“Paganism…” I whisper, in echo of Widow Brissenden.
“It was either put up with it, or force them to choose,” says John. “If they think they can only have one or the other, Christianity or paganism, then I fear what some of them may choose. There would be children going unbaptised and marriages unblessed. This is all they do. It’s a folk memory. They’re calling back summer, as our forebears did.”
“But they’re dancing on the graves, John.”
He hugs me to him, and gazes up at the frozen arch of stars. “Do you suppose the dead mind? They have possibly a long, boring wait until Judgement Day.”
I look at him. “You’re mocking me.” He smiles. I put my arms round him, and he folds me inside his cloak. We kiss again, then walk out of the horned night and back into the parsonage. As we enter the kitchen, my father’s stolen clock on the dresser moves one minute past midnight, and into the day before Christmas Eve.
Chapter 18
Christmas Day dawns bright, with a crackle of thaw in the air. All the villagers of Wraithwaite, Barrowbeck and Mere Point were in church at midnight, and the carols we sang in the cold, amid the candles, moved me to tears. There were chairs along the side of the screened-off lady chapel for the lame or pregnant, and Verity was there, now majestically large, with all of us around her.
Without light shining through them, the four stained-glass windows above the white-clothed altar loomed mysteriously. The candlelight on the faces of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John gave them changing expressions. At the stroke of midnight Alan Smith, the blacksmith, minus his ram’s horns now, came in bearing the stocking baby and set him in his cradle, and all the village children sang In Dulci Jubilo in their high voices. I tried to stem my tears by remembering these same children stoning the ducks on the pond and throwing snails at the squirrels in the forest, but it did not work.
Now, this morning, I can hear Mother Bain singing carols in the kitchen, and I realise with astonishment that I feel riotously glad to be alive. This is the day when witches are powerless, when elves and goblins hide, and when hope of every sort is alive for a while. Moreover, Widow Brissenden has gone home to spend Christmas with her family.
As I make my way downstairs, Mother Bain sweeps into the thumping rhythm of Personent Hodie. In the kitchen the fire is roaring high. Esther and Dickon pick out the beat of the carol with wooden spoons on copper pans, and dance round the room. “God be with you!” shouts Mother Bain, and thrusts a large goblet of steaming malmsey at me. I return her greeting and kiss them all. John appears behind me, looking rumpled.
From outside, suddenly, come the sounds of shawms, crumhorns and Flemish bagpipes. We all go to the front door, and see the church lutenist dancing ahead of the band of village musicians, his lute above his head. People come pouring out of their houses in their nightsmocks, gowns and cloaks, to follow the band, and sing the Corpus Christi Carol.
Lully lulley, lully lulley
The fawcon hath borne my mak away
He bare hym up, he bare hym down,
He bare hym into an orchard brown.
Yn that orchard ther was an hall
That was hangid with purpill and pall,
And yn that hall ther was a bedde,
Hit was hangid with gold so redde,
And yn that bedde ther lythe a knyght,
His wowndes bledyng day and nyght.
Under that bedde ther runneth a flod
One half runneth watir the othyr half blod.
At that beddes foot ther kneleth a may
And she wepeth both night and day,
And by that beddes side ther stondith a ston
Corpus Christi wretyn theron.
They dance up to the parsonage and Mother Bain passes me the vast tray of spiced cakes which she and Esther have been baking since before dawn. The band and half the village crowd into the kitchen, and the rest fit into the hall, stairs and gallery wherever they can. By the kitchen fire John is opening a kilderkin of best ale.
Richard Battle, our senior churchwarden, dressed as the Lord of Misrule, with bells, ribbons and a stick for hitting people, rushes up and kisses me, then hits John with his brightly painted baton. “Damnation to disbelievers and a merry Christmas to all!” he shouts.
The cry is taken up by others. I really don’t feel up to this. The lutenist elbows his way through the crowd, refuses a drink and climbs on to the plate dresser. I go to sit in the chimney corner, and say a short prayer for our plates. The lutenist begins to play, very quietly at first. Gradually everyone falls silent. “Put t’wood in t’hole!” someone yells, and the front door is shut. The small gallery round the kitchen, normally used to store barrels of ale, creaks as people shift and settle themselves. Very delicately the lutenist picks out Puer Nobis Nascitur, and people begin to sing in the same, unfamiliar, soft way Unto us a Boy is Born.
