North Side of the Tree

by Maggie Prince

  “I think not, thank you John.”

  When I explain my intention to Verity, she also insists on accompanying me. James, John and the bishop escort us up the valley to the edge of the clearing, and watch as Verity, the two henchmen and I go on alone. As we draw near to the barmkin I can see that Michael, the new henchman, is keeping watch on the battlements. We see him calling down to someone. A moment later the door of the pele tower flies open and my father rushes out.

  Although there are four of us, we instinctively draw back. I see at once what John referred to. My father’s face is dark purple, and as he comes nearer, I hear his breath gurgling in his chest like water from a bottle.

  “Daughters!” he shouts, and teeters to a halt. “Oh Daughters, have you come home to me?”

  “Is he drunk?” Verity whispers.

  I shake my head. “I don’t think so.” I take a step towards him. He staggers where he stands. “Father, let me help you back into the tower.”

  Verity takes his other arm. She has not touched him since the day he tried to kill James. He bursts into tears. I feel close to tears myself. Between us we coax him up the slope and through the gatehouse, into the kitchen, closely followed by George and Martinus.

  The kitchen is empty, but I can hear Kate singing somewhere in the cellars below. Father is struggling for coherence. The effort is plain on his face. “Daughters,” he attempts again, “dear, dear Daughters…”

  We help him sit down on the settle. Martinus brings some water.

  “Should’st be on watch, lad?” Father asks, peering at him with difficulty.

  “You’re confused, Father,” I tell him. “Martinus doesn’t work here any more. Drink the water. Will you let the Cockleshell Man come to see you?”

  Father drinks the water quickly. “Nay lass, whatever for?” He wipes a trickle from his chin. His colour is cooling a little. He sounds calmer and more articulate as he enquires, “Beatrice, what are they saying about you, lass? I cannot credit it. You cannot want yon poxy parson! You cannot. You cannot, lass. Come home. There’ll be no more locking in. I give you my oath. And we’ll forget about the window. I’ll not beat you for that.” He holds out his cup for more water, and Martinus hurries forward. I reflect how quickly he has fallen back into his old role of serving this familiar master. My father lays his hand on my arm and looks into my face, and I reflect how quickly I, too, have fallen back. He says quietly, “Beatrice, I’ve cared for you, have I not? It has been my pleasure to provide for you. Many girls in your position would have been married off at twelve. Yet I allowed you to learn. Did I not? Did you not have this privilege which most young women do not?”

  I lower my eyes. “Yes, Father.”

  “Yes. Well then.” He sits back. “Now I ask for you to return a little of what I have done for you. Come home. Resume your duties on the farm. All will be forgotten. I shall hold nothing against you.” He turns to Verity without giving me a chance to reply. “And you, Verity, naught shall be held against you, neither. Nor against your child. Your babe shall be the apple of my eye. I shall permit no one to call it bastard, and it shall, with your sister’s children, inherit all that I have. There’ll be no disgrace to you. The yokel violated you. I know that. All who know you know that. There’s no disgrace. Come home. Stay with me, Verity.”

  Verity leans forward and takes his hand. “Father, dearest Father, you know how I love you. Never doubt it.”

  He nods, and there are tears in his eyes. “Never doubt it,” he repeats under his breath.

  Verity kisses his brow, which is slick with sweat, and adds, “But I also love James, Father, and you must accept that, and accept James. Please, Father.”

  She is cut off as he jumps to his feet. The settle crashes over. George and Martinus rush to stand in front of Verity. Father’s face is undergoing a horrific change, becoming even more livid at the high points of his cheeks and nose. He pushes George aside. “Must?” he shouts in Verity’s face. “Must? You dare say must to your father? You traitorous harlot! I shall never accept that witless fool. Never! You spout what those vile clerics have taught you to say. Well, you shall see, and they shall see.” He crosses to the door, leaving us all gaping. “They shall see indeed. Yon fair coach I spied on Wraithwaite Green would be a hard job to miss, out on the highway.” He goes staggering out of the kitchen, and out of the tower.

