by John Masters
She tried again to ask him about the map, but he hauled her so fast across the field that she didn’t have the breath. Near the oak tree Parson was clapping his hands and calling one and all to choose their partners and join in the dance of the Harvest Ring.
‘Well, here’s a chance to get your money back, and more,’ Mary said crossly. ‘There’s a big prize this year. Squire’s giving forty shillings, and a heifer in calf by his young bull. It’s that light heifer with the liver markings.’
Jason stared at the Pennels, hunching his shoulders and daring himself to do what he meant to do. Affection wasn’t enough. He was in love with Jane Pennel. He was a selfish, heartless man. He’d have to be quick. Mary expected to be asked to dance. His sister Molly was coming towards him, old Ahab Stiles trotting behind her like a ram with thoughts of tupping on his mind.
Jason said, ‘I’m going to ask Mistress Jane to be my partner.’
Molly had arrived. She cried, ‘Jason!’ But Jason knew that she understood, knew that the whole meaning of what he said had come to her in a flash as she heard him speak.
He left Mary’s frightened murmurings behind him and walked up to Jane Pennel. He touched his forehead and said, ‘Mistress Jane, will you dance the Ring with me? I think we’ll win.’
Sir Tristram frowned, and Hugo said coldly, ‘Certainly not.’
Jason said tensely, ‘I was asking Mistress Jane, Master Hugo.’
He held out his arm. Jane rose slowly to her feet and came to him. Together they walked into the Ring. Tom Devitt, Drake’s old sailor, noisily cleared his throat and cupped his hand to his mouth. He was drunk as a fiddler’s bitch by now, but Tom could call the Harvest Ring unconscious. He usually did.
Jason held both Jane’s hands and looked steadily at her until her head came up and her eyes met his. He pointed his left foot, and she pointed hers. The caller would call only once in each part of the dance, because it was a competition. After that the dancers had to remember the turns, but Jason knew no one was going to miss a step today. The prize would be won by the grace of their turns, by the poise of the movements and the pointing of the toe and the straightness of the leg.
Tom Devitt called, ‘The maidens in the middle and the men outside. To the left, to the right, dance the Old Wife’s Pride.’ Jason and Jane began to dance.
After ten minutes Jane whispered breathlessly to him as they turned back to back in the sixth change, ‘There are only two other couples left.’
He muttered, ‘Don’t look at them.’ She must not even think of the other dancers, or hear the singing of the drunkards outside the Cross Keys, or notice the amazed surprise in Parson’s smug face, or her father’s strange look, or Master Hugo’s black disapproval.
But he himself could not help seeing the Parson call one of the other couples out of the ring, and noticing their disappointed, sweating faces on the side. Now they’d be saying to each other, to console themselves, that he was still in there because his partner was Jane Pennel. Let them say. He and she were the best dancers in the Ring.
The other couple was good too. But he must not think of them, only of the shape of the dance, and the moves as fluent as the Avon flowing. Tom Devitt began to call the changes faster, until they were having only a single round of each. ‘Benjamin the Fiddler, call him down; Back-a-back and ride to town. . . . Green grass grows in the field, and turn. . . . Alton Chimes . . . Meadowsweet, meadowsweet. . .’
‘Oh, Jane,’ he whispered. Her eyes shone like large green stars. ‘Oh, Jane!’ he reached out his hands, and she caught them and held fiercely. They couldn’t put a foot wrong or miss the grip of their fingers for ever and ever.
‘Come to the spinney tomorrow afternoon.’
She muttered, ‘Yes.’
Something caught at his sleeve, and he brushed it off, not thinking, not taking more notice of it than of a fly.
Again it caught him, but harder, this time nearly pulling him off his balance. Angrily he glanced round, and Parson was shouting, ‘Go away!’ It was Softy Turpin, frowning ferociously beside him and ludicrously swinging round after him so that all the people rocked and screamed and slapped their thighs with laughter. Softy bawled, ‘She’m not started yet, your grace. She’m not started. No need for you to hurry!’
