The Wilding

by McCann, Maria

  ‘Shall I send Tamar for the doctor?’

  ‘Tamar.’

  ‘What’s that look for, Rose?’

  ‘What look?’

  ‘My aunt’s been talking to you, has she?’ I blazed up. ‘It’s all false! That is,’ for Rose was now narrowing her eyes and I thought perhaps I had overstepped the mark, ‘my aunt’s mistaken.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, Master Jonathan. Your aunt doesn’t discuss her family business with me.’ I felt as if I had been slapped. Rose went on, with a little air of dignity, ‘But I do know that Tamar is no longer part of this household.’

  I gasped. ‘Because of me?’

  ‘Because she’s a thief,’ Rose countered. ‘She took a ring from the master, God rest his soul. My word, you’re like snow! Don’t you go fainting on us, Sir.’ She moved the jug towards me. ‘Have a drop more cider-royal.’

  6

  Of Murc and Rot

  During most of that day I was kept from my aunt’s room. Geoffrey relayed instructions that I was not to venture near and Hannah Reele, coming downstairs after an hour or two, reported that Aunt Harriet was delighted to learn that I was in the house, but was not yet equal to seeing me. Hearing this, I knew I had lost whatever advantage I might have gained by surprise. In the privacy of her chamber, protected by her loyal servant, Aunt Harriet had now ample time to compose her face, her voice and her excuses. I even wondered if her swooning had been feigned.

  There was nothing for it but to go back to the cider-makingI went to Paulie and asked if his boy would help me. The lad came forward willingly enough and I took him with me to the cider-house.

  Despite my instructions, it appeared that nobody had examined the mill since I had gone away. The murc we had previously ground lay slimy and stinking beneath a cloud of flies.

  ‘Will it serve, Sir?’ the boy asked doubtfully.

  ‘No. Fetch a bucket of water.’

  Together we rinsed and wiped down the mill with a view to starting the next batch clean.

  The press was also in a sad condition, the cheese of apples and straw all dried out and shrunken. I put a few jugfuls of water through it but not even paupers would have drunk what came out. Sighing, I unpacked the cheese with the boy’s help and set it aside to be spread on the vegetable beds.

  The boy and I then loaded the mill with fresh apples. He seemed eager to stay but I was sick of his childish company and sent him away, telling him I would be wanting his help later on.

  Once he was gone I did not bother with the horse but turned the mill myself – turned it until I felt the sweat on my back – stopping only to scrape down the pulped apples. I craved exhaustion; it seemed only right that I should be going in circles since I had discovered precisely nothing, except that my aunt had noble antecedents and her maid was half a vagrant. This princely intelligence had cost the girl her livelihood and would cost me mine if I made my other customers wait much longer.

  I hated Aunt Harriet. For the first time in my life I cared nothing for the cider I was making; I would gladly have pissed in it. And yet, with all this, I could not leave without seeing Tamar. No matter what Rose said, I was sure my aunt had dismissed the maid to get her away from me. How would Tamar and Joan live, now? On herbs and mosses and a few pennies from making up amulets?

  When I had ground enough apples I brought back Paulie’s boy. Barley straw was piled ready and together we heaped up the murc with the straw, layer by layer. Again that sweet, generous juice ran into the vat before my arm was put to the press. This first must should have been carefully reserved to make my aunt a special cider, but instead I left it there, to be lost in the inferior pressings that would follow. I hoped that this cheese, too, would soon run dry and have to be helped along with water; I hoped to see it ooze with a nasty, murky paste squeezing between the stalks. They say good cider cures anything. I felt just then that a drop of the bad sort has also its uses, and would be the very drink for my aunt.

  *

  When we had rebuilt the cheese I returned to the house to wash off the sticky sap that clung to me. Hannah Reele was climbing the stairs as I passed below; I nodded to her and she paused, then came down again to tell me that Aunt Harriet was not yet out of bed, but ready to receive me whenever I could leave my labours in the cider-house and pay her a visit.

  I thanked her and asked if she knew why my appearance had so affected my aunt, for (I put on a long face) she was not one for faintings and swoonings, and I was anxious lest being widowed had undermined her strength.

