by Leah Fleming
‘Open it!’
She could see the beast at the window, clawing to get in. She shook her head and saw him punch his fist through the glass.
‘For God’s sake! Unlock the window and let me carry you out…’ Micah tried to look less fierce. ‘Come, there’s danger and Martha waits below. Hurry!’
For a second the girl hesitated but the smoke was seeping under the door and the corridor was ablaze. She could hear the flames crackling. Poor Old Sarah was melting in her picture frame. She pushed the little dog into his arms and he lowered it down gently to the other rescuers below.
‘Come, please, Lucilla. I mean you no harm. I loved your mother with all of my heart as you did. We’re all bereft.’
He lifted her gently. Her slender frame slid easily under his arm and like a bundle of thatching straw he lowered her to safety.
‘The cradle? Where’s the cradle, child? Have you taken the babe?’ Martha was screeching like a woman possessed.
‘There’s no babe, only my dolly in her cradle. I fear she’s all burned up too.’
Martha sank to the ground in despair. Was the child telling the truth? Had she snatched the baby from the upper chamber and thrown it in the fire? If so she was deranged and must be punished.
‘I don’t believe you. I left the young master in the chamber…’
‘And here he is, safe and sound, fusspot.’ Gideon was holding the swaddled child in his arms. ‘’Twas the first thing I did when you shouted fire. He’s been asleep on the straw safe out of the smoke.’
The crowd stood round the babe looking not a little surprised. Martha and Gideon were mighty young to be fathering childer. Catching their unspoken thoughts she yelled, ‘You needn’t look like that, ’tis not mine… is it, Gideon?’
‘Then whose be this foundling?’ The Captain examined the bundle.
‘Funny you should ask that, sire. Would you step this way and we will explain.’
‘It can wait… the house is still on fire!’ he said and ran to organise the chain of water buckets. If they concentrated on the old building they might just stop the roaring flames from devouring the lot.
*
Micah stood with the child in the dusk as a welcome downpour of rain finished off what the men had started. It was worse than he’d first feared. Sarah Salt’s extension lay in ruins, nothing but the old Priory end lay intact. The men had made a barrier to stop the fire in its tracks but it was Bagshott’s fine bricks which had stayed firm, protecting the stone walls. To one side were the ruins of Old Sarah’s vanity, to the other the ancient stonework, holding its ground. All was not lost but it was in a sorry state. He felt a fleeting sadness for Nazareth’s child whose own silliness and stubbornness had robbed her of her home. Now she was safely placed at Longhall out of harm’s way and as they’d parted she’d smiled at him for one brief second before she turned her head away.
He could make no sense at first of what Martha told him as he prepared to mount his horse and leave the ruined house.
‘Not so fast, Captain Bagshott. Haven’t you forgotten something in all this smoke and debris?’ She came towards him, carrying a bundle, and pushed it into his arms.
‘What’s this?’
‘Someone I should have told you about long ago. I was not sure if you would accept it.’
‘Accept what… this babe?’
‘Aye, your son, born on the fifteenth of April. She died giving birth to your son. I was there and Gideon. Only we three know of this and so it shall remain.’
‘You’ve looked after him as your own?’
‘But mine he is not. One day the Good Lord will give me a child to suckle but this one is surely yours. See for yourself.’ Micah gazed into the pink face – those dark eyes, his very own, staring back at him. He kissed the child’s forehead. ‘Did she know?’
‘His name is Penitence. ’Twas whispered with her very last breath. I did wrong to hide him. She called for your mother too. I know she wanted him to be brought up a…’
‘A Bagshott not a Salt. Had she lived we could both have shared the task but now it is mine alone. With your help, if you’re willing. Like Miriam in the bulrushes, is it not?’
‘Something of that ilk, sire. My mistress will sleep easier, knowing her son has a father to protect him in this wicked world. Will you ride down to the city with him?’
‘No, tonight we’ll rest in the Priory lodging. Tomorrow my mother will be getting a big surprise. I think ’twill be better if she has a good night’s rest first, don’t you?’
