Mist Over Pendle (6 page)

“Meantime, you’re my cousin and my guest, and as both I make you welcome.”

He led her to the foot of the stair, and himself lit her small carrying-candle from the tall ones that burned there. He handed it to her gravely.

“God’s Grace to you, little cousin!”

“And . . . and to you!”

She ran quickly up the stair until a warm splash from the flickering candle warned her to be careful. She turned and saw him still where he had been, at the foot of the stair; and as she looked, he nodded and turned away.

In her bedchamber, candles were already lit, and Anne Sowerbutts, warned by the bell, was waiting. Margery let the girl help her from her kirtle and into the warm night-gown of puke; and then, pleasant though it was to have this attendance, she sent the girl away. At this moment she wanted to be alone.

Being alone, she looked round her at the big four-poster with the carved oak tester and the rose-red curtains, at the carved and panelled tiring-table, and at the crystal mirror beyond it; no steel circle, this, but a tall sheet of glass backed by a shining surface. Then she lit more candles, so that six of them burned; and these she placed so that all their light fell to the front of the crystal mirror. And with that she slipped out of the long gown and stood only in her smock. This she grasped, and gathered it tightly round her; and stood so, in the light before the mirror, turning this way and that, until she was reassured. She was not like a Flemish mare.

She pulled the warm gown round her again, and sitting by the tiring-table she drew a pair of candles close to the glass; then she brought her face against it, looked long and searchingly, and again was reassured. Certainly she was not pudding-faced.

Then, because she remembered all that he had said, she grew busy, sitting there before the mirror. A full quarter-hour slipped by before she rose, drew three of the bed-curtains, and blew all the candles but one. And when she had said her prayers, blown the last candle and drawn the last curtain, and was wriggling between the scented cambric sheets of the great bed, she spared a kindly thought for her great-uncle Alexander, whose
Homily
made such excellent curling-papers.

She was still sunk in sleep when Anne Sowerbutts drew back the bed-curtains and let in a flood of sunlight that picked a glint from her tousled hair and turned the dust into a glittering mist. It heartened her, and when she had yawned and stretched, and at last climbed out of bed, she told Anne to give her the orange-tawny again. Stiff though she was from yesterday, the brightness of the morning set her hoping for another ride this day.

She was not disappointed. When she was down the stair she found Roger already in his homely riding-clothes and addressing himself to a breakfast of cold bacon, wheaten bread, and frothing brown ale. He waved to her to do likewise.

“Riding,” he observed, as she seated herself delicately, “is apt to work such mischief. You’ll forget it when you’re warm. Could you sit a horse again today?”

She grimaced at him and wriggled in her chair, but she nodded assent.

“That’s well,” he said. “There’s some trouble up the Forest and I must look to it. So you may ride with me, if you’re of that mind, and see people and places, and perhaps the trouble too.”

“Aye, sir.” She was already helping herself to bacon and feeling appreciative of this easy household. “May I know what the trouble is?”

“That’s what we’re to learn.” He pushed back his chair and filled his ale-mug afresh. “All I know is that Wilsey--he’s our Constable--sent word, a half-hour gone, of a man dead at a place called the Rough Lee. And some people, it seems, are asking why. Which is a nuisance. I was due at Altham today. Are you finished?”

“I ... I think so.”

He looked her in the eye, and burst out laughing.

“That’s an answer more of manners than of stomach. I’d forgotten, your youth. Get you to it! Mitton won’t mind waiting.”

He began to charge his tobacco pipe while Margery, nothing loath, attacked the bacon again and helped herself to more ale. The frugality of her mother’s housekeeping had taught her to take chances when they came.

“This ale,” she said happily. “Do you call it small ale here?”

“Mostly.” Roger’s eyebrows had taken a sardonic lift. “You find it none so small?”

“It’s better than our best. As for our small....“

“I know it. I know your London ale--and a poor-weak-sinner’s brew it is! You must try our October----”

He put fire to his pipe while Margery cut at the bacon for a third time. She ate steadily until curiosity woke in her. Then she looked up at Roger.

“This Mitton, sir, who won’t mind waiting. May I know who he is?”

