When I smiled at Rose, who had at first given me such pretty curtseys, she gave me a frightened look and I saw she was being beckoned away by an old man dressed in rusty black. This, I guessed, was Mr Fawcett, the house steward. He had bulging, frog-like eyes which slid from side to side, checking Rose’s dress, and those of other servants. All were in black, filing out towards two carts which would take them to the funeral. I heard Fawcett mutter to a barrel-chested man, whom I thought I had seen somewhere before: ‘That whore’s bastard.’
The blood burned in my cheeks and I took a step towards Fawcett, before stopping myself. Had I learnt from Eaton how to channel rage into such cold bitterness? Or had I inherited it from my mother?
I watched them board the carts. My anger at her treatment mounted as I watched the carts pull away and I went to the stables. I would finish what my mother had begun.
Patch wanted to gallop but I kept her on a tight rein as I followed the carts through a ford, then travelled upward to bleaker country. An uncomfortable silence fell over the carts. Once I caught Mrs Adams’s black scarf as it blew off. I handed it to her with as much courtesy as I could muster. She took it without a glance or a word, and let it hang in the wind before wearing it, as if I had given it some contagion. The only person who would meet my eye was the barrel-chested, bearded man I was sure I had seen before somewhere, but could not think where.
Behind me, as we approached Shadwell, I could see a coach climbing the hill. I fell back from the carts and checked my pistol. The village was a huddle of cottages round the church, which was the only substantial building. Apart from a few smallholdings, people seemed to depend for their survival on sheep, which grazed right up to the graveyard. I did not dismount, but waited while the mourners filed into the church and the coach drew up.
First to emerge was Edward Stonehouse, dignified in his clerical robes, prayer book in hand, face solemnly prepared for the service. I stared down at him with interest. It was the closest I had been to him. He gazed up at me in astonishment, the heavy iron spectacles slipping down his nose. It was more than astonishment. His hands shook, almost dropping his prayer book, and his ruddy face lost colour, becoming pallid against his black robes, and he stopped abruptly. His wife, being helped out by the coachman, collided into the back of him.
‘Do be careful, Edward. You are in such a dream this morning!’ Her voice was sharp and impatient. She looked as if she had just swallowed a whole bottle of vinegar; her eyes were screwed up and her lips so thin they almost vanished into her face. If Edward had been Margaret Pearce’s lover he had had a bad bargain with his wife, I thought; except Luke had told me she had brought him a small fortune, which probably paid for the gleaming coach with the Stonehouse arms, and the coachman’s livery.
‘What is it? Who is it?’ Her eyes were slits as they peered up at me. I returned her gaze with interest while my horse peacefully cropped the grass. She gripped Edward’s arm. ‘Impertinence! Tell the coachman –’
Whether she intended him to tell the coachman to take his whip to me I never knew, for Edward gripped her arm and almost pulled her through the lych gate. Clearly unused to this treatment, she protested loudly until my identity must have dawned on her for, as she reached the porch, she said, ‘It’s not him, is it?’ and twisted round to stare at me. Meanwhile, a governess was ushering the children from the coach. There was one boy, about ten, resplendent in a black doublet who might have attracted Lord Stonehouse as a possible heir, but Phillip (again according to Luke) came from Edward’s wife’s first marriage. Her husband had been carried off in the same plague that had killed Edward’s first wife and the grandson Lord Stonehouse doted on. The other children, all girls, could be my half-sisters. All stared back at me, as children will do, without inhibition, and I gave them as interested a stare back until Phillip demanded of the harassed governess: ‘Who is that man?’
‘A man on a horse,’ she replied.
‘I can see that,’ he said, with withering scorn. ‘Why is he staring at me?’
‘Mama said he was impertinent,’ the eldest girl whispered to him, simpering.
‘Did she! Did she now!’ He broke free from the governess’s grip and strode up to my horse, which began to back restlessly until I quietened her and made her hold her ground. ‘Here – you, sir! Clear off! Unless you want a good thrashing!’
Mrs Stonehouse reappeared at the porch. ‘Phillip! Come here! You are at a funeral!’
