The Forbidden Path

by Jean Chapman

  ‘A love that can destroy, then…’ Cato began, and as if contemplating the remark stirred the two dead pheasants with his toe, the purple and green sheen of their necks disappearing as the brown bodies rolled over displaying the featherless, blood-red face masks of the birds. Belle felt a chill whisper over her skin; it was like something grotesque hiding beneath something quite beautiful. Thunder rolled again - sound effects to their hostility - but much nearer now, and lightning came branching down across the blackening horizon.

  ‘You must get out of these trees,’ he said.

  ‘And what about you?’

  ‘You’re a stubborn, or a stupid, little thing, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m not little!’ she said, ‘and I don’t have to do anything.’ Her temper suddenly flared out of control, but the next second she ducked and hunched, fists to mouth, as a great crack of lightning, followed immediately by a huge clap of thunder, announced the arrival of the storm right over their heads. The first great spots of thunder rain splashed coldly on her head and arm as, the immediate fright over, she stood looking defiantly up at him.

  ‘Come on.’ He caught her wrist and ran with her towards the cottage. ‘Levi won’t mind if we shelter.’

  She struggled against him, tried to release her wrist. ‘Do you drag everybody about,’ she shouted at him, ‘or is it just me?’

  ‘Just you,’ he answered, thunder drowning whatever other comment he made. She had no choice but to run after him, as the ever darkening skies made it quickly more like night than mid-day. The noise of the rain was deafening, pattering thousand-fold on leaves above their heads and splashing in pools already collected, and not yet beginning to be absorbed by the hard-baked earth. She soon could not see where she was putting her feet, which slipped with ankle-twisting agony on unseen objects as Cato sped her along. She was becoming more and more angry with him, and tried again to snatch away, but he held her tightly. Another tremendous fork of lightning threw the trees around them into stark blue and white, and immediately in its light-echo came the cannon of thunder. An ash tree not thirty yards to their right seemed to shudder, and incredibly smoked and was momentarily frilled with flame in the downpour, then slowly split, long thick strands of wood, pale as cooked chicken breast, pulled and dragged as the lesser portion fell away. Now she was running in partnership with Cato, step for step.

  By the time they reached Levi’s front porch their hair streamed water and their clothes clung limpet-wet. She snatched away from his grasp now and leaned against the door, panting and resentful.

  ‘I wish…’ she gasped, ‘I wish you’d leave me alone.’

  ‘In the rain, or under the steam-engine?’ he asked.

  ‘Both! Both, both!’ she shouted back at him.

  ‘You’re like your father - indulge in a little emotional extravaganza from time to time.’

  ‘And you… .’ She looked at him from under her dripping hair, her passion against him almost as intense at that moment as the attraction. She cared too much what he said, his criticism hurt out of all proportion to his words - for after all, she had always wanted to be more like her handsome father than her mundane mother. She sought for words to injure him in return, panting like a caged tigress in the corner of the porch. ‘You’re like your engines, good at pushing people about and knocking things down!’

  Her head still bent forward, she looked up at him from under lowered lids, seeing in turn his hurt and his struggle to find an answer. ‘It’s always a good idea to have power and right on your side,’ he said.

  ‘Right!’ she began, then stopped abruptly. She had been on the point of taking up her father’s arguments, and Cato guessed the direction of her thoughts.

  ‘Yes, the right you’ve kept open by walking the bridleway,’ he reminded her.

  ‘We all make mistakes!’ She pushed herself upright and threw back her dripping hair with a fine regal sweep.

  ‘Quite aristocratic,’ he commented. ‘That’s like your father too, he… .’ His sentence was cut short as Belle launched herself at him, hand raised to slap his face. He stretched upwards and the blow landed with a loud slap on his wet shirt. ‘Don’t try that again,’ he warned. ‘I’ve never struck a woman, but I wouldn’t be above giving a wilful child a pasting.’ She pushed away from him with both hands so violently she brought herself up short, striking the far side of the porch.

