John Saturnall's Feast

by Lawrence Norfolk

  Some examinees proved recalcitrant, Brother Timothy had explained. They might kneel before the table until nightfall while their neighbours bore witness to their deeds and misdeeds. They might resist until dawn, or even mid-morning. But at last their penance would be handed down and they would don the white sheet. Then the Lessoners would gather with their long switches and harsh laughter, ready for the run to church. They had mocked God, Marpot had declared. Now God mocked them back.

  Father Hole dropped his own gaze to the floor. John Sandall had drawn the palm tree on these stones, the boy's hand shaking more than his own before the first drink of the morning. How long was it now since Susan Sandall's return to the village? Eleven years? He remembered her reappearance after Lady Anne's death, the church hung with black by Sir William's order and her belly bulging with the child who would take the chalk. A week ago they had watched him together from the door of the hut, picking his way through the meadow. What would become of him, she had demanded? She had exacted his reluctant promise. Now it weighed upon him. He felt weary. And thirsty.

  Outside the air was damp. Tom Hob's snores resounded across the green. Lights burned in Marpot's house but the other cottages were dark. Some had hung buckthorn over their lintels until Brother Timothy's men had torn it down. The old ways, thought Father Hole. The old fears.

  ‘Only the pure of spirit can see her,’ the blue-eyed man had told him, flanked by Aaron Clough and his scowling boy Ephraim. ‘That is why she attacks the innocent. To blind them to her true guise. For a child will know her, Father. Mark my words.’

  But Father Hole remembered the bent old man in his blue smock. Would he have beaten simpletons? Or forced old women to kneel for hours? Would he have sent a witch to poison their children? From across four decades, the sound of breaking glass reached Father Hole's ears.

  Absurd, he told himself sternly. His warden was no Zoyland zealot. The sickness would pass. His promise to Susan Sandall would lapse. He stood alone at the edge of the deserted green.

  ‘The palm tree stands,’ he murmured to himself. Then he turned and trudged back towards his house.

  The sickness leapt from cottage to cottage, back and forth across the village. The children it touched burned with fever first. Then the retching began. Just as Mercy Starling had warned. At the end, John's mother told him, they writhed like worms on a pin.

  After Mercy's outburst John's mother had banned him from the village. In the mornings he walked the slopes until the afternoon heat drove him down to the meadow and the stand of beech trees in the corner. There he waited and listened.

  Sometimes he would sit in the shade all afternoon. On other days he would wait no more than a few minutes, listening and peering down the bank from time to time. Then the hedge would rustle. The bushes would part. One by one, the faces appeared.

  Dando sneaked out whenever he could. Seth found it harder with his ma dragging him down to the church every day. Tobit came when he liked. The boys settled themselves about the gurgle of the water trough.

  ‘My ma says Mercy Starling lost her wits years ago,’ Dando declared.

  ‘Mine says Jake ain't much better,’ added Seth.

  They looked up the path as if they could see through the elder and hawthorn to the white-fronted cottage.

  ‘You hear about Maddy Oddbone?’ Dando asked. ‘Her waters broke in Marpot's lesson. They didn't let her out till evening.’

  ‘What about old Connie Cullender,’ Tobit said with a smirk. ‘Aaron Clough promised they'd go easy on her. Then they stripped her naked and made her kneel half the day . . .’

  ‘Naked?’ asked Dando. ‘Connie Cullender?’

  John remembered the old woman murmuring to him outside church. It was hard to imagine her naked.

  ‘Ephraim saw her,’ Tobit added.

  John and Seth exchanged glances. But before they could ask how come Tobit was talking with Ephraim, a soft high sound drifted down the path, growing in volume as they listened, the first note swelling and soaring. A high clear voice shaped the verses. John listened intently. Tobit rolled his eyes.

  ‘There she goes.’

  Cassie sang psalms every afternoon. Sometimes she sang in the evenings too. Then John walked the meadow above the Starling cottage, creeping closer and lying down in the grass so as not to be seen by Mercy.

  ‘Singing's all she does,’ said Seth.

  ‘She's praying,’ said John. ‘For Abel.’

