The Wilding (17 page)

I now understood how my father, searching among the camp-followers, had failed to find her and had gone away. Thus did Joan lose her truest friend and her one chance of rescue, having come so close that I could not bear, even after all these years, to let her know how nearly she had missed it.

She kept at the work for several weeks. The wagon was a covered one, and despite its noisome stink she seldom went out into the fresh air. She had no wish to; she ate her ration, and slept, alongside her patients. It was one of the most extraordinary times of her life, she told me: she saw men in such a plight as to melt the heart of the Gentleman himself, with bodies burnt or gutted, or cradling an inflamed and rotting stump where once was an arm or leg, and yet she handled them without pity, having none to spare. She could look into the face of a young boy sweating with agony and say to herself: You’re a man like the rest! Had you been in the Guild Hall, you’d have done like the rest! This lack of tenderness made her a good nurse; when more experienced attendants fainted away, Joan remained unmoved. She cared little if she went on like this forever, lying under canvas among the sick and dying, since she had nowhere else to go. Soon, however, unmistakable signs informed her that she was indeed with child. She stayed on as long as she could before the other nurses observed her condition. ‘I was driven away, Sir,’ she said. ‘Obliged to strike out elsewhere.’

Hearing that her old enemy, the virago, had been quietly despatched one night, Joan went back among the camp-followers, seeking out the desperately poor women who could school her in her new life, and a bitter lesson they gave her. Unless she would take herself a protector, they said, her only way was labour: washing pots or filthy linen, or digging the fields. If she wished for outdoor relief, she must return to where she had been living before. So back came Joan to Tetton Green, not without a whipping or two along the way, hating the place but forced to throw herself on its mercy. She was ready to eat any amount of humble pie, provided a parish loaf came with it.

‘I had to, Sir,’ she told me. ‘My teeth were falling out, what with being starved and the little one on the way.’ She was picked up a couple of villages away by a farmer with a cart, and wept with thankfulness, ‘for my feet were blistered so bad, like walking on embers.’

On the outskirts of Tetton, however, she began to feel dread at the coming encounter with the villagers. As she sat wondering if she should go back after all, she observed a man walking in the fields by the side of the road. It was Robin, out alone and, I would have thought, with enough on his mind to furnish contemplation for twenty such walks. She sat trembling b he did not see her. After a while she looked back and saw him in the distance, growing smaller and smaller as the cart sped on.

She said, ‘Oh, Master Jon, if only I’d talked with him before that day! If only I’d known!’

I thought of my nightmare, and my horror of talking with the ghost. On arrival at the village Joan made her way to the parsonage, where the parson refused to help her on the grounds that she was a notoriously lewd woman.

‘Was that Dr Green?’ I asked.

‘Aye. I came out from his house and it was the same as last time, people spitting as I passed them. And then I saw Robin coming back from the fields …’ Her mouth quivering, she went on, ‘I began to rail … I didn’t see why
he
should bear a good character. People were following us along. But he just took my arm – he did it in front of all of them, Sir, I never forget that – and said, “Have faith in me,” and he walked with me round the back of the house. They didn’t dare follow – they thought he was taking me to Harriet, but he couldn’t do that, you know.’

‘Where did you go, then?’

‘He brought me here.’

In the cave Robin explained to her why he had not come to her aid that terrible night. He fetched food and blankets and spoke to her tenderly. Seeing him weep, Joan wept too and was still weeping days later; I fancy she had hopes he might lay down the law to Harriet, and finally bring her sister home. But she had yet to drain the cup of bitterness: Robin was a man who liked his comforts and feared his wife.

‘Did he stay in the cave with you?’

‘No. No.’ She drifted off here, lost in some private contemplation. On coming out of it, she turned her eyes on me in a faintly surprised way as if meeting me for the first time.

I persisted. ‘Or take you back to End House? It was where you belonged.’

‘
She
would never have allowed that.’

‘But if he wanted to provide for you –’

‘He couldn’t do it, Sir. My sister spied into all the accounts.’

‘Wasn’t he master of his own goods?’ Tamar cried out in exasperation. ‘And yours!’

She was voicing my own thoughts: it appeared that Robin had hardly shouldered his burden with a will. Joan’s eyes were wide with indignation.

‘He wasn’t free! You know yourself, Sir, if the village takes against someone, if the vicar condemns them … my daughter doesn’t understand these things.’

‘Whose fault is that?’ Tamar demanded.

