The Lonely Furrow

by Norah Lofts

  The Lonely Furrow

  A Tree of Life Book

  Published by arrangement with the author’s Estate.

  Copyright © Clive Lofts 2018.

  Originally published in Great Britain by Hodder & Stoughton, 1976. Published in the USA by Doubleday, 1977.

  Cover illustration: Macbeth, detail.

  ©J.L.Muñoz Luque

  www.jlmunoz.com

  The moral right of the late Norah Lofts to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is

  available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-905806-88-1

  Tree of Life Publishing

  United Kingdom

  The Lonely Furrow

  Norah Lofts

  Also by Norah Lofts from Tree of Life Publishing:

  Esther

  How Far to Bethlehem?

  Jassy

  Bless This House

  The Devil in Clevely

  Scent of Cloves

  The Lute Player

  The Town House

  The House at Old Vine

  The House at Sunset

  The Lost Queen

  Eleanor The Queen: A Novel of Eleanor of Aquitaine

  Hester Roon

  Michael And All Angels

  Knight’s Acre

  The Homecoming

  At the end of the last furrow Henry Tallboys halted the plough and looked about him with grim satisfaction. Some way behind him in the field Jem Watson, his hired man, was spreading the wheat grain less evenly and rhythmically than Henry himself would have done; but no man could plough and sow at the same time. Behind Jem was the girl, Joanna, dragging the branch which pulled soil over the seed to protect it from weather and the ravages of winter-hungered birds.

  Henry was tall. It was a family characteristic but the name had nothing to do with stature; it was a corruption of the Norman-French Taillebois. Most men of more than average height at the end of a day at the plough’s tail would have needed to straighten up; at the end of years of ploughing would have acquired a ploughman’s stoop; but Henry had adapted his plough to himself, not himself to his plough. He had fitted it with long, high handles, like a deer’s antlers. So, on this October morning, with the wind from the north telling of winter’s onset, he stood straight and flat-shouldered, more like the knight that his father had been—as he might have been—than the farmer he had chosen to be. Even in his homespun hose and jerkin, in heavy ankle shoes and the cloth leg wrappings of the working man, Henry Tallboys was an impressive figure; hard manual work since the age of seven, some of it, like shovelling manure, dirty work, had done nothing to impair his dignity. His looks he had inherited from his father, Sir Godfrey—in his time a knight of renown but of no great intelligence, of a curiously childlike simplicity. From his mother, the Lady Sybilla, Henry had inherited fortitude, self-will and impregnable dignity; but he owed even more to a man who was no kin at all, a sardonic, sceptical ex-archer named Walter who had taught him the valuable lesson of ingenuity, the art of survival in a hostile world.

  Unaware of all the things that had gone to his making, Henry looked around, taking stock of the situation. He could now take the seed tray from Jem’s neck and say, ‘I’ll finish. You take the horse in.’ If he did that the last furrows would be more evenly sown, in Walter’s way, but it would leave Henry alone in the field with Joanna, the girl, the child, dressed like a plough boy, eleven and a half years old but precocious beyond belief. So he called to Jem and to Joanna, ‘That’s the end. I’ll take the horse away. You should be finished by dinnertime.’

  Everywhere else oxen, not horses, were plough animals but twenty years earlier, with no ox and no money to buy one, Walter had hitched a makeshift plough to a decrepit horse and Henry, willing pupil, had stuck to Walter’s ways.

  On this October, winter-threatening morning he led the horse to the stable, unharnessed it, gave it a friendly thump and saw that the manger was full. Then, out in the wind again, he hesitated slightly. He could go to the right, enter his own kitchen door, or left, round the end of the shorter wing of his peculiar house. He chose the latter, thinking—Better get it over and done with! He hoped that Griselda was not glancing from the kitchen window. She herself did so many things from sheer perversity that she took his daily, necessary visit to two sick men, one his own brother, as a deliberately provoking action on his part. In fact the visit was a penance to him; partly because of the memories which this part of the house evoked and partly because of the worry which the present occupants represented.

  It cost him an effort to say, with some semblance of heartiness, ‘Well, how are you today?’

  ‘I’m better,’ John Tallboys said. ‘I told you I ailed nothing that rest and good food couldn’t cure. Not that the food has been all that good!’ As he made this criticism the young man grimaced, half a smile, half something else, a sly, conniving we’re-all-in-the-same-boat look which should have taken the sting from the remark but did not.

  ‘You’ve had the best the place afforded,’ Henry said. It was true; milk straight from the cow, eggs, fresh meat when the pig was killed a fortnight ago, fowls which could be ill spared. Not only that; John, who was able to move about, had been provided with new clothes to replace his rags and the one physician in Baildon had been brought out to confirm, or deny, Griselda’s hasty, damning verdict of lung-rot and to offer what palliatives he could. He had confirmed it; both young men would be dead by Christmas, he said, and all that Master Tallboys could do was to see that they were as comfortable, as happy as possible during the interim. For this gloomy verdict and a few cough-relieving medicaments the doctor had charged two nobles—the better part of a pound—and while he was tapping chests and listening as though chests were doors to be answered, his horse had claimed a guest’s privilege and gobbled down what was in the manger.