*
Micah lifted the roaring babe out of his wooden crib in the old lodging house and wrapped him tight against the air. The night was balmy, stars twinkling in the midnight sky.
‘Hush, little howler. Come, let’s go round the place one last time to see what is left of it all.’
The garden at Fridewell lay smouldering under smoking timbers and rubble, my lady’s fancy knotbeds crushed by charred furniture. A stench of woodsmoke and burning metal hung on the air. All the old fripperies were gone. Which was how it should be, thought Micah grimly, though not this way. He peered at the face of his child. Poor motherless bairn!
Something in the night air drew him through the yew arch up the steps to the hidden bower, some wayward spirit urging him onwards to the very place where his heart had been stirred. Moths fluttered on the night-scented stocks for the air was purer here. White flower heads waved like ghosts.
‘Come and see the spring… this was your mother’s favourite hiding place. I feel her spirit here with us.’ Micah stretched out his arms to lift the child high over the water towards the moon.
‘Spirit of this cursed place… bless my bairn. May he bring mercy and forgiveness with his name. Let Bagshotts and Salts wage war no more but rest in peace with one another. That which was wrought unfairly between us is now forgiven… Oh, Nazareth, if you can hear me, my tears mingle with the water. Pray for us and the seed we planted, let him flourish and grow strong. Pen will be safe with me, our secret secure, but why did you have to leave us now?’
The Tipsy Hedge
Iris
This summer is holding up well and yet every year I get lazier about gardening chores when there’s a thousand jobs waiting to be done. Now I won’t have to worry any more.
From the far end of the house Miss Bagshott looks down the slope towards the orchard field and the meadow croft beyond. It is getting harder to keep the natives from scaling the fences; squirrels and rabbits, mice and voles, the occasional roe deer. Bindweed twines around the hawthorn hedge; overgrown grasses are full of thistles, docks and nettles, much to the delight of the butterflies. In daylight goldfinches feed on fluffy seed heads; buttercups, campion and oxe eye daisies struggle for air and the strong prickly arms of the blackberries sprout pinky-white blossoms. Here fruits will ripen in due season without any help.
As she walks down to the picket gate through an arch of overgrown rhododendron and azalea bushes the gloom deepens and she thinks once again of smoke and shadows. This spot is farthest away from the home end, a wilder place where the air is cooler and the light spectral. The woodland full of whispering oaks is only branches away from the boundary wall. It would not take much for the forest to reach out and reclaim its own.
Once there were black banties scratting in the orchard meadow, a white goat tethered by the hedge to keep down the grass, and a dusty donkey in the croft who earned his keep on Palm Sunday, brought out of retirement to carry a Sunday School Jesus in the old days when village church and school were the centre of this community.
However much the orchard is neglected, the apples will bend the branches with their weight and the magpies will have their fill. The cherries have been filched by scavenging birds and the damson blossom was caught by a spring frost. The bark of the pear trees is rotten.
‘Plant walnuts and pears for your heirs.’ Who will fall heir to this place when I’ve sold up? What if they don’t like the orchard and rip it apart? If the bulldozer
s come this wilderness will be gone forever.
Tears well up and Iris struggles to hold them back.
Am I doing the right thing? Trees grow old just like humans. I should be replacing them for the future. A garden needs a bit of wilderness. What if the new owners are fusspots who’ll strim away every inch of my undergrowth? Then where can the mice and the voles hide or the hedgehogs hibernate? Life itself is never neat and tidy, but this mess… Would there be time to scythe a path through for the visitors on Saturday afternoon?
Perhaps it will rain and no one will come? Anyway, who will take offence at a few scruffy bits? Now the sign is up there’ll be a steady trickle of viewers, some critical, others not, and some here on a secret recce of Friddy’s Piece, not interested in the garden at all. Saturday is Judgement Day for us all. Will it be easier for me to sell up if everything looks run down and neglected?
