North Side of the Tree

by Maggie Prince

  “Twenty-five.”

  “I’m sixteen.”

  “I know, but older than your years, I think. Look, we don’t have to talk about this now. I was going to wait for you to get over the Scot, but since you half-drowned, I’m so afraid of losing you…”

  I interrupt him. “John, I shall always be grateful to you for saving me…”

  “Don’t! I don’t want to hear that. I don’t want to trade on having fished you out of the ocean. There was something between us before that, wasn’t there?”

  I look back at the rockface. Dazzling streaks of light are stabbing through the clouds above it. John looks too, and for a moment we are both immobilised by the beauty of it. “Yes,” I answer. “Yes, there was.”

  John takes hold of my hand and kisses the palm. “So, can you just tell me it isn’t impossible?”

  I touch his hair. It is wet from the rain, and still uncombed. I answer, “No, I can’t tell you that. It is impossible. Verity will be leaving Barrowbeck to farm with James at Low Back. Who will run the farm if I go too? I have to marry Hugh and stay.”

  For what seems a long time we stare at one another. When we do speak, it is simultaneously, and reduced to politeness. “I should get back, John.”

  “Have you started your lessons with Cedric yet?” He releases my hand and steadies the horse so that I can remount.

  “Not yet. I’m still busy with the winter planting, and stocking the root cellar. There’s time enough.” Cedric, also known as the Cockleshell Man, is our local healer, a close friend of my mother, and soon to be my teacher in the arts of healing and herbalism.

  John and I ride together in silence down through the woods, across a stream, up a steep bank where ferns and tree roots coil out of the earth. I wish we had not had this conversation. Before, I could imagine all sorts of unspoken impossibilities. Now I have been forced to face reality.

  Where the trees thin out, Barrowbeck Tower comes into view in its clearing. I glance back at John. “Now I really do want to go on alone, John. It would be better if you were to see Father about Verity and James when the paying-off is over. Let him calm down a bit after handing out all that money. You must be careful of his temper. It’s getting more violent than ever.”

  “I know.” John halts the horse and dismounts, and helps me down. He remains with his hands on my waist. Around us, the woods are quiet. Damp spiderwebs show up on the bushes. A flurry of rainwater splatters down on to our faces. He says, “I’ll come over this afternoon to speak to your father about Verity.”

  “It won’t be easy.”

  “I know. He doesn’t like me.”

  “You’re always reprimanding him.”

  “He deserves it.”

  I kiss him on the cheek. “Goodbye John.”

  “Goodbye Beatrice.” He kisses me on the mouth. Caught unawares, I put my arms round him and kiss him back.

  A twig snaps nearby. We both jump. Universe is pricking his ears and glaring into the undergrowth. The bushes rustle and a voice says, “Good morrow, parson. Greetings, mistress.” It is Leo, our cowman.

  I step back, speechless. John replies, “Good morrow, Leo. How pleasant to see you.” Leo is giving us an astounded look. I can see through his eyes my untidied hair and flushed face. I wonder how much he has seen. I try to imagine the repercussions if it reaches my father that his daughter has been seen kissing the parson.

  “I must get back.” I pull my cloak round me.

  John says calmly, as if we had merely been on a nature walk, “Go carefully, Beatrice. I’ll watch you as far as the tower,” but I hurry away, taking another path which leads me out of their line of vision.

  “I’ll walk along with you if you’re heading back to the rockface, parson,” I can hear Leo saying behind me. “There’s a sight too many strangers in t’valley today for my liking. I’m just checking a few little snares I’ve set…” Their voices fade as I rush as far away from them as possible.

  I am almost out into the lea now, thinking wildly about what I can say to Leo to ask for his silence. I dawdle at the edge of the trees, and decide to wait for him to come back this way from emptying his snares. The rain is heavier again now, and the wind is rising. Grey planks of rain come skimming over the Pike from the sea. I can see the watchman on the battlements of the tower pulling his hood up. I decide to shelter here and rehearse what I shall say. Leo will surely understand. Everyone employed at Barrowbeck Tower knows the necessity of avoiding my father’s temper. I clutch my own hood under my chin to keep the rain out, and this is how I do not see them coming.

  “Ha!”

