by Norah Lofts
Henry pushed his own left hand behind him, into the back of the belt, loosened to admit it, then tightened to control it. He was being fair, chivalrous, though long ago he had turned his back on all that chivalry meant.
Ah. Then began a fight that was to be long remembered together with the witch-swimming, the baconless year.
Instinctively everybody moved back, even Ted Hodgson on his crutch, to form a ring, an amphitheatre with no seats.
There never had been; there never would be again, such a fight.
Actually Henry was doubly handicapped; he’d immobilised his left arm; Bert, while not wishing to engage his injured hand, had an elbow free; and Henry had never given or received a blow in anger since he and Richard had fought with the miniature spades which Walter had made for them; and Walter had said that the two of them were too much to control; one must go. Richard went and Henry had lived peaceably, whereas Bert Edgar had been in many fights, both as boy and man. Village squabbles easily erupted into blows and since he was usually the victor he was always ready to carry a quarrel to the limit. He was sturdier than many of his kind because, having only one brother, he’d fed better in his childhood than members of larger families. He had, indeed, the build of a bull and although Master Tallboys was superior in height, possibly in reach, too, Bert did not doubt his ability to floor him.
That was what made the fight so memorable. Most people, knocked flat by Bert Edgar, stayed down, either because they were knocked silly or thought it prudent not to get up. Master Tallboys went down no fewer than four times but he kept getting up and rushing in again. He was savage enough but quite unskilled. Bert had learned the art of dodging and some of Master Tallboys’ blows never found their mark at all or simply glanced off; almost all of Bert’s landed and the final outcome was all too easy to foresee, especially when one of Bert’s punches split Master Tallboys’ eyebrow and blood poured down, blinding one eye.
It was time for the Elders to exercise their authority, as was their right and their duty when it looked as though a man might be killed. Death in a fight was always the subject of an inquiry and nobody wanted that. The Elders had the power to stop a fight that had gone far enough by calling upon all good men and true to intervene, an order traditionally obeyed. It was occasionally obeyed in a way that led to more damage, for most bystanders took sides and in intervening dealt pretty roughly with the man thought to be in the wrong. Amongst these watchers opinion was rather divided. Bert Edgar was one of them but in the crowd that had rapidly gathered there were those who had, in the past, suffered from Bert Edgar’s fists and would not have been sorry to see him floored, just once. There were a few others who, while not completely on Master Tallboys’ side, gave a grudging admiration to a man who, put down four times and clearly outmatched, wouldn’t stay down. It showed pluck.
Before the Elders could act, Bert Edgar made the most dreaded move of all. He was getting tired of the fight which had lasted longer than any he could remember; knock a man flat four times when once was usually enough. In this kind of fight there were no rules—you could punch, make painful hacks at shins, even bite if chance offered. So he played one of the oldest tricks; took a step back, seeming to invite a blow and then brought his knee up sharply into Henry’s crotch. It should have been over then but it was not. Seemingly Master Tallboys did not feel or heed the dreadful pain—about the worst anybody could inflict. Instead he seemed to rally, came forward and aimed a blow which did reach its mark. Smack on the point of the chin. Bert Edgar reeled and fell and stayed prone. Breaths that had been withheld during that last minute were let loose audibly.
Henry said, short of breath, ‘Anybody who touches anything of mine will get the same.’ Then, wiping the blood out of his eye with the back of his hand, he turned and walked away. Walked.
It took some doing, for a blow there was the most agonising of all. But pride demanded that he should walk away and not, until he was out of their sight, try to discover what damage had been done—nothing so far as he could make out—and limp a little.
Mistress Captoft dealt expertly with his other injuries but at the same time admonished him with trite pious phrases about violence simply leading to more violence and the only way being to forgive and forget.
Regarding his swollen knuckles with some pleasure, Henry said, ‘Well, I can forgive him now. I think I broke his jaw.’
‘Retaliation might come in a way you could not so easily avenge. If you found your horses hamstrung or a cow’s udder mutilated in the night… You could not fight the whole village.’
That was worth thinking over.