Jason stopped. It was no use. All the power of movement flowed out of his legs, and he could only stand there, trembling. He saw his father, hunched and dark beside the church wall, with three of his cronies. He saw Jane’s huge, soft eyes.
He muttered, ‘The red cow’s calving.’
He left her standing in the middle of the Ring and ran off. Mary was running after him across the field, and Molly was trying to stop her, but as soon as he got into the lane he left them both far behind.
Ten days later there was no moon, and it was a thick night, compounded of darkness and autumnal rain that flowed in a soft black stream over the Pewsey Vale. The wind had changed with the new moon, and blew this night quietly against his cheek as he hurried across the shoulder of the Plain on his way to Pennel Manor.
He came to the spinney and went carefully through it. He stroked his hand against the body of an ash as he passed it. The Oak and Horn had brought Jane here on that Sunday in the hazy afternoon, to lie down together with him here, so that afterwards they could look speechless into each other’s faces. Twice more they’d found an hour to come here. He had asked her to bring a book and teach him to read. She had, and had shown him the letters of the alphabet. Then she had read aloud to him from the book, but haltingly, for the words were long and strange. It was a book about a man’s travels in foreign countries, and as he lay listening he thought: When we marry we’ll have to go away to escape Sir Tristram’s anger. He saw her standing on the deck of the ship, her lips parted and her pale red hair streaming out behind her in the wind. They would search over the rim of the world for all marvels, for whales, cachalots, and dolphins, for flying fish and the magic lights turning in the waves under the ship.
But she stopped reading soon, and, when he began to talk longingly of those voyages as if they were reality, she shook her head impatiently and wanted to be told about ferrets and fitchews and how to set a snare, and she told him that he smelled of the farm, and reminded him that she could marry anyone she chose, even the King’s son, because she was Jane Pennel--but before the reading, when they first saw each other under the trees, she hadn’t thought of how he smelled or what he wore, but only ran breathlessly into his arms. The making love ended her love, but began his.
He came to the edge of the pasture, where he had killed the fox. The manor hedge was fifty yards ahead in the darkness, and the rain dripped off the homespun hood he wore on his head. The hounds knew him, because each time she came to the spinney she had pretended to be walking two of them, and--they’d cocked their big heads and whimpered while he kissed her.
He crossed the field, slipped through the hedge, and worked past the outhouses until he stood under the wall of the manor. He’d been here once or twice, but at the side door, waiting with a basket of eggs or a ham that the Pennels had bought from his father. The house was built all of new small bricks, and the windows had many leaded glass panes. It looked new, raw, and ungainly, but he thought it must be comfortable inside. Once, when Jenny the serving maid opened the door to him, he had seen only the big kitchen. Another time the door beyond the kitchen had been open, and through there it was different from anything he had ever seen. There was oak panelling in big carved squares from floor to ceiling, and tapestries hanging, and a whiff of beeswax polish coming out over the smell of cooking in the kitchen, and he had seen a table with carved legs, and two big globes standing on it, and through there the floor was made of little oblong wooden blocks. Then Jenny gave him a saucy remark and he had to slap her round buttocks, and someone shut the inner door.
He found the small window open, as Jane had promised, and climbed through it. Now he had to remember what she had told him. The staircase was on his right, and directly op
posite him the great hall and fireplace. On his left there was a passage with two rooms leading off it. That passage ended in the door he’d seen from the kitchen. One of the two rooms was a store chamber, and the other a room full of books.
He was a little early. Perhaps Jane wouldn’t be expecting him yet. Perhaps her tirewoman was still hanging round before going through the upstairs door which divided the Pennels’ rooms from the servants’.
Thousands of books, she’d said.
He turned left and carefully opened the second door. A faint beam of light fanned out in the widening gap as he opened it, and in fright he held his hand steady. Hugo might be in there--but Hugo didn’t do much reading, and Sir Tristram was visiting Lord Henry in Admiral. He peered cautiously round the door. The room was empty. The light was coming in through the windows from the carriage lantern that hung over the front door of the manor. He slipped into the room and closed the door behind him.