  That was almost a month ago and John had said at the time that the old mutt-head was wrong; he and Nick were simply suffering from colds that had settled on their chests, aggravated by exposure and near starvation. Maybe in his own case he was right, for here he was, chirpy as a sparrow, gathering flesh on his bones. But from the inner room, the bedroom, Henry heard the rattling, doomed cough.

  ‘And how is he?’

  ‘Better, too, thank you, Henry. One must remember that he is older and caught the cold before I did. I kept him in bed today because I was clearing this room up a bit and there was dust. Tomorrow he will lie on one of these divans and I shall beat about in there.’

  The two rooms had been furnished by a woman from a far country who had lined ceiling and walls with silk, pleated, in imitation of her father’s temporary pavilions, put up, taken down, well shaken at each move. Shut away, deliberately ignored for years, the two rooms had accumulated dust and cobwebs and could certainly do with a cleaning.

  Henry said, ‘I’m glad you feel up to it. I’ll go get your dinner… No, I’m full early… John I have something to ask of you.’

  ‘Yes?’ John said, in a non-committal voice. ‘What is it?’

  ‘It concerns Joanna.’

  ‘Yes?’ John said. He was not being helpful; but then, Henry remembered, he never had been, even when he lived here. He’d always shirked work as much as possible and gone running off to the sheep
-fold to play his lute and make songs with the young shepherd who shared his frivolous taste.

  ‘Her mother,’ Henry said, avoiding as usual the use of Tana’s name, ‘left her a small fortune—in jewels.’ He saw John’s eyes brighten, interested at last. ‘The Bishop of Bywater took charge of them and converted some, at least, into cash. At the same time, he found a place for her in the household of a man with daughters of his own; a place where she would have an upbringing suitable to one of her birth and the chance of a good marriage. She absolutely refused to go.’

  ‘I always thought Tana was not quite right in the head. Her daughter takes after her.’

  Without knowing it Henry clenched his fist.

  ‘You could help. You have seen the world; how people live; the comforts and pleasures people enjoy… Joanna dotes on stories… I think that if you tried, you could make another way of life sound attractive enough to make her change her mind. It’s no sort of life for her here. Griselda has taken against her. She works and dresses like plough boy… I’m worried about her.’

  ‘I could certainly spin a yarn or two,’ John said, recalling wistfully those glorious days when he and Nick had been in much demand with their new songs and catchy tunes; welcome in great halls, in palaces; no village green audiences, no market squares for them! They’d been on their way to Venice, by request from the Doge himself, when this cursed illness had struck and ruined them. But the good days would come again. He himself was better and Nick would be, given time. They’d need money at first. They’d had some on the former occasion—John’s share of his father’s estate.

  ‘I’ll do my best to persuade her.’ He said, smugly, ‘I’m supposed to have rather a way with women.’ Which was, he thought, something of an irony, since he had no liking for them. ‘If I do succeed, I shall expect something for my trouble.’

  ‘You shall have it.’ Henry had the excellent memory of the illiterate man. ‘His Grace sent word that some of the jewels had been sold and the money deposited with Sir Barnabas Grey who had a use for it and who was willing to take the child. No doubt everybody would be so glad to have the whole thing tied up, they’d be willing to pay.’

  In the bedroom, the man whom Henry still thought of as Young Shep coughed again.

  ‘I’ll start this evening,’ John promised, ‘when she brings our supper across. As you say, she is interested in the outer world. She’s always asking questions.’

  ‘Give her the right answers… You’re better, and I’m glad of it. But I think she’d better not go too near him. Griselda may be right.’

  ‘Your pardon, Brother. Griselda is a bitch—and a mad bitch at that!’

  ‘And my wife. So mind your tongue!’

  Ignoring the rebuke, John said, ‘Speaking of supper, what’s for dinner?’

  ‘I’ll go and see.’

  For the first time in Henry’s memory—apart from the time when the plague struck and he was trying to get the harvest in, single-handed, and Sybilla, his mother, was nursing three desperately ill people—there was no sign of a meal being prepared in the kitchen. A good fire blazed in the hearth but neither spit nor black pot were in use and the faggot that should have been used to fire the oven—for this was bread-baking day, Henry remembered—lay there untouched. The table was clean and completely bare.

  Griselda and Godfrey were by the fire playing cat’s cradle. As Henry entered, Griselda said, ‘Godfrey, go play in the hall. Run about to keep warm. Give your hobby-horse a good gallop.’

  The boy was now four with the Tallboys’ precocity, tired of his restricted, mother-ruled life and on the verge of rebellion. But Griselda had ways of dealing with even incipient rebellion. She could change in an instant, as Godfrey well knew, from fond, doting mother to something quite frightening. She did so now because he did not move quickly towards the door between kitchen and hall. She said in her nasty voice, ‘Get along with you. Do as I say!’ and speeded him with a push and the smack on the bottom.

  One day I shall hit her back!

  ‘What about dinner?’ Henry asked.

