Lark Returning

by Lark Returning (retail) (epub)

  ‘We’ll manage, my love,’ he said consolingly, and patted her lightly on the shoulder.

  * * *

  Early one morning she went into labour and her father was wakened by the sound of agonized grunting from her box bed. When he pulled back the curtain he found her crouching on all fours like an animal, her face covered with sweat. Wordlessly she waved him away and pulled the curtain back again.

  It was a Sunday, so he could rush out to the farm to feed his pair of horses and rush back again to be with her. Then he took up his vigil, sitting outside the door listening to the terrible noises she was making. His wife had never endured such agonies and he was worried for his girl.

  About dinnertime he heard her screaming and, panic stricken, rushed inside. Her face was ashen white and her hair hung down, wet with the sweat of her exertions. This time she was standing up, hanging on to the bedpost.

  ‘I can’t deliver it, I can’t deliver it, Father. You’ll have to go and get Big Agnes.’

  In a frenzy he ran off and met Agnes and a group of other bondagers coming back from church in their Sunday best.

  Agnes saw the worry on his face at once and asked anxiously, ‘What’s the matter, Adam?’

  ‘Oh Agnes, it’s Jane, she’s in labour and she says she can’t deliver the baby.’

  Agnes liked Jane and had forgiven her for abandoning Jock. These things happened, she had told him. The girl has just fallen in love…

  Now she rallied to the rescue. ‘My God, just hold on a minute and I’ll come with you,’ she told Adam.

  When she’d changed into her old clothes, they ran back to the abbey house together.

  The big woman was kind-hearted and she shook her head at the sight of Jane, for she could see at once what was wrong.

  ‘It’s a breach,’ she told Adam, ‘we’ll have to try to turn it.’

  Jane’s father went white as he thought of the many times he had struggled to pull a breach presentation calf or foal from its mother. He thought of how they tied ropes to the tiny body and hauled it out into the light while the mothers screamed in agony. Not that for his Jane, surely?

  Big Agnes saw his consternation. ‘You go away and get some logs chopped or something. We’ll need a big fire. I’ll do it, I’ve done it before but…’ Her voice trailed away.

  ‘But what?’

  ‘But the mother died.’

  He sank on to the wooden settle by the fire and put his head in his hands. ‘I’ll have to go and get the doctor.’

  ‘You’ll have to go to Melrose then,’ she reminded him. ‘That’ll take an hour or more and she can’t hang on much longer. I’ll do what I can for her while you’re away.’

  He ran out of the abbey without putting on his jacket, a white-haired old man running as if pursued by the devil.

  Jane never forgot the two hours she and Agnes fought for the baby. The big woman was gentle, in spite of her coarse appearance, and with both hands she grappled inside Jane till she managed eventually to grab hold of the child. ‘Hold on, lassie, hold on,’ she grunted, and with a terrible heave, she pulled it into life.

  In agony Jane fell back on to the tumbled, blood-soaked covers and it took a few moments before she realized that her newborn child was silent. There had been no cry of life as it entered the world. Her pain was so agonizing that she could not move, but she whispered, ‘Is it dead, Agnes?’

  Agnes stood in the window with the bundle in her arms. ‘I don’t know. It’s very weak – it’s a wee lassie, Janey.’

  ‘Give her to me,’ said Jane and held out her arms, into which Agnes laid the pathetic little bundle wrapped in a bloody sheet. As the doctor came in with Adam both women were crying over what they thought was a corpse when suddenly the infant shuddered, flexed her tiny legs and gave her first cry, a feeble little peep like the mewling of a kitten.

  Aylie, December 1814

  ‘What name are you going to give her?’ Adam asked the first time he saw the baby.

  Jane surprised him when she said, ‘Alouette. It means lark. Blaize once said that I sang like an alouette. I’ll call her that.’

  No one but Jane could pronounce it of course so they called her Aylie.