There were the books. His heart bumped loudly. There was a smell of paper and leather, and the rows of leather backs swept up to the ceiling and round the four walls. He saw another globe on a table, and parchment, sand, ink, and quills beside it. But--the books! He took one out at random and carried it like a jewel to the window.
He opened it and stared at the print. It wasn’t even English. He knew the alphabet now, and this was different. He put it back and got out another. All writing, and he could not read.
He found a book with pictures on nearly every page. He burst out laughing with delight, and quickly hushed and listened, but no one moved in the big house. He was looking at a wondrous animal with a tail at each end and four, five, six men, carrying spears, in a box on its back. The animal had--he looked more closely--God’s blood, it had great teeth like a boar’s, only ten times bigger and curving down instead of up. He looked at the ceiling. That animal could not fit into this room. There was writing in the book as well as pictures, and he could not read it. Still, the pictures were more marvellous than shooting stars. He turned the pages greedily.
Pennel church clock clanged loud and close, the cracked bell notes shaking the glass panes in the window and thudding to silence among the leather books. Jason started and stared nervously around him. What was he doing here? Jane Pennel.
The back of the chair was damp where he had been sitting in his wet jerkin. He slipped out of the room, taking the book with him. He crept up the wide staircase. The third door on the left. He made a little scratching on it with his fingernail and waited. He heard a stir in the room and stepped to one side, in case it might after all be the wrong room that he had come to. The door opened an inch and, used now to the dark--ness, he saw a slice of Jane’s face. She opened the door, let him in, and shut it quickly behind him.
She whispered, ‘Where have you been? Why are you so late?’
He said, ‘I was looking at this book, Jane. It’s full of pictures. Look.’ He opened the book at random and said excitedly, ‘Look at that!’
She whispered furiously, ‘I don’t want to look at pictures. You gave me a terrible fright!’ She was trembling as she stood beside him. He began to explain that the book was like a key to heaven, but she said, ‘You’re wet. You smell of cow dung.’
Jason sniffed carefully. He did smell strong. The rain always did that, and the smell seemed even more powerful in this faintly scented bedroom. He took her in his arms and kissed her. That was what she had wanted most from him, ever since the Oak and Horn. She was dressed only in her shift, and she pressed her spiced mouth against his. He opened his eyes to look past her head through the window as they kissed. The first leaves were beginning to fall; they looked like flying tiny ships of air as they sailed down in the light of the outside lantern. He ought to have told Mary he couldn’t marry her; but he hadn’t seen her since the harvest fair.
He stood back from the girl and whispered, ‘Jane, we must go away. We’ll go to Aleppo and see all the animals in the book.’ He picked up the book and opened it.
For a moment she stood watching his face. Already he was absorbed in the book, and she standing here in her shift trembling for him--and she her father’s only daughter. And he--he did smell of cow dung. But she ought not to have said that just now. It was cruel. He couldn’t help it. She couldn’t help what she was doing, either, because his eyes sparkled when he looked at her, and she had felt the same helpless weakness years ago when she was only a little girl and hadn’t then really known the difference between a Pennel and a Savage. So because he had been her first love then, and she had not dared to tell him, she was here and he was here.
She was wicked, and Hugo would kill her if he knew. But Jason would protect her. He had a short knife, and his arms were sinewy and sunburned. The line of his jaw lay hard against the light from outside.
She took the book gently out of his hands and put it down on the bed behind her. She sat down on the edge of the bed and, as he turned, put up her arms and her face to him and closed her eyes.
She felt his breath by her ear, and then his whisper. ‘Will you marry me, Jane? If you will, we’ll go away, and then we can discover everything together.’
Not now, not now, don’t talk of it now when I am helpless, because now I must listen lovingly to everything you say, and it seems good and wonderful, but I know it isn’t. Talk of it later, when this is done and you have assuaged me, and then I will know it is madness and I will tell you again that you smell of the farm.
She whispered, ‘Jason, Jason!’