  ‘There will be no dinner. Not today, nor any other day so long as this goes on. I’ve come to the end of my tether. I’m not going to work my fingers to the bone to keep a couple of vagabonds with the lung-rot! I’ve told you and told you. I might as well talk to the wind. You went there this morning and dared to come straight in here with the cough in your hair, on your clothes. I told you that first time; I’ve said the same every day since and that’s more than a month. I arranged things as well as I could, no comings and goings, I said. This is my home and God knows it cost me dear enough! I’d had other offers—did you know that? If it’d only been a clod cottage, I’d have been mistress of it, not the slave I am here, working my fingers to the bone and no say in who comes or goes. That wicked, wicked girl. You sided with her against me, even when she’d nearly killed your own child! There’s never any money for anything. When did I have a new gown? When did Godfrey have anything except shoes? Pinch and scrape, pinch and scrape. Then along come two rogues and the best is hardly good enough…’

  Henry was accustomed to her railing, skilled at turning a deaf ear, but this morning John had used the word ‘mad’, so now he looked at her with more attention than usual. Her eyes, greenish and rather small, glittered but with malice rather than madness, or so it seemed to him. He swung round and went towards the larder. Four pigeons, unplucked, lay on a shelf. Dinner today should have been pigeon pie! The thought reminded him that he was hungry.

  Jem must be fed—a good dinner was part of his wage and anything less provoked grumbling; Joanna was still growing and had done a hard morning’s work; she needed food, too. And there were two men across the courtyard. Waiting. For what? Henry seldom entered the larder but it struck him that today it was singularly bare, even for Knight’s Acre in the middle of an unprosperous spell. Most of the pig, killed the week before last, was now either salted down in a cask or being smoked in the chimney but surely, surely there had been the better half of a side of bacon from the pig before that, enough to tide them over until the new side was ready. All that was left was enough to make four or five rashers, cut very thin. Two for Jem, who would grumble even at that preferential treatment, one each for Joanna, John and Young Shep. Henry himself would make do with bread and cheese. He lifted the lid of the bread crock, which was not a crock at all but a wooden container made by Tom Robinson who had liked to be useful even when he couldn’t work. It was a huge log, hollowed out, chip by chip, and fitted with a lid with some air holes and a knob. It was quite empty because in any ordinary week this was the time when the fresh new bread should have come, sweet-smelling from the oven. The butter crock—which was a crock—was almost empty. And where was the cheese? He remembered it from last night, suppertime; a good new cheese which would, as days passed, get harder and less palatable but still nourishing. No sign of it anywhere. Beside the poor bit of bacon the only thing the shelf offered him was yeast of which, aware that winter was at hand, he had bought a good jugful on his last visit to Baildon. Griselda had dealt with it properly, spading a little on a board, letting it dry, spreading another layer and so on. The cake was now about three inches thick, nine wide, ten long. Enough to last through the bad weather when marketing was impossible. Also there was a sack of flour.

  Henry stood there, utterly defeated. He’d taken some blows in his life, faced some peculiar and puzzling situations but the problem of how to feed five hungry people—he included himself but excluded his wife and his son for Griselda often fed Godfrey apart and ate little herself—on a few scraps of bacon, some yeast and flour, made him despair. It couldn’t be done. Nobody could do it. Even Walter—and years after Walter was dead, Henry was accustomed to ask himself—in any crisis—what would Walter do? Even the Lady Sybilla, his mother, a marvel at managing and contriving couldn’t have done it.

  He stood there with the north wind cutting through the slatted window of the larder and thought, how ridiculous! After all I
have borne to be defeated and shamed now by a woman’s refusal to cook or keep house.

  The girl, Joanna, came padding in. She had remembered, as he had not, the house rule of shedding muddy footwear. She said, ‘Henry, Griselda has gone moonstruck. I will make dinner.’

  ‘Out of what?’

  He pointed to the remnant of bacon, the empty bread crock, the bare shelf where the cheese should have been.

  ‘But…’ Joanna said. ‘Only yesterday… where can it have gone?’ Determination replaced the puzzlement on her face. ‘I’ll make pancakes. Brighten the fire, Henry.’

  That a girl child, eleven and a half years old, should be able to cook was nothing marvellous but, ever since Joanna had offended Griselda four years earlier, she had been banished from the kitchen, from all the sheltered, domestic side of life, driven away from the hearth-side into the fields or the fold.

  ‘Can I do anything else to help, Sw… ’ Henry chopped off the endearment, formerly in frequent use and still coming easily to his tongue, reaching back as it did to the days when he had regarded her as a child, as his ward.

  ‘Yes. You can chop this bacon into tiny pieces while I beat the batter.’

  Griselda was not in the kitchen but Jem Watson was, hungry for his food and watchful for anything which might be related afterwards, down in the village where what happened up at Knight’s Acre was always news and he, first-hand gossip, welcome to a place by the fire, a mug of ale and a ready audience.

  ‘Missus took ill, Master?’ Not unlikely, with the lung-rot about the place. And Master Tallboys chopping some scrag ends of bacon, the little girl whipping batter.

  ‘Not quite herself’ Henry said evasively and was immediately contradicted by a burst of laughter from the hall where Griselda, to make up for the smack and the push, was playing with her son. He astride his hobby horse, was the hunter, she, down on all fours, the quarry.