The Wilding (15 page)
Grey and level the road stretched away into the mist. There was nothing on it, no standing wraith, no crumpled figure.
He was vanished.
As I made to lay the whip aside, something touched my arm: the paper, clutched in a hand so white and wasted that I could see the bones in it. Wouldead, I raised my eyes to my companion. His skin had the gleam that one sees on rotting fish, and as for his face – looking into the pits of the eyes, I moaned with the terror of a child.
‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Stay –’
My mother was in the room, shaking me. It was over.
*
So: the dream had played me a trick. I had learnt to tolerate it, but it did not wish to be tolerated. I feared it most devoutly now. I shuddered at the memory of the face, and the soft, insinuating voice of the dead.
Thus plagued, it could not be long before I was again planning to call at End House. My father and mother looked unhappy when I said as much.
‘Next year, Jon, I think you might leave Aunt Harriet,’ Mother said. ‘She’s not been kind to you.’
‘Shouldn’t I help my aunt?’ I replied.
‘She doesn’t need your help. She thinks you’re fawning.’ This was unusual, for Mother. As a rule, there being so few Dymonds, she tended to cherish even the most distant and unpromising relatives, but she had evidently had enough of Aunt Harriet.
My father nodded his agreement. ‘She never asked for you,’ he reminded me. ‘Carry through everything you promised, but don’t go there next season.’
That would start in October, too far in the future for me to worry about now. I said I would be glad not to go, provided I could finish up my work this time. I made my usual arrangement with Simon Dunne (he held out for his extra penny), loaded up the cart and was on my way.
The weather was cold, but clear; had it been misty, I might have been tempted to stay at home. I passed through lanes whitened by frost where a thin snow had fallen, unnoticed, during the night. I thought of God creating the world, and of its beauty, which in His kindness and wisdom He fitted to the tastes and appetites of mankind. Even frost and ice, I thought, are fashioned in such a way that they please the eye and thus, to some degree, repay the sufferings of winter. But then my hands grew cold and clumsy and I remembered the women in the cave, and wondered what they were reduced to, and whether they had fire and food. Perhaps they spent most of their time sleeping to keep their strength in, as Joan had said.
Perhaps they had moved on.
My aunt was not at home when I arrived and Rose Barnes opened the door. She said my aunt was gone to meet with some of the villagers.
‘Will she be long?’
‘I wouldn’t know, Sir,’ Rose said, bringing me to a chair by the fire. ‘Would you like some refreshment?’
Numb and hungry, I eagerly accepted and she fetched me some cold meat pie. With that, and the wine, and the warmth, I was soon asleep.
* * *
A door banged.
‘Quite apart from that other business,’ a man said. I blinked and started, finding myself in a strange room. Then I knew where I was: End House, sitting with my back to the door, and with a pain in my buttocks from staying too long in one position.
‘You see the need,’ said a voice I recognised as Aunt Harriet’s.
‘Indeed, Madam, I see it only too clearly, and as far as
that
goes, you may count me your faithful servant.’
‘We are all God’s servants.’
There followed a pause during which neither spoke. I wondered if they were praying. I waited a moment and then stood up from the chair.
‘Good day to you –’
My aunt shrieked. The prayer-book she was holding flew into the air and narrowly missed the fire.
‘– Aunt,’ I finished, guessing at once what had happened and fearing I would be blamed for it.
‘You
will
enter the house uninvited,’ my aunt said sourly. This was her welcome to me. Still, I was forced to admire her powers of self-command: she was recovered already. I picked up the prayer-book, dusted off some ash and gave it back to her. I then bowed to the man, whom I now recognised as Dr Green, the parson Tamar had accused of having no charity in him.
‘Rose let me in, Aunt. I’m sorry I took you by surprise.’
‘What is it, then? A message from Mathew?’
‘Why, no,’ I said. ‘The Redstreaks. You asked would I come back for them.’
She glanced towards Dr Green.
‘We’ll talk later,’ said that gentleman, inclining his head. They strolled out again through the front door and I realised they had withdrawn here for some private business which I had interrupted. I heard my aunt say, in some agitation, ‘Did we speak of … ?’
‘Not a word,’ said the pastor.
