Destiny's Tide

by Destiny's Tide (retail) (epub)

  ‘Why didn’t you?’

  ‘Asked myself that very question many times these last twenty years, boy. The urge to be home, to my own hearth, to your mother? I can’t recall, now. Anyhow, rumour had flown before us – rumour that Raker and most of their ships were lost, but that the men of Dunwich and most of their ships were saved. Didn’t take much ale for that to become a tale that we’d made it so, wrecking their ships on purpose so we could profit more from the catch. So when we came into Southwold, they were waiting for us, drunk and armed. Scores of them, all in a frenzy. Four of our men were killed, my brother George among them.’

  ‘I remember him a little.’

  ‘A good lad, the one closest in age to me. Betrothed, he was, set fair to be wed that summer. Killed by my impatience, as surely as if I’d stuck a dagger in his heart.’ The old leper made a sound that might have been a cold laugh. ‘I know they whisper through the town that I murdered my brother Arthur, that had no wits. But he loved watching the gulls, and came to believe he could soar with them, so one day, he tried to fly from Dunwich cliff. There’s an irony, boy. They say I killed my brother, and they are right, but none of them know they mean the wrong brother.’

  Peter Stannard’s eyes and thoughts seemed to be wandering further toward his dead siblings and away from his living sons, Jack Stannard and Stephen Raker.

  ‘So what became of you, Father?’ asked Jack, gently.

  ‘Mm? Oh, I was cudgelled, had some ribs broken, but got into an alley and hid. Didn’t know George was dead – if I had, then maybe what happened next never would have. Sindony Raker found me there. We knew each other of old – she was of Blythburgh, like your mother, and they’d been friends when they were young. That’s how I knew them both, y’see, how Martin Raker knew them both. Now, boy, Martin already hated me for stealing Anne from him, as he saw it, and for ten score of other things too, but Sindony never did. I think she’d taken a shine to me, before I married your mother, and that night, as she washed me, and tended to my bruises… I never meant it, boy, although I doubt you believe me. Your sister wouldn’t, for sure. But I’ll swear to it on the holy book or any relic of your choosing. I never forced her, may Saint Felix strike me down if I did.’

  No bolt came down from the patron saint of Dunwich. Jack studied the ruin of his father’s face intently, but there was no trace of dissembling. He had a host of questions, but felt he could not interrupt. He looked up at the simple wooden cross upon the wall of the lazar house, and sensed that he was akin to a priest, hearing the confession of the sinner before him. Priests did not interrupt. Priests listened, and so would Jack Stannard.

  ‘It took Martin Raker a month to bring his ship home,’ his father continued, ‘and when Stephen was born, the following spring, I knew he had to be mine. When I saw Sindony at Blythburgh Fair that summer, she told me outright, and that she’d convinced Martin the babe was born early. I even felt sympathy for him, then, for no man knows the truth of what women say, when they talk of their number of weeks, and their bleedings, and all the rest. Sympathy, too, because I’d had the only two women he’d ever loved in the world.’ The old leper sighed. ‘The only moment of sympathy I’ve ever felt for any from Southwold, especially any called Raker. But there, John Stannard, that is my tale done. Stephen Raker spoke true. He is your brother, and I don’t doubt that’s why he seems to have so much guile, when his supposed father had none at all.’ Peter Stannard’s face was grimmer than ever. ‘And that, boy, is why you should be on your guard, for Stannards fear only two men, the king and another Stannard. So there’s my side of the bargain, which I’ve told before only in the confessional in John’s church, to old Feryhe when he was priest there.’

  ‘He gave you absolution?’

  ‘Token penances, for we both knew I was already far beyond any absolution he could give me, or that any pilgrimage could bestow. No, he told me very much what I expect you’re thinking – I know it’s what your sister would think, for certain, if she knew of this. He said I had committed yet another mortal and irredeemable sin to bring the wrath of the Doom down upon me, to consign me to eternity in hellfire. So, what say you?’

  Jack Stannard was silent. Then he spoke, very quietly and slowly.

  ‘I think perhaps you’ve been right these many years, Father. I am not my brother.’

  The leper of Dunwich nodded.

  ‘Aye, well, when it comes to it, I wasn’t mine, either – none of the six I knew, nor the others I reckon your grandfather sired half way across Suffolk.’