  The boys stared at their feet, silenced by the mention of Abel. At last Cassie's voice fell silent.

  ‘Ephraim asked me to come with him,’ Seth said abruptly.

  ‘You say yes?’ Dando asked.

  Seth shook his head. ‘I ain't going around with them.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Tobit.

  ‘None of us are,’ said Dando. ‘Are we, John?’

  John shook his head.

  Tobit was the first to stop coming. Seth, Dando and John sat on the edge of the trough dangling their fingers in the cold water and discussing his treachery.

  ‘I heard a thing about Marpot,’ Dando offered as consolation. ‘Meg Riverett was telling my ma. He's hiding.’

  ‘Marpot?’ asked John. ‘How?’ He remembered the man's baleful stare.

  ‘The Bishop had him up in his court,’ Dando continued. ‘Marpot had a woman dancing around naked out Zoyland way. Then he beat her half to death.’

  ‘What'd he do that for?’ asked Seth.

  ‘Don't know.’

  They shook their heads at the incomprehensible ways of their elders.

  ‘What if he's right though?’ asked Dando. ‘What if there is a witch?’

  ‘How come they can't find her then?’ asked Seth.

  ‘They ain't examined everyone, have they?’ said Dando. ‘Ain't been down to the Huxtables’.’

  ‘Marpot don't dare.’

  ‘They ain't come up here neither,’ Seth said with a glance at John. ‘I ain't saying they'd find her or anything.’

  John nodded and looked back at the meadow. Ephraim Clough's father and the others stamped about the village as they pleased, banging on doors. The thought of his mother being hauled out of the hut gave him a sick feeling. What would he do if they stripped her like Connie Cullender? Or made her run to the church?

  Dando was the next to go. John and Seth passed awkward comments back and forth. But at last the desultory talk petered out. Cassie's singing came as a relief.

  ‘Ephraim was boasting,’ Seth said when she finished. ‘Said his pa was going to examine your ma. Said he was going to test her.’

  ‘Test her how?’ He kept his voice casual.

  ‘I don't know,’ Seth said. He stared hard at the ground. ‘It's just what I heard.’ He rose to slip back through the hedge. ‘Best get back.’

  ‘See you tomorrow,’ called John. But the bushes closed behind the boy. Seth did not answer. The next day John waited in vain.

  He began to spend his days on the slopes. Tramping up and down the terraces, he heard Marpot's hand-bell and watched the dark-suited lines form outside the long cottage. When the latest white-sheeted figure stumbled out, he imagined the harsh shouts and mocking laughter as the hapless penitent scampered under the Lessoners’ long switches.

  When evening came he still wandered in the meadow, waiting for Cassie to sing. But the Starling cottage was silent. When next he heard her song it was fainter, drifting up on the still night air. It came from the church.

  The soft psalm stroked the bare ceiling and walls. It slid along the pews and curled around the pulpit's dark turret. The words settled on the hard stone floor. Cassie's heart swelled. She thought of the little stones in her purse, the ones she had collected. She knew each one, how it bit as she knelt her weight upon it. Now she heard them skitter on the hard floor.

  Saint Clodock had carried an axe and torch against the witch. He had chopped up her chestnut tables. He had burnt her palace. Now the witch was back. But this time Brother Timothy was waiting. Together Cassie and he would
finish Saint Clodock's work. They would set the witch a sharp trial.

  Cassie understood sharp trials. She drew out the pin from her bonnet and put the tip to her blackened nail. She began slowly as she always did easing the point down its prickling groove. Witches did not feel pain, she reminded herself. They did not bleed. When the first drop fell, she began to pray.

  She gave thanks for her life and the lives of her families, the old one in the cottage and the one to come, with Brother Timothy, the Cloughs and all the others. She prayed that Abel and her father would find their own way to the Garden. That everyone in the village should find their way there. Everyone in the Vale from Sir William all the way down to Tom Hob.

  It was time. Brother Timothy had told her so.

  She had asked God to take her after Mary died but God had refused. The witch had hidden herself among them, Brother Timothy said. Cassie's penance was to find her. Every Sunday, she had prayed in the corner of the meadow. She had all but given up hope before God had answered. But at last He had sent the one she needed.

