The Wilding (20 page)

My aunt drew herself up so tightly that her chair creaked. ‘If you seek to interest him in some concern of yours, Mathew, I can only advise you –’

‘You mistake me. I’ve no personal interest in the matter. The thing is –’

Rose entered and served us with our refreshments. When she had gone, and we had praised my aunt’s hospitality, my father began again.

‘I don’t know if you’re aware of this, Harriet, but there’s a vagrant living in the wood behind your house.’

‘There are always vagrants in there,’ said my aunt. ‘Behind the house, you say? Are we in danger?’

‘Oh, no! This is a poor old trot, destitute, derelict. She fancies herself a wise woman – you know the sort of thing. Now, I hear Dr Green has taken men to inspect this so-called witch, and I wondered if you could persuade him to let her be.’

‘Persuade him?’ Aunt Harriet frowned. ‘Surely you don’t imagine I instruct Dr Green in his duties?’

‘I mean only that you’re well respected in the parish. The creature is incapable; she doesn’t know what she’s saying. I’m sure Dr Green is sincere in his –’

‘You seem very well informed, Mathew. Who told you all this – Jon?’

Father inclined his head and my aunt went on, ‘You never mentioned this woman to me, Jon. When you went home, I thought you intended to askbout my sister Joan.’

Her hawk’s eyes looked right through me.

‘Answer, Jon,’ my father said mildly.

‘I did ask, Aunt, and my father gave me back your own words, almost.’ The
almost
was to square my conscience.

Aunt Harriet nodded her head. ‘So let us be clear now. This idiot woman in the wood is the mother of my thieving servant, is she not?’

I was sweating. ‘I did meet her through keeping company with your servant, yes. That was folly, Aunt, I know it now, and I’ll never see them again.’

‘He’s made a clean breast of it,’ Father put in, rescuing me. ‘The thing is, through the girl he met this pitiful old creature. Harriet, I would’ve thought Dr Green would know better. Had she magical powers, she would scarcely be starving in a wood.’

‘You forget,’ said my aunt, ‘that in their fancy witches go gorgeously attired. Satan deludes his servants with false shows of wealth.’

‘All wealth is a false show,’ Father remarked, perhaps none too tactfully in that house. ‘Christ’s teachings make that plain.’

‘The Bible also tells us,
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live
. Dr Green is within his rights to remove her.’

From that moment I think we both saw we should get nowhere, but Father battled on.

‘I would never argue with scripture, Harriet. My point is, this is no witch.’

‘You’ve met with her, then?’

‘Once.’

I wondered: was this another deliberate lie of Father’s? Possibly at that moment he considered Old Joan and Young Joan as two different people.

My aunt said, ‘Dr Green has spoken with her on several occasions; he always proceeds with care. My dear Mathew, surely you don’t think this is the first time he’s dealt with such women?’

‘You yourself seem very well informed, Harriet,’ Father said, with a touch of sarcasm.

‘It’s my duty to help root out evil from the parish.’

I shuddered at the sight of her, so respectable and righteous and … what was the word? I could only think of ‘malevolent’, and that is scarcely a word one cares to use within one’s own family.

‘Harriet,’ my father said, and his voice sounded like pleading, ‘this woman is close to death. Might you not –’

‘As for the young one,’ Aunt glanced at me, ‘pray consider what you are defending. Because of her, men are infecting their innent wives! What pastor would permit that, if he could once put a stop to it?’

At this I felt a rush of indignation and I opened my mouth to say that Tamar was not poxed. My aunt was watching me with a tiny cold smile, no more than just a curl of the lip, as if to say, ‘Come, will you put your head in this noose?’

There was a pause. Then my father very quietly said, ‘And does she drag these virtuous husbands to the woods?’

‘That they go to her only proves the force of the temptation.’

To me it was plain as day that Aunt Harriet knew who it was that lay in the cave, and I was almost leaping with impatience until I could communicate this to my father. There was an air of suppressed triumph about my aunt that he could not have failed to notice, but I did not think he had worked it all out as I had. The link between past and present was – I saw now – Dr Green. He had known Joan as a young woman, and later when she returned as a vagrant. He had spoken to her face to face, most recently when he had refused charity to her and Tamar. He had visited the ‘witch’. At some point he must have recognised her, and told my aunt of his discovery. When that had been, what they had said on that occasion, I would never know, but it had happened recently; I would take my Bible oath that when I first went to Aunt Harriet’s house, she regarded Joan as no more than an old beggar who persisted in peering through windows.