12
It was with foreboding that later that day I once more made my way to the cave. The going was easier now, the trees bare and brown except here and there where ivy shrouded one of them, strangling what was nobler than itself. The weather had changed and a rough wind was at my back, surging in wave after wave over the sobbing trees before sinking at last, only to rise again a moment later.
I edged down the slope and dropped into te ditch. The hurdle was still in place. This time I was more cautious than on a previous occasion: I stood at the entrance and called as loudly as I could, and was at last answered by something like the mewl of a cat, which when repeated proved to be, ‘Within.’
Joan, trussed in the blankets and half buried in straw, lay bunched behind an angle in the rock. I flinched at the sound of her raw, tearing cough.
‘Don’t worry, it’s only Master Jonathan.’
‘Sir.’ She could not summon breath for more. I had to wait for her to stop gasping before asking her, ‘You’re alone here? Where’s Tamar?’
‘Out.’
‘Where?’
She shrugged so weakly it was more like watching her shoulders collapse. ‘Ten of the morning – heard the bells.’
That meant Tamar had been away about five hours –
where
she was, I supposed I should never know. Joan’s head drooped forward onto her chest as if she was fainting. Her lantern was unlit but I had brought one with me and I now proceeded, with difficulty, to light it.
‘How are you living now? Does Tamar get food for you?’
At the word ‘food’ she flung up her chin and looked straight at me. The sunken skin around her eyes glistened in the beam thrown by the lantern: the rheum of old age, or the traces of weeping? There was plenty to weep about. The deathly cold of the cavern, even during these few minutes, had penetrated to my bones, imparting a chill numbness that made me think Joan could not be long for this world.
I took from my bag some wine and cordial, and a pie from our larder, all given me by Mother as comforts for the journey. Seeing the wine, Joan snatched feebly at it. I made her drink the cordial first and eat some of the pie.
‘She finds for herself,’ she said through a mouthful of food. Her voice was stronger already; the poor man’s crust of bread works greater wonders than the glutton’s banquet.
‘But she shares with you?’
‘Yes, Sir. She does.’
Observing that her teeth were unequal to the pastry, I stopped bothering her awhile. I noticed that she left nothing for Tamar: seemingly the bargain did not hold both ways, or perhaps she suspected the younger woman of keeping things back for herself. When she was almost finished I said, ‘I’ve been with my father. Robin’s brother, Mathew.’
‘I remember Mr Mathew.’
‘He remembers you.’
She stopped chewing at once, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘You told him about me? He’s coming – coming here?’
‘No, no. We talked only of the past.’ I bread woe she would ask,
And what did Mathew say?
but she remained silent. I handed her the wine again and she took a long, choking pull at it.
‘He says you left home when the army left,’ I began.
Joan drank some more.
‘That you left with the men.’ She laid down the bottle and stared at me. ‘Come, Joan,’ I said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t ask him?’
‘He says that?’ she murmured.
‘Yes, he does,’ I said, stung. ‘My father is the most truthful of men.’
She was taken by another attack of the cough, collapsing afterwards into the straw and moaning, ‘I won’t see another winter.’ Her fingers as she wiped her mouth were a bundle of stained old bones.
I waited a moment, then repeated, ‘You left with the men.’
‘As soon that as anything else.’
‘What, as soon as with Robin?’
‘I couldn’t. She made sure.’
I let her drink some more, then took the bottle from her. The church clock struck four; outside it would be growing dusk.
‘Do you mean my aunt? Made sure of what?’
‘That I couldn’t return.’
‘From where?’
She shifted in the straw. ‘It’s bad in this cold. Can’t write.’
‘You needn’t, now. You can tell me.’ I offered her the wine again, but she looked at me with suspicion and did not take it. I repeated, ‘You can tell me.’
She shook her head.
‘Come, have some more wine.’
‘Yes, and then you’ll say it was the drink talking,’ she muttered. ‘What? What was that?’
She mumbled something more, some insolence, under her breath, but I let it go. One so powerless, so broken down by poverty and vice, must naturally envy me my happy life, and she could do me no harm. I was content, for the moment, to swallow down any insult provided she would talk about her time with the army.
‘Don’t be angry,’ I wheedled. ‘I’ve come to hear the truth from your lips. You want that, don’t you?’
I could see it in her, protest as she might. She wished to torment me a little beforehand, that was all. I went on patiently, ‘You wrote of how you were with child, and your sister found out.’
