The Wilding

by Maria McCann

  She must have rejoiced when Tamar told her of my arrival. She had seen in me an innocent, had begun to shape her tale for Master Jonathan’s ear, and had so far succeeded that I had felt pity for the outcasts and tried to sweeten their lot. But Aunt Harriet had not taken to me, which meant my powers were fatally limited. Had I been the most passionate advocate ever fee’d, it would be of no use.

  *

  I did not say so to his face, but my father’s story also had its flaws. I never doubted that he had gone in pursuit, striving to snatch the wandering sheep from the jaws of the wolf. He would have done that, I knew, without a moment’s delay. But it troubled me that so much of his account came from Aunt Harriet. Father had not been present at Joan’s running-off. It might even be that the reason he failed to find her was that she had never been with the soldiers at all, in which case … what? Had Harriet swept her from the house with a broom? And meanwhile, what of Robin?

  Had Joan been with child by him, or had she only thought as much? There was no proof either way, and there could be no further comparison of accounts, let alone judgement, until I could read more of hers. How I was to obtain more, after my quarrel with Simon Dunne, I did not know. I supposed I must return to Tetton Green, but I had a horror of seeing Tamar. Not for the first time, I was going round in a circle: until I learned what Joan had to say of her departure, I had no hope of knowing whether I had used my own cousin as a whore, yet while I remained in ignorance of this I could hardly bear to go back to Joan. I fancied she must be waiting for me. She would expect her tale to fetch me running, and if not for events at the inn I would be hurrying there even now.

  My greatest perplexity came from my musings upon Tamar, and these I found impossible to leave off. Not so long ago I had thought to understand her: she had seemed a hard, blank thing, like the walls of the cave she inhabited. Now she was again become as shadowy as its deepest, darkest reaches. If she shared, as she surely must, in her mother’s ambitions, pretendings, delusions – I knew not what to call them – what had she told Robin during the time she was nursing him? Had she received the ring as his daughter, or for some other reason which my mind shrank from contemplating?

  I wondered, too, if after all these years my father would still wish to rescue Joan from her degradation. Chasing after her had been an act of charity bordering on foolhardiness, but it had at least the virtue of promptitude. He might have carried Joan home, soiled and unmarriageable but forcibly prevented from sinking any further. Now there was no knowing how deep she had sunk, and it was a very different matter to take on a woman hardened in degradation, with a daughter far advanced along the same road.

  If I did real to him who lay in the woods behind End House, I should have to reveal all my dealings with them, and I could not think how to do it.

  At last I resolved as follows. There was no need to tell my father as yet: Joan’s tale had been so many years in the making, that the few days since I had read it were as nothing.

  * * *

  I therefore stayed at home, as I have said, and pressed the apples. Our principal late variety was the same as Aunt Harriet’s: the Redstreak, king of cider-apples. From it we got a drink so brilliant and fragrant that some folk preferred it to Rhenish. I had always held that our house must be specially blessed to have such fine cider in our hogsheads and I worked with a will to replenish them.

  What does Solomon say? ‘Comfort me with apples.’ Everything about them is kind and comforting: the mild eating apple, the sharp or bitter fruit that crushes to a miraculous sweetness, the homely apples, like tried and trusted friends, that serve all purposes. Comforting too is the steady rhythm of milling, the scent of the murc, and the first tricklings of the must which Mother Nature, without need of hops or yeast, turns to the purest crystal. The drink’s virtue lies in its noble simplicity, and I wished everything in life could be as clear as the task I was about.

  But cider, too, goes amiss, and my thoughts turned another way: to apples that are naturally bad-fleshed and inferior, to must that grows slimy, or ropey, or sours to a vinegar only fit for sauces, to drink that men are obliged to doctor with honey in order to save anything at all. And I wondered if Joan was naturally bad-fleshed, or if living with Harriet had rotted her, and whether she could have been corrected and doctored with love, and if anything could sweeten Harriet and bring her back from vinegar, and whether Robin were really as weak and washy as I thought him; for that was not like our family.