As I sat studying Aunt Harriet’s pursed, triumphant face, I no longer had the slightest trouble believing that she had made a sacrifice of her erring sister. It struck me that my aunt, who had featured for so long as a dim, ageing figure in the background to my young life, was nothing less than a Cromwell in petticoats. That is perhaps a comical expression, but there is nothing comical about such people. Aunt Harriet would have signed the death warrant of the King of England, had he got in her way.

* * *

Before supper, Father helped me lay out everything in readiness for the morning; after that time it was too dark to do much, even with lanterns. The three of us were to eat together, after which Aunt Harriet could hardly refuse to lodge Father overnight. She suggested that he share my bed, saying that in this way we would be more likely both to wake early, he to travel back to Spadboro and I to begin my work on the cider. This seemed a poor, thin reason in a house where there were servants to wake us, and I believe her real object, grudging as she was, was to avoid dirtying any more of her fine linen.

Father said this arrangement would suit us very well, and that we would retire, with her permission, shortly after supper.

That meal passed off peacefully enough; the fire was burnt out of our conversation, leaving us polite and dull. My aunt asked after ‘Barbara’ and brought Rose out of the kitchen to supply the recipe for a conserve said to be a particular favourite of the Bishop of Bath and Wells; how Rose had come by this, or what connection she might have with the Bishop I am sure I cannot say.

We said goodnight and left my aunt sitting at table. Vexed by a persistent flea, she had taken off her cap, and as I looked back from the doorway on leaving I saw her hair glisten in the dull beams of the candles. Seen in that soft light, and om a distance, she appeared a frail and lonely woman, presiding over emptiness where children should have been.

As we climbed the stairs to my chamber I was wondering why Robin had produced no legitimate issue. If Tamar was indeed his child, the weakness must lie in my aunt. Yet what strength she had, in other ways: strength to bear the evenings alone and in silence, on and on until her death and in plain view of that approaching end. I have never felt myself so alone as she appeared to me at that moment. Though I am of the stronger sex, I am not sure I could have borne it.

*

We undressed by candlelight and got into what I now thought of as Joan’s bed. It was a good size for two people and had the additional advantage that we were able to confer together in whispers. Father told me that although he had already settled upon helping the women in the wood, while talking with my aunt he had come to a further decision, namely that he should return with all haste and fetch them away to a better place before Dr Green could terrify Joan into a confession.

‘But Father, what if they catch you?’

‘Then I have discovered my sister-in-law living in destitution and wish to take her to my home. I have the right – she hasn’t been arrested.’

‘Will you take her to Spadboro?’

‘If I’m forced to.’

‘And if not? Where will you go?’

‘
You
should know nothing.’

He was right. Should Dr Green question me, I could answer him in all innocence. On the other hand, it also meant I could never again find out Tamar, unless Father relented. But then, I had only to remember her face as she said, ‘What is there to break off?’ to realise how little she wished to be found.

‘Very well,’ I said.

‘Good lad. Now: when I’m gone, no hints, no smirks, nothing of that sort. Obey your aunt.’

‘I promise.’

He blew out the candle and began settling himself for sleep. After a while I heard him snore. Sleep came less easily to me but when it came it was black nothingness, empty of both joy and fear.

* * *

The following morning Father left while it was still dark; I waved him off and when the light permitted, went back to my aunt’s cider. I will spare you the details: let me say only that the familiar labour I had loved so long brought me no comfort and I was in no mood to prolong it. But it went slowly enough by itself, since I had all the apples to gather and sort without the help of little Billy, who was gone on some errand in the village, and by the time the second cheese was in place it was nearly dark outside.

Already a day had passed since Father had gone with me to ave. I stood in the doorway looking out at the sky – clear and starry, the women would feel the cold in their bones – and wishing I could sleep in the stable rather than go back inside End House.