  ‘She took you for a ghost,’ said Hannah.

  This was the last answer I expected. I repeated stupidly, ‘A ghost?’

  ‘Yes, Sir. The master’s.’

  As far as I could tell, Hannah was a girl who spoke little and generally the truth. I said, ‘Nobody’s ever taken me for Uncle Robin before. Am I so like him?’

  ‘Not very,’ Hannah admitted. ‘Only your hair.’

  My hair does crinkle like Robin’s. It seemed Aunt Harriet was inventive, in her way, but not inventive enough. I said, ‘How could she see my hair and not my face?’

  ‘She can tell you better herself, Sir, if you ask her.’

  ‘I’ll be certain to,’ I said. ‘Surely she can’t think my uncle’s ghost would walk? He’s in the bosom of Abraham.’

  ‘Amen,’ said Hannah with a prompt certitude that I myself was far from feeling. ‘But his widow’s troubled, Sir. Troubled by dreams.’

  Now she had caught my interest. Hannah slept in a small closet off Aunt Harriet’s room; she was well placed to know about any sleepwalking, sleeptalking or other signs of guilt. I again strove to appear sad and sympathetic.

  ‘My poor aunt! Does she suffer often?’

  She nodded. ‘I’ve seen it before, Sir, in widows.’

  I cast out a line to see what I would catch. ‘She dreams he’s with her, is that it? And then wakes to find she is alone?’

  ‘She didn’t say, only that the dreams are about him. I can always tell when she’s having one; she whimpers in her sleep.’ The notion of Aunt Harriet whimpering was an astonishing one to me. ‘Shall I tell the Mistress you’ll come to her by-and-by?’

  I realised she was waiting to be dismissed. ‘Yes, of course. Go to her.’

  As I watched Hannah go back up the stairs she seemed to glide as if she too had passed into the realm of dreams. Any moment now I would wake and find myself in my chamber at Spadboro, with my mother knocking on the door and calling me a slugabed.

  On the landing Hannah paused and looked back, since I had still not moved. She was now standing directly in front of a great window that shed its wintry light on the stairwell; she was, in fact, just where I had stood when Aunt Harriet spied me from below. The outline of Hannah’s head was picked out against the window but her features were lost in shadow, reducing her to a mere silhouette. When I stood in her place, I too would have been silhouetted. All Aunt Harriet would have seen of me was my curls.

  * * *

  Wind keened in the tops of the trees. In the cave opening, on a dead, ashy patch of ground, lay my apple log with one end blacktops d a few small twigs laid around it. It had not burnt, being unseasoned, and the women must have known it would not; but despair will try anything.

  ‘Tamar!’ I called.

  There was no reply. Despite my good woollen coat, I shivered; I could not stay for her unless I got out of this biting air. If nobody was at home, I could not be said to intrude, so I entered the cave, holding my hands out in front of me so as not to walk face-first into the rock. The interior was as dark as ever but once fairly inside I was out of the wind and surrounded by – I will not call it warmth, but a lesser cold. The keening in the treetops also died away and my ears picked up something else: a faint rustling. I tensed, expecting the raven to fly at me, but the sound, now that I was studying it, suggested a more weighty motion than that of a bird. I thought of Joan, newly awakened and raising herself on her bed of rags.

  ‘It’s Master
Jonathan,’ I called. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

  The sound stopped at once, but there was no reply. Now I was the one afraid, sick in fact, in dread of wild boars, or worse, laid up in there. A robber inside the cave could see me, though I could not see him; it was like walking blindfold among enemies, and as I realised my disadvantage my legs grew clumsy and weak. I began to back out of the cave without turning round, so that if someone came rushing at me out of the darkness we would at least be face to face. My painful breath and shuffling footsteps filled the silence, announcing my whereabouts to the silent, unseen presence within; at any moment I expected a knife to flash through the air and stick quivering in my heart.

  All this took less than a minute, but in my sweating panic it seemed much longer. As soon as I emerged into the dull light of the wood, I turned and fled along the dry ditch and withdrew, faint and shaking, behind a tod of ivy.

