John Saturnall's Feast (5 page)

‘Get his tongue wagging,’ Josh told Ben. ‘Get him talking, understand?’

Ben flexed his shoulders and felt the welts from the straps of his pack. How hard could talking be? He handed up his bedroll. The oilcloth parcel followed with its curious smell. Josh packed both then picked his way around the puddles to where the mule pulled up mouthfuls of grass. The boy watched him warily, rubbing his wrists where the cords had chafed. Josh looked at the sunken cheeks and thin limbs wrapped in the blue coat.

‘You ain't going to run away, are you, John Sandall?’

The boy gave the merest shake of his head.
The wicked Blades of Grass,
thought Ben. What had the priest meant?

‘We're going to Buckland Manor,’ Josh continued. ‘You know where that is? Sir William's going to take you in.’

The boy pulled the blue coat around him and looked back up the valley.

‘You can't go back,’ Josh said quietly. ‘You can't do nothing about what happened.’

God had been missing for forty-three years. A little old man in a long blue smock bent double beneath an enormous sack, he had vanished in an explosion of glittering splinters. A moment later Saint Clodock had followed, sung to his destruction with a toneless psalm by the Geneva-cloaked ruffians who had marched into the church with their stones, their long poles, their whitewash and brooms. The windows of Saint Clodock's had been bare ever since.

That had been Father Hole's first Easter in the parish. Now, sweating, swaying, his white hair waving, the priest climbed the creaking steps to his pulpit and wondered why the crash of glass should resound in his memory on this unremarkable Sunday morning. Why, after the reigns of a queen, two kings and the seating of six Bishops of Carrboro, should God's disappearance trouble him now? Resting his hands on the smooth rail he surveyed his congregation, seeking an answer in the upturned faces. From the ancient pews below, his parishioners stared back.

The wealthiest yeomen sat at the front, the Cloughs, the Huxtables, the Sutons and the respectable side of the Chaffinge family. The pews behind them were reserved for the Parkisons and Fentons, then the Drurys, the other Chaffinges and the Riveretts. Behind them, in the free pews, sat everyone else. They wore their best bonnets and dresses, their cleanest boots, stockings and breeches. They gaped at him and breathed through their mouths against the faint smell of decay from underfoot. The Starlings and Dares were ignoring each other this morning, Father Hole noted. Tom Hob swayed a little, his mouth open wide enough to catch flies. In front of him sat Maddy Odd-bone, newly dismissed from her place in service, her swollen belly brazenly on display. Ginny Lambe had a fresh bruise on her face and Elijah Huxtable sported eyes even redder than his nose. In the corner, Susan Sandall sat upright in the back pew. Her boy, normally motionless and silent, seemed unable to stop fidgeting. At the back of the church stood his black-garbed warden, his heavy face surmounted by a full head of long blond hair and punctuated by two unblinking blue eyes.

That was it. That was why he remembered, realised Father Hole, swallowing the sprig of spearmint in his mouth. Timothy Marpot's eyes. It was their certainty. Their absolute absence of doubt. The black-cloaked window-breakers had possessed the same look.

But no zealot would wear his luxuriant blond hair so long, thought Father Hole. Nor work so selflessly for his parish. For Marpot would preach the sermon whenever Father Hole was indisposed, continuing long after the sands in the glass had run down, according to the reports of Gideon Stevens. He even led lessons in his cottage for the men and women of the parish, just as the Bishop had encouraged. No, Timothy Marpot's arrival in the parish was a boon. A godsend, he had told his new warden at their Audit Dinner. As he carved slices from the cheeks of the calf's head, a beatific smile had spread over the man's face as if some long-deferred prayer had been answered.

A loud cough from Gideon recalled him. Father Hole glanced at his chosen verse, turned his mottled face to his congregation and upended his hourglass.

‘The wicked spring up like grass,’ he announced to the parishioners of Saint Clodock's. ‘But the virtuous man stands like a palm tree.’