Phillip looked as arrogant and hot-tempered as his step-uncle Richard, but – giving me a final ‘This is a private family funeral, sir, and strangers are not welcome!’ – reluctantly joined his sisters trooping into the church. So far I had gained an unexpected enjoyment from this, but now began to feel increasingly uneasy. There was no sign of Richard, or of an approaching coach. He might be in the church, but it was unlikely he would go in before the servants. I had never believed Will’s story that Richard had gone to join the King, but was less concerned to question it while his soldiers were there. If Richard and Mrs Morland were as close as she said, I would have expected him to be at her funeral. I hesitated, gazing as if for inspiration at the only elaborate feature of that simple church: a doorway carved with man tempted by fruit from the Tree of Life. I wondered if my mother had gone through that porch to marry. And to whom.
I found a copse where I tethered my horse as best I could from prying eyes. As I returned, I glimpsed a man running from the back of the church towards the village. Edward’s reed-like voice was magnified by the bare stone and echoed round me as I pushed open the church door: ‘We brought nothing into this world . . .’ He stopped as the old, swollen wood grated against the stone flags. Illuminated in the doorway, I felt like a player on a stage as every head swivelled. I had to endure the door’s protesting groan again before the cold, musty dimness closed round me.
Heads jerked back as Edward continued, his eyes following me as I stumbled down the aisle, trying to find a place: ‘And it is certain we can carry nothing out . . .’
There were places further along the benches, but people would not move, remaining in the aisle seats as still as the stone effigies, staring rigidly ahead, or with bowed heads and hands clasped in prayer. I tripped over a protruding flagstone and would have fallen if I had not grabbed the meaty shoulder of Mrs Adams. I muttered an apology, but she acted as if nothing had happened, apparently too deep in her devotions. Finally, someone did move, albeit grudgingly, leaving me the end of a bench on which I could precariously balance one buttock. It was Henry, the coachman. I nodded my thanks, but he too remained stolidly unaware of me.
Edward might have chosen the psalm deliberately for me. The candle flames in the sconce above his pulpit bent with his movements as he stared accusingly at me: ‘Lord, take thy plague away from me!’
‘Amen,’ said Mrs Stonehouse, from her pew in the front, her children, then the whole congregation echoing her.
Edward gripped the pulpit, his voice carrying an avenging strength. ‘Hear my prayer! . . . For I am a stranger with thee: a sojourner, as all my fathers were . . . spare me a little, before I go hence, and be no more seen.’
I shuddered, for although the words were addressed to the coffin below him, they seemed to be directed at me. I felt I had committed a blasphemy, like a thief in the night stealing memories which I had never shared. While the congregation prayed fervently for the soul of Mrs Morland on its final journey, I struggled to join in but the words stuck in my throat. I could feel her presence. She was reluctant to start on that journey while I was there. A malevolence clung round the coffin, as tangible as the damp, cloying scent of rosemary on its lid. Panic rose in me and I was on the verge of running from the church when I remembered I did have memories, Kate’s memories, as real to me as if I held them myself. I could picture Mrs Morland snatching up my mother’s dress as if drawing back a curtain, as I came out into the world.
I covered my face with my hands and prayed, not for Mrs Morland, but for my mother, who was buried
in this place, probably quietly and secretly. I wept, standing clumsily, awkwardly as the coffin was lifted, and borne down the aisle, the children briefly scampering to pick up drifting rose petals until they were stopped by their mother.
Through my blurred vision I saw, beyond the swaying coffin, the list of incumbents, beginning with Hugh Bertrand in 1112. I wiped my eyes on my cuff. The incumbent from 1622 to 1625 was Mark Stevens. Then there was a gap until 1627, when Edward Stonehouse gained the benefice, together with Highpoint. Abruptly, I realised I was holding up the people on my bench. All brushed hurriedly past me, as if I had the plague Edward had obliquely suggested, except Henry, who dropped his hat. By the time he picked it up, most people had filed out of the church, following the coffin.