  * * *

  The horse went before me with a strange jerking movement of the head, his mane floating on the air, and I realised it was lighter than any horse’s mane ever seen, and this was because it was of spun gold. I was about to reach out and touch it when I perceived a swirling in the mist ahead, a darkness forming, as yet suspended but clotting and thickening even as I observed it.

  I at once tried to pull the horse around, but the strength was gone from my arms. The beast drew steadily towards the place, forward and forward, the shape now elongating, becoming upright, a figure, a hat. The hat moved and (oh, horror) a pale glow broke upon the mist.

  No, no, I must not see, I would not. I laid on the whip and put my other hand over my face, ready to drive blind rather than look; I breathed deeply and screamed so loud as to fill the air, deafening myself, and thus, blind, deaf and screaming, rattled past. At last my voice cracked and I could scream no more. I opened my eyes and looked behind.

  Grey and level the road stretched away into the mist. There was nothing on it, no standing wraith, no crumpled figure.

  He was vanished.

  As I made to lay the whip aside, something touched my arm: the paper, clutched in a hand so white and wasted that I could see the bones in it. Wouldead, I raised my eyes to my companion. His skin had the gleam that one sees on rotting fish, and as for his face – looking into the pits of the eyes, I moaned with the terror of a child.

  ‘Stay,’ he said. ‘Stay –’

  My mother was in the room, shaking me. It was over.

  *

  So: the dream had played me a trick. I had learnt to tolerate it, but it did not wish to be tolerated. I feared it most devoutly now. I shuddered at the memory of the face, and the soft, insinuating voice of the dead.

  Thus plagued, it could not be long before I was again planning to call at End House. My father and mother looked unhappy when I said as much.

  ‘Next year, Jon, I think you might leave Aunt Harriet,’ Mother said. ‘She’s not been kind to you.’

  ‘Shouldn’t I help my aunt?’ I replied.

  ‘She doesn’t need your help. She thinks you’re fawning.’ This was unusual, for Mother. As a rule, there being so few Dymonds, she tended to cherish even the most distant and unpromising relatives, but she had evidently had enough of Aunt Harriet.

  My father nodded his agreement. ‘She never asked for you,’ he reminded me. ‘Carry through everything you promised, but don’t go there next season.’

  That would start in October, too far in the future for me to worry about now. I said I would be glad not to go, provided I could finish up my work this time. I made my usual arrangement with Simon Dunne (he held out for his extra penny), loaded up the cart and was on my way.

  The weather was cold, but clear; had it been misty, I might have been tempted to stay at home. I passed through lanes whitened by frost where a thin snow had fallen, unnoticed, during the night. I thought of God creating the world, and of its beauty, which in His kindness and wisdom He fitted to the tastes and appetites of mankind. Even frost and ice, I thought, are fashioned in such a way that they please the eye and thus, to some degree, repay the sufferings of winter. But then my hands grew cold and clumsy and I remembered the women in the cave, and wondered what they were reduced to, and whether they had fire and food. Perhaps they spent most of their time sleeping to keep their strength in, as Joan had said.

  Perhaps they had moved on.

  My aunt was not at home when I arrived and Rose Barnes opened the door. She said m
y aunt was gone to meet with some of the villagers.

  ‘Will she be long?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, Sir,’ Rose said, bringing me to a chair by the fire. ‘Would you like some refreshment?’

  Numb and hungry, I eagerly accepted and she fetched me some cold meat pie. With that, and the wine, and the warmth, I was soon asleep.

  * * *

  A door banged.

  ‘Quite apart from that other business,’ a man said. I blinked and started, finding myself in a strange room. Then I knew where I was: End House, sitting with my back to the door, and with a pain in my buttocks from staying too long in one position.

  ‘You see the need,’ said a voice I recognised as Aunt Harriet’s.

  ‘Indeed, Madam, I see it only too clearly, and as far as that goes, you may count me your faithful servant.’