John pulls up a firkin of ale and sits on it next to me in the chimney corner. People sing through mouthfuls of cake, passing along the tankards they have so fortuitously brought, for refilling. A flurry of wind blows down the chimney. Ash flutters on to my skirts.
“I’ve let the fire go down a bit ready for the Yule log,” says Mother Bain, coming to sit opposite us in the other chimney corner. I nod wordlessly. “Nay lass, you do naught but cry these days.” She shakes her head at me wonderingly, then turns to look for Dickon. “Come on, Dickon. You too, John. Fetch in the Yule log from the stables. I covered it over with oilcloth to keep the frost out.”
As the last verse of the carol begins, Esther takes up her wooden spoon again and taps experimentally on an upended copper pan, rapping out alternate beats of the tune. It is strange music, wild and unsettling.
A cheer goes up when John and Dickon stagger in with the large piece of tree trunk which is the Yule log. I move out of its way, say a short prayer for all the small creatures living in it and watch as it is swung with a mighty crash into the flames. Ash and sparks fly out into the kitchen, and those near it scream and jump back, then they all sing The Holly and the Ivy, and march back out into the frosty morning.
We just have time to eat breakfast, and dress, before the morning’s church service, which is more an extension of the wassailing than anything else. During the sermon one villager has loud, uncontrollable hiccups, and two more fall over. “I expect it’s the cold,” says my mother, who is standing next to me. Despite the slight thaw it is still very cold, and there is frost on the lectern and the rood screen. Under our feet the flagstones are thawed by the passage of many feet, but I know that beneath them the ground is still frozen solid. I think of Robert. John includes a prayer for prisoners. I close my eyes and shiver.
After the service Mother, Verity and James come over to the parsonage, and we all sit in the kitchen round the Yule log, drinking and talking and putting the last touches to the food, before moving into the hall to eat it. Father’s bed has been brought in, and I sit by him and mash his food for him. Mother Bain, Esther and I have prepared a swan stuffed with quails, pork in claret, spinach and walnut pie, quince and rosehip jelly, pickled cucumbers and cabbage, carrots in butter and cinnamon and a series of tarts and fruit puddings. I think of how Father would once have enjoyed all this. Now he is scarcely aware of it passing his lips.
I am unable to control an absurd tremulousness for the rest of the afternoon. At every carol I have to get out my handkerchief again. “Lord knows what you’ll be like when you hear Kate singing,” comments my mother as we all go out at dusk to where Dickon has the cart, carretta and horses waiting to transport us all to Barrowbeck. This is the day when my father is to return home for good, transported gently and slowly on a bed made up in the back of the cart, and then carried on a hurdle up the east stairs of Barrowbeck Tower to his old room behind the living hall hearth. It is the day I could return home too, if I chose.
John and I dismount by the barmkin gate in the twilight, and hand our horses over to William who is on guard. He says, “Welcome home, Mistress Beatrice.” John
takes my hand and draws me to one side.
“Stay,” he says. “It’s what you want, isn’t it.”
I put my hands round his face and kiss him. “Yes, it is what I want, sweet John. After the betrothal tomorrow, I want to come back here, and then in a while, be married from here.”
He pulls me behind the elder tree by the barmkin gate and kisses me.
“You’ve got a lot to answer for, lass,” comes Kate’s voice from the dairy behind us. “Getting that holy man into our loose ways.” I laugh, and go to embrace her, and we all go up to the gatehouse together, and into the tower.
The rooms are full of greenery. In the living hall a huge peacock pie decorated with feathers stands in the centre of the table. Christmas Day is the only day of the year on which peacock feathers do not have the power of the evil eye, and Kate always takes advantage of this temporary dispensation.