“He isn’t. He’s dead. That’s why he won’t mind waiting.”

“Oh!”

And Margery, who had been contemplating a fourth attack on the bacon, suddenly decided not to. Instead she told Roger she had finished.

“You’re sure?” He looked hard at her. “To horse then in ten minutes’ time.”

She was out of the house in less than that, and on the gravel by the great door she found the horses, held by the man who had led the pack-horse yesterday. He handed her a packet done in white cloth.

“Bread and cheese,” he explained. “Master Nowell said it should be in your saddle-bag.”

She took it with a surprise which he must have noticed.

“Said you’d not had much breakfast,” he added, “and maybe you’d be sharp set before we’re back.”

Margery saw no sense in contradicting this, so she took the packet and stuffed it into her saddle-bag. Then she turned to look at him more carefully. She saw a small stocky fellow, thick-set and strong, with fair hair, unwavering blue eyes, and a nose that looked as if it had once been broken. She found herself smiling at him, and he smiled back with a display of startlingly white teeth in a face so brown and creased that she wondered where, and under what suns, he had been. Margery’s smile broadened’. She thought she liked this man.

Then Roger came out of the house to join them, pulling on his gloves as he walked.

“So you’ve met,” he said. “That’s well. You should know Tom Peyton, little cousin. We’ve been together many a year, and he’s my old and trusty friend.”

And Margery knew from his tone that he meant it. She turned to Tom Peyton again.

“I hope you’ll be in some sort my friend too,” she told him. “I’m a stranger here and have need of friends.”

His smile broadened into a grin.

“Do my best ma’am. Command me.”

Roger nodded approval and then swung lightly into his saddle. Tom Peyton held Margery’s stirrup.

They went away at a brisk trot, and soon Margery was staring at the contrast between this country and the Kentish fields she had known. She could not, indeed, see it as fully as she could have wished, for much of the road lay between banks that cut the view; but she was soon aware that they were climbing to a bleak and undulating moorland, a place of rock and bracken, of tufted grass and scattered trees.

Roger waved his gloved hand to the left.

“The great hill’s yonder,” he explained, “and it runs, as I told you, to the nor’east. This side, there’s a great broad face of it that dips to the valley where runs the Sabden brook....“

“Which we crossed last night?”

“That one. And this side of the brook the ground sweeps up again to this ridge, which marches with the hill. We’re on the outer face of the ridge just now, which is why there’s no good view of the hill. But look to your right!”

He waved at the broad prospect that had opened below them. For a couple of miles the ground fell smoothly to where a sunlit river shone silver. Beyond it the hills rose again.

“That’s the Calder,” he said. “And those few dwellings beyond it make Burnley.”

Margery considered it observantly. This, she thought, was farmland, but not the farmland she had known in Kent. This was a rougher land, with the cattle lean and the trees in scattered clumps. Stubble fields seen here and there suggested lighter crops than the Kentish farmers cut. Roger saw her thought.

“These are no wheat lands,” he said. “We contrive a little of it for our own tables, but the most of our folk must needs make shift with barley--and little enough of that.”

“And is barley all your people’s living?”

“No. There’s pasture too, as you may see, and it’s better than you’d suppose. Even in the Lacys’ time there were vaccaries here.”

“Vaccaries?”

“Cow pastures. What else? But here’s the open ground. Now see!”

They had ended the climb at last, and now to their left the ground fell steeply to a silver thread which she guessed to be the Sabden brook. Beyond it was the great hill, bare and stark in the sunlight.

“What’s on the hill?” he asked.

Margery looked keenly, and at once she saw what he meant. The hill was in full light, and from the one end to the other its great flank was dotted with white specks which could only be grazing sheep.

“There’s our true living,” said Roger. “There they graze. There’s wool to be clipped and carded and spun, and cloth to be wove and dyed. And beyond all that, there’s flesh to be roasted and boiled, and there’s milk and cheese for some. God’s chosen animal, the sheep.”

Margery gurgled with amusement. This, as a theological pronouncement, was new to her.

“And is it a good living, sir, that this chosen animal gives?”

Roger frowned at that.

