by Leah Fleming
I could see Ambrose Swinstey staring at me with a sour sickly grimace that would turn milk in the pail and I hated him in my heart.
‘We have to follow them,’ I whispered to my aunt but she was frozen to the spot.
‘I will not go into that cursed place and listen to that impostor’s prattle, that hireling priest on his wooden pulpit. There are folk here in need of succour and sustenance before their journey home. There are those who will wait for their husbands to return. My work is here. The Lord will protect His own.’
‘But someone has to bear witness to what is said and done. I can go. They’ll not notice me. I am not of age to be accused. Who will bother with a maid? Please . . .’ I cried, anxious to follow my uncle down the track to Windebank.
‘Go if you must, but take care to take no part in the proceedings. Mind everything that is said and done, no more, no less.’
‘Can I go?’ Mall pleaded but Margery shook her head. ‘I need thee here.’
I think both he and I grew six inches at those words.
I slid through the crowd like a knife in melted butter, crossing the track along the high road through the copse so I could catch up with the prisoners and enter the township along the little-used path that cuts across the drover’s track, down past the Foss where the water rushes over the rocks, to a huddle of houses that nestle high above the riverbank, down the path to the cobbled square and the stone church with its square tower. My heart was thudding at the thought of entering a steeple-church but needs must when there was danger afoot.
I stood in awe at first of the high tower with slits in the wall like a castle turret and the stone walls, the windows coloured with glass and pictures, stone tombs lined with faceless statues. How could one ever think of truth when such distractions were all around to catch the eye? I crept though the door, hoping to be unnoticed, but folk notice strangers and some stared, pointing at me. ‘That bairn’s one of them.’
Now I knew what Peter felt when the cock crew thrice after he denied his Master. I huddled into my cloak, blushing with fear. Then the men were pushed roughly into a corner at the back of the church.
‘Take off your hats!’ barked the churchwarden but no one moved to obey him.
‘I won’t tell you again. This is the house of God,’ shouted the parson from the pulpit.
‘I doff my hat to no man but my Maker,’ said Uncle Roger. Elias Morton took up a stick and knocked it off his head. ‘This is not your assembly here, Windebank,’ he yelled. ‘Do your hat honour!’
The schoolmaster watched as his hat was torn from his head and stamped on but he said nothing. The priest rose up and began his tirade against the men assembled.
‘Take heed! This is what happens when men take it into their own heads to defy the laws of the land and the authority of the Church of England, setting up assemblies under the pretence of an exercise of religion. Behold this unruly sect of people who call themselves Seekers, whose only purpose is to overturn majesty, overturn ministry, overturn all our good practices. What say you to them?
‘These are men who deny all authority but their own, deny the common courtesies of hat honour, disturbing the priest in his pulpit, denying his good offices, withholding what is his due in tithes; who gather in public places to the annoyance of all. What say you to these charges?’
This short stocky man with blazing eyes was whipping up a frenzy of noddings and starings as the assembly began to stir and call for punishment.
‘They are yours to deal with as you think fit,’ he added, wiping his brow. ‘For they have sore vexed my patience with their murmurings and housecreeping. I will have none of them in this parish.’
‘Aye, aye,’ shouted two men who left where they were standing and started to knock their neighbours about the ears. ‘Out, out,’ screamed the mob turning angry, pushing the men out of doors down the churchyard path.
I tried to get out with the crush but being small and insignificant I could only wait, edging my way through as best I could to see what was happening.
It was as if my nightmare returned. These were neighbours of our village, faces known; hands shaken over deals at market now beating down upon defenceless men. What was happening?
Uncle Roger was beaten to the ground and kicked. All I could see was a confusion of men with sticks and staves beating the visiting preacher, beating, beating and I was crying out when I saw what was done to our schoolmaster Sampson. He lay prostrate, his head covered in blood as they beat upon him. In my dreams for many years after I still see those sticks beating like drums about his head and the blood on the stones.