Aunt and Uncle Juniper, Gerald, Germaine and Hugh arrive, and we all play games for an hour before sitting down to Christmas supper in the living hall, with all the henchmen, and George and Martinus up from Low Back Farm. We change the watch every hour or so, so that no one shall be left out. Afterwards, we open the last big flagon of elder wine, and sprawl, bloated and exhausted, along the table between the two fires, telling ghost stories. Mother tells the story of the Headless Lady of Hagditch, who searches for her lost lover along the highways at dead of night, and I know that her chilling description of the lady’s crazed yearnings owes more than a little to the fact that Cedric is not here, excluded from our Christmas festivities for decency’s sake. I feel, with her, the slowness of Christmas, the frustratingly measured pace of the rituals which must be gone through, whilst all the time, outside, other more pressing urgencies lay siege to our attention.
Towards midnight Germaine plays her lute and Kate sings Tomorrow shall be my Dancing Day.
In a manger laid and wrapped I was,
So very poor, this was my chance
Betwixt an ox and a silly poor ass,
To call my true love to my dance.
Sing O my love, O my love,
This have I done for my true love.
I put my head down on the table and sob.
John and I are much teased for choosing a martyr’s feast day on which to become betrothed. Our betrothal is to take place straight after Esther and Dickon’s marriage tomorrow morning. Then I will pack my things and return here. Tonight I am to sleep in my own bed again. At bedtime John and I go up to the battlements to do an hour’s watch. Flurries of icy rain, smelling of the sea, are blown over the battlements, and a crab moon swims through breaks in the clouds. There are no enemies here tonight. We lean against the beacon turret and kiss, and when William comes up to take over the watch, we go downstairs to my bed.
Chapter 19
Immediately after Christmas a terrible tension sets up in me. Esther and Dickon are married in the church porch, and later that same day John and I become betrothed. Lifetime promises made in front of family and friends – what could be more binding than that, I wonder, as we stand in front of the Vicar of Hagditch at the altar rail. Our wedding will take place at Midsummer, and the bishop will officiate.
The twelve days of Christmas pass slowly. After the Feast of Stephen come the Feast of Saint John the Apostle, Childermas and the day we call New Year’s Day after some quaint, ancient custom when the year used to start on the first of January instead of the twenty-fifth of March as it does now.
On that day, the first day of January, we all exchange gifts. John loves his purple nightshirt. Our relationship has changed since Christmas night. I suppose it is quite obvious to everyone. Certainly, now that we are betrothed and living under separate roofs, we are allowed more freedom than before. It is a little unreal to me that my future is now set out before me, with this man, whose body I am quickly coming to like quite as much as I like his mind. Marriage will be a step further. We can wait – though if John had been in any other line of work, I doubt we should have.
Finally it is Twelfth Night and the Feast of the Epiphany. We all go over to Aunt Juniper’s for more over-eating. I find I am looking forward to Plough Monday, when normal life – not to mention normal eating – can be resumed, whilst simultaneously I am filled with growing terror at the onward progress of time. March will come so soon. Every bare tree looks like a gibbet.
It has become clear, now, that Hugh is seriously courting Anne Fairweather, the rich widow from Hagditch. We know her a little already, from social occasions round the county, but we meet her for the first time in family surroundings at Mere Point on the Feast of the Epiphany. Anne is a good few years older than Hugh, and she owns the large and beautiful manor house at Hagditch.
“Owning all that, she’s mad to marry again,” comments Verity as we chop the last limp carrots of the year in Aunt Juniper’s kitchen.
Anne bears something of an air of mystery, partly arising from her being so badly pocked that she always wears a veil, and partly from her wealth and family connections to the nobility. I am relieved, if a little insulted, that Hugh has managed to console himself so soon.
Even more interestingly, it becomes clear that Anne is related to one of the Lord Justices of Assize, at Lancaster. I make up my mind to get to know her much better.
After the meal in the long hall at Mere Point, we play games. During a game of Hoodman Blind I notice Gerald taking John to one side. As they go out, Germaine leaves the game and takes my arm. “He’s had a messenger from Lord Ravenswyck.”
Germaine no longer rouges her cheeks or curls her hair. Instead, she lets her face remain its natural parchment colour, and draws her hair severely back from her forehead. Her posture has become loose and straight and direct.