  The voice, hands, body all come at once. A massive lout in dark, dirty clothing leaps from the bushes and knocks me to the ground. Another, shorter man follows him. I see a flash of brown jerkin and blue breeches. As I draw in my breath to scream, a stone is rammed into my mouth, crashing against my teeth. Grit and soil choke my voice. A knife flashes before my eyes.

  “Back from seeing your fancy man, eh? Let’s have your money, lady.” The first man pinions my arms whilst the second grapples at my waist to see if I have a purse. I writhe and try to scream, but my throat is full of gravel, and all I can do is cough. I struggle to reach my knife, but the first man finds it before I can and rips it from my belt in triumph. “She’s no gold or silver, but I’ll have this pretty bit of ironmongery instead.” He hooks it into his own greasy green belt, then mutters, “Now what else can we tek off her, eh?”

  I lash out, sick with terror. Then suddenly it is as if the first man has flown away. He is lifted off me bodily by a pair of strong, brown hands. “Get away, lady,” snaps Leo. “Run for it.”

  I run.

  Chapter 3

  I stand behind Father on the battlements. Below us, assembled in the meadow, are the scores of men who walked to Barrowbeck from all over this corner of England. Whatever one might fear or mislike about my father, one can’t help admiring his reputation as a warlord. He is certainly better at this than he is at farming.

  He raises his hands for silence, and shouts, in a voice for once unslurred, that they should all return home and thank the Lord for sparing them. There will be purses for all of them at the barmkin gate, he tells them. Then he wishes them Godspeed on their journeys home.

  The rain has stopped, but a cold wind is blowing across the battlements. The clouds shift. There is a flash of blue sky, brown trees, memories of blue breeches and brown jerkin. I feel unsteady, and support myself against the beacon turret. The pain in my mouth is making me feel sick. I touch the cuts and swellings, now liberally plastered with Mother’s marigold balm.

  Mother is standing next to Father, her arms folded in her sleeves, smiling serenely. Strange how we keep up appearances in the face of strangers. She turns to me. “Are you all right, Beatrice? You really did come a cropper in the woods, didn’t you.”

  I attempt a smile. “I’m well enough, thank you Mother.”

  Germaine, music tutor and wardrobe mistress to the household, is standing next to me. She gives me a critical look. “Was it really a fall?” she enquires disbelievingly. Far below, amongst the shuffling crowd, I catch a glimpse of Leo. His gaze is fixed on me.

  “Yes,” I mutter, averting my eyes from her, from him, from everyone.

  If I had not turned back, after I ran from the men, I should not know what I do know now. After Leo rescued me, I fled along the edge of the woods for quite a little way, unwilling to go into the open in the state I was in, my mouth bleeding and my clothes torn. Then I stopped. There were two of those men against Leo. They both had knives. I seized a hefty branch from the ground, and turned back.

  Leo met me. He was striding along in his usual way, his hands full of snared songbirds. His mouth was thirled in a horrifying, animal snarl, though. I stood and gaped at him. He said, “Mistress Beatrice, what are you doing still out here? You should be home, getting Kate to tend to your hurts.” When I did not reply, he asked, “Do you want to come back with me and let Sanctity see to
you?” I glanced beyond him, back along the path and into the undergrowth, and my knees buckled.

  Leo supported me through the woods, clutched against his jerkin full of the smells of the cowshed. I could scarcely bear to be touched, but the alternative would have been to fall down. We tottered our way right round the edge of the clearing and down the tiny, briar-tangled path to the cottage he shares with his wife, Sanctity, and their many children. Sanctity helped me to a straw bed in a corner, where I lay on the counterpane of patchworked rabbitskins whilst she mopped my injuries. Sanctity Wilson is a scent-maker by trade, and because she brews potions, she dresses in the fashion of the religious, in high-necked, dark clothing with her hair scraped severely back, to avoid any possibility of being considered a witch. This is how they say Queen Eliza used to dress when she was a princess, as protection against her half-sister, Mary. Several women across the valley dress so. Fear of being accused of witchcraft grows to unreasonable proportions in some.

  “Please don’t tell anyone what happened, Sanctity,” I asked her.