‘Upper Vale,’ Henry said. Henry’s eyes met mine, and I realised he must be the coachman who had helped Kate build a fire for my mother after he had driven them to that remote farmhouse. ‘Mark Stevens is at Upper Vale.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, but he had already gone.
The church had been left open, presumably for the recording of the death. On a small table in the vestry was a bound book ready for signing, a quill and a horn of ink. The book was open, the breeze tugging at the pages, which were weighted down by a seal. I jumped as there was a clattering sound in the church. A pewter bowl used in baptism had fallen from the font and was rolling on the flags. Through the doorway, I could glimpse the coffin being lowered into the grave.
The book contained the parish records of births, marriages and deaths going back to 1604, when the Church tried to tighten its grip on marriage. Before then people might be married (or believed they were) by agreement between parents, spousals before witnesses or even, with poor people in remote areas, a ‘handfast’ without the blessing of the Church.
I turned back the pages to 1625. They were stuck together. No wonder my hands trembled. Ever since this business began, I had struggled with the stain of illegitimacy. Only now, when it might be disproved, did I fully realise what a weight it had been on my soul, however much I tried to rationalise it away, or shrug it off with bravado. I was in such a haste I tore one page. I struggled to control myself. There was nothing in 1626, which I could understand, for there had been a gap between Mark Stevens leaving and Edward Stonehouse taking the benefice. But, to my acute disappointment, there was nothing in 1625 either. I fumbled wildly with the page, convinced a pair must be stuck together, but it remained firmly, stubbornly, one page. There had been no marriage, and I must remain a bastard forever. It had either never taken place, or been a fantasy in my mother’s mind.
Then, as I returned the book to its previous page, I noticed something only someone as zealously trained as I had been by Mr Black would have done: a little flake of paper with a bound edge, caught in a globule of glue, like a fly in amber. I turned the book on its end, towards the light and squinted down the binding. Yes. There was no doubt about it. The page for 1625 had been removed, and the binding re-glued. I was so taken by my own cleverness at this discovery I was unaware someone had crept into the room until the pistol was snatched from my belt. I fell against the table, dropping the book, sending splashes of ink from the horn and the quill spinning to the floor.
The pistol was levelled straight at me by Edward’s son Phillip, a triumphant expression on his face.
‘Stand away, sir, or I shall fire!’
‘Let me have that.’
‘No, sir! Stay there or I will shoot you!’ The pistol was not cocked, but he must have watched a gamekeeper or perhaps even have been taught to shoot, for he was fumbling to cock it. He backed away. The pistol with its long barrel was too heavy for him, wavering this way and that but, by dint of trial and error, he found the dog lock and at any moment would fire. I dived at him, grabbing at the pistol, jamming the cock with my fingers. He jerked backwards, hitting his head against the door jamb and falling stunned. In an instant he went from being a little man to a boy again, looking about to cry. As I moved to help him, he scrambled away from me and cried that if I shot him – and in church too – I would certainly go to hell. I assured him I had no intention of shooting him, although he would have done the same to me, and would that not have sent him to the same place?
‘No, sir!’ He got up, with a sullen glare, his courage flooding back to him. ‘For I am good and noble, and you are bad and base. You are a thief, sir, and I shall tell my father and he shall have you hung!’
I squatted down so I was on the same level as him. ‘I am no thief, Phillip. I am trying to catch one.’
He scowled at me unbelievingly. ‘Who? What did he steal?’
‘Me,’ I said softly. ‘Who I am.’ For the first time he looked at me uncertainly, understanding my manner, if not what I said. I pointed to the parish book. ‘Perhaps you could ask your father who tore out the page of marriages in 1625.’
He stared at me a moment longer, before abruptly running away. I shouted after him: ‘What would you say if I was your step-brother?’
He stopped at the church door, shouting, ‘I’d say you were a liar, sir!’ before running out.
There was one more thing I had to do. I walked between the gravestones, some blank, others with skulls or winged angels. One after another the servants were picking up earth and scattering it on the coffin. The barrel-chested man picked up his handful of soil. Unlike the others he stared at me again directly, meeting my eyes, but my attention was drawn elsewhere.
