THE MEETING PLACE

by MARY HOCKING

  ‘She is my daughter,’ she cried as the armed men advanced through the crowd. ‘She is dressed in these fine clothes for a pageant . . .’

  People began to back away from her. She and the juggler had a small patch of ground all to themselves – which was nothing new, it happened whenever they entertained at a fair. She clapped her hands and cried to him, ‘Show them. Show that they’ve made a mistake, that she is our child and we will act for them . . .’

  But his face was white and his eyes were wide with horror, just as they had been that first time when he came in from the dark and found the Duke of Clarence’s man lying dead in the kitchen. ‘Act it for them,’ she cried. ‘They’re so stupid, they don’t understand words; but you can make them see it. She is our daughter and we are here to perform for the townspeople.’

  The men with weapons were thrusting their way towards them. A babble of voices broke out. ‘It was her, she brought the lass here. She dragged her here, we saw it.’ They began to throw stones as proof of their virtuous intent.

  The juggler cried, ‘She is ill. She doesn’t know what she says or does.’ His voice was weak, he had no gift for words; but he was agile and he danced in front of Joan, warding off the stones the people were throwing. ‘Please, she means no harm. Let me take her away’ He capered in front of the first armed man to emerge from the crowd. ‘I’ll take her away, she won’t do any more harm. I’ll beat her once we get away.’

  The man swung the butt of his weapon and said, ‘You’ll not be beating anyone.’ The juggler dodged that blow, but the next caught him on the shoulder; even so, he was nimble enough to avoid another blow aimed at his head. But there were too many men by now and he had always needed space for his graceful art. They bore him down. The crowd clapped and cheered and several people ran forward to hold the girl in case she should get away and bring trouble to them all, but she was eager enough to be captured now, horrified at the ending of a morning’s impetuous folly.

  The armed men bore away their captives. They had left Joan and taken the juggler; he would be a more fitting malefactor to bring to the justice of their lord than an old madwoman.

  Joan struggled while sweaty hands tore her bodice and nails scored her breasts; she bit and scratched, fighting for her child as she had never fought before. They would have to tear her to pieces before she stopped fighting. And so they would have done had not the people in another part of the ground, who had no knowledge of what was going on, suddenly surged forward in a great hurry to reach the castle gate where they thought, mistakenly, that free ale was about to be dispensed in celebration of his lordship’s feast day. Joan fell to the ground and managed to roll under the cart while the thudding feet passed.

  She was sorely bruised and for a time could scarce draw breath. When at last she raised herself on one elbow the crowd had gone and she was alone, save for an old tinker who was loading up his horse. ‘They took’m away, tha’ fellow,’ he said. ‘Tha’ll not see’m agin. I saved this for ’ee.’ He handed her a velvet cap which she had given to the juggler, having come upon it none too honestly at one of the fairs.

  She sat holding it for a time. Violence had brought this quiet man into her life and violence had carried him out of it. She pressed the cap against her cheek, remembering the rich brocades and silks which he could bring before her eyes, the dazzling glory he could momentarily conjure from the simple trappings of life. In the days to come she would feel his loss more keenly than she had felt the loss of Martin. He was a good man and good men were hard to come by.

  Later, as the sun dipped over the field, she dragged herself down to the stream to wash. Her face was mirrored in its still water and she saw that she was old, and as she looked, learning the reality of herself, she understood that her wanderings were over. The sun-baked villages where she would once again find the steward with blue-black hair no longer beckoned. For the first time in her life she knew where she must go.

  ‘Here,’ she said to the old tinker, seeing with what eagerness he eyed the velvet cap. ‘I’ll have no use for this now.’

  She put her few belongings in two bundles and tied them to the long pole the juggler had used.

  And Clarice, returning to the car park, saw her as she set out on her last journey. Their eyes met and Clarice said, ‘Oh, my fellow wayfarer, how I wish we might speak to each other. Such tales we would have to tell.’