  ‘It’s only a small wrestling ring,’ he said calmly. She was beside herself with anger and frustration. For this, she had made the first gesture, left a note of apology under the thatch! She leaned back, restrained where she was by a solid curtain of rain and tormented by an overwhelming emotion, which she could at that moment label neither love nor hate. She only knew it was no kind of neutrality, it demanded action. Fists clenched, angered by his jibe that she was a child, and by his poker-faced reserve, she could stand their intimate shelter and antagonistic alienation no longer.

  ‘It’s you who’s acting like a child!’ she shouted. ‘Just because I called you a coward in the heat of the moment. You … I’d left you a letter, but you’ll not have it now!’ She pushed herself from the far corner of the porch out into the storm. It was like standing under a gushing pump. It took her breath with the coldness and sheer weight of water. She had difficulty in seeing, except when lightning lit the scene with eerie blue electricity. Her feet slipped on the cobbled path, and she had to put one hand to the ground to save herself. The next moment she was swept up and carried back inside the porch. She struggled, but he held her easily.

  ‘Oh, you’re stronger than me. … I know that…. But… .’ She pushed at his chest, but was very conscious of the heat of his body coming through their clothes. She was aware her saturated clothes clung like a second skin, and saw Cato raise his eyebrows a fraction in appreciation. She raised her hand and slapped his face with all her force.

  Cato turned immediately into the storm again. Astonishment now made her stop fighting, as he carried her to Levi’s bench, sat, and turned her face down on his lap. She struggled now, but to no avail.

  ‘Your father should have done this years ago,’ he shouted through the noise of the torrential downpour, then slapped her hard on the bottom. It hurt so much she was too surprised to cry out as he continued. ‘God knows why,’ Cato went on, pausing to administer the second slap, ‘but I love you, Belle Greenaugh!’ Slap. ‘You’re big trouble, I know that.’ Slap. ‘But whether I like it or not, you’re in my blood.’ Slap. ‘I can’t think of my life without you now.’

  She grimaced, waited for the next slap, gasping with hurt pride and summoning energy to fight or scream, or retaliate…. but before she could do anything, a cry more devastating than anything she could have mustered had Cato grasping her arm protectively, and both on their feet, listening.

  ‘Someone’s hurt …’ she heard herself say, and her free hand sought Cato’s as they both seemed to force their powers of hearing beyond the noise of the storm, and both gasped, horrified, as a second cry came.

  If the first had been of a man surprised to a sudden ecstacy of pain, the second was more terrible — on a lower note forming disbelief that so much agony could exist and be contained in one entity.

  9

  ‘He can’t be far away,’ Cato said. ‘Stay here, I’ll be quicker on my own.’

  Belle immediately stepped back into the porch, catching her breath half with humiliation, half with excitement. The cries, the storm, his beating and his words had brought her to such emotional fever she would have been quite incapable of fighting against wind and rain at that moment.

  She leaned back, taking great gulps of air. He loved her but he beat her, she loved him and slapped him. It was a dangerous occupation, she thought, and for a few seconds laughter and tears mingled disturbingly, as did the thunder and rain outside. She began to shiver. Her wet clothes felt icy now — the heat of passion and of Cato’s body were quickly ebbing away. The heatwave of that long summer was gone too, it seemed, in this one tremendous down
pour.

  She found herself listening and longing for any sound of Cato returning, and was soon shuddering uncontrollably. Then she thought there was a shout; she went to the porch step, listening, peering through the rain into what seemed like an unknown, terrible landscape. One moment it was in total darkness, the next storm-lashed trees loomed in unfamiliar outline. Again a shout seemed to mingle with, and yet be drowned by, the rain. ‘Cato? Where are you? Shout again! Shout out again!’

  Now she was sure there was an answer falling into the echo of her own call. Then as the countryside was again illuminated by a great fork of lightning she saw Cato running towards her, running and beckoning, his movements looking weird and erratic in the spasmodic lightning. ‘What is it?’ she asked, beginning to go towards him, feeling she was in a nightmare where, although she willed her legs to run, they moved only in an exaggerated kind of slow imitation of reality.