The text was one of his favourites. Wickednesses were many, Father Hole explained. Happily the single trunk of virtue rose above, starving them of sunlight and rain. That was the palm tree. Evil withered, he remembered telling himself, hunched over the table in his parlour while the Zoyland zealots bellowed in his church. Untended, the grass of wickedness shrivelled and died. The chanting had stopped. It was over, he had told himself. Then the crash of the glass battered his ears. So he had sat with the long brown bottle, alone like the palm tree, waiting . . .

And he had been right. By the time the Constable and his men had been fetched from Carrboro, Brother Zoilus and his black-cloaked men had moved on. To the hamlets up on the Spines. Or out onto the marshes of the Levels. To the dank chapels of Zoyland. Brother Zoilus had made his last appearance bursting from the crowd after Mass in Carrboro Abbey. Bible raised in righteous anger, he had used it to break the Bishop's nose. In return, his lordship had cut off the man's hand.

‘Thus the wicked decrease,’ Father Hole told his congregation as the last grains of sand in his hourglass trickled down. ‘They are turned to chaff. God blows them away. Such is the fate of the wicked.’

He led the prayers for the Kin, then Sir William at the Manor. He watched the men and women rise from their pews. His thoughts turned to the parlour and the bottle in the cupboard. He would wait until sunset, he resolved. This was the Lord's Day after all. A chorus of coughs, sniffs, mutterings and scrapings was rising in the nave.

At the door he offered blessings and examined his charges. The bruise on Ginny Lambe's face prompted a warning look to John Lambe. The bulge in Maddy Oddbone's belly provoked a glare and a shake of the head. Tom Hob was treated to a rap from his own wooden tankard, dangling from a string around his waist. The smell of stale cider from Elijah Huxtable prompted Father Hole to lay a hand on the man's arm.

‘The new well's near two years old, Elijah. Have you tried its waters?’

‘Well-water's for children and horses, Father,’ the man muttered. Father Hole exchanged glances with Elijah's brother Leo as the others shuffled past. The older man shrugged.

He was their shepherd, thought Father Hole. They were his sheep. Like sheep, they mostly wandered where they wanted. At last only the children were left. Father Hole led them in and had them sit cross-legged on the floor. He held up a lump of chalk.

‘Who will draw a palm tree?’

They looked at him open-mouthed: Tobit Drury and Seth Dare, Dando Candling whose hair was whiter than his own, Cassie and Abel Starlin, the Chaffinge children, Peggy Rawley who always clutched a doll, the Fenton girls and all the others. He smiled down at them. He liked to ask them odd questions. Even startle them. God could disappear, he told them once. He could vanish like ice in a puddle. Like glass in a window.

‘Come now,’ he cajoled. ‘Who will draw?’

Father Hole waved the chalk before the stolid faces. In his mind's eye, he saw the trunk rise, the great branches curving down like scythe-blades. Then, from the back, came a voice he could not recall hearing rise above a murmur before.

‘I will.’

John rose to his feet, his heart thudding in his chest. He had barely heard a word of the sermon. He had fidgeted through the prayers. All week, Cassie's challenge had loomed in his thoughts.
You wait for me after church.
Now he edged past the other children. The cloying odour of decay hung in the air. One of the Huxtables had been buried the month before last in one of the lairstalls under the floor. The same smell had risen out of the old well, thought John. The wet winding-sheet smell. But why should a well smell of bodies? He took the chalk from Father Hole and drew the arc of the palm tree's trunk. He willed his hand not to shake as long-leaved branches sprayed out of the top and dropped to the ground.

‘Yes,’ Father Hole said when he had finished. ‘That is how God fashioned the palm tree.’

John picked his way back through the cross-legged children. Ephraim was whispering to Tobit. Seth kept giving John looks. He glanced over at Cassie. He had been watching the white-bonneted girl all through the service, her words echoing in his head.
You want to know? You wait .
. . Father Hole was telling them how the palm tree's shade at once shielded the weak as well as starving the grass of sunlight. John waited for the lesson's end, part of him urging it on, another part hoping the priest would talk for ever.

