I decide to go and hide in the chimney corner. I seat myself facing the flames, my back against the hot stone, my skirts tucked in under my knees. The kitchen fire is roaring, and a tall blackjack of ale stands near me, on a griddle winched to one side away from the flames. Steam curls along the hot poker which Kate has plunged into it, and there is a smell of singed flesh where the poker leans against the lip of the big leather jug. The men who carried the corpses in appear up the slope from the wood cellar at the far side of the kitchen. Kate looks round from plucking thrushes at the table. “Help yourselves to ale, lads,” she calls. “I reckon you’ll be needing it.”
The smell of newly drawn feathers mingles with the other smells of the kitchen, live flesh sweating and dead flesh singeing, and I realise that my mood is shifting. Instead of feeling shaky and terrified, now I am starting to feel angry. I am angry with the men who attacked me, angry that Leo’s saving of me had to take such a terminal form, leaving me as good as a murderer, angry at the droning throb of my bruises, at the loss of my knife, at the confrontation awaiting us all when my father finds out about Verity, and above all, angry that such a good friend and cousin as Hugh has to be turned into a husband for me, by those too old and set in their ways to know what they are talking about.
The four men come over and ladle hot ale into their tankards. They nod to me but I pretend to be asleep. Leo’s son, Dickon, is mending the bellows on the opposite side of the fire from me, pleating new leather into the sides where the old has cracked, and if it were not for the tapping of his hammer I should probably indeed have slept.
My parents have not arrived yet. I find myself practising speeches to calm my father’s temper when he finds out about Verity and realises that the family’s plans to marry her to Gerald, and keep the two farms within the family, are in ruins. He beat her once for her involvement with James Sorrell, and he tried to kill James. Now, faced with the inevitable fact that they must marry, and quickly, I simply cannot imagine what he will do.
I wonder, too, what Gerald’s reaction will be. I watch him, a younger, darker, more angry-looking version of his brother, talking to Germaine in a far corner of the kitchen, stooping over her as she sits in a tall-backed chair putting tiny stitches into a pair of lace sleeves. Somehow, I don’t think he is going to be too distressed.
Aunt Juniper appears beside me. She points at Gerald and Germaine. “Just look at that, will you Niece? He spends so much time talking to that skivvy that he scarcely gets to see your sister at all. He should be over at Wraithwaite Parsonage at this very moment. I really don’t know what’s becoming of this family.”
“Germaine’s a bit more than a skivvy, Auntie,” I reply, wondering why I am defending the person who annoys me more than any other in this household.
“Nonsense! She’s a serving woman and she’s twice his age, and what Gerald wants to be doing talking to her is a mystery to me.”
People near us glance round and grin. I suspect Aunt Juniper is the only person to whom it is a mystery.
Mother comes in, her cheeks pink and her hair escaping from its cap. “That’s the last of the strangers on their way!” she declares. “I never thought I’d thank a Scot for anything, but I do thank him for forcing our men to stay at home.” She crosses to the hearth. “I’m going to open my elder wine. Give me a hand, Juniper. We have good reason to celebrate.”
“Them downstairs don’t,” mutters Kate.
I peer round the corner of the hearth as my mother and aunt lift out two wooden-stoppered clay flagons from the proving oven. “Give Kate a drink, Beatie, for pity’s sake,” Mother orders me. “I can’t be doing with her endless griping. Get out the silver goblets. I’m not using pewter any more. Cedric says it rots your brain.” She thumps the flagons on to the table and stares round her for a moment, hands on hips. “I can still scarce credit that the march on Scotland is stopped.”
“For now.” Kate slams her rolling pin into a soft mound of dough. “We wouldn’t have given up so easily in my day – one Scot and a whole war called off – I never heard the like of it.”
I take down the best goblets one by one from the dresser, whilst Mother and Aunt Juniper unstopper the flagons. I remember Father coming home with these goblets one Michaelmas, fifty of them in finest silver, beautifully wrought with patterns of herons and reeds. When I have passed everyone a goblet of wine, I go to sit on the bench at the long table, and as I do so there is a commotion in the gatehouse arch and my father comes crashing in. “What’s the merrymaking?” he bellows, and lurches towards the kitchen table. “Are the dead men laid out?” He throws an arm round Kate who is putting the lid on the thrush pie. “What’s in t’tart, Kate?”