  That night, walking in the starlight from the theatre, she paused to look up to the hills and saw, directly above her, a solitary figure silhouetted on the skyline. ‘She has arrived at last,’ she thought.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘There’s another woman here,’ Joan Mosteyn said to Dame Priscilla. ‘Another like me. Only she wears breeches and her hair’s been shorn, poor creature. What do they mean to do to her?’

  ‘There is no such person,’ Dame Priscilla answered wearily.

  ‘But I saw her, and she knows me; she calls me her fellow wayfarer.’

  Dame Priscilla did not see fit to pass on this latest instance of madness. In truth, she was very sorry to hear it, for Joan Mosteyn had seemed to be improving. She worked harder than she had ever worked since she first came to Foxlow Priory, bending her strong, vigorous body to whatever task was allotted to her.

  Joan was taking note of the here and now of life. In the past there had always been something else that she was yearning to do somewhere else and mind and body had scarcely ever been in harmony.

  She said to Dame Priscilla as she did the washing in the stream, ‘When I was in my mother’s house I slept in a little room with a window so high I had to stand on a bench to look out; all I saw was the tips of trees and stars. My mother said I shouldn’t look out, that if I did I’d get carried off by Will o’ the wisp. But I married Martin Mosteyn. After Martin died and the villagers drove me out, I spent plenty of nights under the trees and stars, but Will o’ the wisp never came for me. Even when I took up with the juggler and we went from place to place and all we owned was the horse and cart and what we could carry in our packs, even then I never did catch up with him.’

  Dame Priscilla, recalling what the prioress had said about Joan gathering the threads of her life together, prompted gently, ‘And then you came here.’

  Joan said, ‘Yes.’ They both kept silence. Dame Priscilla thinking what a sad end it was, while Joan thought how wonderful it was.

  Everything had been taken from her, home, husband, children, lovers. And now, at the end of it, he had gone, too; that vagabond Will o’ the wisp whom she had followed for so long, beguiled by hope, had gone dancing off round the bend of the road and over the brow of the hill. She was stripped bare as a tree in winter. It was surprising how peaceful it was to be free of desire and expectation. In fact, now that she had nothing, she sometimes felt as though she had everything. It didn’t stay with her, this contentment. She had her fits still when her body would go dancing and no one knew where her wits were; but the days of her peace outnumbered the days of her fits.

  But for others there was no peace. There was sickness in the village and drought and the people were weak and starving. They looked back over past years, remembering disputes that had arisen over fishing and fowling, rumours about a nun who had conceived a creature up on the wild moorland, giving birth to a child with huge horns instead of ears, who had been buried alive at night. They remembered, too, that more recently the nuns had wilfully taken in a madwoman who had uttered dreadful curses and had undoubtedly brought misfortune on them all. Winter with its deprivations lay ahead; before it took its grip on them, while the blood was still hot in their veins, the men went out one night and raided the priory lands, setting fire to one of the barns.

  The nuns watched horrified. The priory had been their shelter and was now their prison; perhaps it had always been prison to some of them, but they had not seen this so clearly before the flames came near. Dame Ursula was not the only one to see the devil dancing in the heart of the fire.

  The madwoman became ter
ribly agitated and it took three of the nuns to hold her down, else she would have rushed out into the flames. ‘The devil calls his own,’ old Dame Edith said grimly. They would gladly have consigned her to the flames had it not meant opening the gate, which was a risk they dared not take. Dame Priscilla went for the old priest. He was in his chamber, standing by the window watching the fire.

  ‘We’ve held the cross over her and still she resists,’ Dame Priscilla gasped.

  ‘She needs chastising,’ he said, without turning his head. This advice was hardly practical since Joan was too robust for the nuns to chastise even when she wasn’t in one of her fits.

  ‘One word from you, Father,’ Dame Priscilla pleaded. ‘One word and the devil will surely leave her.’