‘He gave me money,’ Joan pleaded. ‘I wenay for the child to be born. After that I was in lots of places … where there was field work, I did it. For a while I took up with a strolling man and travelled about with him, until he died.’

‘But whenever I came back here …’ Tamar began.

‘But whenever I came back here, I found a way to let Robin know. He’d always bring us something … he kept me out of the House of Correction, many a time.’

‘And out of your own house, all the time!’ Tamar’s arms were folded as if she thought her hands might otherwise fly out and slap her mother. ‘When I went to nurse him, oh, my eyes were opened! He had goods like I never saw and half of it was
hers
.’

I studied her. ‘Didn’t he know you?’

‘When I first went in to him he seemed to think something. But he hadn’t seen me for years, and I’d grown, and Mrs Harriet put a cap on me that covered up my hair. I waited a few days before I told him. Then he asked me to take my cap off and had a look at me like that, and asked me some questions about Joan. And the next day he gave me the ring.’

‘Did he ever say he’d provide for you?’

She shrugged. ‘I didn’t believe him.’

‘You thought he’d leave everything to Harriet?’

‘He didn’t
love
her,’ Joan whimpered. ‘I was his true love.’

Tamar turned to me, her fierce voice obliterating Joan’s whimper. ‘I had to go outside whenever he came – even in the snow, once, and I was only a little thing.’ She spat. ‘I’m glad he’s dead.’

Disgust filled me. How far I had come from those innocent days in Spadboro when I had no conversations that might not have been heard by anybody! There seemed no innocence left in me at all; even so, I could not bear to hear any more of Robin’s visits to the woman he had ruined. I said, ‘I’m going to Spadboro this afternoon but I’ll be back soon. What’ll you do about the parson’s men?’

Tamar said bitterly, ‘Nothing we can do.’

‘I can’t move much, Sir,’ said Joan. ‘My legs are so bad, now, I can’t get along the paths.’

‘I’ve buried her charms and things,’ said Tamar. ‘If she’d just keep her mouth shut, all would be well, but she
will
try to frighten the men and then we get on to the Gentleman. I tell them it’s the ramblings of a silly old woman but they shake their heads; I don’t think they have any grandams at home. I’ll bring you on your way, Sir.’

I rose and made my way out of the cave. Tamar walked with me, scrambling up the ha-ha in my wake. When we were out of earshot of the cave, she said, ‘I’ve something to tell you, Jon.’

My mother was in the front garden, picking kale; I saw her wave a handful of dark leaves as I guided Bully through the gate. She came to the yard and stood by me as I unharnessed him, all the time asking me questions without waiting for the answers: How was Aunt Harriet? Had I felt so very cold driving back from Tetton Green? Was that the end of her apples, now? Had she parted civilly with me? Had I lost weight? Surely I had, and so on. I was glad that she was content to forgo answers as I could scarcely give her any, being now so tense that my throat had begun to swell as if holding back tears.

‘My dear mother,’ I said, crushing the kale as I seized her hands, ‘I must speak with Father. He’ll tell you my news, I’m sure.’

The gladness died out of her face. ‘Aye,’ she said bitterly, ‘that’s how it is with mothers and sons. First we’re everything to them, then we’re nothing.’ She pulled away from me and began walking back to her kale patch.

‘Ah, Mother, how can you think so?’ I called after her, unsure whether to follow. She did not stop but replied over her shoulder, ‘You’ll find him in the office.’

*

My heart right up in my mouth, sitting on my tongue, you might say, I knocked at the office door.

‘Yes?’ came Father’s voice.

I entered and found him poring over some sort of plan.

‘This is a pleasant surprise,’ said he. ‘Well, not altogether a surprise – but altogether pleasant.’ He rose to kiss me. ‘Here’ (he indicated the plan) ‘are some notions I had about the garden. New seed beds, new fruit trees – and damsons.’

‘Excellent,’ I whispered. He gave me a sharp look, at that, and motioned me into the chair opposite his, his bright eyes blurring as my own filled with tears. It was not how I had intended to begin.

He said gravely, ‘You have something to tell me, I perceive.’

I could no longer meet his eyes. My throat now so swollen as to make speech impossible, I let myself drop forward until I slid off the chair onto my knees, holding up my hands in helpless appeal.

‘Up! Up!’ Father said sharply. ‘Be a man.’

I winced to hear him thus echoing Tamar. He seized my shoulders and pulled me upright before pushing me back into the chair where I sat confounded, hanging my head.