‘No.’
‘Yes – you wrote that.’
‘We all
thought
I was with child. But it wasn’t long enough to know.’
‘You weren’t, then?’
‘I wasn’t sure.’
This wrong-footed me. I had thought to hear crude fudgings that I might set aside, should I wish to. I tried again.
‘But you’d been sweethearts for some weeks. What about the sickness?’
‘I had a bilious constitution.’
‘But in time, you know,’ I hinted.
‘Oh, Sir!’ Her eyes were more than glistening now; a tear was visible on her dirty, wrinkled cheek. I was almost ashamed of myself, and would have stopped but for the fact that she herself had commenced this tale and drawn me into it. Then she seemed to come to a decision; she wiped her face and cleared her throat. ‘We had soldiers lodged at the Guild Hall,’ she began.
Here we were at last. I said, ‘You wrote of them.’
‘Women stayed within doors if they could, out of their way. It was a hideous time for me, cooped up in End House.’
‘You had Robin’s protection, didn’t you?’
‘Aye; but she had the upper hand.’
‘I never thought Uncle Robin was afraid of his wife.’
Joan said with a flash of malice, ‘
You’re
afraid of her. Tamar –’ The cough here racked her, forcing her to break off. When it had died down she went on, ‘Outside the house there were the soldiers, inside Harriet and Robin at each other’s throats. He was too soft; he should’ve given her a good beating.’
‘Perhaps conscience restrained him,’ I put in. ‘He was in the wrong, after all.’
‘Yes; but
why
was he?’
I stared at her, thunderstruck. ‘Because he was a faithless husband.’
‘That’s not my meaning. He and I should’ve married, so why did we only meet when he was already bound to
her
? I’ll tell you something, Master Jon.’ She craned towards me so that I was aware of her foul breath. ‘The Devil is the Prince of this world. Open your eyes: the proof is all around you. She’s one of His own, and that’s why she prospers.’
I felt a revulsion towards Joan, poor and helpless as she was. I said, ‘It’s God who prospers people.’
‘God! He’s not bothered with the likes of me. The Dark Gentleman gathers in all the rotten fruits God lets slip and He makes something of them.’
‘He’ll make cinders in Hell of you. Why d’you call him a gentleman?’ I waved my hand to indicate the cave. ‘Is this how he keeps his promises?’
‘You don’t know what I asked, and whether I kept my side of the bargain.’ I didn’t like the way she looked at me as she said this. ‘I’m not afraid of Hell, Sir.’
‘Then you should be – you should be. But go back to the soldiers.’
‘From Him to them, eh?’ she said as if I had made an excellent joke. ‘Well, one evening I was hiding in my chamber and I heard them shouting. I don’t know what’d happened; something stirred them up. A band of them came out onto the green and down by the stream, all fighting drunk. They had muskets stored in the Hall, everybody knew that, and I heard shutters snapping to, double-quick, in case something should come crashing through the windows. I closed my shutters like the rest, but I peeped from behind them. A few of the soldiers started banging on drums, bawling that they were for King and Country and that fighting men must be fed. I can hear them now.’
‘What did they do, attack?’
She shook her head. ‘They wanted mutton. I don’t know who had sheep to spare – we were short of everything – but mutton they got. I tell you, Sir, the Devil’s the Prince of this World. They roasted it, too, right there in the Hall. They opened the windows, else they would all have choked, but the ceiling was black with fat and soot. I’m told the place stank months after.’
That was war, I thought: men sinking into beasts, ruining a fine building for the sake of a few mouthfuls of leathery, unhung mutton.
‘And then, Sir, they sent word that they must have a woman to dress their meat.’
I whistled. ‘I hope the villagers sent a man cook.’
‘You’re very green, Sir,’ she said shortly. ‘So was I, at first. The men of the village came out into the lane, to talk without their wives. I heard them settling on who they should send.’
‘Not their own womenfolk, I’ll be bound.’
‘Oh, no! There was a woman, married but she’d been whipped behind the cart more than once; it was when I heard her name that I understood. Their plan was for the soldiers to go to her one at a time, her husband to stand guard. They – the soldiers – were gone back into the Hall by then, and someone went to them to make the offer, but it wouldn’t do. They wanted the woman sent in to them, and nobody with her. The villagers dursn’t do that, though, not even to a whore, if her man didn’t consent.’