  She stood by the small fire under the roof hole, rocking her latest baby, and frowned at me. “Well, I won’t if you don’t want me to, dear, but you should certainly tell your mother.”

  I lay back and inhaled the musty smell of rabbitskin, and wondered how much Leo had told her of what had happened. All I knew was that no one would hear any of it from me. My mouth would heal. I had not lost any teeth. My clothes would mend. I heaved myself up and sat with my back against the wall. Next to me a tree was growing as part of the wall. One of the house beams had taken root, and was calloused all over where branches kept having to be lopped off. The smell of cow dung, sweet and familiar, came from walls newly rendered for winter. From the tripod over the fire, where Sanctity was brewing scent, the fragrance of rosewater competed with the dead-flesh smell of the rush lights. On a shelf by the door stood bottles of sticky, brown fluid, full of the perfumes of summer.

  “Take one of these,” she said. “Lavender will calm you down.”

  I can smell it on me now as I stand on the battlements, watching my father move to the parapet and raise his hands in blessing. “Go your ways peacefully,” he shouts. “There’s ale as well as a shilling for you, down at the barmkin gate. God bless you.” I can feel his relief that the opportunity for having a drink himself is drawing nearer. The sunlight brightens, and flashes on something amongst the men below. Leo is polishing his broad-bladed knife. In a moment of light-headedness I imagine it hissing through leather, grating on bone.

  My father steps back, hands on hips, face flushed and smiling. He is pleased with his performance. He comes towards us waving his pouncet box to perfume the air, as if to say, that’s enough of the stinking masses, back to more delicate matters. He peers at my injured face and demands, “What’s the matter with you, girl?”

  “Nothing, Father. I fell in the woods.” I ponder how strange it is that he can still undermine my antipathy so easily, with just one look of concern.

  “Come Germaine, Beatrice, will you help me serve ale to the travellers?” Mother ushers us towards the spiral staircase. “Are you fit to do it, Beatrice, or do you want to lie down? Kate can help with the ale.”

  “I’m late with the milking, Mother. I’m sorry. I should go down to the cowsheds and see if Tilly Turner has managed on her own.”

  “I don’t suppose she will have. Go on then. We don’t want them getting milk fever. Whatever were you doing instead?”

  “I went to see Verity.”

  Suddenly I have all my mother’s attention. “How is she?” she demands under her breath, so that my father will not hear.

  “She’s with child,” I whisper.

  Mother stops, one foot poised, at the top of the spiral staircase. For a long moment she says nothing, then she murmurs, “In that case, the sooner we get her home the better.”

  A good milker can do a cow in a few minutes. Tilly Turner takes about an hour. She grumbles and mutters about how sore her fingers are, instead of singing to the animals so that they relax and let the milk down. I have to say that singing to cows is not my idea of the best way to start a day either, but now I sit back-to-back with her on a low stool in the cowshed, and hum a tune under my breath, partly from sheer relief at doing something safe and ordinary. The cow’s warm, gurgling side is against my cheek, and the rhythmic stroking of fingers against palms, the slap of milk into the wooden bucket, combine to soothe away the terrors of what happened to me. For once, I am even thankful for the distraction of Tilly’s tales of injustice and martyrdom. I sneak a look at my aching knees. They are bruised black where I fell. What happened with John now seems so remote and unreal that I don’t feel absolutely sure it took place. It seems more like one of my long-ago daydreams about him.

  After the milking, we put on our shawls to soften the drag of the yokes across our shoulders, and toil up the hill with the buckets swinging wide on their ropes, past the crowd, through the barmkin, to the dairy in its rock cave. This is when the screaming starts.

  My first thought is that the Scots are attacking us again. Tilly and I look at one another, duck out of our yokes so that the buckets bump to the flagstone floor, and run outside. The screaming goes on and on. We race out of the barmkin. The crowd gathered by the gate is now hurrying up the slope, past the tower, towards the woods.

  “What is it?” I ask Germaine, who has remained by the trestle table with a jug of ale in her hand.

  She shrugs. “I have no idea.” She pours a mug for me, since all her other customers have gone. Now we can see two of Father’s henchmen emerging from the woods. They are carrying a wooden hurdle. Two homesteaders from the valley follow them, carrying another. The screaming has stopped, but several women from the valley come rushing past us, sobbing. Germaine shoots out her hand and grabs the arm of the first of them.