“Songbirds.” Kate peers up into his face and scowls at him. “Cupshotten already, master? You wasted no time.”
“Aye well, Katie, you see we don’t have any time to waste, do we, as them downstairs will surely warrant.”
“You’re right there, master.” She stabs the pie crust three times with her pastry knife, muttering, “Father, Son, Holy Ghost.”
“Amen,” intones my father, and the two of them nod gloomily at one another.
I pour myself more wine. The sweet-smelling brew rocks to and fro in the shiny round bowl, red, maroon and purple in the shifting firelight. I see my mother leading my aunt away, arm round her shoulders, heads bent, to seat themselves in my place in the chimney corner. My mother is talking. My aunt is listening. I realise she is being told the news about Verity. With a surge of longing I want my own sister here, back where she belongs. I have no one here now who thinks as I do, who is prepared to laugh with me at the absurdity of our elders, and to defy them with me when necessary.
Suddenly Leo is at my side. I jump. I had not seen him arrive. I take a large swallow of wine, and then have to lean my elbows on the table to keep myself steady. He sits down next to me and asks, “How are you, lady?”
“Well enough.” I realise how ungracious I sound, and stand up to pour him some wine. “I thank you, Leo, for enquiring.”
He rummages at his waist. I catch the flash of a blade. “You’ll be wanting this back.” He produces my knife from where it was pushed into a sheath with his own. I stare at it, so familiar, with its horn handle and curved blade. “Was this what you used?” I ask him, appalled. Our eyes meet. It is as if we were alone in an empty kitchen. He makes a circle of his finger and thumb, touches it to his own broad-bladed knife, then to his lips.
“Nay,” he says. “I used my own. It was a pleasure, lady.”
There seems to be nothing more to say. My profuse and incoherent thanks of earlier cannot be repeated, back in this normal world. I try to work out my feelings. I try to work out whether there was anything else he could have done. I feel a strange closeness to Leo, like kinship. We share one another’s secrets. Perhaps this is how you do feel towards someone who has saved your life. After a while Leo says, “I’ll be saying nowt about the other, neither, mistress.”
I have to think for a moment what he means, then I realise he means John, and the kiss. “Oh. Well thank you. And… Leo, you can be sure… I shan’t be saying anything to anyone about what happened, either.”
He nods. A pact has been sealed.
Germaine comes round with cates, tiny squares of bread fried in goose grease, wafer-thin slices of salty black pudding, candied gooseberries, marchpane comfets. We help ourselves from two big platters. My father, leaning lopsidedly on the chopping block, slips off when he tries to help himself, and bangs his cheek. With a spluttering curse he heaves himself upright and crosses the room to the fireplace as if dancing the galiard, relieves himself into the flames, then pirouettes back. He picks up one of the flagons with both hands and drinks from it. The wine spills down his neck, staining his ruff. “Damnation to the Scots!” he shouts. The assembly raises its goblets. The fire flares brilliant, unfocused, into the room. Germaine goes round lighting the candles, and they shine with rainbow haloes in the smoky air. Leo pats me on the s
houlder, and leaves.
As the afternoon draws on, Kate puts on barley broth to stew, for those who might wish to recover their senses later. I grow weary of explaining my injuries to people, and wonder if I would have minded less if my explanations had been the truth.
Tilly Turner, curled on the oak settle by the fire, faints with great drama, smashing her head on the hearth, and has to be revived with a burning feather under her nose. Mother pats her cheeks back and forth with more vigour than is strictly necessary, and William the henchman assists her out into the fresh air. Moments later he returns with a flurry, calling to Father, “Master, parson’s come out of t’wood.”
“Woodworm’s come out of t’wood,” my father mutters, staggering to his feet. William comes over and props him up.
“Is he to come in, master? Is the parson to come in?”