I was feeling sick.
‘So they were at a loss. Then the soldiers started firing through the Hall windows. They said it was to let the smoke out, but really it was to frighten folk.’
I recalled the altered casements I had seen during my waks.
‘And then my door opened –’
‘No,’ I said. ‘No –’
‘My sister came into my room, and she dragged me downstairs and out into the street and handed me over.’
‘No.’
‘She handed me over.’
We sat looking at one another in the faint light of the lantern. I was speechless; I had thought nothing could shock me more than her revelations about herself and Robin, and now I saw I had but dipped a toe in the river. Joan went on, ‘I’d no one to defend me, no husband, no brother. She told them I was able to dress any amount of flesh – those were her very words. I hear them in my dreams, Sir.’
Surely this was itself a dream – this cave, this cracked voice out of the darkness, this terrible tale that went on and on. I tried to marshal my scattered wits.
‘What of Robin? He wouldn’t stand by and permit that, surely?’
‘I screamed for him but he never came. I thought they were in it together, to palm off his child on the soldiers – I cursed him to Hell. A long time after, I found it out: how he went to the stable, thinking the horses might be frightened, and when he came back I was gone, and he never knew. He found out too late, you see.’
I trembled. If I rose now and left the wood, in a very few minutes I would be standing before the Hall doors, perhaps as Harriet had stood and watched them close behind her sister. At that thought I could scarcely breathe. My mouth filled with spit and I felt I must get out of the cave. Outside, in the icy air, I leaned against a tree and vomited. There was nothing in my belly, only a little sour froth, but the heaving took some time to subside. Afterwards I felt emptied out, not only my guts but everything inside me, as if I were hollow.
How pitilessly had the soldiers dealt with the girl brought to them! And yet there were things in this story that shocked me more. Let me be clear. I was not, am not, disposed to forgive or gloss over the men’s wrongdoing. I say only that what turned me inside out like a glove was the notion that one sister should deliver up another – no matter what the provocation. I wept a little, not even sure I was weeping for Joan. Perhaps it was for the world.
After a while I went back into the cave and sat down.
Joan said drily, ‘You don’t like my tale, Master Jon.’
We were silent a minute or two, until my thoughts began running on the consequences of what had happened. I asked her, ‘When were you released? Did someone from the village rescue you?’
‘Who?’
‘Anybody! How could people go up and down past the Guild Hall, knowing you were inside – seeing in through the windows?’
She said quietly, ‘There’s a room without windows. They took me there.’
‘God have mercy.’
‘They shoved me outdoors the next morning. I could’ve crawled on the ground, I was so broken, but I came out walking upright. There’s pride in everything – in everything. So I held myself up, and as I was descending the steps I saw our neighbour, who had always been kind to me, coming along the lane. I can’t tell you how my heart yearned to her; I greeted her and as soon as she saw me, she turned away. I went through the village, and it was the same everywhere – nobody would even look at me, much less embrace me or even take my hand. The wives twitched their clothes away as if I were poisoned.’
‘But all that happened against your will,’ said I.
‘Folk had to believe otherwise, Sir, or what were they to think of their own good selves?’
‘And you didn’t go to Robin?’
‘I didn’t know, then, how my sister had tricked him; I thought he’d betrayed me. I went to the field where the camp-followers were, and I passed with them out of the village.’
‘And now you’re back –’ Something here occurred to me, something that, caught up in the story, I had not thought of until now. ‘Joan. Has anyone from Tetton recognised you?’
She shrugged. ‘One time, Master Jon, I was driven away from End House and you were at the window. What did you see? Nobody. A beggar with her head bound up.’
‘Perhaps; but I didn’t know you then. What about the women who visit here?’
‘The lovers of the Gentleman? They –’
‘Lovers of – Good God!’ I exclaimed.
‘
They
don’t call themselves that, Sir; not at first. They don’t wish to be seen, you understand; we sit in the dark.’ She gave a wheezing laugh. ‘Besides, the young don’t see the old. If you live to my age, you’ll find that out.’
‘Very well,’ I said. ‘But stop this talk of the Gentleman, d’you hear me? You’ll bring down trouble on yourself.’ Joan looked sulky at this. ‘I have to get my bread, Sir.’