  “Whatever is happening, Betsy?”

  “A murder, madam. Two of the men from away have been killed in the forest. We found them…” She gives a gasping moan. “Their throats were cut. Sliced oppen.”

  I turn away, hands to my mouth. Germaine lets go of the woman, who hurries away down the hill after her companions. She turns to me. “A murder in these parts – how truly shocking. Your Scotsman did go, I presume?”

  I take a mouthful of ale, and walk away up the hill, ignoring her. I feel too sickened to be angry. The bodies are at the door of the gatehouse, surrounded by a silent crowd. There is no other way in except past them, unless I were to go by the secret passage under the floor of the dairy, which is out of the question with so many people about. My father steps forward. “Put ’em in t’wood cellar. ’Tis a poor end for those who only wished to serve their country.” The crowd nods and mutters. A few of the older people are crossing themselves, and for once my father lets it pass.

  A piece of bloodstained bedsheet covers the upper part of the first body. The man’s arms have slipped off the edge of the hurdle. As the henchmen lift it by poles at either end, the arms flap, as if alive, and for a moment I wonder if the man really is still alive after all. Then the bedsheet slides off completely, and his lolling head is revealed, his throat open in a frightful turtle smile, his brown jerkin and blue breeches drenched in blood.

  The face and shoulders of the second body are covered, but there are drops of congealed blood on the arms, crossed over his greasy green belt.

  When the bodies have been taken down the curving slope to the wood cellar, I make my way up the east staircase and along a twisting passage to the east landing. I need above all to be alone. The jakes on the east landing is the nastiest of our several latrines in the outer walls of the tower, a last resort for the desperate when all others are in use. Here I can be reasonably sure of being undisturbed. I wonder if Leo’s son, Dickon, our laystow boy among his many other duties, has emptied the privies today from the hatches one floor down. Understandably, he looks for any excuse to avoid this particular work. Kate, our cook, has been known to pursue him round the t
ower with a meat cleaver, to persuade him to greater diligence.

  The stink, and the hum of flies, make this little sanctuary an unlovely place to be, but peaceful. It is dark here, with only a faint luminescence from the jakes itself. I light a candle on the linen chest, and carry it in with me, propping the broken door shut with it.

  I have been pushing away the terrible thoughts in my head, but now they are unavoidable. The sight of the two dead men as I saw them in the woods keeps flashing across my mind. Sometimes they are alive again, and coming at me with the unexpectedness of the attack. Sometimes they are dead, lolling and staring. It is my fault, all my fault. I want to escape from it, from all the events of today, to stay for ever in this dark place with my guttering candle, to be walled in like a Papist nun. My mouth hurts. My knees and ribs and arms hurt. I want to slough off my flesh the way that grass snakes shed their skins. Yet it remains, white and sluglike, painful and unsheddable. The thought that I kissed John earlier appals me. Isn’t he supposed to be spiritual and remote? Isn’t that what I like about him? I want to scream that no, I am not to be touched, not by attackers, not by lovers, not by anyone. The urge to scream, in the way that the women who found the bodies screamed, comes roaring up from my feet, but all that emerges from my mouth is a tiny mew, like a kitten’s.

  Chapter 4

  There is something freakish about today; everything feels abnormal and unfamiliar. I’m beginning to wonder if the bang on my head was worse than I thought. There’s Hugh for a start, sweet Hugh, fair-haired and funny, whom I thought I knew, but who now looms at me with a predatory look that is new. He has been fussing over my bruises, and teasing me tenderly about being legless so early in the day. Dear Lord, it is grotesque. Normally he would have joked uncaringly, and suggested a ride in the woods, or target practice, to take my mind off it. I wonder if Uncle Juniper has been advising him on techniques for wooing reluctant females. I look at them now, across the crowded kitchen, drinking and conversing by the gatehouse arch. Uncle Juniper, whose real name everyone has long forgotten, is hunched over and gesturing wildly, clearly describing something deeply bloodthirsty. I wonder for a moment if I am really going to be able to do this – seriously do it – marry Hugh and see my future settled for ever within these confines.