  Simon Bulbrooke, son of one of the seven brothers’ two sisters – the other having become a nun after being disappointed in love – once told Jack that those of his uncles whom he had known, apart from the simpleton Arthur, were roaring men, quick to draw blades and lift skirts, and that Peter Stannard had been the quiet one of the family, often beaten raw by his older siblings and their brutal one-armed father. That had been the case until the day dawned when Peter was the last brother living, and suddenly became the sum of all the others. If Si’s shade was present there, at that moment, in the Saint James lazar, Jack believed it would contradict Peter Stannard, and tell him that he, of all men, truly had been his brothers.

  Jack’s father shuffled upon his stool, making himself more comfortable.

  ‘And now, boy, enough of ancient history. Not that Stephen Raker will think it so – he’ll return to plague us, by some means or other. You’ll needs be watchful, Jack. But in the meantime, let us talk of your side of the trade. Let us talk of Mistress Jennet Barne.’

  TWENTY-FIVE

  On the crisp, fine morning of O Rex Gentium, three nights before Christmas Day, John Stannard and Jennet Barne walked out upon Dunwich Cliff, by way of Duck Street and the Middle Gate. For decency, Agatha and Meg accompanied them, but remained at a discreet distance behind. Her aunt pointed out this or that plant to the girl, commenting on the healing qualities of one, or the dangerous nature of another. All this was much to Meg’s frustration. In ordinary times, she loved learning from her aunt, although the questions she asked Meg about her visits to her grandfather were sometimes strangely worded and a little annoying. But now she wished nothing more than to be allowed to leave Agatha Stannard’s side and run ahead, to listen to what her father and this woman were talking about. Jennet Barne was tall for Suffolk, and sturdy, too, as though she had already borne many children; which, Meg knew, she had not. Her kirtle of cambric was modest enough, as was the gown over it. Short, straight black hair, creeping out from under her coif, framed a plain, round face. It would be an instantly forgettable face, the face of an oft-rejected spinster already passing her prime – a spinster like, say, Agatha Stannard – were it not for the brilliant smile from a mouth still, somehow, full of all its teeth, and they gleaming white. It was the teeth that most unsettled Meg. Such completeness, and above all such whiteness, was surely unnatural. Perhaps Jennet Barne was a witch, as sorcery was surely the only explanation for such perfect teeth in one so very old as to be nearly twenty-five.

  A few yards ahead, the witch was serious in tone.

  ‘My grandfather died many years before I was born,’ she said. ‘He was naught but a husbandman of Westleton, I believe. The Barnes have prospered mightily since his day.’

  ‘I knew mine,’ said Jack. ‘At least, I have some memory of being picked up by an aged one-armed man who stank of herring. He’d been a soldier in the wars between York and Lancaster – married three times, and sired my father when he was near fifty. Stannards are lastenest, by and large, long lived unless the hand of God intervenes, as with my poor brother, or unless they go to London and are taken by the plague, like my cousin Hal.’

  They came to the edge of the cliff, to the south of the town, nearly in the shadow of the great windmill that had stood on the cliff for longer than any living soul could remember. Even here, though, a good way from any house, they were still within the Palesdyke. The ancient defence had guarded Dunwich for a thousand years, or so it was said, and t
he extent of the land it enclosed gave proof of the town’s former greatness. Now, it was little more than an overgrown ditch with an earthen bank on its inner side, the ramparts having fallen long ago. A little way inland, grass and ivy grew among the ruins of both the Blackfriars and the Temple of Our Lady, the old Hospitaller house, with its little round vaulted church that Meg loved. The monastery gardens, where countless generations of monks had grown vegetables and herbs, were overrun with weeds and brambles. A half-dozen men were at work on the roof of the Blackfriars church, stripping it of its lead. Out at sea, to the south-east, a fleet of Tyne colliers was beating down toward Hollesley Bay, bound for London to satisfy the great city’s voracious need for coals to fuel its midwinter fires. The wind was south-westerly, so at the base of the cliff, with the tide ebbing, it was strangely quiet, the waters lapping gently upon the beach.

  Jack pointed out to sea, toward a point further north than the fleet, and Meg, just out of earshot alongside her aunt, knew what he would be saying to this Mistress Barne. It was the tale a father had often told his daughter.