He forced her gently back on the bed, and she sighed, but he sat down beside her and said again, ‘Will you marry me, Jane? We’ll find men who know the way, and we’ll go with them to Coromandel. Old Voy told me that’s the best thing to do. I will make you happy all your life if you will.’
The dim yellow light, diffuse and rain-blurred, washed his dark face as he leaned over her. He said quietly, ‘It’s no use just lying together every time you want to forget that I am a farmer’s son, dear Jane. Do you love me, Jane?’
Because he had held off she was helpless against the truth. She did love him, but, oh, it was wicked and impossible. She muttered, ‘I do love you, Jason.’
She heard her own words and faced them. The memory of every time she had ever seen him came upon her, all at once and together, and swept aside the obstinate remnants of her pride. If her father could be made to agree to the marriage he would give them land and send them to London for Jason to be made into a gentleman. Hugo would be furious--but she didn’t like Hugo. She was afraid of him, that was all.
She said, ‘I’ll marry you, if my father will agree.’
She felt herself shaking with relief and anxiety. She had found the truth at last, and now it became the most important thing in the world that Jason should agree and somehow find a way to make her father agree.
Ah, she could have married anyone, but she would marry Jason. They couldn’t live in Wiltshire, but her father owned land in Dorset too. They would go there when Jason had learned to be a squire. He’d be a small farmer-squire, like Master Yeoford and Master Ingle here in the Vale. It would be all right, and she and he would He had gone limp beside her, and a sudden access of panic sent her arm jerking out to seize his elbow. ‘What is it, what’s the matter?’
Surely he couldn’t refuse now, to go and follow his crazy dreams, his mad books. He only wanted to go away because he was not treated as he deserved, but that would all change when he was a squire in Dorset. What more would he want or expect?
‘What is it?’ she whispered.
The door opened, and light flooded the room; light sparkled on the sheets and the high canopy and the red Turkey carpet and the stone walls, and on her clothes in the open wardrobe, and on the book beside her white legs. She rolled over and up with a cry, her hands pressed to her face. Jason jumped to his feet and turned. It was her brother Hugo.
Hugo put down his lantern on the table, and the light from it flashed down the long blade of the rapier in his hand. He was fully dressed--crumple
d riding boots and spurs, silk breeches, red doublet, wide white ruff, his head bare, long hair wet on his shoulders, empty scabbard swinging against his legs as he stepped forward, the sword drawn back.
She cried, ‘Oh, no, Hugo, no! I love him. We’re going to be married!’
Her brother looked only at Jason and muttered, ‘You whoreson knave,’ and lunged out.
The rapier slid down the light, the sparks slid up the blade, and the point flickered past Jason’s side as he bent and jumped in. The men met, breast to breast, in the centre of her bedroom, their left hands locked above their heads, the rapier snaking back and back, but it was too long. She felt the night air cold in her teeth and saw the poacher’s knife in Jason’s hand, and saw it strike down into her brother’s back. Hugo’s eyes widened, and Jason caught him and eased him to the floor. What was the matter with him? But Jason’s hand glowed red as nightshade berries, and the blade of his knife dripped red on to the red carpet, and the pool of red widened under her brother’s back, and his eyes stared, amazed, at the carved ceiling.
Jason bent and put his hand on Hugo’s heart. He straightened up and said, ‘I’ve killed him.’ Then, slowly: ‘Better him than you. Did I have to kill him?’
He shut the door with care. She said, ‘Hugo, my brother.’ She knelt down and looked into his face, and put out her hand to touch him, but dared not. It was her fault too that he lay dead on her carpet, because she had been wicked enough to fall in love with Jason and to wish that Jason would protect her against Hugo’s anger.
She felt wild, deep breaths of air fighting down into her lungs, and the room and Jason’s face and Hugo’s dead eyes blurred together. Then Jason’s hands were on her wrists. He said, ‘Be still, darling Jane. We can reach my father’s farm in twenty minutes. Molly will help, and we can get the horses ready in ten more. By morning we can be past Salisbury if we ride hard. If you have any money, get it. Dress quickly, my dear love. We’ll take the first ship.’