‘I shall buy a truly savage hound,’ he said. But not today. The thought of riding just now was something to shrink from.
Sitting opposite her at dinner, it occurred to him that Mistress Captoft looked different; washed-out seemed an apt term; some of the brightness had gone from her hair, much of the colour from her face. And she was wearing, not one of her usual fanciful headdresses but a cap of white linen, very plain and unbecoming; as was the charcoal-coloured dress, devoid of all ornament. Her ordinarily hearty appetite seemed to be impaired and she took no wine.
Jem Watson turned up in time for dinner and for half a day’s wages. The orgy of the previous evening had made food in the village short; the loss of the pigs would mean tightened belts for all for some time to come; and that made a paid job, with a midday dinner, a thing to be valued.
Mistress Captoft, in her forgive-and-forget mood, had said the least possible to Katharine and David but she had spoken fairly freely to Henry who, in any case, knew what had happened. She had named no names but what she had said had been in the presence of Godfrey to whom the whole affair was a drama in which he had played an admirable part. It was he who supplied the vital bit of information which Jem carried back to the village that evening.
‘You could ’a knocked me down with a feather, when she come walking into the kitchen, perky as a robin. And then I heard, from the boy. Somebody chucked her a rope and pulled her out.’
The Devil, they decided, would not have used such an ordinary thing as a rope. Why should he, with all the forces of evil magic at his command?
And all Intake had been here, on this side of the river, barring Old Hodgson, stiff in his bed and a woman even more crippled.
Barring Father Matthew and his ugly boy.
Joseph, the Knight’s Acre shepherd, could be entirely discounted. He’d been seen going about his work just as people turned away from the river bank. Besides, he knew nothing.
But the priest had not been seen. And he knew what was planned. Had seemed to approve. His excuse for not being present—that the Bishop had ordered him to do nothing—had seemed all right at the time. Now it sounded very flimsy.
They were all extremely vulnerable. So much had happened in so short a time; the peasant stolidity had cracked and must be melded together again by some communal belief and purpose.
Abruptly the mind of the mindless mob thought it saw everything. Father Matthew wasn’t one of them, he had only pretended to be so. With equal suddenness everybody decided that actually they hadn’t liked him very much. He was greedy, always looking in at about suppertime and eating as much as a man who had been ploughing all day. The popularity which Father Matthew had gained by seeming unlike a priest rebounded with horrible force. He wasn’t like a priest because he wasn’t one.
‘Even to the words,’ Old Ethel said. ‘I’ve noticed.’ And she should know, for the habit formed when she was Father Ambrose’s housekeeper had never been broken. She never missed a Mass.
‘I don’t know the words,’ she admitted. ‘I ain’t no scholar. What I do know and can say is that there’s things he don’t say like the good old man did. Nor the new one, neither—I mean the new one before him.’
That remark struck a note in some minds. Weren’t them some shocking tales about church ritual being garbled, Pater Nosters said backwards, the Host itself being used for evil purposes?
On
e thing linked with another. What about that boy he kept? So ugly—except for the fur, the living spit of the thing in the picture; and talking as though his tongue was too big for his mouth. Could be his familiar. And if Father Matthew was a witch it would account for his being able to cross the river; witches could fly, couldn’t they? Well, then, say he was a witch—or should it be wizard?—what had they ever done to him that he should kill their beasts? Plain as the nose on your face; they hadn’t ploughed his glebe.
Then where did Mistress Captoft come in? They were two for a pair; in league with each other. Then why had he called her an evil woman and gone down to ask the Bishop what to do? He’d done it to draw attention from hisself and who knew that he’d ever been near the Bishop? He’d said so; but the Devil was the Father of Lies, so naturally them in his service would tell lies. Or it could be they’d fallen out—rogues were said to fall out—and he wanted to teach her a lesson, let her nearly drown and then save her, just to show who was master.
Another thing, too. What about his own pig?
A lot hinged on the well-being of that one animal; if that was ailing or dead it’d prove… No it wouldn’t; he’d be cunning enough to strike his own pig, just to fool them.