  ‘My father knew his grandfather, too, another John Stannard. He could remember days agone, when the shore was as far out as what the men of those times called Beacon Hill. It was a headland even higher than the cliff upon which we stand, Mistress, or so men said. It was where fires were lit to warn of invasion, as when King Edward came back to take the crown from King Henry.’ Jennet Barne nodded, although her attention seemed to be elsewhere. ‘There was a South Gate through the Palesdyke in those days, and another church, Saint Nicholas, which my grandfather saw go over the cliff—’

  ‘Yes, most interesting, Master Stannard. Most interesting indeed, of course, and you must tell me more of all this when we are wed. But I think you and I must talk, must we not, of the letters exchanged between your father and my cousin? We must agree upon the arrangement proposed. Of the dowry, for one. And we must talk of a date, I think.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jack. ‘A date.’

  Meg noticed the change between her father and Mistress Barne. She felt her heart race. Perhaps Father was finally set to reject this woman, this witch who was being foisted on him. She had used all her wiles on Grandfather during her recent visits to Saint James, but he either laughed or glowered, and ignored her in either event. The old leper, who otherwise gave her everything that she wanted and more besides, much to Aunt Agatha’s inexplicable annoyance, had failed her in this, the most important thing of all. Perhaps, though, Father had finally seen through the witch. Perhaps, Meg hoped, he had finally noticed the teeth. Perhaps he would at last seek a bride worthy of him. Goodman Ryman had told her of how the Duchess of Norfolk was estranged from her husband. True, she was very old, but that meant Father would soon be a rich widower, and could then marry for love again.

  But no. Jack stepped forward and kissed Mistress Barne lightly upon the cheek, thereby earning a look of utter reproof from both his daughter and his sister. Although Agatha Stannard had said nothing to her brother, nor, of course, to her niece, the latter could already read the faces of adults with an accuracy that verged on the unsettling. Thus Meg knew that upon this matter of Mistress Jennet Barne, she and her Aunt Agatha were as one.

  Rather than concentrating on the unwelcome spectacle before her, Meg Stannard looked out to sea instead, to where Beacon Hill had once stood, and recalled the tales handed down from her grandfather’s grandfather, the tales that she loved so much. This Stannard ancestor of hers could recount the stories handed down from the generations long before even his time, of the days agone when there was another Dunwich within the Palesdyke: a greater Dunwich, a Dunwich of even more churches, a Dunwich that some said had been a city to rival London, a Dunwich lost forever. A Dunwich with a harbour packed from side to side with its own ships, which could send more hulls off to the old kings’ wars than even London itself. A Dunwich whose greatness thrilled Meg, just as she knew it thrilled her father when he told her of it. A Dunwich humbled in one night by a mighty storm which threw up so much shingle that the old harbour, the best harbour on the entire east coast of England, was sealed forever. Ever since then, every third or fourth winter had carried away a little more: a few feet from the cliff there, a half-acre of the marsh there, but never enough of the vast shingle bank, the Kingsholme, that blocked the port’s direct access to the ocean. But the sea would not defeat Dunwich, both her father and grandfather always said. As long as a Stannard breathed in the town, they said, the inexorable sea would have an opponent. And Meg knew that, whatever name she eventually took upon marriage, she would be a Stannard until her dying day.

  Yards away, other concerns were paramount.

  ‘The spring is impossible,’ said John Stannard to Jennet Barne. ‘The new ship needs at least one trial voyage before the summer’s campaign, and I have a mind to take her over to Flanders, if I can secure a decent cargo. My father has another scheme afoot in Flanders, too – but that is not an affair with which I need trouble you, Mistress.’

  ‘And the summer, I take it, will be the campaign itself?’

  ‘No doubt, if we receive a summons to send a ship. Ryman says there’ll be no peace with the French before then, and certainly none with the Scots.’

  ‘Ah, this Thomas Ryman. I long to meet him. A friar who was a soldier and has become a soldier again. A man who had the confidence of a duke. An intriguing fellow indeed.’

  ‘He says he will come to the great Christmas Mass at Saint John’s. God willing, Mistress, you will meet him then.’

