‘Palm trees,’ she said. ‘These are dates. Honey came from the hives and saffron from these flowers. Grapes swelled on the vine . . .’
She spoke half to herself as if she were reciting words learnt long ago, her fingers skipping from the faded symbols to the images of plants and fruits. Then she turned the page.
It might have been a different book. The ink was bolder and the paper less mottled. Here were the palm trees again, and the crocuses and vines, but with all their cousins too. Flowers that John knew from the meadow sprang up beside bushes whose fruit he had never seen before. Creeping plants coiled like serpents amid monstrosities which surely had never existed in nature. Yet every vein of every leaf or petal was picked out as if drawn from life. Every stem was labelled with tiny spiky letters. More such pages followed. Then the ancient book returned with its faded ink. This time a forest of birds rose from the mottled paper.
‘These pages were written long ago,’ his mother said, looking down at the trunks and branches. ‘Written and rewritten. Long before you and me.’
‘What are they?’ John asked, looking among the trees.
‘Each page was a garden. Every fruit grew there.’
Kettle-steam, he thought again as his mother fell silent. But then the images drew him in. Birds flew or roosted amid the branches: plovers, larks and doves together with others that John could not name. They carried words in their beaks, fluttering up out of their treetop garden. The building featured again, larger now but obscured by the trunks of the trees. The chimney peeked over the top. His mother turned and the bolder pages resumed. They seemed to have been added later to illustrate the ancient ones, for these showed birds from great eagles to fig-peekers. John turned to a river with fishes jumping in and out of the water. Each scale held a word, the lines leaping from body to body. The building rose on the far bank. The next was a seashore teeming with tiny scuttling crabs. Now he could see that the building was grander: a hall with high arched windows. The chimney was a great tower. Orchards of cherries, apples and pears followed, the trees all laid out in a criss-cross pattern. There were the high arched windows and chimney again. Almost a palace, John thought. Who lived there?
A strange plantation passed before John's eyes. At the back of his throat his demon stirred as if he might smell the scents of the blossom or taste the fruits. Every plant and creature imaginable was here, he thought, the real and fanciful crowded together. But the wisps of steam still rose from her kettle. The strange gardens no more told him why he and his mother belonged in Buckland than the grass in the meadow outside. John felt his defiance evaporate, replaced by bafflement.
‘I don't understand,’ he confessed at last.
His mother smiled.
‘I'll teach you.’
It was all but dark when the driver turned the piebald mare off the road. Josh and Ben tramped through a meadow to a broken-down barn. A ramp of earth led into the croft. Joshua hitched up the horses. Then he came to the mule. On its back, the boy lolled to one side.
‘I told you to keep an eye on him,’ the driver told Ben sharply. ‘Now look.’
The boy was shivering. Joshua untied the bindings about his wrists and ankles then eased him off the animal's back. He collapsed on the floor.
‘I thought you meant he'd run away,’ Ben Martin offered awkwardly.
‘How's he going to do that?’ Josh snapped, chafing warmth into the boy's hands. ‘Ain't got nowhere to run, has he? Come on, get hold of his feet.’
The boy struggled weakly as Josh stripped off the sodden coat. They worked on his shivering limbs then pulled a wool coverlet from one of the sacks. The boy seemed indifferent to these attentions, neither helping nor hindering. He was thinner even than he had appeared on the mule, his ribs and collarbone jutting out. His face betrayed no reaction as Josh wrapped him in the blanket.
While the driver brushed down the horses, Ben Martin foraged for wood. The parcel's strange odour wafted up. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the boy's head turn.
‘You know this smell?’ Ben asked.
The strange odour had hung about him since the back room of the Dog at Night the week before. Like pitch but sweet, even wrapped in oilcloth and sealed with wax. Almery had heaved the parcel onto the table.
Buckland Manor, the dark-faced man had told him in his strange accent. Carriage to Richard Scovell. Master Cook to Sir William Fremantle himself, the man had added with a grin. Nine shillings had seemed a good price at the time.
Before that night he had carried nothing heavier than the ledger-books of Master Samuel Fessler, wool-factor, who was Ben's late employer. He had never set foot in the Vale of Buckland. He had never been so far as the Levels. But Ben had nodded to the dark-skinned man in the warm back room. The next morning he had shouldered the strange-smelling pack and set out for the Vale.