The talk went on and on, round and round. It served to take their minds off the dismal prospect of a winter when bacon must be bought.
One thing emerged fairly clearly; to Old Hodgson’s great delight, there was no talk of further action against Mistress Captoft. Once suspicion had fastened upon a man this almost entirely male dominated society could regard her as women were generally regarded, helpless tools, willing or unwilling. Irresponsible creatures.
Henry, whose notice and solicitude would have meant so much only a week earlier, said, ‘But you have eaten almost nothing. And you look poorly. At least take a cup of wine.’
‘Thank you, no. To speak frankly, Master Tallboys, I am weaning myself from the lusts of the flesh. On Monday I intend to go to Clevely and ask for admission there.’
‘Clevely! You mean the nunnery?’
‘Where else?’
‘That is impossible,’ he said. ‘Years ago when my father was looking for a place for my sister, he went there and came away without even stating his errand. I remember it well. He said the place was a ruin and the few nuns left either deaf or blind or senile. Time will not have improved it.’ Henry knew he was right there. The time of lavish gifts to religious houses was over. Shrines at which miracles were said to be performed, like St. Egbert’s at Baildon and maybe St. Edmund’s in the town that bore his name, were still patronised and prospering but places like Clevely… Who’d leave money to restore and support a place where the most that could be hoped for was a few prayers, mumbled by old women who couldn’t tell Sunday from Monday?
‘But that, Master Tallboys, is just what I need. In such a place what money I have will be welcome and useful and by living in discomfort—as I doubtless shall do—I shall give proof of my gratitude to God. For sparing my life.’
Something in Henry’s mind asked: To what purpose? Alive Just in order to be miserable? And something else asked: What about you? What is your life, Henry Tallboys? Work like a horse; eat; sleep; get up to work again. To what purpose?
He knew the answer to that. He had Knight’s Acre; he had his son. What more could a man ask?
He said, in that deceptively stolid manner, ‘I’d sleep on it, if I were you. And I’d think about Lamarsh, a different place altogether. Water-tight at least.’
Saying that he gave her one of his rare, singularly sweet smiles; a joke; come on, share it!
He didn’t care where she went; or when—just this little, typical male interest in whether a roof was water-tight or not. And to think that she had dyed her hair, painted her face, latched herself in an iron corset in order to attract him! The thought shamed her to the core. God be thanked, he’d never noticed her antics!
Maude Grey cried very easily and was inclined to take advantage of this ability. Free-flowing tears could often cut short a scolding or forestall another blow. So she cried as she obeyed her mother’s injunction to use her utmost power of persuasion upon Joanna. Joanna, being tactfully prepared for betrothal to Lord Shefton, had simply said, ‘He is too old.’ After that she had listened unmoved to Lady Grey’s earnest and reasonable arguments and to Sir Barnabas’s more jocular, light-handed attempts at persuasion. So Maude had been entrusted with the task. The young who wouldn’t listen to their elders might take note of a near contemporary.
Maude had been told exactly what to say and she said it.
‘It could be such a happy occasion, Joanna. Christmas and a betrothal. We shall all be so deeply disappointed.’ Tears gathered and spilled.
‘Why disappointed, Maude? Disappointment can only come from a failed expectation. The only ones I can see in this case are Lord Shefton’s and he deserves disappointment. Old enough to be my grandfather! And those teeth! They stink.’
Diligently, obediently, Maude mentioned all the advantages to be set against age and ill-smelling breath; a castle, four other abodes, one in London, access to the Court; the fact that it could only be a short servitude; an old man could not live for ever; and with his death Joanna would be free and rich; even her own dowry untouched and much added. Like everything else about this place, this way of life to which Henry had condemned her, false and mercenary.
Hateful.
‘I won’t do it.’
Maude cried harder. ‘The lady, my mother will be angered with me. She will say that I did not try hard enough to persuade you.’
‘Why should she expect you to succeed when she had failed?’
‘She thought that as we are much of an age, and friends…’
‘Surely even she could not expect me to enter into such a marriage simply to save you a beating, Maude.’
