by M. J. Trow
Boscastle turned away from the sight to the terrified faces clustered round him. ‘Fetch Lady Joyce,’ he growled to one of his people and the lad was pleased to be gone. Heart thumping, he dashed across the peacock lawns and up the curve of the stairs, his pattens clashing on the stones. But he didn’t reach his master’s door, because Lady Joyce was already on the landing.
‘I know,’ she said curtly, to his ramblings. ‘It’s all right, John. I’ve seen them.’
She glanced through the casement on the turn of the stairs, as she hurried to join her household. From there, she could see her people, the Clopton people in knots of two and three, instinctively drawing together around Boscastle. On the slopes that rose to the dark woods beyond, where the elders gave way and the oaks began, Greville’s men were advancing on Clopton. This, she imagined, was how it must have been in her great-grandfather’s day when the families of York and Lancaster clashed in deadly sway across English fields and good men went down before the relentless ranks of roses, red and white. Yet this was now, today, the year of her Lord 1585. Could it be, as the Jesuit priests had told her, that good Queen Bess was just the Jezebel of England after all?
She crossed herself at the foot of the stairs and her heart jumped as she saw John lift a halberd from the rack in the hall. ‘No, John,’ she said. ‘It’s not going to come to that.’ She straightened to her full height and smoothed down her bodice. ‘I expect Sir Edward has heard of my father’s indisposition,’ she said, ‘and has come to pay his respects. Put it back, John, there’s a good lad.’ And, hesitatingly, the boy obeyed.
Boscastle hadn’t gone armed in years. But today, at least for the last hour, he wore his old sword, the one his dad had used to good effect against the Scots at Solway Moss. He’d already counted his menfolk. Eleven of them young enough and fit enough to hold their own. After that, the Clopton servants were women and children. And even the eleven had never actually fought before. They’d all had scraps, no doubt, in hayricks and farmyards the length of the county, when fists and clogs came into play. But this would be different. Straining his eyes against the glare of the noonday sun, Boscastle had counted more than thirty men, in jacks or brigandines. One or two of them wore helmets. At their head, Edward Greville was in full field armour, an expensive piece he’d had imported from Milan.
‘My Lady.’ Boscastle nodded to Joyce as she swept into position alongside him. He had served the Cloptons all his life, as had his father before him, since just after the Solway fight, in fact. He was only a young man when the girl was born and he remembered the parties and the hunts and the music. It was Boscastle, not old Sir William, who had taught the girl to ride.
She glanced down at the broadsword hilt bobbing at his hip. ‘There’ll be none of that,’ she said, secretly longing for the altogether more promising dagger of Kit Marlowe. ‘Not today.’
Edward Greville clashed under the Clopton arch in a storm of echoing hoofbeats and halted his bay, standing in the stirrups to view the ground. At a nod of his head, his armed horsemen broke into two, half to his left, half to his right and formed a semicircle of death around the Clopton servants. A little girl began to cry until her mother hushed her, burying the child’s tear-streaked face in her skirts.
‘Sir Edward,’ Joyce Clopton called out in a clear, strong voice, ‘you are frightening the children.’
Greville unhooked his helmet and lifted it off, passing it to a lackey on his left. He steadied the horse as though to dismount.
‘No,’ she said, ‘no need to get down. You won’t be staying that long, surely.’
He paused as his foot left the stirrup but no mere woman was going to deflect him from his purpose, by God, and with an arrogant jump he reached the ground. Another lackey ran to hold the animal’s bridle and Greville closed to Joyce. ‘I have heard your father is unwell, My Lady,’ he said softly. ‘May I see him?’
‘No, Sir Edward, you may not. Not if you were the last man alive.’
His scowl turned to a smile. ‘This is simply a courtesy call,’ he said. ‘One local landowner to another.’
She tapped smartly on the damascened breastplate with her knuckles. ‘Do you always go so heavily armed to pay your courtesy calls?’ she asked. ‘Or is it true what they say?’
The scowl had returned. ‘What do they say?’ he asked and immediately wished he hadn’t.
‘That Sir Edward Greville is so feared for his life that he sleeps surrounded by crumpled paper in his chamber in case someone should sneak in on him. That he goes to the jakes armed cap-a-pie.’