‘Stop! These are your neighbours,’ I screamed. ‘Why do you deal like this? What have they done to deserve such? Stop this. Oh please stop hurting them.’
No one listened to me but a rough woman held my arms and pulled at my hair, bending my head back. I ripped her kirtle with my hand and tore away.
Then the black crow priest marched through us with a gleam of triumph in his dark eyes. ‘Enough . . . I think these Friends have learned a lesson for today better than any sermon. Go back to your wretched congregation and warn them that this is what we think of your message. There will be no more meetings out of sight. I will post a watch at the barn against any further defiance. Be ye assured I will make it my business to destroy this pestilent sect from our town. Get up and go home. I want to see every one of you in church on Sunday.’
The men staggered bruised and battered but one lay on the ground unmoving.
‘Pull him up,’ shouted the priest, pointing at Christopher Sampson. They started to lift him but he fell back.
The crowd fell back, silent, watchful as Uncle Roger and farmer Brindle bent over him tenderly. The rest helped carry him carefully across the cobbles under the lych gate and down to the schoolmaster’s house. I followed behind with his bloodstained hat, my heart dark with curses, not looking back for fear I would turn on that black crow and earn a beating.
Uncle Roger turned to me and whispered. ‘Go quickly for Mistress Sampson, send for Margery and her box of herbs. Hurry, Joy . . .’
It was hard to run uphill when I was weary, frightened and alone. It started to rain hard and I was soaked by the time I reached the safety of the ash tree, tears running down my cheeks, tears of relief, of fear and shame and shock, I know not which. I delivered the message and sank down in the empty barn as the congregation rushed down to Windebank to see for themselves.
Then my parents were no longer alone in the orchard. There was another grave dug by their side. Our schoolmaster did not wake up from his beating but lay for days until his heart stopped. There was no justice on this earth for him and no one was charged with his murder but I record here every act of violence I saw on that day and the names of those present were etched into my heart for eternity. The loss of him was grievous to us all and now there was no one to teach lettering and ciphering but myself.
The Lord was not mocked. A week later in the torrential rain that turned every track to mud and the beck into a raging torrent, Elias Morton lost his footing when hurrying to see if our barn was secure. His body was found down stream and my warnings of his fate did not go unheeded in these parts but there was no pity in my soul. His drowning troubled me not a jot.
The loss of my teacher was another matter and I could not swallow any food for days. Everything stuck in my throat, making me sick. I kept seeing the sight of him lying in his own blood, helpless against the fury of his neighbours. What harm had he done any of them other than to bring the light of knowledge into the minds of little children? What was there about our lessons that demanded his life?
That was the first time it dawned upon me that the world was unfair, that rain and suffering fell upon the just and unjust alike in equal measure and also that in those strange dreams I had foreseen it all. Thankfully I was still too young to understand why the gift had been bestowed. That would come in the fullness of time.
4
Looking back to that time nothing w
as the same after the parson’s attack on us. As months stretched into years we grew used to having a regular watch set over our barn to prevent any further meetings there. In winter it was not the weather for standing sentinel on cobble stones with the east wind rushing through the yard nor for us to meet on the fell tops in the hollow of the great rock.
There was a falling off of visitors, stunned by the death of Kit Sampson and the harshness of those we had thought our neighbours, although sometimes it was possible for Friends to sneak up unnoticed. Quiet meetings were held under cover of darkness, out of sight of the constables, but more than five adults in a house and we would be accused of riotous assembly.
Joseph Swinstey was not eager to stand in the muck of our farmyard while the farm hands bustled around and we hurried past him to the dairy, pretending he wasn’t there. He sent young Will Carr as a replacement for Elias Morton.
It was not easy to ignore him for he was built like a bullock. At first there were no warming possets of ale, hunks of oatcakes and crumbling cheese handed out in his direction, until my aunt weakened at Uncle Roger’s command.
