The Wilding

by McCann, Maria

  ‘Thieves. We hope to have them in our hands soon.’ Her smile was cruel, as if the thought gave her delight. It crossed my mind that my aunt had a streak of madness, so sinister did she appear at that moment, but when she added, ‘And once they are sentenced we’ll be rid of them,’ I realised it was no more than her habitual selfishness.

  ‘It’s those women, is it? Will they be whipped away?’

  ‘That’s for the authorities to decide. They’ve certainly earned themselves a whipping.’

  I winced at the thought of Joan’s bony shoulders. ‘Even the old one?’

  ‘She’s not too frail to traffic with Satan,’ my aunt returned with a little air of putting me right. ‘As for the other, Mathew and I were right to keep you from her. She’d have devoured you up.’

  I could restrain myself no longer.

  ‘Aunt,’ I said. ‘Do you think Uncle Robin ever looks down from Heaven and sees our doings?’

  From swelling with complacency my aunt’s features shrunk up small, like a snake’s, but she made no reply. Indeed, she said nothing more until we rose from table.

  * * *

  Undressing that night, I felt wretched. I had brought Joan and Tamar to my father’s care, and that was a great thing to have achieved; but I had achieved it at the price of never seeing them aain, had burdened Tamar with a fatherless child, and had failed to carry out Robin’s wishes. I had but one day to discover the will – for it was plain I would never again be lodged at End House – with no inkling of where to find it; while my aunt, if she understood my game, stood poised to block me at every turn.

  I gave myself up to grim fancies. My father’s attempt at rescue would come too late. Dr Green, zealous on behalf of his wealthiest parishioner, would see the women jailed – if not for witchcraft, for whoring; if not for that, for theft. With none to speak for them, and my aunt clamouring on the other side, they would find neither justice nor mercy.

  Despite knowing it was fruitless, I got up in my nightgown and once more went over the room, since it had once been Joan’s, searching every inch, tapping every drawer in the press for hidden compartments and pushing my hands as far under the mattress as I could reach. Not so much as a scrap of paper.

  The search was absurd. Had Robin hidden anything here for Joan to find he would surely have let her know. Besides, why should he not have given it to her? She could read. Then I thought, perhaps she was once in possession of such a document, had hidden it here and been dragged away by Harriet before she could retrieve it. She might not choose to tell me that. I was a Dymond, after all; I might wish to protect my inheritance by finding the papers and destroying them.

  Here I had a new idea. Perhaps, if Robin did write a will intended to protect Joan from her sister, he did so after the scenes in the Guild Hall, after she had left Tetton Green, and so he had never been able to put it into her hand or instruct her where to find it. Meanwhile, if Harriet suspected the existence of such a document, she and her servants would have searched everywhere: house, offices, stables. Yet here I stood poking under a mattress, as if I alone could light on the thing. I moved away, ashamed of my stupidity.

  Very well: suppose he made a will and it was destroyed by Harriet. He could have written another, towards the end of his life, and bidden Tamar take it to her mother. On the other hand, as long as Joan and Tamar lived in hope they had an interest in keeping him alive. Robin, so selfishly careful of himself, would never have forgotten that.

  No matter how it had been, I could see where my father came in and why he had been summoned. Both Harriet and Joan could read, but my father was the sole person who could read and whom Robin held in absolute trust.

  And yet … all this was pure supposition. There was no proof that such a will had ever been written; should I go to a notary, I knew exactly what the man would ask: What makes you so convinced of the existence of this paper? All I could answer was that I was plagued by a dream, and that a dead man required me to make amends.

  Why had he picked out me for this hopeless quest? I had never been an intimate of his. I could have raged about the room like a baited bear, such was my pent-up frustration; but there was nothing for it but to get tamely into bed. Once there, I grew calmer, and bodily fatigue had its usual effect. Aunt Harriet’s linen bolster was perfumed with lavender, and polished (perhaps by Tamar) with the iron: I yielded to its persuasions, and slept.