She saw the muscles twitch in Greville’s jaw and knew the risk she was taking. So did Boscastle and he instinctively moved towards her, making sure his sword arm was free. Greville snapped his fingers and a portly man wearing the livery of Lincoln’s Inn was grateful to climb down from the saddle. Never a natural horseman, Henry Blake was far happier on his own two feet.
‘I had hoped to deal with Sir William in person,’ Greville said as Blake held his satchel in front of him, ready for business. ‘But as that seems impossible . . .’ He gestured towards the front door. ‘Shall we, Lady Joyce?’
‘Whatever business we have to discuss,’ she said, ‘can be conducted here, in the open. In the honest light of day.’
‘Very well,’ Greville conceded. ‘Blake. You know my factotum?’ he checked with Joyce by way of introduction.
‘I know your creature,’ she said, looking down her nose at the reptilian lawyer, busily ransacking his satchel for the necessary papers.
‘By an escheat dated 1544 and another for 1469,’ Blake began, reading from the Latin, ‘Clopton Hall and all the movables thereof are forfeit to the lord of the manor of Stratford, viz and to wit, Sir Edward Greville . . .’
‘Show me that!’ Joyce snapped. Blake passed the parchment scroll across, vaguely astonished that the woman could read Latin at all. She read while Boscastle steadied the scroll.
‘This is nonsense,’ Joyce said, ‘legal hocus pocus. In what sense can one landowner demand the property of another without a mutual agreement, either by cash or marriage?’
‘Marriage,’ Greville said with a smile, closing to the woman. ‘The idea had crossed my mind and since you force me to conduct such delicate business here in my . . . in your father’s courtyard, I must, I’m afraid, dispense with the usual formalities. I had come, Lady Joyce, to ask your father for his daughter’s hand in marriage. But as things stand . . .’ He smiled at the astonished look on her face and bent his head towards hers, his nose pointing to the jut of her breasts. ‘We are people of the world, Joyce, you and I, not country clods. We don’t have need of banns and courtship and ceremony. And time is pressing –’ he glanced down – ‘as my codpiece is reminding me.’
There was a ripple of coarse laughter from his men behind him and no one was quite ready for what happened next. Joyce brought her left hand back with force and slapped Edward Greville around the face. He staggered backwards and three or four swords shot clear among his horsemen. Boscastle’s blade gleamed in his hand too. Steadying himself, Greville held up his hand to calm the moment. He tasted his own blood on his lip and snarled at Joyce. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Master Blake here assures me that I have the right to take Clopton Manor, if, as now seems likely, it does not come to me by any formal arrangement, on one condition only.’
‘And that is?’ Joyce was too furious to realize the risk she was taking and her voice was still strong, her head high.
Greville wiped his lip with the back of his hand and saw the blood smear the laces at his wrist. ‘And that is that all recusants’ lands are forfeit to the Crown.’ He flung his arm behind him towards Stratford. ‘The Clopton pew in Trinity Church has been empty this many a long year, lady,’ he said, ‘because your father – and, no doubt, you – are of the Papist faith.’
The rumbling that had been growing among the Clopton people ever since Greville arrived now broke out into shouts and curses, men and women screaming at the intruder. Bu
t Joyce held up her hand for quiet and they obeyed.
‘As Lord of the Manor of Stratford,’ Greville went on in the new silence, ‘I claim Clopton in the name of her glorious Majesty, Elizabeth.’ And he crossed as near to Joyce Clopton as he dared. ‘And all the movables thereof.’
ELEVEN
Meon Hill lay stark under the summer sun. The fields of the Midland Shires shimmered in the heat of the noonday. And the farmers, long waiting for this for their harvests, whetted their scythes and smiled to each other. The circle of the seasons was complete, once again. Time, come Sunday, to give thanks to the Lord.
Etty Barham sat on an old tree stump staring out across the rolling hills. She had done this ever since she was a girl and had talked to herself under the moon. Her father, when she was little, had taken off his belt and strapped her – she had the weals across her back to this day. But then, on a day like this when the birds sang in the meadow stillness, she had looked at him, whispering under her breath the words she knew but could not remember learning – ‘Eheich, iod, tetragamaton elohim, el elohi gabor. Tzabaoth, Tzabaoth. Eheich.’