The boy looked away. The fire crackled and Josh cut a loaf into three. The men watched the boy rip hunks off his share and cram them into his mouth, chewing and gulping with a grim determination.
‘Where's his folks?’ Ben Martin asked.
‘Ain't got none.’
Josh recalled the trudge through the silent village, Father Hole's six half-flagon bottles clanking dully in their straw-lined panniers.
‘They don't dare show their faces,’ the priest had growled as he limped up the green from the smoke-stained church. A long rip in his cassock had been stitched with wool. A scar above his eye pulsed an angry red. They walked up the back lane where the priest called a wild-eyed man out of a white-painted cottage. Jake Starling led the priest, the driver and the mule up to the roofless hut. There the boy squatted in a sea of mud and filth.
Jake waded in then tied him to the mule. The blue coat was draped over his back. Father Hole had given his instructions then pulled a thin packet from his tattered robe and handed it to Josh.
‘The priest wrote a letter,’ the driver told Ben Martin now. ‘Left it open too. Not that it'd do the likes of me any good.’
Ben Martin looked at the letter. He thought of the dark village with its deserted green, the silence in the Flitwick inn when he had mentioned Buckland. His world was the back room of the Dog at Night. Not this Vale of Buckland. Not the village, or a boy tied to the back of a mule. None of this was his business. He was a fool.
‘I can read,’ he told Joshua Palewick.
‘Annunciation Day, the Year of Our Lord Sixteen Hundred and Thirty-two
‘To Sir William Fremantle, Lord of the Vale of Buckland, from his Servant the Reverend Christopher Hole, Vicar of the Church of Saint Clodock in the Village of Buckland
’My lord, the Wicked spring up like Grass and the Virtuous man stands like a Palm Tree. Just so have we in the Village of Buckland served as a Garrison of the Faithful since Saint Clodock swore his Oath and marched on the Witch with his Torch and Axe. Now I write to beg your lordship to stand Guard over one of our own, a Boy christened here John Sandall.‘
The firelight flickered. The letter was written in a loose running hand and it had been some time since Benjamin Martin had read so many words in a row. Josh listened and nodded from time to time but the boy only stared into the flames. The letter might have described people who were unknown to him, or a distant country that he had quit long ago.
’Sire, I beg your lordship to take in this Boy. None here will care for him and the People here shun him, being fearful of their own past Acts. For an evil Presence moved among us here at Buckland this Summer past. Then many young Souls were struck down, enduring great Sufferings before the Lord would receive them. Neither did that Evil neglect their Elders, who descended into Division, nor their Priest who committed two Sins of Omission. For he did not see the wicked Blades of Grass spring up, nor did he recognise the Viper which slithered in Disguise through the Garden and infected all here with its Poison. Now the people will not look upon the Boy's Face for his very Features do reproach them for their Viciousness. Therefore I do consign him to your lordship's Care . . .’
<
br /> Ben's voice sounded unfamiliar to him in the dark barn. The animals shifted and snorted. Josh nodded to himself at Father Hole's account as if the boy's expulsion confirmed some long-held suspicion. The boy himself hugged his knees and watched the fire, his face betraying no expression. But as Ben settled himself on his blanket, he thought on Father Hole's words, wondering at the ‘Viper’ and the ‘wicked Blades of Grass’ and listening to the rain drip through the rotted thatch. At last he fell asleep.
The bang of the door awoke him. Josh was up. Outside the sun shone down and the wet grass steamed. The packhorses ambled out of the croft and picked their way over the waterlogged turf. The limping mule followed. The boy emerged on shaky legs, his damp coat hanging from his shoulders. As Ben hauled his heavy pack across the ground, Josh looked over.
‘You can put your gear on the horses,’ the driver said gruffly. ‘Bit here. Bit there. Won't hurt none.’
A surprised Ben pulled the bedroll out of his pack.
‘And maybe you can do something for me,’ added Josh.
Pack-men's bargains, thought Ben. ‘What's that?’ he asked.
‘See him?’ Josh pointed. ‘Won't talk, will he?’