  Even sheltered there, I had to check several times before I was satisfied that nobody leaving the cave could see me. When I was convinced of this I crouched down, breathing deeply to quieten my leaping heart, and listened: no steps, no rustling, no sound of pursuit. I began to feel less frightened and more curious. I stood again, clamped my hands in my armpits and waited.

  How long I was there I am not sure. I had just begun to find the cold intolerable when I heard a voice. Half fascinated, half in terror, I moved to the side of the bush and then had to duck as a man in brown passed so close that I could have laid a hand on him. He was perhaps thirty, burly and sallow-skinned; as he scrambled up the slope, his back to me, I saw that his garments were fresh and good, not shabby or stained with grass. This was no vagabond robber but a man from the village, and not the poorest neither.

  If he had spoken, he was not alone. I kept very still as his footsteps traced the path overhead. When I could no longer hear him pushing aside the bushes I peeped out again. Tamar, wrapped in what looked like a blanket, was peering out from the cave mouth and seemed to be checking, like me, that the man was gone. She then pulled a hurdle across, to keep off the worst of the wind, before retreating inside.

  I was not as surprised as I might have been. Certain ideas had formed in my head, while I waited behind the bush, as to the meaning of those mysterious sounds and the silence that followed as soon as I called outdiv height="0em">

  So this was what Rose had meant about the village men. My aunt had hinted as much more than once and had openly called Tamar a whore in her letter to my father, but I had paid no attention; I had known better. Humiliation, disgust, a sense of betrayal – all these surged within me, curdling into a bitter and poisonous brew.

  I was not wise enough to go away and think. Instead, I pushed aside the ivy bush and stumbled back along the dry ditch, bellowing like a child: ‘Tamar! Tamar!’

  Silence.

  ‘Don’t try to hide, I saw you!’

  Like a ghost she glimmered from the depths of the cavern – clad not in a blanket, I saw as she came into the light, but in a gown, or what had once been a gown, a filthy affair in ancient cream-coloured satin. Her hair, no longer gathered in under a cap, fell in knots and tangles over her shoulders; her feet were bare and blue and her eyes as fierce as if she meant to fly at me.

  ‘Hold your noise,’ she said.

  I did as she ordered, not through obedience but because I was shocked dumb by her insolent manner. When I found my tongue again, I said, ‘You forget I’m your mistress’s kin.’

  Tamar hawked and spat. ‘I’ve no mistress. No mistress, no work, and a mother that far’ (she pinched her finger and thumb together) ‘from starvation.’

  ‘You’ve other resources,’ I said.

  ‘Is that what you’ve come for?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I reproved her. ‘I’m here to help.’

  She looked disbelievingly at me. ‘Yes?’

  I took out a coin and put it into her hand. Her fingers closed over it.

  ‘At least be civil,’ I said. ‘If you want my help you should –’

  ‘Thank you, Sir.’ She said it pat, without feeling.

  ‘Now, tell me what happened. Rose says you were dismissed for theft.’

  ‘Rose is right.’

  ‘The ring?’

  ‘Somebody told her.’

  ‘You’re mistaken,’ I said softly. ‘I swear on my life. I was called away by my mother, and when I returned I found you were gone.’

  She shifted from foot to foot, considering.

  ‘On my life, Tamar.’

  ‘It was gold,’ she lamented. ‘I could’ve sold it.’

  ‘Did you show anybody except me?’ She began to shake her head, then halted as if some new idea had presented itself. At last she said sullenly, ‘It fell out of my gown once.’

  ‘Was anybody there?’

  ‘The mistress. She never said anything; I didn’t think she’d seen.’

  We were still standing at the mouth of the cave, the pitiful hurdle between us. Tamar’s dirty satin bodice left her neck and breast half-naked; the exposed skin was dappled with mauve and her shoulders hunched with cold.

  ‘Where’s your winter gown?’ I asked.

  ‘She made me give it back.’

  ‘Then let’s go into the cave, for God’s sake.’

  She scowled and did not move.

  ‘Tamar,’ I said patiently, ‘if I meant you harm, which I don’t, I could do it just as well out here.’

  At last she put aside the hurdle. We entered the cave together and sat side by side on the heap of rags where Joan had previously lain. This was one of the better-lit corners, a dusk rather than a darkness, but there was a foul stink of rags, or Tamar, or both.