‘So, the birds have come home to roost,’ he said, at which I burst out into loud sobs. He said again, ‘Be a man,’ but as I continued blubbeng over se went to a cupboard and fetched out a bottle and cup. When he uncorked the bottle I scented brandy-wine, a drink I detested, and shook my head. His response was to pour a cupful and thrust it towards me. As the sickly, perfumed stuff burnt its way down my gullet, I gagged, but as soon as that passed I felt myself growing calmer. The knot in my throat began to slacken so that I could speak – hoarsely, but without the spasms that had racked me at first.

‘Thank you, Father.’

He waved away my thanks, and waited.

‘I need your help, only it’s all so – oh, God!’

Father said quietly, ‘First tell me why you’re crying.’

‘I’m in a difficulty,’ I answered, thinking that on hearing his favourite expression, he might smile. He did not.

‘At Christmas, when I was late,’ I went on, ‘and I told you I’d been robbed –’

‘I know,’ he cut in. ‘You looked it, you stank of it, you couldn’t have deceived a child. Has she poxed you, is that why you’re in such a state?’

I quailed beneath his stare. ‘It’s not as if –’

‘
Has she poxed you?
’ Father leapt up and shook me by the shoulders. ‘It’s of the greatest consequence, answer me yes or no!’

‘No. I don’t think so.’

He let go of me and flung himself back into his chair.

‘I didn’t mean – but –’ Seeing his right hand lift as if to strike, I hurried on, ‘I meant no harm. She was in desperate –’

‘Harriet’s servant,’ my father said, terrifying me by the speed with which he grasped the story away from me. ‘Tamsin?’

‘Tamar. I went to give evidence, and –’

‘Didn’t I tell you she’d wind you in? Those were my very words.’

‘I didn’t go for any bad reason, Father, and she, she did nothing to tempt me to it, not then. If you’d only seen her! She could’ve been lying on ice; her skin was blue. I bought her some clothes, and took her to an inn. That was – the time. Now –’ My throat was closing again. ‘Now –’

‘Now she’s with child,’ Father said.

I nodded. After that I could not speak for a while, my sobbing so overwhelmed me. Father exclaimed, ‘Young men … ! Nature takes her course, and you’re dumbfounded, you never meant
that
! How could you be such a fool, Jonathan – you, who’ve helped me take the boar to the sow!’

‘Father –’

‘And what makes you think it’s yours? Surely she wasn’t a maid when you lay with her. Couldn’t you tell?’

‘I was a maid myself,’ I said, hot with humiliation. ‘But I believe she was not.’

‘Of course not,’ he said, relenting a little. ‘Jon. We’ve always talked like father and son; let’s now understand each other like men. Your young woman is a drab. To buy clothes for a drab and lodge her at an inn is to pay handsomely.’

‘But if she’s with child?’

‘Handsomely,’ he repeated. ‘You owe her nothing more. Be sure
she
thought what’d come of it, even if you didn’t.’

I said, ‘It’s not so simple when you know all. Tamar is related to us, Father. Her mother is Joan Seaton.’

‘
Joan Seaton?
’ My father’s man-of-the-world manner crumbled in an instant. His jaw dropped and his face filled with blood so that I was afraid he would have an apoplexy. ‘And this is her daughter? Have you any idea – no –’ He broke off and covered his burning cheeks with his hands.

‘I know, she might be my cousin,’ I hastened to help him. ‘Uncle Robin’s daughter.’

A minute passed during which my father remained masked, breathing noisily against the palms of his hands. When he did lower them, it was to refill the cup with brandy-wine and take a long draught. We looked at one another.

‘She could be anyone’s,’ he said, pushing the empty cup away from him. ‘You see what comes of secrets! Why did you never tell me this before?’

‘How should I know she was connected with us?’ I protested. If it came to secrets, I could equally have reproached him. ‘Tamar told me her old mother dwelt in the wood, and that I shouldn’t say anything to Aunt Harriet. I saw no harm.’

‘You and a servant from your aunt’s house, no harm? Keeping company with outcasts, no harm?’

‘I know, but when I saw how they were living – so wretched, Father, and Aunt Harriet so wealthy. They were accused of stealing some gifts I made them; you know that part. The old woman wrote me an account of her life – I was reading it at Brimming. I have it all here, everything she wrote, and right at the end she puts that she’s Aunt Harriet’s sister.’

‘Good Christ,’ my father murmured. ‘Does this woman know who
you
are?’