How pitiful and disgusting that a woman gently raised should be forced to ‘get her bread’ thus. There must be monies and goods remaining that had once been Joan’s and I had a good idea who had profited from them. I said, ‘When will you reveal yourself to Harriet?’
‘
Never!
’ Joan squealed.
I was not expecting this reply. I said, ‘But you must, if you wish to get back what’s yours. How else can it be done?’
‘You’ll tell her nothing about us, Sir! She’d hunt us out.’
‘Then how can your money and property be restored? That
is
what you’ve come back for, is it not?’
‘Tamar spoke with Robin about it.’
I sighed and said gently, ‘Yes. But your best chance now is for Harriet to acknowledge you.’
‘She never will.’ Joan’s face looked so stubborn and vengeful as she said this that she could have been one of the Rebel Angels; and indeed, she was fighting under the colours of the Gentleman. ‘She’s had her chance; they’ve all had their chance. I was the salvation of this village!’
‘Shh – blasphemy –’
‘Denied, handed over to the soldiers, like your Christ!’ Her eyes glittered. ‘The people here devoured me, body and blood … and they’ve denied me for nigh on thirty years.’
* * *
Walking back to Aunt Harriet’s house in the thickening dusk, I moved like a sleepwalker, twice tripping on dead wood but luckily catching hold of a branch each time. I was, however, very far from asleep. The inside of my head buzzed like a hive, while somehow my feet placed themselves one in front of the other and carried me along the path.
Once I had an aunt by marriage, cold, wealthy and commanding. Now another had been foisted on me – sister to the first, shadow to her substance – and along with her, a daughter, whore to half the village and also to a certain young fool from Spadboro. Our family was certainly more numerous, these days, and to my mind, at least, it was grown a perplexing torment. My father could be said to share the same blood as Robin, which meant Robin’s blood ran in my veins; and if Robin were Tamar’s father, then Tamar and I …
But there I was caught again. Either she
was
Robin’s, and my bastard cousin, or the child of a soldier and nothing to the Dymonds. From Joan’s account, there seemed no way of telling; my doubts could never be resolved. Damn Joan, couldn’t she tell by looking at the girl? Women are said to know these things by nature. A great deal hung upon it, for if Tamar were indeed Robin’s child, and Harriet’s niece (or should that be stepdaughter?) then provision must be made for her. Modest provision, I mean, not to be compared with the rights of a legitimate heir. A difference must be maintained. Still, we are taught to exercise compassion, to sinners as to the godly. Even bastard children must be clothed and fed.
*
Getting no further with Tamar, I began to puzzle over Aunt Harriet, and here I found myself oppressed by the most chilling thoughts. I could picture her, fury that she was, so enraged that she scarcely knew what she did, dragging Joan into the lane, frantic to shame and punish her – and afterwards, trembling, sick at the betrayal the village men had witnessed and that Robin must surely discover. I saw her overwhelmed by guilt and fear, knowing her evil could never be blotted from God’s book – in short, utterly undone.
Lord knows, this picture was horrible enough. Yet I was soon visited by another so shocking as to seem the prompting of the Gentleman himself, namely that Harriet had acted not in frenzy but in cold cunning. If her sister were with child, how better to make her miscarry? If not with child, surely she would be afterwards; and what surname could she give the babe except perhaps ‘Legion’? It was as Joan had said: there was nothing for her to do but vanish. Harriet had visited on her a destruction so terrible that, like the cities of the plain, nothing remained to show where she had been.
Even these vile imaginings were not without a grain of comfort. Since Tamar was come into the world a sport, a wilding, I would wish her to be the child of the abduction, bitter though that tale was – a thousand times more bitter than my father’s. It was infernal selfishness in me, but so it was. Tamar must not be Robin’s child; else, what should I think of my good self?
* * *
‘Where
have
you been?’ cried my aunt, barging towards me as I made to go upstairs. ‘There’s a hogshead gone bad.’
I was taken aback. The must had been as clear and sweet as any I had pressed, and I had taken care in preparing the barrels.
‘It’s vinegar,’ said Aunt Harriet. ‘You can’t have burnt enough sulphur. And when I want to talk with you, the boy tells me you’ve gone out walking. In this weather!’