*

Father had done well to warn me against triumphing over Aunt Harriet. I was sorely tempted, for his departure was the signal for mocks and gibes. As Rose put some stewed fruit on the table my aunt remarked that the charms of the young woman in the wood seemed to have swayed my father, and that it was curious how all the men of the Dymond family shared this tendency to be drawn by crude and impudent attractions.

‘You must allow
one
exception,’ I said. My aunt’s eye lit up; she was so used to slavish flattery from those around her that I believe she expected it even from me. Her look changed, however, when I added, ‘Nobody ever considered my mother either crude or impudent.’

My aunt said only, ‘You’ll finish tomorrow – eh?’ but it was too late; I had seen the insult go home. However, this was not the way to keep my promise to Father, so I said more humbly, ‘I’ll do my best, Aunt. Where was Billy this morning?’

‘He’s gone to Dr Green’s house, with the constable,’ my aunt said, ‘telling them about some thefts that took place here. Firewood and straw.’

I felt myself grow pale, but she could hardly have perceived that in the dim room, and my voice was firm as I asked, ‘Has the thief been detected?’

‘Thieves. We hope to have them in our hands soon.’ Her smile was cruel, as if the thought gave her delight. It crossed my mind that my aunt had a streak of madness, so sinister did she appear at that moment, but when she added, ‘And once they are sentenced we’ll be rid of them,’ I realised it was no more than her habitual selfishness.

‘It’s those women, is it? Will they be whipped away?’

‘That’s for the authorities to decide. They’ve certainly earned themselves a whipping.’

I winced at the thought of Joan’s bony shoulders. ‘Even the old one?’

‘She’s not too frail to traffic with Satan,’ my aunt returned with a little air of putting me right. ‘As for the other, Mathew and I were right to keep you from her. She’d have devoured you up.’

I could restrain myself no longer.

‘Aunt,’ I said. ‘Do you think Uncle Robin ever looks down from Heaven and sees our doings?’

From swelling with complacency my aunt’s features shrunk up small, like a snake’s, but she made no reply. Indeed, she said nothing more until we rose from table.

* * *

Undressing that night, I felt wretched. I had brought Joan and Tamar to my father’s care, and that was a great thing to have achieved; but I had achieved it at the price of never seeing them aain, had burdened Tamar with a fatherless child, and had failed to carry out Robin’s wishes. I had but one day to discover the will – for it was plain I would never again be lodged at End House – with no inkling of where to find it; while my aunt, if she understood my game, stood poised to block me at every turn.

I gave myself up to grim fancies. My father’s attempt at rescue would come too late. Dr Green, zealous on behalf of his wealthiest parishioner, would see the women jailed – if not for witchcraft, for whoring; if not for that, for theft. With none to speak for them, and my aunt clamouring on the other side, they would find neither justice nor mercy.

Despite knowing it was fruitless, I got up in my nightgown and once more went over the room, since it had once been Joan’s, searching every inch, tapping every drawer in the press for hidden compartments and pushing my hands as far under the mattress as I could reach. Not so much as a scrap of paper.

The search was absurd. Had Robin hidden anything here for Joan to find he would surely have let her know. Besides, why should he not have given it to her? She could read. Then I thought, perhaps she
was
once in possession of such a document, had hidden it here and been dragged away by Harriet before she could retrieve it. She might not choose to tell me that. I was a Dymond, after all; I might wish to protect my inheritance by finding the papers and destroying them.

Here I had a new idea. Perhaps, if Robin did write a will intended to protect Joan from her sister, he did so after the scenes in the Guild Hall, after she had left Tetton Green, and so he had never been able to put it into her hand or instruct her where to find it. Meanwhile, if Harriet suspected the existence of such a document, she and her servants would have searched everywhere: house, offices, stables. Yet here I stood poking under a mattress, as if I alone could light on the thing. I moved away, ashamed of my stupidity.

Very well: suppose he made a will and it was destroyed by Harriet. He could have written another, towards the end of his life, and bidden Tamar take it to her mother. On the other hand, as long as Joan and Tamar lived in hope they had an interest in keeping him alive. Robin, so selfishly careful of himself, would never have forgotten that.