  Joan had escaped from her captors and when the priest entered the kitchen she was pursuing the frightened nuns with a warming pan. The fire shed a crimson light on this violent scene and Dame Priscilla felt she had stepped into Hell. So, judging by his expression, did the priest. Joan came thundering down the side of the long trestle table, knocking over pots and pans and a bench, and the priest stood in her path, looking as though he had lost all power of speech and movement. Joan swung the warming pan above her head, holding it with both hands; and there she stopped, while the nuns held their breath, not daring even to pray, and outside the fire crackled and popped and the trapped cattle shrieked pitifully. For what seemed many seconds she remained poised, legs apart, as awesome as one of the forbidden gods the Danes brought with them long ago, the warming pan held aloft like the smith’s mighty hammer, firelight burnishing her fearful face. Then she let the weapon fall behind her shoulder; one upthrust arm bent across her face to shield her eyes, the braced muscles of stomach and thigh relaxed and with a little sigh this magnificent creature sank languidly to her knees, where she became absorbed in an examination of her gown. She studied the coarse material, apparently in some perplexity as to how she came to be so attired. Her words when she finally spoke made little sense. ‘And tell him to bring me a length of green say . . .’

  She looked at them, standing around her. ‘This is the time that the cattle are slain. Martinmas. Martin. And Piers and Jemima.’ She gave a sharp cry and grasped at the hem of the priest’s robe. ‘What are they doing to my children?’

  Dame Priscilla beseeched him, ‘Tell her something good about the children, Father; it will give her and all of us some peace.’

  ‘Your children live,’ he said.

  ‘They live,’ she repeated.

  ‘Yes.’

  She seemed at a loss what to do with this assurance and sat back on her heels, looking uncertainly about the room. The fire was burning more fiercely than ever outside and all around the walls glowed rosily, which seemed to please her.

  ‘Did the Lady send you to tell me this?’ she asked.

  There was such rapture in her face that none could doubt that it was not the priest whom she saw standing there. ‘The Lady did send you. She sent you to tell me that my children are alive. Did she tell you where they are and what they are doing, and how they are, because I forget so much . . .’

  The priest said, ‘There is nothing else I can say. Sometimes, Joan, we have to be content with very little.’

  She bowed her head. ‘I am content,’ she said meekly.

  The nuns marvelled at how the light from the fire could so transform this mad creature that she might at this moment have been taken for a gentlewoman.

  Then, as if by a miracle, it began to rain. It rained more than any but the very old could recall. Streams overflowed and the water, rushing from the moor, cascaded down, sweeping away whole farms and hamlets. For a time those who had surrounded the priory withdrew to shift for themselves and their families.

  There remained an unpleasant stench of burning that try as they might they could not get rid of; it seemed to have become part of the fabric of the building and it was in their nostrils day and night. There were those among the nuns who had sometimes enjoyed dreams of being carried away and used vilely; the stench invaded even this pleasure and turned it sour. Prayer was no help; indeed, it seemed that they were most in danger when they prayed. As they contemplated the Blessed Virgin, there crept into their minds things that had walked the land before the days when the first saints came to bring the good news of Christ, dark things that had been banished to the swamps and the heart of the forest. These things were returning to claim back their domain. The prioress did not share these fears but she understood them, and at night she walked from window to window, from door to door, holding up the crucifix so that the things should know they could not enter.

  When the great storm had passed, the villagers were in a worse plight than before. Joan Mosteyn pitied them. As she worked in the kitchen, helping Dame Marian, she said, ‘Let me go to them. I will take them soup and nurse those who are sick. I was ever a good nurse. It is all I have ever been good at.’

  As she spoke, she bent her head over the tureen, thrusting back her hair with one hand. Her hair had lost its lustre, but it was still thick and streaked with gold and it crackled as she ran her fingers through it so that sparks shot out around her head. Dame Marian started back. The soup had not smelt very wholesome for several days but surely this stench was more than humanly foul? Her flesh crawled; the old superstitions she had thought long conquered cried out within her, ‘She is a witch.’

  ‘We must thrust her out from here,’ she said when she recounted this incident later to Dame Edith and Dame Ursula. ‘Then we will all be safe.’