  I rush after him. I can hear Verity sobbing behind me. The tower door is standing open. Outside, Father is striding unevenly down towards the barmkin. I hear the high-pitched whinny of Caligula, his black stallion, greeting him.

  “Oh no…” I run after him. “Father!” He is puffing with the effort, and I catch him up easily. “Father, stop! You’re not fit…” I lower my voice. “You’re not fit to go out robbing. You’ll get caught. I beg you, Father, don’t go out now. Please, let us talk some more. If you wish me to come back, then…” but he is not listening. I pray that John, James and the bishop are keeping out of sight as Father proceeds at a lolloping run round the barmkin wall towards the entrance.

  Suddenly he stops, and turns back to me, gasping. “He vexes me, your parson, Beatrice. He vexes me greatly. Your babbling bishop vexes me worst of all. Mayhap this night his lordship will learn it is more blessed to give than to receive.” He struggles to regain his breath. After a moment he lays his hand on my head and says, “I hope you shall be here when I return, Beatrice. Pig sticking this week, I think? It will never salt down enough, else. Speak to Leo. You know best which of the swine to choose. Fare thee well, Daughter.”

  I watch him open the barmkin gate and duck into the turf-roofed overhang of the saddlery. Caligula comes trotting up to him. For a moment, faintly on the wind, I hear the sound of the drum again.

  Chapter 8

  I do my best to persuade the bishop not to leave, but he is expected at Hagditch for Matins early the following morning, and at Kerne Forth for Vespers the following afternoon, and he puts my anxious insistence merely down to good manners.

  Verity has given me Meadowsweet, her dimwitted, golden-eyed mare, since she does not wish to endanger her unborn child by riding any longer, and anyway will soon be too big. Mother has given her the carretta from the tower, to be drawn by one of James’s slower and less flighty horses. I feel reluctant to replace dead Saint Hilda with any other horse, yet as we ride back to Wraithwaite, taking the long way round the edge of the woods rather than haul the bishop up the rockface, the sound of Meadowsweet’s hooves tapping along the rocky bridleway cheers me more than I had expected.

  This path, which borders James’s land, is hedged along with blackthorn bushes. They have lost most of their leaves now, and only a few slack black sloes remain on the bare branches. Instead, rows of dead moles hang there, upside down like colonies of bats, their tiny, rosy hands outspread. We pass more and more of them, flapping at our passing with a brief mockery of life. James will be wearing new moleskin breeches this winter.

  I kick Meadowsweet into a gallop and leave John and the bishop behind. The moles are such an embodiment of mute helplessness that I cannot bear them. They seem to represent all that is inarticulate – James too tongue-tied to be taken seriously by people such as my father, my father himself whose attempts to express affection are nullified by incoherent rage, all of us who are bound to keep Father’s own criminal secret, myself locked into the secret I now share with Leo, and worse still, the secret knowledge of everything I shared with Robert, which can never be told. The moles are silent, writhing on their thorn trees. I must outrun them.

  My hat ribbons lash my face, and one flicks me in the eye, making it water. My eyes are streaming by the time the bishop catches me up. He says, “Forgive me that I could not help you more, Beatrice.” He edges ahead and turns his horse, so that I have to slow down. “Please, do not distress yourself, my dear. I pray that your father will relent, now that he is banished from Communion. John will perform Verity and James’s betrothal immediately, without your father’s permission, and the first
banns will be published this Sunday. All shall be well. I shall visit you again soon.”

  He repeats his promise later, as he leaves, with just enough time to reach Hagditch before light fades. I look up at the words carved into the lintel as we bid him goodbye at the parsonage gate. Truth and grace be to this place. I could tell him the truth. It is clearly wrong to let this man go out on to the highway, conspicuous in his red and gold coach, when I know what probably lies in wait for him. Yet if I were to tell him that my father is a highway robber, not only my father but also my mother would be ruined. Nor, I realise for the first time, would it bode well for John’s career in the church if his house guest were revealed to have such scandalous connections. Take an extra lanthorn; take the coast road not the high road; wait for George and Martinus to join you at the crossroads in case of highway robbers. Verity and I have done and said all we can. Now we must just pray.