Phillip was talking urgently to his mother, making his hand into a pistol. Perhaps he often told stories because, with incredulity on her face she tried to gesture him into silence, only giving her stunned attention when Edward’s voice faltered and, in the most familiar passage of all, he put ashes and dust in the wrong order. This disjunction spread along the line of mourners: two, bending to scoop up soil, bumped into one another, one almost falling into the pile of earth, with hurriedly stifled laughter. The regular patter of stones on wood was broken. As I went past, I caught Mrs Stonehouse urging her husband to set the men on me for my insolent blasphemy.
‘Be quiet!’
The two words rang round the graveyard. Her mouth dropped open with the astonishment of a woman who had never been spoken to like that in her life. Before she could respond, he continued, hoping Mrs Morland would find eternal life, speaking at such speed he spurred the mourners on so the rattle of stones on the lid became almost continuous.
By some instinct I moved to the north aspect, to a wild overgrown section near the sheep, which scattered as I approached, their bells a thin skeleton of sound. Here, most graves were buried in the undergrowth, few had stones, and fewer still were marked. Burrs clung to my breeches, and the fluffy white seeds of old man’s beard eddied around me, drifting where the wind carried them as I searched among the stones.
‘Margaret Pearce is there –’
Edward had appeared by my side. He pointed to a stone, jammed against the drystone wall, barely visible among brambles and weeds. I tore them aside, ignoring thorns and nettles. It had no name but at one time had been scratched and scrawled with some obscenity in redding, the dye with which farmers mark their sheep. I fell on my knees and scrabbled the weeds away with both hands.
‘Tear away!’ Edward said. ‘The weeds will grow all the faster – that spot will support nothing else!’
I leapt up. ‘I will put a fresh stone there!’
‘You will not!’
‘I have a right.’
‘You have no rights here! Neither has she! She is lucky to be buried on consecrated ground. If it still is! She has soured it, cursed it – nothing will grow in this corner but weeds!’
His chest was rising and falling. He still had the prayer book in his hands, plucking fretfully at a tear in its spine. Everyone had moved from the grave to stare at us. The youngest child, a toddler, was walking towards us before Phillip grabbed him and, imitating his mother’s scolds, thrust him at the governess.
‘If you do not go, I will have you arrested!�
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‘For checking marriage records?’
Mrs Stonehouse was moving towards him with a determined expression on her face but he rounded on her so violently she stopped, holding her hat on in the wind, straining to hear.
‘Why was a page torn out in 1625?’
He lost all colour and I thought he was going to faint. In spite of everything, in spite of the long journey I had taken to find the truth, my heart went out to him. I was a confused jumble of emotions: anger at his complicity in what had happened to my mother, joy that I might at last have found my father.
‘Can we talk elsewhere? Later?’
‘There is nothing to talk about!’ he said violently.
His reaction was so extreme, his face so full of guilt, I could not stop the word coming to my lips. ‘Father –’
For the barest split second he took it as a term of his calling, then jumped as if I had stabbed him. ‘I am not your father!’ His wife must have heard him, for she now came forward with a look that a cavalry charge could not have stopped.
‘The marriage was declared illegal!’ Edward said.
‘By who? By Lord Stonehouse?’ I said.
Suddenly we were all talking at once. The mourners edged forward, open-mouthed.
‘What marriage?’ Edward’s wife said. ‘What are you talking about? Who is this man? Is he the b—’
‘Bastard? No, madam,’ I said, taking off my hat. ‘I no longer think you can call me that.’
She stared at Edward, who suddenly turned not on me, but on my mother’s grave, over which the weeds and nettles already seemed to be creeping back. ‘Origo mali!’ he said, spitting out the words. Then he swung round on me, losing control of himself completely. ‘She was a cheat and a thief! She tricked me into agreeing to go away with her, claiming she had money. Money! The only money she had was the pendant she stole that afternoon. That was nothing to do with me – I had no part in it, nothing. I was horrified when she showed me it – horrified!’ His voice was now full of bitterness. ‘She fooled everyone – she certainly fooled me! You are base born, you are nothing to do with me, nothing – and that is the whole truth of it!’
Plague Child Page 28