  * suasions, /p>

  The horse started up in answer to some mysterious prompting and the cart rolled away. I was at once plunged in the trance of nightmare, my limbs dissolving in fear so that I was powerless to jump down. We entered a narrow sunken lane, hedged in on either side and swallowed up in mist. From time to time I glimpsed branching ways, their dark openings gliding past as if borne upon a stream. Then came a fingerpost for Tetton Green, seemingly lit up from within, and the horse flowed in that direction without any guidance on my part. I could hear myself groaning: my soul seemed suspended, sapped of will by the clammy veils that shrouded us. We descended into a tunnel, swimming through darkness towards the meeting awaiting me somewhere along the way.

  At last the tunnel opened out. The mist slid down the sides of the cart and rippled round the wheels. My voice had dried in my throat, else I would have cried out in fear, for this pale sea of mist always came just before, and now I could already see, far off on the road, the dim spot that I dreaded. At first it seemed no more than a thicker patch of vapour, obscure and indistinct as what surrounded it, but as the cart drew nearer I saw parts of it break away and sink to form the hands.

  Suddenly my tongue was freed.

  ‘No, Robin!’ I screamed. ‘Go away – leave me!’

  We were almost up with him now, the cart still fixed in its hideous gliding motion. I knew what I must do and looked round frenziedly for the whip, but there was none.

  *

  I was sitting up in bed, holding the covers away from me. Shaking, I lowered them and peered into the darkness, unsure whether I was awake or asleep. My neck and chest were awash with sweat; when I felt this, I knew for sure that I was awake, and in a room as cold as the dank lane of my nightmare. The dream was not finished! Why had I woken up before the end? The thought of sleeping again, with Robin lying in wait for me, filled me with dread, but now the air began to chill me in earnest, so that I was forced to lie back and cover myself with a quilt.

  I had done all I could for him. Why should he continue to persecute me with these monstrous dreams? I pictured them continuing the rest of my days, breeding inside my head where nobody could pluck them out. Hideous! And what of my promise to my parents, that I would marry? Would any wife welcome a husband incapable of lying quiet in his bed?

  I am perhaps diseased in the mind, I said to myself; or if this continues, I may become so. It was not the first time that I had been visited by this fear, but the first time I had permitted it to assume a distinct shape. I decided that on my return to Spadboro, I would seek the aid of our pastor, a kindlier man than Dr Green, and try if he could release me from Uncle Robin. At this moment, as I was arranging myself again in the bed and wondering if I should remain awake all night, I heard a sudden sharp clink at the back of the house. In a few seconds the clink was repeated, more loudly this time, and I understood that this noise had awakened me from my dream.

  I lay in darkness, straining to pick up another sound, and thought I distinguished a sort of shuffling. Slowly, for fear of creaking floorboards, I pulled aside the bed curtains, padded over to the window and coaxed open the casement, then the shutter. As I did so, a decate ray of light, a will o’ the wisp, glided over the stonework and vanished. Icy air poured over the sill onto my bare feet and legs, but I stayed as I was, though shivering. At last, not far off, I spied a twinkle among the leafless branches, as if a star had become entangled in them, but this was a wandering star, and moved uncertainly on its way again. Somebody was taking a lantern along the path – and soon, as the wind shifted, I was able to catch a faint murmur, which at
times resolved itself into men’s voices before dissolving again into the sigh of the swaying trees.

  Silently closing the window, I felt my way back to the bed. The thing had run its course, then: the women were to be arrested. My first impulse, dismissed as soon as considered, had been to run out and attempt to intervene, but that was quite useless. Even were I equal to driving away the men, which was certainly not the case, they need only come back later, since Joan was too feeble to escape. I was sorry for her and sorrier still for that virago, Tamar, who with better luck might have been just such a sweet, romping, harmless thing as Poll Parfitt. I did not think the men would show Tamar much kindness, but she could at least plead her belly –

  I clapped my hands to my mouth. She would surely think it worth her while to proclaim that the father of her child was Master Jonathan Dymond. Then what? I was entangled in this business whether I liked it or not, and my first impulse had been the right one. I must get out into the wood, if only to see and hear the proceedings, and perhaps get some idea of where the women were to be taken so that I could tell Father.