Everyone waits for my father’s answer. They all know his opinion of John Becker.
I creep across the kitchen and take over Tilly’s place on the oak settle, where I can be hidden by its high sides. I had forgotten that John was coming. I’m horrified at the thought of him seeing me hot, sweaty and half-drunk. Germaine comes to sit next to me. “Hiding, Beatrice?” she enquires. I nod carefully, fearful that my head might fly off. Germaine laughs. “He might consign the rest of us to hellfire, but not you, my dear.”
To me, the kitchen already seems like Hell – hot and full of people whose misdeeds are about to catch up with them.
My father blunders across the kitchen, stumbling over chairs and benches. “Might as well show him in, William lad,” he shouts. “Yon whining preacher could do with a drink, I daresay. Can’t do aught but improve him.”
Everyone’s gaze swings towards the entrance. We hear the front door crash open, then William’s voice. “They’re in the kitchen, sir.” My father prepares himself grandly, feet apart, hands on hips. William comes back into the kitchen and whispers something to him.
“Nay lad,” my father replies loudly, “I’ll see him in here. Is he too grand for the kitchen? Eh? Eh?” His voice is thick. His nose stands out purple with a slight knob on the end where a vein pulsates. William departs, and returns with John.
It is a shock to see him, all the more so because he looks absurdly pale and sober and clean, in comparison with the rest of us. I see how we must look to him, red-faced and rowdy. It dawns on me how unsuitable a match I would be for John, or indeed for any decent and respectable person outside the family. “Good day.” He looks round and addresses everyone, then turns to my father. “May I speak to you privately, Squire Garth?”
He is beautiful, beautiful and solemn. I am starting to remember what it was like this morning. He hasn’t seen me yet.
“You can talk to me here, lad. No one’s going to be eavesdropping,” my father answers. Everyone turns away and pretends to be busy doing something else. “We’re all celebrating being alive.” Father waves his arms. “Even you can understand that, I daresay. You’ll take a cup of elder?”
“Thank you.” John smiles at my mother, who is already reaching down another goblet. “It’s worth the journey here just for your elder wine, Columbine,” he says. Mother nods – she obviously realises why he is here – and his attempt to soothe the atmosphere hangs awkwardly in the air. He turns back to my father. “Sir, it is important that I speak to you alone, upstairs in your rooms please, about a matter of great importance.”
Everyone is listening. Germaine stands idly chipping flakes of dried food from the knife marks on the table with her fingernail. Kate studies her pie. The henchmen nod meaninglessly to each other, in a pretence of conversation. Suddenly Aunt Juniper rises from the chimney corner and marches towards John. “Young man, I cannot imagine how you permitted this to happen,” she snaps. Silence falls across the kitchen.
“Juniper…” Mother tries to hustle her away. “It’s better if we talk about this in private.”
“Nonsense. Do you imagine you can keep this disgraceful secret for even a moment, Columbine? My niece was in your care, Parson Becker…” She stands before him, clearly almost speechless with fury, and shakes her finger in his face. Mother hurries round her and takes hold of my father’s arm.
“Come, Husband. The parson wishes to speak to us privately.”
My father brings his fist down on the table with a terrifying thump. “What is this? What brings you here, parson?”
John swings his gaze from my father to Aunt Juniper. “This happened before Verity was in my care, madam, indeed it happened whilst she was supposedly in the care of your two Barrowbeck households. Now please excuse me.” He turns back to my father. “I have already said that I wish to speak to you privately, sir.” He gestures towards the stairway. “Now, will you kindly accompany me?”
My father is silent for a moment. He releases his arm from Mother’s grip, steadies himself and brushes crumbs from the front of his doublet. Then he says, “I had assumed you had come to do the job you’re paid for, parson, to bless the dead. There have been murders here today. We shall find the murderer, you can count on it, and then you will have the opportunity to lead that lost soul to repentance, afore we hang him. These are the jobs you’re paid to do, sir, and not, I think, to decide where and when your betters should speak to you.”
John gives a brief sigh of vexation. “Very well then, Squire Garth, let’s go and bless the dead. Perhaps you would be so good as to accompany me?”