  “I love you,” says John under his breath, as we watch the bishop’s coachman whip up the elegant piebald gelding which pulls his coach. The bishop waves and the coach moves off.

  My state of distraction is such that it takes a moment for John’s words to sink in. I look up at him. Here is someone who does not have secrets, who says what he thinks, regardless of the consequences, who says it in measured terms, and then listens to a person’s reply, whatever it might be. I have a moment of feeling quite overcome by wonder. “I could love you very easily, John,” I tell him. “Perhaps I already do.”

  He holds out his hand to me, and I take it, and we return to the kitchen hand in hand.

  “He’s left it late. Darkness is barely an hour off.” Mother Bain is lighting a taper at the kitchen fire. She goes round the pricket candlesticks on the walls one by one, setting the yellow candles alight. The tallow from which they are made does not smell as sweet as our own beeswax candles, and it drips fast into the wax-pans underneath. The wick next to me drowns and goes out. John brings a stool and sits next to me in the dimness. Mother Bain stirs the rabbit stew in the cauldron over the fire. The seething peace of evening settles on the parsonage, and we all sigh, and smile at one another, and gaze into the fire.

  Suddenly there is a loud knocking at the door. We jump, as if caught in some guilty act. “That will be Widow Brissenden,” says Mother Bain. “She called earlier, John, whilst you were out. I forgot to tell you.”

  “Oh God.” John bites his lip. Mother Bain clicks her tongue at the blasphemy. “I’m sorry,” he says to me, as Mother Bain goes to open the door. “I forgot I’d invited her to come and meet you. There is talk, Beatie. I’m sorry. I had to do something. No one else was available at such short notice, and Widow Brissenden’s family appear to be able to spare her.” As he is speaking, a tall figure clad in black looms in the doorway.

  “Widow Brissenden, parson,” announces Mother Bain, reduced almost to invisibility in the shadow of this huge newcomer. We stand up and all greet one another, and I feel furious, furious with John that he thinks I will be prepared to live with this stranger for the sake of appearances, furious with Widow Brissenden for the proprietorial glare she is already casting round the parsonage kitchen. Love him? If this is John’s idea of love, then I prefer my father’s way of showing affection. He wants me home. He shall have me home. I excuse myself, without any attempt at politeness, and go up to my bedchamber.

  At once I feel ashamed. This woman is bereaved. I must be patient and kind, and make her welcome. I can hear John showing her round the parsonage. Her voice booms out from the room she will have, next to mine along the landing. When Mother Bain comes and fetches me downstairs for the meal, I find Widow Brissenden already ladling rabbit stew on to her plate from the cauldron. Whilst we eat, dipping our bread in the gravy, a collection of crumbs and fragments of stew builds up on the plateau of Widow Brissenden’s bosom. From time to time she refers to her husband, and wipes her eyes dramatically with a large handkerchief, but the rest of the time she regales us with stories of shocking doings in both Hagditch and her home village some miles away. In many cases, it would seem, disaster was only averted by her prompt intervention. John is quiet and gloomy. Mother Bain excuses herself after the meal and retires to bed. The last of the light fades outside, and we wait for Widow Brissenden to go. I want to say to John, I told you so. See, you can’t stand her either. Just listen to me next time.

  The widow doesn’t go. Instead, she starts telling us about her daughters-in-law, one by one, and how none of them is good enough for any of her four sons. It is whilst she is on daughter-in-law number three that I become aware of a commotion outside. I frown at John, and nod towards the door. We get up and go to see what is happening. Widow Brissenden’s story trails off, and she comes and joins us.

  It is too dark to see much, but people are coming out of their houses with lighted torches and lanthorns. The clamour is quite far off, but growing nearer. We join the crowd and move with them towards the end of the village. I catch the words, “… highway robbers…” and “… murder…” and then someone at the front of the crowd cries out, “I can see his body!”

  It is not until I catch a glimpse of red and gold in the distance, illuminated in the flare of a torch, that I realise it is the bishop’s coach which is returning. Sick with apprehension, I ask someone coming back through the crowd what has happened, but the woman knows no more than I do. She says, “If there are highway robbers about I’m off home to protect my children,” and pushes her way towards the cottages by the tavern.