  She was a small, white-faced child who frightened the kind heart of Big Agnes. She preferred babies to be fat and rosy. On the second day after her birth, Jane was back on the farm with her precious child wrapped up in a shawl and tied tight against her heart.

  ‘You’ll not send her out in this cold,’ Agnes warned the steward. ‘That bairn’s not strong. The cold wind would kill it and you wouldn’t want that on your conscience, would you?’

  The steward blustered. ‘We’ve got work to do, we don’t have time to worry about bondagers’ bastards.’ But he was intimidated by Big Agnes’ eye and when the work was being handed out, he told Jane to stay in the barn and cut turnips for the sheep.

  Fortunately for Aylie, her mother was strong. The milk flowed abundantly in her breasts and in spite of everyone’s fears, the child prospered.

  By the time the post runner brought the letter from France, even gloomy Big Agnes was beginning to hope that Jane’s bairn would live.

  The runner in his blue coat with the brass buttons searched round Charterhall looking for Jane so that she could pay the charge on her letter. It cost one shilling, but she would have paid every penny she possessed to take it from the runner’s hand.

  Standing in the barn, she ripped off the seal and read it eagerly. Blaize had only learned of the baby’s birth more than a month after it happened because he had been away from home. His reaction was everything she desired, however:

  At last I’m a father! I feel so proud, as if no one else has ever been a father before. I think the name Alouette is lovely for the baby, perhaps she will be able to sing like a lark too. Is she small? She can’t be, with such a magnificent mother. How I long to hold and kiss her – and even more to hold and kiss you, my Jane. I long for you, I think of you, every day. I have told Marie and now we are organizing a division of our property. I suspect she prefers celibacy to marriage. Her main concern is: Who is going to have the house and the carriage horses?

  I will be with you in the summer. One day, when you’re out in that big hayfield with your hat shading your freckles from the sun, I’ll come up beside you and put my arms round you. Oh Jane, how I love you.

  She read and re-read the letter, then she sat down on a pile of hay and suckled her child, who grabbed with her tiny fists at the blue thread Jane wore tied loosely round her neck. All nursing mothers in the Borders wore those threads, she did not know why, but it was the Custom and as always she followed the old ways.

  Big Agnes came into the barn with a load of turnips and Jane told her that she’d had a letter from Blaize.

  ‘He says he’ll be back in the summer,’ she said joyfully.

  ‘I’m glad to hear that, because yesterday I heard Glendinning telling the steward that he’s planning to build a new stableyard – and he’s going to use the stone from the abbey for the buildings. You might be losing your house, Janey,’ was Agnes’ reply.

  The shock made the breath catch in Jane’s throat. ‘But he can’t pull down our abbey. He can’t, he can’t…’

  ‘He owns it, lass. Using the stone saves him buying new stuff. He’ll use your abbey for a quarry.’

  She kept this news from her father because she feared it would worry him, but a few days later she saw by his face that he had heard the rumour too.

  ‘They’re planning to use the abbey stone for building over at the big house,’ he told her.

  ‘Can’t anybody stop them?’ she asked.

  ‘No, it’s Glendinning’s property, he can do what he likes with it,’ Adam said resignedly.

  She stared around their cosy home with tears in her eyes. ‘But it’s been like this since the monks left. Look at all those lovely carved stones, and all those wee stairways, even the old doors are just as they left them. You know they sing in the choir at night when
the moon’s full, Father. How can the ghosts go on singing if he pulls it all down?’

  ‘They’re just spirits. We’re people, and it’s more to the point to ask where we’ll go when he pulls it down,’ was Adam’s bitter reply.

  His daughter was suddenly frantic with terror. ‘But we can’t leave here. Blaize won’t know where to find me if we leave here. I’ve got to stay in the abbey, Father. He’s coming back for me.’

  The old man soothed her. ‘Sit down, girl, it’s not happened yet. We’ll worry about it when it does.’

  About a month later Glendinning’s steward came to the abbey to give them notice to quit. Coincidentally that was the same day as a lawyer rode out from Melrose to inform Jane that a money order for the sum of fifty pounds had come for her from France. It was sent by Blaize.