My father nods graciously, and leads the way towards the wood cellar, followed by John and my mother. Everyone watches in silence as they go. Aunt Juniper is in tears. I put my arms round her.
“Did you know about this, Beatrice?” she asks. I nod. She sinks on to the bench and covers her face with her hands. Hugh and Gerald hurry over to her, whilst Uncle Juniper watches nervously from a distance, fidgeting from one foot to the other.
“What’s happened?” Hugh asks me, and since everyone will soon know anyway, I answer, “Verity and James are expecting a baby.”
Kate splutters over her pie. “James Sorrell? Yon farm lad? Nay, never!”
I turn on her. “That’s enough, Kate.”
She tightens her lips in outrage, marches to the hearth, flings her pie into the baking oven and slams the heavy iron door shut with a clang that echoes round the walls.
Aunt Juniper rises to her feet and sweeps out of the kitchen, saying tersely to William, “Saddle our horses, please.” Her husband and sons follow her.
People are starting to take in the news. There is a shocked murmuring across the kitchen, and a growing feeling of apprehension as we wait for my father’s reaction. It does not come. Instead, when he returns alone to the kitchen, he seats himself calmly at the head of the table and says, “My friends, we have found our murderer. I want four men to come with me to Low Back Farm at once, to arrest James Sorrell.” He points over people’s heads to William and three other henchmen standing by the gatehouse arch.
“No!” My mother has followed him up the slope from the wood cellar. “This is madness, Husband. James can’t possibly have killed anyone.”
“Silence!” my father shouts. “We have a witness.” He beckons to Michael, a new henchman who joined us last Lady Day, a tall, sly man who never looks anyone in the eye. “Michael, you witnessed this murder, did you not?”
A look of complete bafflement crosses Michael’s stupid face for a moment, then he nods vigorously. “Aye, master.”
“Say what you saw.”
“It was Master Sorrell as did it, master.”
“And you’ll bear witness to that, before the magistrate?”
“Aye master.”
“Then we shall see Master James Sorrell locked in Lancaster Castle before this week is out, to await the assizes and the hangman’s noose.”
I feel cold, as if there were no fire, no heat. I stand up and climb on to the oak settle. People look at me. I call out, “Father?”
He scowls. “What are you doing, girl? Get down.”
“Father, t
hese injuries… look at them.” I hold out my arms, touch my fingers to my swollen mouth. “I didn’t fall in the forest, Father. Those two men are dead because they attacked me. They tried to hurt me. I lashed out at them, and I must have accidentally…”
My father gapes. Suddenly all his drunkenness is gone. He moves with startling speed and before I know what is happening, he has pulled me off the settle, pinioned my arms behind me and is half-carrying me out of the room. I scream and struggle. People rush forward. I think to myself, where is John, where is Hugh, where are they when you need them?
My father is very strong. My ankles knock painfully against the edges of the stone stairs as he hauls me up the spiral staircase. I can hear my mother pattering behind, crying out, “Be careful, Francis! You’re going to hurt her worse than ever.” Voices from the kitchen, raised and incredulous, fade away behind us.
When we reach my room Father drags me inside and slams the door, and both my parents stand with their backs against it. I try to get past them and escape, but my father pushes me away.
“Father, this is ridiculous. Let me…”
“You’ll stay there until you get this idea out of your head,” he interrupts me. His voice is surprisingly mild. “You’ve had a knock on the head and it’s turned you daft, girl.”
“Mother…” I appeal.
She comes forward and puts her arms round me. “Sweeting, for once your father is right.” She glances at him sternly to neutralise any effect this unusual state of agreement might have. “You’ve had more ale and wine than is good for you, and a knock on the head too. It’s addled your brains. You don’t want to be saying anything which people might misinterpret. Now we all know you didn’t kill those men. However, I think there are things here that you’re not telling us, Beatrice. So do as your father says and stay here for the time being. You can decide in your own time when to tell us the truth. I’ll send Kate up with some barley broth.” My parents bow to each other politely and walk out of the room.
North Side of the Tree Page 3