  John and I make our way through the crowd as the coach slowly approaches. The coachman is half slumped on his seat, his face mud-streaked. The piebald gelding is limping. They stop as John reaches them. Silence falls across the crowd as he opens the coach door. For a moment no one is visible inside, then there is movement and the bishop appears. Shakily he takes hold of John’s proffered hand and steps down. An old woman near me crosses herself.

  “Thank God,” I mutter. “I thought they were saying he was dead. Who do they mean, then? Whose body…?”

  People around me shake their heads. Everyone is craning forward to see. John directs the coach round towards the back of the parsonage, then makes his way over to me again. “Come inside, Beatie,” he says. “I’m afraid something has happened to your father.”

  Chapter 9

  I rush through the house to where the coach has stopped by the stables, and watch John and the coachman lift my father out and carry him through to the kitchen. Mother Bain has just woken. She hurries out of her room behind the hearth, rubbing her eyes, then sweeps mugs and dishes aside to make space for my father’s body on the kitchen table. Carefully, they lay him down. At first I think he is dead, then realise that he is breathing.

  “He’s alive.” I move to his side and take his hand. He looks fearsome. His nose and cheeks have a lacework of purple veins standing out on stretched skin. His mouth is slack, curving in glistening grooves down towards his chin. His hands, crossed on his chest, are trembling.

  “Aye, he’s alive, but there’s something sorely wrong.” Mother Bain, still in her nightsmock and nightgown, lifts one of his eyelids and peers in, then holds his wrist to feel the echo of his heartbeat.

  “By your leave, mistresses!” Widow Brissenden barges past us. “Kindly allow me. I have experience in these matters. My own dear uncle is but lately dead of a similar choleric humour.” In our astonishment we allow her access to my father’s helpless body, and she takes one look at him and announces that he needs to be bled. “I am experienced in blood-letting,” she booms. “I have my instruments in my bag at the tavern,” and she is off through the front door before we can recover enough to answer her. Mother Bain and I look at one another, then she resumes her examination, loosening my father’s clothing and placing her ear against his chest. Behind us, the bishop and John are talking in low voices.

  “I take it you did not know of Squire Garth’s other occupation, my son?”

  “What occupation? I do not understand you, my lord. What on earth
happened?”

  “He was lying in wait for us on horseback, hidden amongst the trees at Haggen Bottom.”

  “Who? Squire Garth? You cannot mean that Squire Garth was waylaying you?”

  “That is what I am telling you, John. He was disguised in peasant’s clothing and with a black cloth tied over his face. He came out at us with a bullwhip, whipped my coachman to the ground and threatened me at swordpoint. I tried to reason with him, and told him I had very little gold or silver with me, but it was no good. He got off his horse, took my bags from my coach, then set my horse loose and tried to drive it off into the woods. My coachman ran after it.”

  I look round at them. John is staring at the bishop, open-mouthed. He catches my glance, looks at me for a long moment, then returns his attention to the bishop, who is now telling how Father remounted and rode away into the woods, laughing. It was only as the coachman caught their horse and returned with it, that they heard, some way off, the laughter change to choking, followed by a crashing amongst the bushes. They found my father unconscious in the undergrowth. Between them they carried his body to the coach, and brought him back here.

  “We need Cedric.” We all turn as Mother Bain speaks. “I do not know if your father needs to be bled, Beatrice. I do not know if it is his heart or his brain affected, so I am going to prepare a poultice of flos unguentorum for each. John, will you fetch the Cockleshell Man, and Mistress Columbine too, I think.”

  “That will take but one journey, from what I hear.” The voice in the doorway is sour and disapproving. Widow Brissenden is back, brandishing a selection of knives and a letting cup. Gently we explain to her that her services will not be required, for now. Mother Bain asks her if she would be so kind as to tend the injured coachman, as he is in need of the most compassionate care, for which the widow is renowned. Mollified, Widow Brissenden marches over to where the unfortunate coachman cowers in terror in a corner.