  This was a fortune to people like the Cannons, but her surprise and pleasure were spoiled by the cruel realization that they could no longer stay in their old home.

  ‘But where are we to go?’ she demanded of the steward. ‘Have you another house to offer us?’

  He looked shifty and said, ‘You’d better see Mr Glendinning about that,’ and he rode off in a hurry.

  If such a thing was possible, Jane’s anxiety increased. She suspected that if Glendinning was not offering them another house, that could mean that he was planning not to offer them work. When she shared her fears with her father, he pulled on his jacket to go round to the big house and see their employer.

  Glendinning was eating his supper and kept the hind waiting for almost an hour, but eventually he sent the serving girl out to tell the old man to come in. He and his boorish son were sitting at a lavishly covered table spread with the remains of their meal.

  His first words were friendly. ‘Sit down, Cannon, you’re getting on and must need a seat. The heavy work must be hard for you now. How old are you anyway?’ Adam Cannon sat awkwardly on a sabre-legged chair and fixed his blue eyes on Glendinning. ‘I’m sixty next year, but I’m as fit as a man ten years younger.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure you are but for how long? For how long?’ replied Glendinning, ‘And what’s happened to that son of yours? Where’s he gone?’

  ‘He went to Berwick to join the army. They’ve sent him to Bengal.’

  Glendinning and his son looked at each other with raised eyebrows. ‘India? My word, that’s a long way away.’

  Adam said nothing and Glendinning was forced to carry on speaking. ‘You’ll have heard about my plan to build a new stableyard. The one we’ve got is a ramshackle mess. The house needs a good stable. We’ll be using the stone from the abbey for it.’

  The hind made no objection. ‘So I’ve heard,’ he said.

  The silence hung between them, heavy with meaning, and Glendinning felt anger rising in him. He was the landowner, he was the employer, he did not have to explain to this man why he no longer needed him on the farm, but there was a dignity and composure about Adam Cannon that demanded respect.

  ‘You’ll not be able for heavy work much longer and your son’s off now. Jane’s a good enough worker but that bairn’s taking up a lot of her time and the other bondagers won’t let the steward send her into the field when the weather’s bad. That’s nonsense, you know. We’re not running some sort of poor’s house here. At the next hiring fair I’ll be looking for a hind that can give me more working hands from one house, so we’ll not be needing you any more after the term.’

  Adam Cannon was too proud to beg. He’d worked on Charterhall all his life. His father and grandfather before him, all his ancestors back to the Middle Ages had lived and worked there. None of them ever had to go to a hiring fair to stand in line for a job. He was a proud man who’d farmed his own acres, paid his rent and raised his family decently and now, when he was old, he was being turned out of the home that was his as much as it was Glendinning’s.

  Proudly he turned on his heel and walked from the room. With a determined stride he followed the path down to the river and stood looking into the weir where fat spawning salmon gathered every year. When he was a boy, all the local people could take a salmon now and again but since men like Glendinning owned the river, anyone taking a salmon risked going to prison for poaching.

  With a bitter expression he stood watching the slow-running, brown-flecked water for a long time and then, when it was dark, he went back to the abbey house and told Jane the terrible news.

  * * *

  Hard eyed, Jane stood with crossed arms watching the men taking down a part of an old wall which bore delicately carved traceries branching like trees across the dark red stone.

  ‘Where’s that going?’ she asked.

  ‘It’s for the front of the groom’s house, it’ll look real bonny,’ said the foreman who was supervising the removal of the stones.

  ‘It looked bonnier where it was,’ the angry girl replied, and turned on her heel to walk away.

  The peace of the abbey was shattered daily by the noise of the gang of labourers who had moved in as soon as the better weather began. They demolished walls and grubbed out fallen pieces of carved stone which horses dragged off in carts across the meadow to where the rising buildings of a large stable block for housing riding horses, carriage horses and the new carriages could be seen. It was far superior, better built and more water tight than any of the houses the working people inhabited.