  ‘I need your help,’ Cato gasped as she reached him. ‘He’s just inside the spinney.’ There was no breath left in either for questions or answers as they ran, but there was a hardness, an anger, in Cato’s voice.

  The centre of the storm had moved a little over towards Loncote, and the sky was just beginning to lighten behind them and the rain to ease as he led the way to the spinney. A figure lay huddled and still on the perimeter of the dripping trees. She suddenly darted forward, outstripping Cato in the last few strides as, with a catch of her heart, she thought it was Levi Adams who lay there. Then relief, as she realised the figure was too tall to be Levi, cleansed the anxiety for a moment. In the same second she recognised Mordichi Evans, and clasped both hands to her mouth in horror, as she saw the iniquitous thing closed fast on his leg.

  ‘It’s a mantrap,’ Cato said briefly, and she saw he had a stout hedge stake in his hand. ‘When I prise open the jaws you must lift out his leg.’

  Belle nodded, swallowing the bile that threatened to flood her mouth, as she saw that Evans must have slipped even as his foot had sprung the trap, for it held him almost horizontally along his calf. Thank God he was unconscious, she thought. Cato’s hand gripped her shoulder for two seconds, asking her preparedness. She nodded, and he inserted the pointed end of the stake below the metal teeth that held Mordichi, straddling the old man, a foot on cither side of the malicious trap to keep it still while he levered at the jaws.

  For some moments the edge of the stake disintegrated as Cato applied force and Belle held the corduroy trousers, feeling the bone-thin thigh beneath her hands. Then he managed to wedge a firmer part of the wood below the teeth. He paused. ‘We must do this the first time. Ready?’ He took several deep breaths, then bore down with all his might on the stake. She saw the teeth of the trap begin to open, begin to release the leg. Cato edged a boot-toe in, to hold the trap to one side, while he leaned to press the stake the opposite way. The teeth came further from the leg. She felt they would never clear it, and she pressed back the corded trousers while millimetre by millimetre, first dull, then red-stained, still they were revealed, as Cato struggled to open the jaws wider. He had one boot firmly on one half of the spring now, and with a gigantic effort opened the trap fully. Still she had to pull the leg away as the teeth retained and pulled it to one side. She lifted and cradled the limb, having to bend it to clear the trap and Cato’s feet.

  ‘Right!’ she cried.

  ‘Get back!’ he ordered, his voice thin with strain. ‘As far as you can before I let go.’

  The trap leapt and sprang to with the viciousness of a live thing, biting into the stake with a force that made her shudder anew.

  Cato wasted no time. He ripped off his shirt and gingerly turned back Mordichi’s trouser leg to look at the injury. Belle saw his jaw-line harden. ‘It’s the bone as well — not much we can do, except see he doesn’t bleed to death.’ He bound his shirt tightly above Mordichi’s knee. ‘That should help, while I carry him back,’ he said, stooping to pick up the old man as carefully as he could. ‘You had better go home,’ he added.

  ‘I can at least open gates for you,’ she said, and he nodded. ‘Anything to save time,’ he agreed brusquely.

  She moved ahead, holding back branches, running ahead to open gates and, once Glebe Farm was in sight, hurrying on to dispatch someone for a doctor. Her instinct was to burst into the kitchen, but her brief meeting with Mrs Abbott, when she had come for help before, had given her a healthy respect for Cato’s mother. She contented herself with hammering fiercely on the door.

  Almost immediately, a young girl opened the door. Belle vaguely recognised her as from one of the larger, poorer Rodborough families — low-browed, dark hair pudding-bowl cut. The girl listened, mouth agape, as Belle told of Cato coming with a badly injured man. ‘I fetch the missus… the mistress,’ the girl corrected herself, and scurried through to the parlour, where Belle could hear her urgent gabbling.

  Belle glanced round quickly, her heightened senses missing nothing. The kitchen walls had been white-washed, and there was an abundance of excellent quality deep blue willow-patterned crockery on dresser and shelves. The stone floor had been well cleaned and reddled, and deep orange rugs and curtains made the formerly bleak room welcoming. She noticed too that a rather splendid hanging brass oil-lamp had been added in the middle of the ceiling. A great deal had been done in a very short time, she thought.