  She remembered his face, startled and bloody, looking up from the water trough.

  The ache from her knees crept up through her bones. A second bead of blood trembled down the pin. She would count to a dozen tonight, she thought. From her corner of the meadow she had kept watch on John Sandall, a tiny moving speck high above. Then she had seen the woman weaving her way through the brambles. Disappearing into Buccla's Wood. At that moment all was clear. Rising to her feet and hitching up her skirts, she had felt God's purpose course through her veins. She had run to Brother Timothy.

  A dark form loomed above. An instant later the man knelt beside her. She had thought she would expire of shame when he had stripped off her brown wool dress. She was a loosemouth, he had admonished her, to speak so promiscuously with the son of Susan Sandall. But she would have endured a thousand such penances.∼ She was God's messenger, he had told her. Now the man's blue eyes found her own.

  ‘Are you prepared, Sister Cassandra?’

  A disturbance of the gloom, John thought first. His mother's worsening cough had driven him out. He stood in the meadow, the water jug clutched in his hands. High above something was moving on the slope. As he watched, a tattered white pennant seemed to flutter out of the dark brambles. Someone was descending. He stood before the door of the hut. Only when the figure reached the lowest terrace did John recognise the bonnet.

  Cassie advanced through the long grass. But as she drew near he saw her halting gait. Her limbs moved with awkward jerks. Abruptly she stumbled and fell. John dropped the jug and ran forward, offering his hand to the girl. But then he recoiled.

  There seemed no part of Cassie that had not been scratched. Long red lines ran over her limbs. Her woollen dress hung in tatters. Blood smeared her hands and forearms. She had used them, it seemed, to protect her face.

  ‘Cassie?’

  ‘I know the witch.’

  Her blue eyes were almost black in the gloom.

  ‘Come with me,’ he told her. ‘My ma will help you.’

  But she shook her head, rising stiffly to her feet. ‘I saw her go up there.’ Cassie looked up the slope to the dark line of trees.

  ‘But there's no way in,’ John replied. ‘It's all thorns, remember?’

  ‘That don't make no difference.’ The girl stood before him in her shredded dress. ‘I told you, John. Witches don't bleed.’

  A sinking feeling grew in John's stomach. He heard the hand-bell ring out from the green below. Faint shouts answered the clanging noise.

  ‘God sent you to help me,’ Cassie said, stumbling through the grass. ‘You led me to her, John.’

  ‘Cassie, wait,’ he pleaded. But at the top of the bank the girl launched herself forward. Together they half ran, half fell down the bank. Picking himself up beside the trough, John heard a familiar voice.

  ‘Took your time, John.’

  Ephraim Clough stepped out of the hedge. John straightened and faced the older boy. Ephraim glanced at Cassie.

  ‘What have you done to her, Witch-boy?’ He turned towards Two-acre Field, and shouted, ‘I've found her! Over here!’

  A sick feeling gathered in John's stomach, familiar and unwanted. But against it rose a new anger. He stared at the boy's heavy brow, his full cheeks and broad face. With a cry, John sprang, his first punch rapping the top of Ephraim's skull, stinging his knuckles and drawing nothing more than a surprised grunt from his opponent. But the second swing ended in a gristly crack as his fist found Ephraim's nose. Ephraim gave a cry and clutched his face. A giddy abandon took hold of John. He wrestled his enemy down then he and Ephraim were rolling about the path, grabbing and punching and kicking. Ephraim was bigger and stronger but John's anger seemed to lend him a new strength. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Cassie stumble away. He heard the hand-bell ringing. He hit out again and again, careless of the blows that Ephraim returned. At last he pinned his opponent, trapping the boy's arms. Blood streamed from Ephraim's nose.

  ‘Go on, Witch-boy,’ he dared John. ‘We'll see how your ma sings.’

  The words only enraged John more. He raised his arm. He would punch the boy's face as hard as he could. Keep punching until he was silent. But even as he shaped to deliver the first blow a hand gripped his shoulder. He was pulled backwards. A furious face glared into his own.

  ‘Where have you been!’ his mother hissed. ‘Come, John! Hurry!’