  As well as I could, I dragged my clothes over my nightshirt in the darkness. Finding a muffler in the press, I wrapped it round my face, for secrecy as much as warmth, and in a very few minutes I was outside in the yard, easing back the bolt. Another minute, and I was in the pathway at the back of the house, and then I was stumbling through the wood.

  It is a terrible business, making your way through a dark and deserted spot at dead of night. How much worse, then, when the spot is not deserted – when under cover of darkness strangers are concealed, and perhaps nearer than you would like.

  The January night was hard as steel, the moon no thicker than a fingernail. I dared not carry a lantern, and struggled along by the help of the stars, which (thank God) were many and glittering. By daylight the way was not so very long (though it seemed many miles further in that tangled blackness), and by stretching out my foot each time, to feel for mud, I was able to keep on the path, though not without a few nasty switches across the face and, once, a thorn bush nearly in the eye. I could hear the men more plainly now: one had a loud, full voice, suggesting a powerful, brutish type, the other spoke more softly, yet I thought he must be in charge of the affair, to judge by the length of time he was suffered to speak uninterrupted. This second, then, was most likely a gentleman, perhaps Dr Green himself. They seemed to be carrying a dark lantern; the open side of this sometimes flashed towards me, causing me to duck, and it was with sweating caution that I inched nearer to them.

  Alas, I was not cautious enough. Night and lack of sleep caused me to misjudge the place: the ground yawned beneath me and with a scream fit to wake the dead, I fell into the ha-ha.

  They were on me at once, crashing through the shes and shining their light full in my eyes. I was dazzled, unable to see them, and quite unable to speak.

  One of them reached forward and plucked the muffler from my face.

  ‘Well – !’ a voice said and they burst into laughter.

  ‘Pray do me no harm,’ I said, when I could get my breath. ‘I came from the house just there – Mrs Harriet Dymond’s.’

  ‘We know,’ said the rougher of the two voices. The dark lantern was now turned about so that I could get a look at them, and I found myself gazing at my father, and next to him, Simon Dunne.

  ‘You promised to stay away,’ Father said.

  ‘I only came because I saw the lantern.’

  ‘Saw it, how?’

  ‘From my window. And you can be heard from there.’

  They exchanged glances and Dunne said, ‘They’ll have heard him at Spadboro, then!’

  ‘We can’t stop now,’ said Father. ‘Did you see the horses, Jon? Back of the house?’

  I must have narrowly missed walking into them in the dark.

  ‘You’ve two horses, Simon?’

  ‘We’ve one of our own, now,’ said Father. ‘I thought it best.’

  *

  It was awkward work carrying Joan from the cave along the track. My father and Dunne had brought a blanket and from this they made a kind of sling in which to scoop her up. At the ha-ha they paused. Dunne climbed onto the upper path while Father hoisted Joan, supported by me, onto his shoulders. With a deal of frightened muttering from Joan, and of puffing from Simon Dunne, she was lifted to the top. I then went ahead with the dark lantern while Tamar, carrying a pitiful bundle of clothes and chattels, brought up the rear.

  I wanted to ask my father how he had talked Simon round to such an adventure, where he would take the women, and what care would be procured for them. Instead I fixed my mind upon being a trustworthy pilot, holding back brambles so that they might not spring into the eyes of those following me, and warning them of roots or slippery places. Even with the lantern, I strained to distinguish what lay before us. Shadows dissolved and regrouped; gleams of light fled upwards from puddles on the ground, picking out a tree here or there and then losing themselves in the depths of the wood. Somewhere over to my right was End House. I hoped Aunt Harriet was not peering from behind one of the windows, or worse, lying in wait for us, along with Dr Green and his men, in the obscurity of the lane.

  We at last gained the cart. While Dunne talked softly to Bully and his yokefellow, turning them round with as little noise as might be, Father and I laid Joan, still in her blanket, on the ground.

  ‘She’s light as a bird,’ my father remarked

  Hearing this, Tamar swore.