‘The lad knows no better. He’s under orders but since he is in spiritual darkness, let’s show him the hospitality of Friends.’ My uncle limped for the rest of his life from the beating that he received at the hands of the priest’s men, but he bore no grudges.
It was my job to offer the young man warm cordial and havercake which he wolfed down like a hungry dog. It was hard for him to refuse such generosity and I could see his cheeks flushing every time I danced past him.
I was growing out of my kirtles and boots, filling out my bodices and shifts in all directions and took delight in his discomfort, tossing my head like a frisky colt, pretending I had not noticed his admiration.
Being at the beck and call of others did not sit easily on me and having few social companions outside the family was a constant itch. The Carrs were great farmers in the district. Had they been of our persuasion perhaps I would have eyed him with more sympathy. I daresay Will was just a son doing the bidding of his father, as I must fetch and carry, spin and sew and work for my keep here.
‘It’s good training for your position,’ Aunt Margery said whenever I baulked at her orders. ‘One day you will thank me for training you up to be a helpmeet to some master. When you have a cradle full of noise and bother to wake you of a night, you’ll happen train up a maid to serve you. What I order is for your own good, Rejoice. Obedience is the first rule of humility.’
Obedience was an itch I always scratched raw. I was restless, straining at a leash of my own making. There was not even any respite in walking down to Windebank for lessons with the schoolmaster now. It made the days longer and darker up here.
Sometimes Dilly and I were sent down with a basket of pasties and oatcakes for his poor widow. She sat by her meagre fire making lace to sell and we watched her twist the bobbins into such intricate patterns. We could not buy such trimmings from her basket. Seekers even then favoured plain apparel with stiff linen collars and cuffs and very little fancy work, to set us apart from worldly people, I suppose.
Isabel Sampson had promised to continue to teach us our stitchery but it was proper lessons I wanted to learn and no one had offered to replace the master. I dreaded passing the lych gate where that picture of him lying on the ground with his head stove in and the death pallor on his face flashed into my eyes. My uncle fretted that his barn was shut against the Friends but my aunt seemed relieved.
‘You were spared prison because of the schoolmaster’s death. It will be hard enough paying the fines again. What will become of us if you aren’t here to guide us?’
‘Tush and nonsense! You’ll manage fine with Mall and the farm hands. If I am called to make sacrifices in this world for rewards in the next, it’s only what the Apostles suffered for their faith. We must do likewise . . .’
‘That’s fine talking but how will I manage without thee?’ There were tears in her eyes and a furrow across her brow. For all the starch in her collar my aunt looked to her husband in every matter. They bickered and shouted like snapping puppies but underneath there was a great fondness one for the other that puzzled me.
‘Men and maids are made for mischief,’ warned my aunt whenever the girls in the dairy were fooling with the farm hands but the affection between husband and wife, that tenderness of concern, was something from which children are apart, I fear.
It was a strange time, sometimes yearning for the warmth of her mothering concern, yet other times wanting to lash out in response to her words with defiance. I was neither child nor maid but some half-changeling, betwixt and between; a stranger amongst all that was familiar and known. What was it that had changed me so?
I was musing on all this one afternoon when Dilly and I walked back along the ridge. We stopped to see the landslide where Constable Morton had met his end and I pondered on the warning, spoken in the heat of anger, that I had given him: ‘Watch thy step.’
Was it possible by my very words I had caused his death? By wishing hard, was something so? Would I be thought a witch for having spoken them?
As we climbed the track another thought came into my head, a notion from nowhere which stuck in my mind, a silly bold idea and it wouldn’t go away. Dilly was picking the last of the black spice from the hedgerow, bushes that stretched across the field walls waiting to be garnered.
We stopped to test them but the frost had shrivelled them to nothing. They’d been kissed now by the devil and were dangerous to eat. I felt a branch arch over and touch me, staying my progress, and a voice in my head.