The boy stood beside the mule, raking his scalp with his nails. He was crawling with lice, Josh had noticed last night. Father Hole's letter was all very well but the boy's arrival would hardly set the chapel bells ringing at the Manor. Or Mister Pouncey clapping his hands for joy. A useless mouth was bad enough. A lousy useless mouth was worse. But a lousy, useless and mute mouth . . .
‘Get his tongue wagging,’ Josh told Ben. ‘Get him talking, understand?’
Ben flexed his shoulders and felt the welts from the straps of his pack. How hard could talking be? He handed up his bedroll. The oilcloth parcel followed with its curious smell. Josh packed both then picked his way around the puddles to where the mule pulled up mouthfuls of grass. The boy watched him warily, rubbing his wrists where the cords had chafed. Josh looked at the sunken cheeks and thin limbs wrapped in the blue coat.
‘You ain't going to run away, are you, John Sandall?’
The boy gave the merest shake of his head. The wicked Blades of Grass, thought Ben. What had the priest meant?
‘We're going to Buckland Manor,’ Josh continued. ‘You know where that is? Sir William's going to take you in.’
The boy pulled the blue coat around him and looked back up the valley.
‘You can't go back,’ Josh said quietly. ‘You can't do nothing about what happened.’
God had been missing for forty-three years. A little old man in a long blue smock bent double beneath an enormous sack, he had vanished in an explosion of glittering splinters. A moment later Saint Clodock had followed, sung to his destruction with a toneless psalm by the Geneva-cloaked ruffians who had marched into the church with their stones, their long poles, their whitewash and brooms. The windows of Saint Clodock's had been bare ever since.
That had been Father Hole's first Easter in the parish. Now, sweating, swaying, his white hair waving, the priest climbed the creaking steps to his pulpit and wondered why the crash of glass should resound in his memory on this unremarkable Sunday morning. Why, after the reigns of a queen, two kings and the seating of six Bishops of Carrboro, should God's disappearance trouble him now? Resting his hands on the smooth rail he surveyed his congregation, seeking an answer in the upturned faces. From the ancient pews below, his parishioners stared back.
The wealthiest yeomen sat at the front, the Cloughs, the Huxtables, the Sutons and the respectable side of the Chaffinge family. The pews behind them were reserved for the Parkisons and Fentons, then the Drurys, the other Chaffinges and the Riveretts. Behind them, in the free pews, sat everyone else. They wore their best bonnets and dresses, their cleanest boots, stockings and breeches. They gaped at him and breathed through their mouths against the faint smell of decay from underfoot. The Starlings and Dares were ignoring each other this morning, Father Hole noted. Tom Hob swayed a little, his mouth open wide enough to catch flies. In front of him sat Maddy Odd-bone, newly dismissed from her place in service, her swollen belly brazenly on display. Ginny Lambe had a fresh bruise on her face and Elijah Huxtable sported eyes even redder than his nose. In the corner, Susan Sandall sat upright in the back pew. Her boy, normally motionless and silent, seemed unable to stop fidgeting. At the back of the church stood his black-garbed warden, his heavy face surmounted by a full head of long blond hair and punctuated by two unblinking blue eyes.
That was it. That was why he remembered, realised Father Hole, swallowing the sprig of spearmint in his mouth. Timothy Marpot's eyes. It was their certainty. Their absolute absence of doubt. The black-cloaked window-breakers had possessed the same look.
But no zealot would wear his luxuriant blond hair so long, thought Father Hole. Nor work so selflessly for his parish. For Marpot would preach the sermon whenever Father Hole was indisposed, continuing long after the sands in the glass had run down, according to the reports of Gideon Stevens. He even led lessons in his cottage for the men and women of the parish, just as the Bishop had encouraged. No, Timothy Marpot's arrival in the parish was a boon. A godsend, he had told his new warden at their Audit Dinner. As he carved slices from the cheeks of the calf's head, a beatific smile had spread over the man's face as if some long-deferred prayer had been answered.
A loud cough from Gideon recalled him. Father Hole glanced at his chosen verse, turned his mottled face to his congregation and upended his hourglass.
‘The wicked spring up like grass,’ he announced to the parishioners of Saint Clodock's. ‘But the virtuous man stands like a palm tree.’