  ‘Watch your tongue,’ Father said curtly.

  ‘Beg pardon, Sir. We’ve left Hob behind.’

  ‘Left what?’

  ‘Joan’s raven. He’s dear to her.’

  ‘You can’t take him where you’re going. Stand aside, will you?’

  The cart came round and Joan was lifted onto it.

  ‘She’ll fret without him,’ Tamar insisted as her mother was wrapped round with the blanket. ‘She’ll pine.’

  There was a pause. I sensed that my father was torn, wanting but fearing to allow this small thing.

  I said, ‘I’ll fetch him.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ Father said. ‘We’re going now.’

  ‘Give me the lantern, stop outside the village and I’ll catch you up.’

  ‘Is the bird in a cage?’ Father asked Tamar.

  ‘He’s made himself a nest up in the rock.’

  ‘Then how can you fetch it away?’ he demanded of me.

  ‘Your father knows best,’ Simon said. ‘Come, Mistress, you’re to go with us.’

  Tamar scrambled into the cart.

  ‘Won’t you wait?’ I pleaded. The cart creaked softly as Father and Simon climbed into it. Simon clicked his tongue to the horses and they took the strain.

  ‘Move, then,’ Father said, not to them but to me. ‘We’ll stay at the village end until you come.’

  I plunged back into the wood. Though it was a familiar way, and with the advantage of a lantern, it was as if an icy wind blew through me. I feared everything and everybody: my aunt, Dr Green, his followers, any wild thing that might be lurking nearby. I even feared Hob, and thought again of the man who was blinded by a bird. Suppose the creature flew at me in the dark, all beak and claws?

  Dropping into the ha-ha I nearly extinguished the lantern, and only by the greatest luck kept it lit. I entered the cave, going through the length and depth of it, examining the angles and making sudden springs and turns to be sure nobody was there (though had I found a lurking robber, what could I have done? I was unarmed). When it proved empty, my fear began to subside. The cave, a hell-mouth a few minutes previously, now appeared to me what it was: a shelter.

  I paused, weighing up the problem of Hob. His nest was high on a stone ledge marked out, when I shone the lantern along the wall,streaks of droppings below it. Let him once fly out into the cave and farewell all chance of taking him. My only course was to climb up and seize him before he was awake.

  I was not so much daunted by the climb itself. The
rock was rough and ribbed; any boy worthy of the name could have scaled it. My fear was of my cold, stiff fingers, and of the trouble of carrying the lantern with me. More, I was not sure how I should lay hold of the bird without losing my grasp on the cave wall. But I had not time to waste in pondering any of this, but must put my powers to the test at once, so up I went.

  My lantern must have risen over his nest like the sun upon the wider world. He winked with surprise and rose on his legs, but before he could spread his wings I set down the light and grasped him round the neck. It is no simple matter to keep hold of a full-grown raven; he flapped and screeched so that I nearly let go. When at last I had thrust him, head down, into my open pocket – which luckily was a large, deep one – and fastened down the flap, I felt him turn a somersault inside his prison as I made my way down the rock. Once on the ground, I hurried along the path, vigilant in feeling for branches on the side where Hob lay, lest a chance blow to my coat should kill him.

  All was darkness around my aunt’s house. For aught I could tell, she might be watching from a window. I was especially nervous of Geoffrey Barnes, and would not have been surprised to find him lying in wait, but evidently he was tucked up in bed with Rose. I left the path beside the house for the open road, hurrying along it towards the wood, and after a short time perceived the cart, pulled in by the side of the road.

  As I approached I observed that Father and Joan were speaking together; it seemed that a little food had restored her power of conversation. Then Tamar, hearing my footsteps, turned towards me and the others at once fell silent.

  ‘It’s Jon,’ I called softly. Still nobody spoke a word until I was almost upon them, when Tamar, seeing me, asked, ‘Where’s Hob?’

  ‘Here.’ I mounted the cart and sat next to her. ‘How will you keep him?’

  She showed me a piece of cloth. ‘I’ll wrap him up, until we’re within doors.’