  ‘Joan’s your mother?’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘Why do you call her Joan?’

  ‘It’s what I’ve always called her.’

  Not to call one’s mother ‘Mother’: I reflected that vagabonds had strange ways.

  ‘Where is she now?’

  ‘Gone to ask the parson for help.’ She turned contemptuous eyes on me. ‘There won’t be any. ’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘That there’s no charity in the parson?’

  ‘To see you so reduced. Take care, Tamar. You won’t help yourself by making God your enemy.’

  ‘He doesn’t mind me whoring myself and making amulets, then, as long as I bow down to Dr Green?’

  ‘Well,’ I said. ‘It’s best not to make amulets, or – the other thing.’

  ‘Is it pleasant being so virtuous, Sir? And having food, and fire, and a warm coat?’

  ‘Let’s not quarrel,’ I said. ‘Everything’s so strange just now.’

  ‘Is it?’ said Tamar, meaning, I think, that for her thingwere much as they had always been.

  ‘Very. I’m haunted, Tamar. By Uncle Robin.’ I related my dream of the cart. The sneer faded from Tamar’s face as she listened.

  ‘So, you see? It’s him, he’s doing it. This means something,’ I said.

  She said, with a mixture of fear and delight, ‘He can see us, then. He’s still with us. But Sir, he didn’t die under a cart.’

  ‘Well, I know that,’ I said. ‘But these dreams must have a cause. Else, why have they stopped since I came here?’

  ‘Oh, that’s easy, Master Jonathan.’

  ‘Easy?’

  ‘The spirit can rest a while. When you do what he wants, he leaves you alone.’

  ‘How am I doing what he wants?’ I protested. ‘I don’t know what it is.’

  ‘But you’re trying to find out. You asked me about that letter of his. Your aunt, she’s hiding something.’

  Servants are at all times prone to think evil of their betters.

  ‘What could she be hiding?’ I asked. ‘It was my uncle who had a secret.’

  Tamar began to hum under her breath.

  ‘That’s not an answer,’ I remarked. The smell of unwashed flesh and stale urine was growing oppressive, so I rose.

  ‘Now,’ I asked, ‘
what shall I bring?’

  ‘Firewood,’ she said at once. ‘A saw – an axe. Blankets. Something cooked, soft – Joan’s teeth are bad –’

  ‘If I can. Anything else?’

  She turned towards me with a curious expression. ‘Paper. Pen and ink.’

  ‘Can you write, Tamar?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What will you do with it, then?’

  ‘Joan can make a spell – ill-wish our enemies.’

  ‘I hope you don’t mean me,’ I said, though I cared nothing for spells. ‘Or do you still think I told my aunt about the ring?’

  ‘Not when you’re so kind, Sir.’ She looked up at me pleadingly. The thought crossed my mind that if I had desired this girl, and wished to make her subservient to me, I could scarcely have done better than to betray her.

  ‘Can you get my ring back?’

  ‘No hope of that,’ I said. ‘My aunt’s convinced you stole it.’

  ‘You don’t understand, Sir.’ Tamar shook her head. ‘She’s never thought that, never.’

  ‘Why else would she dismiss you?’

  ‘Because the master took it off his hand, and put it on mine.’ She smiled. ‘That’s what she knows, Sir. That’s what she can’t forgive.’

  * * *

  When I got back to End House I went straight to my aunt’s room and tapped at the door. Hannah Reele, who answered, glanced at me approvingly and I saw she had been waiting for my visit.

  Aunt Harriet was propped on a mound of pillows and quilts, surrounded by drinks and titbits. As I entered she was rubbing an unguent into her hands; Hannah bent over her and wiped it away with a cloth so as to protect the bed from grease-spots.

  ‘You may kiss me, nephew,’ Aunt Harriet announced in a clear, firm voice.

  I stepped up to her bedside. My aunt’s cheek was sweet-smelling; the hair looped about her neck and ears retained its youthful gold. I knew that she used washes and perfumed waters of various sorts. In another woman that would be vanity; in her it was more a desire to get the greatest use out of everything, even her own skin.