Her father had stopped in his tracks, his blood frozen, his mind gone. He had fallen, writhing to the ground, chewing the dust as he clawed to bring back his fleeing soul. But it was all too late for him and by cock-shut time he lay in his burial shroud. No one ever took their belt off to Etty Barham again.
She sighed and went on stroking the warm plumage of the plover in her lap. That was all so long ago and she could barely remember it now. She who lived by herself, who knew the winding roads and the lonely call of the wind. What was it they called her in the village? A hedge witch? No, she was more cunning than that. Her children scampered around her, the rats that scuttled in her thatch, the toad that sat bloated and sullen, slowly blinking its golden eyes, by her hearth; the earthworms she nibbled through the night. She was never lonely.
They came to her for charms, for spells. At night, when their neighbours couldn’t see them – the men whose wives wandered to other men; the lame who couldn’t walk; the blind who couldn’t see. Those who had lost their way; those who wanted blood; those who believed in an eye for an eye. They all came to her and she gave them what they wanted.
But now was a different time. The summer of the weather, the summer of storms. It was nearly Lugnasadh and she had miles to go. All must be ready, all carefully prepared. She stroked the half-tame bird one last time and then snapped its neck.
Henry Blake sat in Sir William Clopton’s chair in Sir William Clopton’s Great Hall and smiled to himself. Standing in front of him were the entire staff, all of Clopton’s people. Blake sensed the air in the Hall, the mood of pure hatred; but then, he was a lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn and he was used to that. He noted that none of the men had taken off their caps and all of them, even the children, scowled at him as if the Devil himself was in their chamber.
One by one, Blake’s clerk read out the names and one by one they sullenly answered. There was no ‘sir’, no deference. But then, Blake couldn’t expect any. What had Greville called him – his factotum; his jack of all trades. And the Lady Joyce had translated that as ‘creature’. Marvellous!
‘Sarah Williams,’ Blake said, repeating the name the clerk had just read out. No one stirred. ‘Is Sarah Williams here?’ he asked.
‘She is not on the staff,’ Boscastle told him, from the far end of the room, ‘and she is known as Merriweather.’
‘Not on the staff,’ Blake repeated, ‘yet her name is on the list.’
‘Of those to be fed and cared for,’ Boscastle explained. ‘No more.’
‘How touching.’ Blake smirked mirthlessly.
‘Dorothy Gilligan,’ read the clerk, his quill poised.
Silence.
‘Dorothy Gilligan,’ he said again.
Again, nothing.
‘Not another defaulter?’ Blake said loudly. ‘Is she another grace and favour, Boscastle?’
‘No,’ the steward told him. ‘She is a maid of the kitchen. And should be here.’ He was looking round at his people, but none met his eye.
‘You are in my father’s chair, creature!’ A voice shattered the moment and all eyes turned to the stairs. Joyce Clopton stood there, imperious in her gown with ermine trim. In three strides she was at Blake’s elbow. ‘Stand up, you toad, when a lady enters the room.’
Henry Blake wouldn’t have known a lady if one fell on him, and it had been many a long year since that had happened. He was shamed in front of Greville’s men and those of Clopton Hall and he rose to his feet with an awkward smile on his face. ‘Some of these people seem to be missing,’ he said, tucking his thumbs into his belt.
Joyce looked at her father’s staff, Boscastle at their head like an ox in the furrow. ‘What is that to you?’ she asked.
As if to a child, Blake explained. ‘By law, Sir Edward Greville has taken possession of this estate and the movables thereof . . .’
‘Movables?’ Joyce spun to face him. ‘Movables, you clod?’ She snatched up a goblet on a side table with the Clopton arms stamped on it. ‘This is a movable,’ she said and threw it at him, gashing his forehead as he was far too surprised to get round to ducking in time. ‘These—’ she shrieked, and then, calming herself, went to stand in front of them. ‘These are my people.’
Blake batted aside the fussy attentions of the clerk. ‘No longer,’ he called out to her. Then he half turned to the man trying to staunch the blood from his temple. ‘Where is Dorothy?’ he hissed. ‘Where is the Maiden?’