  The arrival of Cato, who carried Mordichi to the long oak settle along one kitchen wall, saved her further explanation.

  That Mrs Abbott was an efficient and speedy organiser was amply demonstrated as she sent her girl to fetch her husband; Cato to harness the fastest horse - her own mare — to the gig; Belle to change into dry clothes (the only ones that were near her size being some of the village girl’s clothes which had been freshly laundered at the farm.) Joe was attending to Mordichi, who was beginning to return to consciousness, as his wife returned to the kitchen pulling on driving gloves.

  ‘Miss Greenaugh will show me the way to the doctor’s house. I shall certainly drive quicker than either of you,’ she said.

  Belle saw Joe’s eyebrows rise in critical and reluctant agreement, but he waved her on her way.

  Belle was soon to see why, when Ruth Abbott urged her horse on, for it had the gait of a professional racing trotter and she drove with flair. Belle thought she had the manner of a charioteer, as they sped towards the house of the Loncote doctor.

  ‘I used to race my brother when we were children,’ Ruth said, as if she sensed Belle’s unspoken questions. ‘It was quite a sport with us for a long time, trotting races along the beach.’

  Belle had begun to speculate about Ruth Abbott’s background when Ruth enquired how Mordichi Evans had been injured. It was the only time she took her eyes from the road, as Belle told of the mantrap.

  ‘Bit barbaric here, aren’t you?’ The older woman seemed to be reassessing the whole area in her brief scrutiny of Belle.

  Belle opened her mouth to deny the criticism applied to her family, when with a great thud of her heart she recollected her cousin’s words: Warn your friends the Abbotts that they’d better watch their step! She felt her cheeks burn with the certainty that she knew who had been responsible for using the old, illegal trap. She knew, too, exactly where it had come from. She glanced at Ruth Abbott and was relieved to see she was engrossed in her driving again. Belle pointed to the doctor’s house on the outskirts of the village just coming into their view.

  A compact, businesslike Scotsman, Dr James Robson was surveying the storm damage in his flower-borders when they drove up. Having seen their approach, he took no convincing that it would be quicker for him to travel back With Mrs Abbott in her gig.

  By the time Belle arrived back at Glebe Farm, driving the doctor’s turn-out, there was a fair assembly of people outside: Mordichi’s two sons, several other timber and sawmen, and, as if by coincidence or second sight, the herb woman complete with her covered basket. Belle wondered if she might even be living with the Evanses - wherever that might be. She half suspec
ted they had taken up residence in a deserted cottage near the old osier beds, where a professional basket-maker had once lived.

  As she tied the reins of the trap on their brass bar and stepped down, she sensed the men’s aggression. They stood grouped by the kitchen door, murmuring quietly to each other and continually casting glances in her direction. She was the outsider here, the opponent, and she knew they were already looking to fix the blame on the Greenaugh family. She knew, too, she could hardly defend her father, when she felt that the blame lay at her cousin’s door.

  She was relieved when Cato, hearing the second trap arrive, came from the house to meet her.

  He led the way into the kitchen, where Mordichi was now fully conscious, and the doctor, Joe and Ruth Abbott were looking at and talking to the suffering man. Belle caught a glimpse of his face, white and beaded with perspiration. She had never seen such a look of intense pain before. He held himself rigid, gripping the side and back of the oak settle as if trying to lift himself away from his exquisite agony. She heard the doctor say ‘I think there is no alternative… the bone is too badly splintered…I’ll have to take the leg off below the knee.’ He began to take off his jacket and, glancing round at the long kitchen table, beckoned to the cowering kitchen-maid, ‘I’ll want lots of hot water, hurry now, and clean sheets.’

  ‘Ooh, no! Ooh, no!’ Mordichi drew himself further into the back of the settle by the sheer strength of his arms and the intensity of his pain and horror. ‘Get the wise woman’s daughter! I want her! I want Hepzibah’s gal!’

  ‘Now, now, my man, this will do you no good.’ The doctor approached him again. ‘The sooner this thing’s done, the sooner you’ll start to mend.’