The text was one of his favourites. Wickednesses were many, Father Hole explained. Happily the single trunk of virtue rose above, starving them of sunlight and rain. That was the palm tree. Evil withered, he remembered telling himself, hunched over the table in his parlour while the Zoyland zealots bellowed in his church. Untended, the grass of wickedness shrivelled and died. The chanting had stopped. It was over, he had told himself. Then the crash of the glass battered his ears. So he had sat with the long brown bottle, alone like the palm tree, waiting . . .
And he had been right. By the time the Constable and his men had been fetched from Carrboro, Brother Zoilus and his black-cloaked men had moved on. To the hamlets up on the Spines. Or out onto the marshes of the Levels. To the dank chapels of Zoyland. Brother Zoilus had made his last appearance bursting from the crowd after Mass in Carrboro Abbey. Bible raised in righteous anger, he had used it to break the Bishop's nose. In return, his lordship had cut off the man's hand.
‘Thus the wicked decrease,’ Father Hole told his congregation as the last grains of sand in his hourglass trickled down. ‘They are turned to chaff. God blows them away. Such is the fate of the wicked.’
He led the prayers for the Kin, then Sir William at the Manor. He watched the men and women rise from their pews. His thoughts turned to the parlour and the bottle in the cupboard. He would wait until sunset, he resolved. This was the Lord's Day after all. A chorus of coughs, sniffs, mutterings and scrapings was rising in the nave.
At the door he offered blessings and examined his charges. The bruise on Ginny Lambe's face prompted a warning look to John Lambe. The bulge in Maddy Oddbone's belly provoked a glare and a shake of the head. Tom Hob was treated to a rap from his own wooden tankard, dangling from a string around his waist. The smell of stale cider from Elijah Huxtable prompted Father Hole to lay a hand on the man's arm.
‘The new well's near two years old, Elijah. Have you tried its waters?’
‘Well-water's for children and horses, Father,’ the man muttered. Father Hole exchanged glances with Elijah's brother Leo as the others shuffled past. The older man shrugged.
He was their shepherd, thought Father Hole. They were his sheep. Like sheep, they mostly wandered where they wanted. At last only the children were left. Father Hole led them in and had them sit cross-legged on the floor. He held up a lump of
chalk.
‘Who will draw a palm tree?’
They looked at him open-mouthed: Tobit Drury and Seth Dare, Dando Candling whose hair was whiter than his own, Cassie and Abel Starlin, the Chaffinge children, Peggy Rawley who always clutched a doll, the Fenton girls and all the others. He smiled down at them. He liked to ask them odd questions. Even startle them. God could disappear, he told them once. He could vanish like ice in a puddle. Like glass in a window.
‘Come now,’ he cajoled. ‘Who will draw?’
Father Hole waved the chalk before the stolid faces. In his mind's eye, he saw the trunk rise, the great branches curving down like scythe-blades. Then, from the back, came a voice he could not recall hearing rise above a murmur before.
‘I will.’
John rose to his feet, his heart thudding in his chest. He had barely heard a word of the sermon. He had fidgeted through the prayers. All week, Cassie's challenge had loomed in his thoughts. You wait for me after church. Now he edged past the other children. The cloying odour of decay hung in the air. One of the Huxtables had been buried the month before last in one of the lairstalls under the floor. The same smell had risen out of the old well, thought John. The wet winding-sheet smell. But why should a well smell of bodies? He took the chalk from Father Hole and drew the arc of the palm tree's trunk. He willed his hand not to shake as long-leaved branches sprayed out of the top and dropped to the ground.
‘Yes,’ Father Hole said when he had finished. ‘That is how God fashioned the palm tree.’
John picked his way back through the cross-legged children. Ephraim was whispering to Tobit. Seth kept giving John looks. He glanced over at Cassie. He had been watching the white-bonneted girl all through the service, her words echoing in his head. You want to know? You wait . . . Father Hole was telling them how the palm tree's shade at once shielded the weak as well as starving the grass of sunlight. John waited for the lesson's end, part of him urging it on, another part hoping the priest would talk for ever.
John Saturnall's Feast Page 3