‘Think on, Joy, there’s schooling to be done. Feed my lambs . . .’ I spun round, expecting to see Christopher Sampson puffing up the hill behind us, but there was no one, just his voice in my ear. ‘Feed my lambs in the barn.’ It troubled me greatly enough not to want to sup my broth or finish my platter that evening.
‘She’s sickening for something again,’ sighed my aunt. ‘I hope you don’t have notions about Will Carr, all this moping at my table. What ails thee now?’
Out it all tumbled about Elias Morton and the warning about the voice on the blackberry path and the idea growing in my head to keep a school in the barn.
‘No one can begrudge the children some learning,’ smiled Uncle Roger. Mallory bent his head down and sulked. Dilly jumped up and down wanting to be the teacher.
‘What do you know?’ snapped Mall.
‘I can teach letters and ciphering. We can read scripture and practise what the schoolmaster told us. I heard his voice. I have to do it.’
‘You’re daft in the head,’ he snapped back.
‘No, I’m not!’
‘Enough!’ Uncle Roger banged his wooden platter on the table. ‘The lass’ll do the Lord’s work in our barn until He provides another Master.’
‘She’s got her chores to do, Roger.’
‘I’ll fit them in and Nan can help me teach sewing if you will spare her,’ I added, pleading with my best smile.
‘It breaks my heart to see my poor sister’s smile in this bairn, all sweetness and light one minute and cunning the next. She winds you up like spun yarn around a bobbin, Roger Windebank. It’ll all end in tears if we open up the barn against the Parson.’
‘It’s my barn and my farm. We are free to teach school on a weekday. No one has spoken against that,’ he answered.
‘Just you wait. You won’t be happy until you’ve beggared the lot of us. I’m sure the Lord in His mercy does not wish us to tempt providence,’ she snapped back and Mall looked hopeful.
‘I have spoken on the matter, good wife and there’s an end on it!’ My uncle had the last word and Mall kicked me under the table but my legs were longer and I kicked him back so hard he winced and gave me one of his scowls that made me laugh.
‘If the wind catches your face like that it’ll stick,’ I teased.
‘I don’t care,’ he replied. ‘Don’t expect me to come to your lessons.’
‘When you can read and write and number as well as the lass, then I’ll give you leave to skip a page,’ said Uncle Roger, winking in my direction. ‘If the Lord is to bless us in the field and in the basket, we have to do our bit to promote honest trading and good practice. How can a lazy lummock who can’t read or write his name, or work out a sum of money make much profit?’
And so it came to pass that Widow Sampson left her cottage with horn books, slate boards and primers. We set out the benches as for a meeting, convincing young Will Carr that school lessons in the week were not breaking the Sabbath ban. Even the Parson could not expect a watch to be kept every night of the week.
If some of the parents gathered with us after lessons to sit a while in silence then who could say it was or was not Divine worship?
There was just a trickle of pupils at first from Windebank; children of the faithful who could be spared: Tom and Barbary Middleton, Jennet and Sam Brindle from Middle Beck Farm. Widow Sampson left me to work with Dilly and Nan who wanted to read Scripture portions.
On wild tempestuous days when the branches swirled about and broke and the river overran its banks, no one braved the journey and we sat at our studies, or at least I sat, hoping to pursue my reading until my aunt called me in to see to my chores.
After a week of terrible storms it was First Day again and Joseph Swinstey called to check there was no one in the barn. I made to slip past him.
‘None of that! No worship here,’ he shouted.
‘It’s just First Day school,’ I put on my sweetest smile and bobbed a bow. ‘Just Dilly and Mall and me at our studies.’ My cheeks were afire with cunning.
‘Well be sharp about it,’ he snapped. ‘It’s an idle wind is this, one as goes through you not round you.’ He made his pleasantries hoping for some hot broth.
‘Why do we have to go to lessons?’ whispered Mall, pulling away to be after his father.