Time was when I’d have been up those ladders, tar washing, coppicing, lopping off branches, carrying baskets of apples to the cider press, gathering blackberries, sloes, elderberries from my tipsy hedgerows for the winter booze. But those days are gone, Iris. Let George do some more mowing if it bothers you.
Who said a sense of the past is the best sauce for an unpalatable present? What, after all, have I got to look forward to but bath chairs and bedpans? Stop that! You’re not doing the tour to depress yourself. Come on, it’s not that bad. Some might call this orchard corner quaint and there’s much of interest to the well-tempered eye; the quince straddling the wall, and the mulberry tree, even an ancient medlar with its grey bark, crooked trunk and unexpected leaves, large and downy to the touch.
The note pad comes to the rescue once more. In the dusk her eyes alight on the old apple tree with a rope swing dangling down temptingly. She eases herself cautiously on to the wooden seat. It holds and she pushes gently back and forth as she did as a child.
I’d better just check the ropes. Some little toe rag will climb on it on Saturday, I’m sure.
There’s always been a swing in the orchard and Iris wonders who was the first to hang one here?
PART SIX
THE SCHOOL
1770
‘If the meek flower of bashful dye
Attract not thy incurious eye;
If the soft murmring rill to rest
encharm not thy tumultuous brest
Go, where ambition lures the vain,
or avaunce barters peace for pain’
—Dr Erasmus Darwin
‘The Medlar Tree
The fruit is old Saturn’s and sure a better medicine he hardly hath to strengthen the retentive faculty, therefore it stays women’s longings. The good old man cannot endure women’s minds should run a-gadding’
Secrets
The patchwork kite soared upwards, gliding on the wind, its tail rippling above the open fields beyond the orchards of Fridwell House, over the jigsaw of field shapes and hedges where men shielded their eyes to glimpse its progress, above the new brick church tower of St Mary Virgin, then the Parson’s farm, the mill and the ponds and the line of cottages strung along the road to Longhall.
Down below a string of boys chased after the kite master begging their turn, tugging at his shirt. For a second there was dispute and fisticuffs. In the struggle the kite was freed from all constraint, flying like a bird out of their grasp, escaping towards the valley of the Trent where workmen on the turnpike road leant on their spades to watch the strange bird passing overhead. Its flight was marked with a smile until the gaffer bawled them out for time wasting.
The kite floated onwards over the grey ribbon of stone road going north to south through the Chase. Then the breeze softened and the kite dropped out of the air like a shot pheasant, tumbling down into the brook and floating far away from Fridwell village.
A small boy in brown breeches, loose shirt and waistcoat, stared up at the empty sky in disbelief and turned on his companions. ‘It’s… all y… ye… your f… fault.’
‘Oh, ye… ye… yes, says who?’ mimicked a lad with his hands planted defiantly on his hips. ‘Going to tell yer precious m… mam, are you? Tell-tale tit, your tongue is split! Spit it out, Barnswell, if you can. We’ve not got all day.’
Ephraim Barnswell bowed his head in frustration. Why did his words not spill out like everyone else’s in the school? Why was he so slow and clumsy? Now he had lost the patchwork kite Mother had made for them all. Why did these stupid louts have to come into his orchard anyway, to pick the fruit and disturb him, swinging on his rope and sitting on his swing, breaking the branches with their weight? Why did she make him share his playing ground with a bunch of village bully boys who knew nothing but stone picking, weeding, and scrumping apples? He hated the school being in his house. Why did Mother keep on with it? Was it not bad enough to have to live with Iron Man, who called him ‘stupid’, ‘runt’ and ‘the bastard’. Never once did Ephraim hear his real name.
I’m not stupid. Just because I can’t utter words at one go. In my head they’re perfectly formed, it’s just my teeth and tongue chitter when I speak aloud and then Iron Man roars with derision, making it worse.
When Ephraim was alone with his mother there was little problem but they were hardly ever alone with this bunch of dullards and dunces always interrupting.