“No,” he answered shortly, “not for all. It’s very well for us who are the owners. It’s well enough for the yeomen, who in their way are owners too. But for the common sort it’s not nearly so well. Sheep give less work than wheat, and there are folk in plenty here who eke out their barley bread with stolen mutton. How say you, Tom?”

“I’d say less, sir, if they’d let their thieving stop at mutton.”

“I’ll not gainsay you. That place yonder is Fence.”

They had dropped from the crest of the ridge now, and were riding along its outer face with a grey stone hamlet in view below them.

“Fence? That’s an odd name sir?”

“There was store of deer there once, kept safe behind a fence.”

Margery nodded. She was admiring the sweep of this sunlit valley, with its green and silver set against the blue and white of the sky.

“And those are the Hoarstones,” said Tom Peyton.

He was pointing at some tall stones rising out of the ground to their right, and Margery grew curious; but for once, Roger did not know the answer.

“Ask me not,” he said. “We call them so, and none knows how they came, nor whence.”

“The country folk,” said Tom Peyton, “have a tale that the Devil sits among the stones on certain nights, and the fairies on the other nights.”

“Fairies?” Margery smiled. “You keep fairies here?”

Roger grunted.

“I’ll not vouch for the fairies,” he said, “but we’ve certainly got the Devil.”

They had a minute’s silence, and then Margery was at it again.

“This Rough Lee to which we go,” she said. “Is that where this Mitton lived?”

“Aye indeed, and as house steward!” Roger laughed aloud. “God’s Grace! House steward in a yeoman’s home, as though Dick Nutter were a belted earl! It’s a woman’s madness!”

Margery looked at him inquiringly, and he explained it patiently.

“I mean Mistress Nutter,” he said. “Mistress Nutter of the Rough Lee--known through the Forest as Our Alice. She came here out of Trawden some twenty years agone, and she came as the wife of plain Dick Nutter. Then she took airs, and would have herself the wife of Master Richard Nutter--though he’s Dick to all Pendle. And of late she’s so puffed that none doubts she means to end as the wife of Richard Nutter of the Rough Lee, Esquire--if God do but give her land enough.”

“God, is it?”

Tom Peyton flung the question quickly, and Roger turned sharply at it. For a moment Margery expected trouble, thinking her cousin might resent this as an impertinence. Then she saw that she was wrong, and at once she guessed why. These two had been many a year together, and no doubt Tom Peyton was privileged to speak his mind. Roger, she saw, was smiling.

“Again I’ll not gainsay you, Tom. We’ll say, if the Devil should find for his own.”

Then he seemed to remember Margery again.

“But of your question, this Mitton was her house steward in these last years--him that used to be the pig man! And now he’s dead. And I don’t yet know what’s thought odd in that.”

They had crossed to the inner face of the ridge again, and soon the great hill was in full view to the left. Another mile brought them to a turning, and the road dipped steeply down to the inner valley. At the bottom were crossroads, and Roger stooped and pointed.

“You see the four roads meet? Opposite, the road comes from Barley, which is a mile or two beyond in a cleft of the hill. To the right of the Barley road, the high ground is called Wheathead. What’s to the left we call Goldshaw. And in Goldshaw....“

He pointed away to his left, where the ground rose steeply, and Margery, following that, saw a cluster of buildings, all in the grey stone and perched high on the naked hill.

“I told you we’d a church within the Forest,” he went on. “There it is, and we call it the Newchurch, though it’s been there many a year. Do you see it there, below the road?”

“Aye sir. With the road running past it?”

“Just so. Past it and above it. Had we been for Barley or for Wheathead, we might have used that road.”

He pointed down to the crossroads far below them.

“Do you mark the water there?”

Margery had already seen it, a shining stream that ran by the Barley road and seemed to come from the great hill behind. At the crossroads it turned sharply and then followed the road that ran to the right.

“It’s the Pendle Water,” said Roger. “We must drop to the crossroads and thence follow the Water to the right there. A mile downstream from that, and we shall be at the Rough Lee.”

“Being a house, sir?”

“Being mainly a house, but with a cottage or two lying near. That’s to be expected, since these Nutters are folk of substance. As yeomen go, Dick Nutter is the wealthiest in Pendle.”