“A messenger?” I ask.
“All gentlemen of the northern counties are to meet, with their forces, at Newcastle, on Shrove Tuesday.”
“Oh no…”
“John won’t go, of course, Beatrice. Don’t look like that.”
“No… no, of course, but Gerald… oh, Germaine.” I realise, suddenly, with my father out of action, and bumbling Uncle Juniper not of a military persuasion, that suave, warlike Gerald will now lead the troops, that he, in effect, must now be regarded as lord of the manor. I look at Germaine. “We need the men to work the land then, and… oh… it seems very wrong to fight during Lent…” is all I can find to say. Hugh rushes past me with a warmingstone bag over his head. Anne Fairweather shrieks and tries to get out of his way.
“Aye. Some will be giving up much for Lent.” Germaine clasps her hands until her knuckles whiten. “Yet we’ll have no land to work if the Scots keep coming.”
I move to the windowseat. “So, Gerald will lead our men?”
Germaine sits down next to me. “He’ll have to. Father-in-law would get no further than the nearest dog-pit.”
“Will you marry first?”
“We’re hoping to wed at Candlemas. There’s just enough time for the banns. Gerald is asking John now.”
I kiss her on the cheek. “God bless you, Cousin.”
I turn to stare into the blackness outside. Despite the noise of revelry here in the long hall, it is possible to hear the sea crashing on the cliffs, and sense all that fearsome world outside, of gaping fishes, predatory seabirds, snapping crabs, unearthly stone creatures in the cliffs – the salamanders which long ago burnt themselves into melted stone – a world of all that is as old as water, and as unreasoning. You could go mad thinking about it. Yet it is in all of us, those of us who stay, and those of us who cross the border.
“Beatrice,” Germaine says suddenly, breaking into my thoughts, “your Scot, is he one of those locked in Lancaster Castle?”
“He is.” I am surprised at how matter-of-fact I can sound, in view of the terrifying pointlessness of everything. “I thought we shouldn’t have a raid on Scotland now, Germaine. I thought the queen might keep those Scots as hostages. I thought at least that Robert was suffering for some good purpose. Now we are
to raid anyway, and Robert is rotting in that dungeon for nothing.”
Germaine takes my hand. “Don’t forget how he came here, Beatrice. No one forced him to come. The Scottish raids will go on, unless we hit them hard.”
I pull my hand away irritably, and walk out of the hall.
A little over three weeks later, Gerald and Germaine are married in Wraithwaite Church, and the woman who was servant to my family becomes my cousin, and to all intents and purposes, lady of the manor.
It is good to be back at Barrowbeck with Mother and all the familiar members of the tower community – Leo, Kate, Tilly Turner and the henchmen – even sly Michael, clearly dismayed because he thought he had got rid of me. I suggest to Aunt Juniper that he might make a good match for Widow Brissenden, who will surely be desolate for company now that her chaperoning duties are at an end. My good aunt looks quite excited at the prospect, and vows to investigate the matter. Esther and Dickon, too, are now back in the valley, their services hired out to Verity for the time being. Germaine, who is getting on better with her mother-in-law than any of us had dared hope, has persuaded Aunt Juniper to take on the widow of the second man who was murdered, as skivvy, and to train her as cook at Mere Point. After initial dubiousness, Aunt Juniper quickly gets to like the idea that she might not always have to do all the cooking herself, and takes to dressing rather grandly in the afternoons, and calling on neighbours all round the district.
On days of clement weather the men get on with hedging and ditching. On days when the milk freezes in the pails and the water in the wells, they chop wood, and mend and sharpen the farm implements.
With John, I learn some very earthly pleasures on icy winter nights in the cow byre and dairy, our breath freezing in the air. John is a most beautiful man. He is dark, where Robert was tawny. It adds to the strangeness, that things should be this way again, with a different man. He calls me his sweeting, his love. He can be outrageous and funny. I see a side of him I never saw before. We laugh a lot. People grin knowingly when they hear us cackling at some foolish jest incomprehensible to others. If it were not for my knowledge of Robert’s imprisonment, I should be happy.
North Side of the Tree Page 13