The clerk frowned. He had no idea what Blake was talking about. He put it down to the blow on the head.
‘Well.’ Blake cleared his throat and resumed his seat. ‘To proceed.’ The clerk took up his quill again.
‘Boscastle,’ Joyce whispered in the man’s ear. ‘Where are Dorothy and Merriweather?’
And all the steward of the Cloptons could do was shrug.
The wagons arrived at the Rollright Stones after much patching and swearing just as the day was beginning to cool. The sweat from their labours was sticky on everyone’s brow and the little breeze that sprang up as they turned from the main road on to the track to the stones was like a blessing and everyone turned their face to it, brushing their hair back to feel the benefit.
‘My word, that feels nice,’ Sledd said to Thomas, as he pulled on the reins of his horses. He slewed round in his seat and looked at the boy. He didn’t look any different from the old Thomas, perhaps a slight whiskering of the upper lip, but that was probably there all along. Sledd knew you couldn’t keep nature at bay for ever. What was it he had been told when he himself was a boy actor? It’s sad when a lad’s voice broke, but sadder if it never did. He flung his arm around the boy’s shoulders and gave him a squeeze. ‘Forget the thunder box I promised you,’ he said. ‘I might let you have a crack at a part in this mummers’ rubbish we’re filling in time with. But don’t push your luck – no name on the handbills, nothing like that.’
‘Of course not, Ned,’ the boy agreed, a smile splitting his face from ear to ear.
‘And a pay cut.’
‘That’ll be hard to do,’ Thomas said, evenly, ‘since I haven’t been paid since last Christmas. I was learning the trade, you said, so I shouldn’t expect a wage as well.’
Sledd nodded and smiled. ‘That’s true enough.’
‘So,’ Thomas said, with the air of one pushing his luck just one tiny inch further than its leash would reach, ‘now I’m not learning any more, I get some money. Right?’
‘Wrong. Now, get down and start pitching the tent for the women. It feels a bit weird up here, I don’t want them in the open tonight.’
Thomas jumped down from the wagon and looked around. The track had brought them out on to a flat plain, with a circle of weathered stones immediately in front of the wagons. To his left, one large stone was standing alone, and ahead and beyond the circle there seemed to be another group of stones. Tucked under the lee of the last group, there se
emed to be a small hut, with smoke coming out of a hole in the roof.
‘We aren’t alone, Ned,’ Thomas hissed, pointing to the shed.
‘Well,’ Sledd said, glancing in the direction of the boy’s finger, ‘I don’t think we’ll be outnumbered by whoever is in there, boy, do you think? You couldn’t swing a cat in there.’
‘Why would I want to swing a cat in here?’ a voice behind them suddenly asked.
Both actors spun round, but there was no one there.
‘Who said that?’ Sledd hissed to Thomas.
‘Me,’ said the voice, ‘over here, in the hut by the Whispering Knights.’
‘If that’s you, Nat . . .’ Sledd roared.
‘If what’s me?’ Nat Sawyer appeared round the end of a parked wagon, his bed roll over his shoulder and a pipe of tobacco between his teeth.
Thomas plucked Sledd’s sleeve. ‘Over there,’ he whispered. ‘Look.’
From the doorway of the hut, an arm had emerged and at the end of it, a finger beckoned. The finger was crooked and gnarled, with a nail hooked and sharp like a talon.
Sledd looked askance at it for a moment, but it didn’t stop its slow gesture, which seemed to pull on him so he had to approach. As his feet seemed to drag him over the grass, Sledd looked over his shoulder, trying to catch someone’s eye, someone who would help him, but everyone seemed oddly busy examining the ground at their feet.
Finally, he reached the door of the hut. The arm had been withdrawn, but he could see a figure inside, huddling over a roaring fire in a fireplace almost as big as the room itself. Sledd screwed up his eyes against the glare of the flames. The heat hit him in a wave; it was like looking into Hellmouth itself. The creature inside did not turn as he approached the door and he certainly didn’t want to go in uninvited. It just didn’t look like the kind of place where that behaviour would be acceptable.
‘Come in.’ The person beside the fire turned to him suddenly. ‘Don’t stand there with the door open. Were you born in a barn? There’s a terrible draft.’