At last they were dismissed. The children surged out, John at their head as always. But this time, at the gate, he stopped. At the sight of him, the little ones stared. Cassie emerged with Tobit, Seth and Abel. A scowling Ephraim followed with Dando. John stood his ground. Then he saw Tobit's heavy brow crease. Dando's eyes narrowed. He had been wrong, John thought suddenly. Cassie's challenge was a trick. He was a fool. They would fall upon him. But the boys looked at one another. Tobit stepped forward.

‘We thought you were dead,’ Tobit blurted out.

‘There was blood all over,’ added Seth.

‘Cassie said you stopped breathin,’ Dando told him. ‘But she prayed and you came back.’

John stared, not trusting himself to glance at the girl. But as the children turned between himself and Cassie, a sceptical voice sounded.

‘That so, Cassie?’ Ephraim asked. ‘You prayed him to life?’

Cassie turned a guileless gaze on the older boy. ‘You doubting me, Ephraim?’

‘You prayed for the son of a witch?’

Ephraim looked about at the other children, seeking their support.

‘For Witch-boy?’ He appealed.

But no one moved. No one raised a hand against John. A scowl darkened Ephraim's heavy-browed face.

‘You take me for a fool,’ he spat. ‘But Ephraim Clough's no fool. Warden Marpot knows that.’

Cassie favoured Ephraim with her most radiant smile.

‘God chooses his messenger,’ she said. ‘That's what Brother Timothy told me.’

The dark-suited boy shook his head but the little ones were already edging forward, crowding around John as if a fierce animal had wandered down from the hillside and begun tamely nibbling the grass on the green.

‘Is it true your ma charms snakes?’ Peggy Rawley asked, clutching her doll.

‘Was your pa really a pirate?’ demanded the youngest Riverett.

‘Or a blackamoor?’ added an undaunted Bah Fenton in her whiny voice.

Then they were all around him, jabbering and questioning. John stood in their midst, nodding or shaking his head, a bubble of happiness swelling inside him, growing and growing until he feared it might burst.

‘So who turned the water in the old well sour?’ asked one of the Suton girls.

‘That was Marpot, moving in next door to it,’ said Seth.

Cassie shook her head disapprovingly and Ephraim's scowl returned but the other children laughed. Then Seth took out his cap, threw it high in the air and looked across their heads.

‘You playing then?’

It took a moment for John to understand. Then Abel added his voice.

‘Well, John?’

He played drop-cap and catch on the green then fives with Seth's ball against the back of the church. He ran races around the pond and played hide-and-seek among the trees of the Chaffinge orchard. When the shadows from the well lengthened, he walked up the back lane with Cassie and Abel and it felt as if his feet barely brushed the ground. He floated over the stile and the clods of Two-acre Field. As they rounded the far corner, Cassie reached down and picked a pebble from the soil. She took out a purse embroidered with crosses and put the pebble inside.

‘That was good what you said,’ John said shyly.

‘What was that?’

‘About praying for me.’

‘I did pray for you, John.’ She gave him a smile. ‘You want to know what God said?’

John nodded.

‘He said you'd help me.’

‘Help you how?’

‘He said you'd help me find the witch,’ said Cassie.

‘What witch?’

‘The witch that took our Mary. Up there.’

Cassie looked up, above the hedge that marked the edge of the field, all the way up the slope to the dark line of trees at the top. But before John could ask more, the clanging of Marpot's hand-bell came from the direction of the green. Abel trudged up, his boots crumbling the clods.

‘Brother Timothy's calling,’ he told his sister with a grin. ‘Don't want to keep him waiting do you, Cass?’

Cassie gave her brother a pitying look then turned without another word. The boys watched her run off across the field, her brown wool dress flapping about her legs. Abel turned to John.

‘She tell you she talks to God?’

‘She said she prayed,’ John said awkwardly.

Abel snorted then shucked off his blue coat. Picking up a stone, he weighed it in his hand.

‘You know how to throw?’

John shook his head.

‘Want to learn?’

‘This was a garden once,’ John's mother told him. ‘A long time ago. Everything a body could need grew here.’