The boy looked in vain for his kite. His hands trembled. Another of his precious toys gone. Why should he have to share his chap books, board games, hoops, hobby horse and soldiers? In no time they were all battered and torn, ripped and ruined. It wasn’t fair!
There were ten children in the Dame school: the miller’s sons, the farmers’ daughters, the wheelwright’s child, even cottar children brought learning pence now and again. Mother turned no one away. She said they needed money for ‘the fund’. Ephraim thought that Iron Man had sufficient coppers in his leather purse, from digging and draining ditches, supplying labour for the turnpike road building.
Anyone could see that his mother was a lady in disguise. Had she not a fine-spoken accent? Did she not play a spinet? Was she not one of the Salts of Longhall Manor, a name once revered in the district? Could she not read, write and draw fine flower pictures, knowing every name in the Latin like a scholar? If he lived to be a hundred Ephraim would never understand how she’d come to marry such a drunken swine as Abel Barnswell, his father.
How he feared the lifting of the iron latch, the thud of Abel’s boots on the flagstone floor, the smell of the farmyard and the tavern on his breath, the stench of his clothes and the iron of his fists. Sometimes if his meal were not on a plate in the kitchen, piping hot, the table laid in his honour, Iron Man would fling Mother across the room in a rage and kick her with his boot. Ephraim knew better than to go to her aid. The punishment would only be repeated. Instead he would slide out of sight and curl up in a corner, trembling at his own weakness until he heard the chair scrape, the chink of a knife on a platter.
With luck the brute would burp and belch and brush his way past them to go out again to the tavern. They were the good nights when Ephraim would wipe away the blood and mop his mother’s tears. She would bank up the fire then go to the secret trunk kept hidden and locked under the stairs to bring out the parchment and pens. She would show him her botanical drawings and together they would dissect a flower on the table and draw each petal, sepal, stamen and leaf. By rushlight she would read to him from old leather-bound books found in a chest in the attic, her face raw and blotched but her grey eyes shining with interest.
On a bad night Iron Man would stay indoors, snoring by the fire. They would creep about on tip-toe so that he was not disturbed. While there was moonlight enough they could sneak off into the garden, to get as far away from him as they could. Mother would flap her arms like broken wings or sit on the swing, arms curved around the ropes, rocking back and forth, weeping. He would sit on top of the gate which looked out over the meadow fields, listening to the dusk calls of foxes and owls in the copse, wondering why they must endure this awful prison.
> He hated Iron Man with the white heat of rage but his own puny hands were useless, powerless against the bully’s blows. One day, Ephraim promised himself, he would grow tall and strong and then Iron Man’s rule would be over. He could not wait for that day to come.
The old Parson knew about the drawings and the beatings. He always called during daylight when Iron Man was about his business. Sometimes he took Ephraim to one side and whispered, ‘Be patient. The Lord sees all… Look after your mother. Her burden is great and unjust, I fear. If ever she needs help, you know where I am.’
Ephraim saw there were tears in the Parson’s blue eyes and his hands trembled as he spoke. He often slipped a coin into the boy’s hand as he took his leave. ‘For the fund… child… for the fund.’ Sometimes the old man stopped to admire the plantings with Mother and they would whisper out of earshot. Sometimes Parson Thomas took her drawings away with a sigh, rolling them carefully under his cloak away from prying eyes. Then Mother blushed with pride and pleasure for there would be more coins for the fund. She would pace the terrace garden, muttering to herself, wrapping her long shawl across her chest.
Why did they have to live so secluded from her kin? Why did no carriage ever come to their door, no letters in the post boy’s saddle bag? No one but the Parson ever crossed their threshold except the stupid pupils of Mother’s little school. What had they done to deserve such shunning, such misery with Iron Man? Hetty Barnswell could not wait for her pupils to depart. The girls had been doing the laundry with her maid, Nance, learning how to prepare lye balls from burnt fern ashes sifted, dried and mixed with grease. They stirred up the cleansing, pummelled the clothes with the dolly posser, agitating the fibres and loosening the dirt. It was good training for the older girls with many town houses in the city looking for country girls as servants.