  ‘Mayhap not, Master Stannard. The Barnes are of Westleton still, in name at any rate, and I’ll take mass only there when in these parts. The Reverend Berte’s view of divine service is also more to my taste than that of any of the Dunwich churches. More reformed. More London. Less devotion to the old ways – Doom paintings, the Lord’s Prayer still in Latin, all such Popish superstitions. In the fullness of time, I hope we can be married at Westleton, once you have ceased your voyaging and campaigning. In the autumn, perhaps, if your father and my cousin can come to acceptable terms?’

  ‘In the autumn, perhaps, lady. Or the spring after that.’

  * * *

  ‘I do not like Mistress Barne, Father,’ said Meg Stannard, when the two had returned to their house and were seated before the fire, Meg upon her little stool, Jack upon the family’s ancient settle, facing the vast Flemish tapestry of the fall of Troy. This had been Peter Stannard’s pride and joy, even though it was bought second-hand and had to be cut to fit a wall that was much too small for it; but it was the only tapestry of its size in Dunwich. Across the way from it, Tiberius snored loudly upon the hearth, occasionally emitting a prolonged and noxious fart.

  ‘It is not your place to like or dislike her, daughter.’

  ‘Do you like her, Father?’

  John Stannard stared at his daughter. Many a father would beat a child for such insolence, but although Jack did not hesitate to discipline young Tom, he always felt guilt at punishing Meg, no matter how terrible her misdemeanour. He knew why: she looked so much like Alice, and sometimes, just as now, she spoke with a wisdom far beyond her nine years. A wisdom very much akin to Alice’s, and words very much like those his wife would have spoken, in the very way she would have spoken them. Jack had other words in his mind, too: the words that Jennet Barne had spoken against the forms of faith that were the cornerstone of belief for every man, woman and child named Stannard. The prospect of spending what might be, God willing, the remaining forty, or even fifty, years of his life, with one who detested what she called ‘Popish superstitions’, weighed heavily on his mind.

  ‘It is not your concern, Margaret Stannard,’ he said, half-heartedly. ‘If it’s God’s will that I marry her, you will show her all the respect due to a mother.’

  ‘Of course, Father,’ said Meg gravely. ‘All the respect due to a mother. But do you like her?’

  TWENTY-SIX

  The storm began in the morning of Christmas Eve, and by dusk, it was in
full spate. A sudden blizzard from the east brought fresh snow to Dunwich, whipping up colossal seas that drove against the foot of the cliff. The guards appointed to the new ship, still upon the stocks, huddled around their brazier as they watched huge waves crash over the Kingsholme. Yet still the parishioners of Saint John’s responded to the summoning bell, and struggled against the driving snow to make their way toward the church for Midnight Mass. Some families were even merry, and sang Adam Lay yBounden defiantly, into the very teeth of the storm.

  ‘Fitting, in its way,’ shouted Thomas Ryman, as he and the Stannard family stepped out from their front door into the street and braced themselves against the force of the storm. ‘Fitting that God should thus mark the passing of John’s church.’

  ‘Or His displeasure with this kingdom,’ said Jack.

  ‘A sour sentiment from you at the coming of Christmas Day, Jack Stannard!’ said Ryman.

  ‘Why should God be displeased with the kingdom, Father?’ asked Meg, who was holding Jack’s left hand, her brother on his right, and shouting her very loudest to be heard above the howling wind.

  ‘Nothing, child,’ said her father, looking around to check that no-one else could have heard his unguarded remark. Agatha Stannard raised her eyes to the heavens. ‘Come, let’s hasten to the church, this is no sort of weather for Christian folk to be abroad in.’

  They hurried down into the market square. Saint John’s stood on the eastern side, towering above the Guildhall, inns, shops, and the ancient market cross. The land, full of houses and streets, had once sloped gently away from it, down toward the sea, but that land was there no longer. Instead, the east end of John’s church now stood at the very edge of the cliff. No more burials took place in its churchyard, no more endowments supplemented its coffers. Over the years, countless timber and stone defences had been thrown up against the foot of the cliff, paid for by selling off the church plate, but they were all swept away by the sea. The church was doomed, and after this final celebration of the mass, it would be stripped of its contents, close its doors forever, and wait for the unforgiving sea to carry it away. But not before Jack Stannard, Thomas Ryman and the Reverend Seaward had undertaken one last task.