  The prioress herself was confused.

  ‘O Lord, what would you have us do?’ she prayed. ‘Were we all to be pure in heart as was your servant. King Henry, it would go ill with this your Priory of Foxlow, and even worse with the realm of England.

  ‘Lord, when a godly king reigns, his subjects grow daily more wayward and undisciplined. What would you have us do? Were I to abandon myself to meditation forsaking the ways of the world, the world would cheat us of our lands and our dowries and we should not be able to carry on your work. What would you have us do?

  ‘It was easier in olden times, the people had greater reverence, they made such generous gifts to the church that nuns and monks had themselves no need to store wealth and could afford to live humbly. That was a time when your saints could walk the earth. It is not so today. What would you have us do?

  ‘If we send this woman out again to minister to the sick, they will think we have handed her over to them to deal with as a witch. If we keep her here, there will be no peace for us and worse than the harm to our bodies will be the corruption of souls. Many of the sisters are frail in mind and spirit, she is a threat to their salvation. Lord, what would you have us do?’

  Chapter Twenty

  The farm folk had the scent of the storm before it broke. ‘Bad rain to come,’ they said. The air was dank with it already. Eleanor reported that she had heard there were terrible high tides along the coast. ‘Them’ll drive the rivers back like they did in the great flood,’ Harold said. No one knew exactly when the great flood had been, only that it was before living memory. Veronica had been allowed to stay a few days with another cousin who lived in the small market town some six miles away and Edward decided that she must be fetched back.

  ‘The lass’ll be safer there than here,’ Eleanor said, but Edward was adamant that on no account should the family be separated at such a time and he set out soon after breakfast.

  Rhoda had told herself that if she could but hold out for one day she would be on the way to mastering her feeling for Jory. But now a new and terrible urgency presented itself. As she listened to the talk of the coming storm, presented in the graphic detail that delighted Eleanor, and reinforced by the usually more sober statements of Harold, she, too, surrendered to the expectation of apocalyptic disaster. It was no longer a question of holding out for one day, but of this one day being her only hope of ever seeing Jory again.

  Had she planned her going, worked out deta
ils in bed at night, risen prepared to dissemble and manipulate, it might have come to naught, for she was no schemer. As it was, the resolution coming suddenly with no time for second thoughts, she simply walked out unobserved. Boldness, as so often, paid.

  What she had in mind she could not have said, as she turned her face into the wind. Decision lay behind her. As far as she was concerned, the chaos Eleanor and Harold had predicted had already happened; her world had shifted and changed overnight. How it would eventually assemble itself was unimaginable.

  Soon the path veered to the east, giving more shelter from the wind, which she no longer met head on. She was able to walk faster. Even so, in this weather, it would take her over an hour and a half to reach the parsonage at West Bentham.

  On the side of the hill, she saw sunlight on the trunk of a single twisted tree, green and flickering as if underwater. Ahead, there was no sun and the folds of the hills were gradually losing their sharp outline. On all sides she seemed to hear water running as though the hill were a honeycomb of hidden streams.

  Around her now there was no sign of animal life and very little vegetation, the grass thin as if growing on the crust of a great crater. ‘The moor is cruel’: she recalled these words from her childhood. Over the years, looking back on a place left behind, they had acquired an appeal, a suggestion of some grandeur missing from her life in London, a primitive strength. But Jory had said, ‘We can’t identify with land, make it into an image of ourselves. We are not hewn of this rock.’ The path on which she walked was strewn with stones; she would be better walking on turf, but on either side there were boulders among which it would be only too easy to twist an ankle.

  She was climbing towards one of the great barrows now, and the light was so poor that its girdle of heather and bracken was indistinguishable from the nearer pockets of bog that lay between tussocks of coarse grass. Water gleamed on the path. There was always moisture here because not far beneath the surface there was an impermeable pan of iron that prevented rain from soaking into the ground. When there was too much water, the barrow simply shrugged it off its great shoulders, sending it cascading into the narrow valleys to join the swollen rivers.