  They were running again, running as hard as they could, the long grass whipping their legs, across the dark meadow and towards the first bank. Once again, oily tallow-smoke laced the night air and the banging of pots and pans mixed with the villagers’ shouts. Once again John heard his mother's breath rasp in her throat. Arms flailing, they hauled themselves up the first slope, the heavy bag bumping between them. Then the next and the next in a furious scramble. Only when the ghostly banks of furze and scrub rose around them did they look back.

  Flickering lights ringed their hut with fire. The villagers were gathered all around. Then, as John and his mother watched, the first torch was thrown, tumbling end over end, drawing an arc of flame through the darkness to land on the roof of their hut. The pale yellow flames flickered, licking the thatch then spreading over the roof.

  A tongue of red fire rose into the night. Around the hut the villagers were a dark mass, surging back and forth. He did not need to see their torchlit faces. Not only Marpot and his Lessoners but all the villagers were there: the Fentons and Chaffinges and Dares and Candlings, all the rear-pew women who had knocked on their door and their children too. As if Ephraim's thick-browed face were stamped on the faces of Seth and Dando and Tobit. Only Abel had stood by him, dying of fever in his bed. The fire took hold and it seemed to John that the flames ran through his own veins, their heat spreading through his frame. He had been right, he thought. He and Ephraim both. They did not belong here. They had never belonged.

  He looked up at his mother. Her hands were pressed to her mouth, her eyes wide. Below, the hut blazed, the smell of smoke strong in the air. John reached up and took her hand.

  ‘Ma?’

  But she could only shake her head.

  They resumed their climb. Soon the banks of brambles stretched out thick arms. The bag bumped between them as John and his mother edged their way into the thickets. When they reached the final bristling barricade, his mother wrapped her arms about him. A moment later she had plunged them both into the thorns.

  The spines would tear his skin as they had Cassie's, thought John. He flinched as the first canes scraped his legs . . . But the stems and leaves rustled harmlessly. His mother seemed to part the brambles as easily as Moses did the sea. Emerging on the other side, he found himself unmarked. As he wondered at the miracle, his mother gripped a stem and ran her hand down its length, shucking the spines like peas from a pod.

  ‘Fool's thorn,’ she said.

  John nodded and looked up. At the top of the bank, sheathed in deep-lined bark, the ancient trun
ks of Buccla's Wood leaned like pillars supporting a massive canopy. John scraped together a heap of dry leaves and lay down with his mother. Far below their hut smouldered, a red eye glaring out of the darkness. Deep inside him, John felt his anger glow like a hot coal.

  A magpie cackled. Sunlight glittered. John opened his eyes and blinked in the glare. For one blissful moment, he wondered how he came to be lying on a bed of leaves at the edge of Buccla's Wood. Then his memory blew the hot ember into life: the shouts and cries, the flames, the familiar faces turned to a chanting mass. He felt the red coal lodge itself deeper inside him.

  Beside him, his mother slept, her long black hair spread out over the ground. As John rose, she stirred. He looked down the slope to the roofless shell at the edge of the meadow. Smoke still rose from the blackened walls. His mother placed a hand on his shoulder.

  ‘You said we belonged there,’ he told her. ‘You said we belonged more than any of them.’

  ‘We do,’ she answered.

  But she paid no attention to the hut nor even the village. He followed her gaze down the Vale, leaping hedgerows and woods, tracking the river until it disappeared. There was the ridge and the gatehouse, the tower of the chapel and the great house beyond. Buckland Manor. That was it, he realised.

  ‘You served there,’ he said.

  His mother rubbed her red eyes. ‘Yes, John. I served there.’

  ‘But you came back.’

  ‘I had no choice.’

  Another riddle, he thought. Even now.

  ‘You said you'd teach me,’ he said.

  ‘I will,’ she answered shortly. ‘Come.’

  She heaved the bag onto her shoulder and turned to the woods behind her. But as John turned to follow a flash of light caught his eye.

  It came from the distant house. A second flash followed. Then more. A row of windows was being opened, John realised. Sunlight was glinting off the panes. He stood on the slope and watched the lights flash like signals sent the length of the Vale. Then he turned and followed his mother into Buccla's Wood.