  ‘We are all God’s servants.’

  There followed a pause during which neither spoke. I wondered if they were praying. I waited a moment and then stood up from the chair.

  ‘Good day to you –’

  My aunt shrieked. The prayer-book she was holding flew into the air and narrowly missed the fire.

  ‘– Aunt,’ I finished, guessing at once what had happened and fearing I would be blamed for it.

  ‘You will enter the house uninvited,’ my aunt said sourly. This was her welcome to me. Still, I was forced to admire her powers of self-command: she was recovered already. I picked up the prayer-book, dusted off some ash and gave it back to her. I then bowed to the man, whom I now recognised as Dr Green, the parson Tamar had accused of having no charity in him.

  ‘Rose let me in, Aunt. I’m sorry I took you by surprise.’

  ‘What is it, then? A message from Mathew?’

  ‘Why, no,’ I said. ‘The Redstreaks. You asked would I come back for them.’

  She glanced towards Dr Green.

  ‘We’ll talk later,’ said that gentleman, inclining his head. They strolled out again through the front door and I realised they had withdrawn here for some private business which I had interrupted. I heard my aunt say, in some agitation, ‘Did we speak of … ?’

  ‘Not a word,’ said the pastor.

  12

  Lovers of the Gentleman

  It was with foreboding that later that day I once more made my way to the cave. The going was easier now, the trees bare and brown except here and there where ivy shrouded one of them, strangling what was nobler than itself. The weather had changed and a rough wind was at my back, surging in wave after wave over the sobbing trees before sinking at last, only to rise again a moment later.

  I edged down the slope and dropped into te ditch. The hurdle was still in place. This time I was more cautious than on a previous occasion: I stood at the entrance and called as loudly as I could, and was at last answered by something like the mewl of a cat, which when repeated proved to be, ‘Within.’

  Joan, trussed in the blankets and half buried in straw, lay bunched behind an angle in the rock. I flinched at the sound of her raw, tearing cough.

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s only Master Jonathan.’

  ‘Sir.’ She could not summon breath for more. I had to wait for her to stop gasping before asking her, ‘You’re alone here? Where’s Tamar?’

  ‘Out.’

  ‘Where?’

  She shrugged so weakly it was more like watching her shoulders collapse. ‘Ten of the morning – heard the bells.’

  That meant Tamar had been away about five hours – where she was, I supposed I should never know. Joan’s head drooped forward onto her chest as if she was fainting. Her lantern was unlit but I had brought one with me and I now proceeded, with difficulty, to light it.

  ‘How are you living now? Does Tamar get food for you?’

  At the word ‘food’ she flung up her chin and looked straight at me. The sunken skin around her eyes glistened in the beam thrown by the lantern: the rheum of old age, or the traces of weeping? There was plenty to weep about. The deathly cold of the cavern, even during these few minutes, had penetrated to my bones, imparting a chill numbness that made me think Joan could not be long for this world.

  I took from my bag some wine and cordial, and a pie from our larder, all given me by Mother as comforts for the journey. Seeing the wine, Joan snatched feebly at it. I made her drink the cordial first and eat some of the pie.

  ‘She finds for herself,’ she said through a mouthful of food. Her voice was stronger already; the poor man’s crust of bread works greater wonders than the glutton’s banquet.

  ‘But she shares with you?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. She does.’

  Observing that her teeth were unequal to the pastry, I stopped bothering her awhile. I noticed that she left nothing for Tamar: seemingly the bargain did not hold both ways, or perhaps she suspected the younger woman of keeping things back for herself. When she was almost finished I said, ‘I’ve been with my father. Robin’s brother, Mathew.’

  ‘I remember Mr Mathew.’

  ‘He remembers you.’

  She stopped chewing at once, her eyes wide and frightened. ‘You told him about me? He’s coming – coming here?’

  ‘No, no. We talked only of the past.’ I bread woe she would ask, And what did Mathew say? but she remained silent. I handed her the wine again and she took a long, choking pull at it.