‘No, but I could say—and I do say it with all my heart—I wish he had chosen me.’
‘So do I, with all my heart.’ I should have been spared all this; and Maude would not have minded; poor down-trodden girl, knowing nothing of love; thinking only of the castle and four other abodes—and being a Countess, taking precedence over her mother!
Maude said, using the disrespectful she, ‘She has her mind set on it, Joanna. And when her mind is set… She has ways of enforcing her will.’
‘Not on me! She could order me to keep to this room and live on bread and water for a year. And I still wouldn’t do it.’ She had intended to keep her secret, something hidden and private and precious in this alien world but now, to save further argument, to save poor Maude from rebuke, she revealed it, harsh, abrupt, conclusive. ‘I couldn’t. I was betrothed before ever I came here.’
In the only sure privacy that their way of life afforded them, in their bedchamber, Lady Grey said to her husband, ‘I do not believe it. It is an invented story. Why, it is only a few days ago since I had a letter from her guardian, His Grace of Bywater, fully approving and congratulating me—us—on such good management; on attaining such a match. Would he have written thus, knowing her to be already betrothed? When he consigned her to our care, was not the ultimate aim to see her suitably married?’
‘So I understood.’
‘The whole thing,’ Lady Grey said, dealing with pins and lacings as though they were the offenders, ‘has been a mystery. And a burden. For one thing she now denies that the Bishop is her guardian or that she has one at all. Grand talk about her lineage—but all Spanish. Such airs and graces, with no backing at all. And now, just when I thought the whole thing settled, and the way made clear for Maude, this happens. I shall write to His Grace of Bywater again, first thing tomorrow, and send a fast rider.’
Riding, but at the mule’s pace, Mistress Captoft went along the track which led to Clevely. It went downhill and there were trees, and a curve, so that one saw the place suddenly. Henry had prepared her to some extent—a decayed, ruinous house, full of old women, but she had not envisaged such complete decay, something resembling
a broken down haystack. Still her spirit did not falter. She dismounted and rang the bell, which was briskly answered by a nun who in no way fitted Henry’s description: a brisk, able-bodied woman little, if any, older than Mistress Captoft herself. They exchanged greetings and each recognised in the other a mirror image.
‘I wish to speak to the Head of this House,’ Mistress Captoft said.
‘That, I regret to say is impossible. Our Prioress is unwell; keeping to her bed.’
A kindly way of describing that state of senility which much resembled a vegetable existence.
‘I am Dame Isabel. At such time, I am in charge. If you would be seated and tell me the business that brought you here…’
It was both invitation and challenge. Those about to dedicate their lives—and their fortune—to God, should not be easily deterred. So Mistress Captoft seated herself on a bare and not very stable bench in a room, presumably the convent’s parlour, which not only smelt of damp and decay but gave visible evidence of it; a frond or two of fern in a crack in the wall, another growth, small, woolly-surfaced mushrooms along the skirting where rotten wall joined rotten floor. Most deplorable but such things could be remedied. Mistress Captoft was fully prepared to bring her money, her energy—all that she had—to the remedying. So, under the steady and unsympathetic stare of Dame Isabel’s eyes—one always thought of bluish, greenish, greyish eyes as being cold but brown ones could look like pebbles at the tide’s edge—Mistress Captoft explained her situation and her intention. And having offered her all, she was repelled.
Dame Isabel said, ‘Decisions taken upon impulse—as this sounds to me to be—are often regretted. I feel that you would be wise to think again. And even then, this is hardly the place. Clevely has not taken a novice for at least twenty years, so far as I can ascertain. We have no Mistress of Novices, no facilities for instruction. I am sorry.’
She said the last words with finality. She did not want the woman here. Even in her present subdued mood, the very contours of Mistress Captoft’s face betrayed her as a masterful, managing creature who, once admitted in whatever capacity, would be a threat to the absolute authority which Dame Isabel exercised over the other inmates by right of being young and active and in full possession of all her senses and all her wits. She was also a woman of good family and had brought a little money with her. The decayed house was not quite so near the brink of starvation as it had been when Sir Godfrey visited it.