‘Yes. I told her I was Mr Mathew’s son.’

‘Good Christ.’

‘And there’s something else.’

My father looked up with urious expression, almost pleading. Had he been a wicked man, rather than one of upright life, I would have said he was sick with apprehension.

He said, ‘If it’s another secret, Jon, then think and don’t be hasty. Best is to have none; next best is not to let them out.’

‘It’s not my secret, Father – nothing to do with me.’ The expression of dread at once cleared from his face. ‘You told me Joan ran away with the soldiers.’

‘That’s right.’

‘She says she was Robin’s mistress before that.’

‘Never,’ Father said at once. ‘A wicked lie.’

‘She says Harriet knew.’

‘Well.’ My father rubbed his hand over his head as if to clear his thoughts.

‘Father, you remember the soldiers billeted at Tetton Green? They held the village in terror.’

‘I remember a great deal of that sort,’ said my father. ‘I pray we never see war again.’

‘One night they came onto the green, drunk and armed, shouting that they wanted a woman.’

Father inclined his head judicially. ‘Are you saying that’s how Joan took up with them? What a tender innocent she must’ve been! Not even Marian Drew’ – this was a woman notorious in the village – ‘would go out to a pack of drunken soldiers.’

‘She didn’t want to go. Harriet handed her over.’

‘What
are
you saying, child?’

‘She was handed over to them. For use.’

‘Sheer nonsense,’ Father said angrily. ‘Only think. Granted that Harriet would do that to her own sister – which I
don’t
grant you – how could it happen with Robin in the house?’

‘He wasn’t there; he’d gone to the stable. She was taken to a room in the Guild Hall and kept there until they put her out of the door … scarcely able to walk,’ I added, my voice tailing off as his face hardened.

‘
That
sounds like Joan, all right: a corrupt, lascivious fancy. And what of the neighbours, pray? Didn’t they see what was going on? Did they just let her be dragged inside?’

‘The soldiers were firing off muskets in the dark; most of the neighbours fled indoors. Only a handful of men were left. They needed someone with neither husband nor family to defend her.’

‘She’s shaped her tale well,’ Father said. ‘So she wrote all this and gave it you?’

‘This isn’t the writing. She told me, and Father, I believe her.’

‘But don’t you see it’s impossible, child? What would Harriet say to Robin when he returned?’

‘I don’t know,’ I answered. ‘But she’s always been believed, hasn’t she? And Joan never. Nothing can be done about that, now. My question is, can nothing be done to provide for Joan?’

He shrugged. ‘The house is Harriet’s. First from her father and then over again from Robin.’

‘The father must’ve bequeathed
something
to Joan. He wouldn’t leave her penniless while her sister had everything. Whatever that was, money or goods, Harriet has it now. And I’ve been thinking. If Robin did like Joan, he might have left her something in his will.’

‘He might, though I can’t see him liking such a creeping, disagreeable thing as she was, but d’you think Harriet would stand for it?’ He snorted. ‘If she ever found such a will, it’s gone into the fire long ago.’

‘No,’ I said at once. ‘Harriet never found it.’

‘Then trust me, it’ll never be found. But how can you know she didn’t?’

‘She would’ve seen Tamar’s name in it,’ I said. ‘She’d have thrown her out of the house.’

He smiled at my simplicity. ‘Robin couldn’t write Tamar into a will. Joan, yes, perhaps; but he didn’t know of Tamar’s existence.’

‘He did know of her, Father! He and Joan were known to one another long after she left Tetton Green.’

My father pursed his lips.

‘And if he put Tamar in a will he’d have to name her, and her name can only be Seaton. So I don’t think Harriet can have seen any will like that, or she’d never have let Tamar into her house.’

‘But did Harriet
know
her as Tamar Seaton?’ Father asked. ‘What name did she go under?’

I had not thought about this and could not remember if I had ever heard Tamar’s surname. ‘I don’t know,’ I admitted, crestfallen. My father looked long and hard at me. When he spoke again it was to say quietly, ‘You do realise you’re Harriet’s heir?’

‘How can you think so? She loathes me!’

‘Too strong, child. Young folk imagine everything is to do with them. Your aunt’s always been prickly, but who else would she leave to? Besides, your mother and I have helped her, in our way, over the years. Now’ – he dropped his voice for effect in a way that reminded me of Joan herself – ‘
if
this woman’s Joan Seaton – which she may not be – she’s a thieving whore. Why cut yourself out of an inheritance for her?’