  ‘He says you left home when the army left,’ I began.

  Joan drank some more.

  ‘That you left with the men.’ She laid down the bottle and stared at me. ‘Come, Joan,’ I said. ‘Did you think I wouldn’t ask him?’

  ‘He says that?’ she murmured.

  ‘Yes, he does,’ I said, stung. ‘My father is the most truthful of men.’

  She was taken by another attack of the cough, collapsing afterwards into the straw and moaning, ‘I won’t see another winter.’ Her fingers as she wiped her mouth were a bundle of stained old bones.

  I waited a moment, then repeated, ‘You left with the men.’

  ‘As soon that as anything else.’

  ‘What, as soon as with Robin?’

  ‘I couldn’t. She made sure.’

  I let her drink some more, then took the bottle from her. The church clock struck four; outside it would be growing dusk.

  ‘Do you mean my aunt? Made sure of what?’

  ‘That I couldn’t return.’

  ‘From where?’

  She shifted in the straw. ‘It’s bad in this cold. Can’t write.’

  ‘You needn’t, now. You can tell me.’ I offered her the wine again, but she looked at me with suspicion and did not take it. I repeated, ‘You can tell me.’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Come, have some more wine.’

  ‘Yes, and then you’ll say it was the drink talking,’ she muttered. ‘What? What was that?’

  She mumbled something more, some insolence, under her breath, but I let it go. One so powerless, so broken down by poverty and vice, must naturally envy me my happy life, and she could do me no harm. I was content, for the moment, to swallow down any insult provided she would talk about her time with the army.

  ‘Don’t be angry,’ I wheedled. ‘I’ve come to hear the truth from your lips. You want that, don’t you?’

  I could see it in her, protest as she might. She wished to torment me a little beforehand, that was all. I went on patiently, ‘You wrote of how you were with child, and your sister found out.’

  ‘No.’

  div> ‘Yes – you wrote that.’

  ‘We all thought I was with child. But it wasn’t long enough to know.’

  ‘You weren’t, then?’

  ‘I wasn’t sure.’

  This wrong-footed me. I had thought to hear crude fudgings that I might set aside, should I wish to. I tried again.

  ‘But you’d been sweethearts for some weeks. What about the sickness?’

  ‘I had a bilious constitution.’

  ‘But in time, you know,’ I hinted.

  ‘Oh,
Sir!’ Her eyes were more than glistening now; a tear was visible on her dirty, wrinkled cheek. I was almost ashamed of myself, and would have stopped but for the fact that she herself had commenced this tale and drawn me into it. Then she seemed to come to a decision; she wiped her face and cleared her throat. ‘We had soldiers lodged at the Guild Hall,’ she began.

  Here we were at last. I said, ‘You wrote of them.’

  ‘Women stayed within doors if they could, out of their way. It was a hideous time for me, cooped up in End House.’

  ‘You had Robin’s protection, didn’t you?’

  ‘Aye; but she had the upper hand.’

  ‘I never thought Uncle Robin was afraid of his wife.’

  Joan said with a flash of malice, ‘You’re afraid of her. Tamar –’ The cough here racked her, forcing her to break off. When it had died down she went on, ‘Outside the house there were the soldiers, inside Harriet and Robin at each other’s throats. He was too soft; he should’ve given her a good beating.’

  ‘Perhaps conscience restrained him,’ I put in. ‘He was in the wrong, after all.’

  ‘Yes; but why was he?’

  I stared at her, thunderstruck. ‘Because he was a faithless husband.’

  ‘That’s not my meaning. He and I should’ve married, so why did we only meet when he was already bound to her? I’ll tell you something, Master Jon.’ She craned towards me so that I was aware of her foul breath. ‘The Devil is the Prince of this world. Open your eyes: the proof is all around you. She’s one of His own, and that’s why she prospers.’

  I felt a revulsion towards Joan, poor and helpless as she was. I said, ‘It’s God who prospers people.’