  Jane’s impotent fury increased all through the spring days. Glendinning had relented slightly and told Adam that his services would be retained till next spring term, but then they would definitely be no longer required at Charterhall. They worked as hard as ever, for it was a matter of pride not to shirk their duties even when they were burning up with resentment and a sense of injustice. Besides, they needed letters of reference from Glendinning if they were to find another position.

  Jane was playing with her baby on the cloister steps one Sunday afternoon when Jock came through the arched doorway and sat silently down beside her.

  ‘You’re looking sad, Jane,’ he said gently, tickling the baby’s legs with a piece of feathery grass.

  She looked at him with gratitude and admiration. He had never reproached her for abandoning him for Blaize, but had taken it with silent dignity.

  ‘I am sad,’ she replied, ‘I can’t bear the idea of leaving here. I love Charterhall abbey. It’s part of me.’

  Jock looked around at the old walls that shone salmon pink in the rays of the dying sun. ‘It’s a sin when you’ve all worked so hard for that man,’ he said. ‘But don’t you worry, Jane, you and your father’ll find another job, a better one.’

  She shook her head. Her worries sat heavily on her. Her father was visibly failing, as if the spirit was going out of him with every stone that was dragged away from the abbey. His strength was failing. It was noticeable that he had to stop frequently to draw laboured breaths when working, and he was no longer able to carry the massive loads he once shouldered without thinking.

  ‘Adam’s not the man he was,’ she told Jock, ‘and it won’t be easy for me to find a good place because of the baby… Farmers don’t want bondagers with bairns.’

  ‘Are you still waiting for your Frenchman coming back?’ Jock asked tentatively.

  She did not speak but stared past him at the long green meadow beside the wood and nodded her head silently.

  Jock looked downcast and she realized that he still hoped she would come back to him in the end.

  ‘You mustn’t wait for me, Jock. If I don’t marry Blaize I won’t marry anybody.’

  ‘I can see you love him, far more than you ever loved me,’ he told her. ‘I remember seeing you with him, you never looked like that for me. It fair broke my heart but I don’t blame you, Jane. I know what it’s like to love somebody. You just can’t help it, can you?’

  ‘No, you just can’t help it,’ agreed Jane.

  * * *

  Haymaking had come and gone without Blaize and if Jane was anxious she hid her anxiety beneath the other urgent concerns
that took up her day. The labourers had cleaned a good deal of the abbey site but they left the nave and the old dormer house in which she and her father lived with the baby.

  ‘You can’t start here,’ she warned the gang foreman one bright morning. ‘It’s our house till next term time.’

  ‘And on that very day he’ll be in pulling it down,’ said Glendinning’s son, who had ridden out to inspect the work.

  Jane turned her large, angry eyes on him and stared for a long time without speaking. Her gaze disturbed the young man. He pulled the reins and was about to swing the horse round when she called in a clear voice, ‘I see something coming for you, Mr Glendinning. You might not be here at term time.’

  The young man flushed scarlet with anger and fear. ‘You’d better not threaten me, you whore, you with your Frenchman’s bastard,’ he shouted, and urging his horse into a canter, burst through the gaping crowd of men and disappeared among the graveyard trees.

  When the corn was ripened again Jane, her growing baby still tied to her side, was out in the fields with her sickle. All the time she was cutting and stooking the sheaves of corn, she thought about Blaize. A perpetual worry niggled away in her mind. It was not that she feared he had betrayed her. She trusted him implicitly and was secure in the knowledge of his love, but something else made her mortally afraid for him. As she worked, she could not stop her mind persistently returning to the memory of the shaft of light shining on his face at Christian’s funeral. When it made her shudder, she impatiently thrust a hand over her face, wiping away the sweat with the corner of the cloth she wore tied over her hair. ‘Don’t be a fool,’ she told herself, ‘there were lots of other people at that funeral who’ll probably die before Blaize does.’