Lady of the Highway

by Deborah Swift

Cutch was too quiet. I could see him weighing up the men as potential adversaries. I suppose that’s what being a soldier does for you, and he was still worried for Abi. He kept glancing her way. He was on guard, I realised; he trusted no one, not even the Diggers.

  *

  The next day the men began to plough, though it was late to do so, and we had no heavy horses. The men had to furrow and till the earth by hand, and it was hard work. Cutch offered to help and to oil up rusty plough blades. The weather was windy and the rain lashed down, but we women worked hard to churn butter from Susan’s cow, and to grind our meagre supply of corn into flour. There was not much food to feed us all, but by sharing we had more than we could have managed alone.

  For a few weeks things went well. My grief had become a dull ache, I was no longer physically sick with it, and the fact I was doing something useful in Ralph’s memory eased the gnawing pain I carried for him. But then the weather worsened and the land, being flat, became waterlogged, making the men’s work harder. Small grumbles became bigger grumbles, and what had seemed like minor problems became big concerns.

  The fields were more mud than grass now, and through lack of nourishment the elderly cow had stopped giving milk. One day the men brought in the bloodied carcass of the cow and we had to salt it in a barrel, and smoke it, boil jelly from the hooves and cook up the innards.

  Never had I done such a thing before. The stink of blood and bone made my gorge rise. Margery Barton watched my white face with an expression of glee, passing me the slotted spoon to stir the congealing mass over the big fire in the copper pan. We hung the flanks of the carcass in the outside buttery when it was done, to keep them cold, but the meat did not last long. She was a scrawny beast, and there were too many mouths to feed.

  One morning, a few weeks later, we awoke to find the last flank of beef had gone. It had been stolen in the night. Nobody had heard anything, not even Cutch, who slept in the stables, but it made me wish we had a couple of dogs. I did not like the idea of strangers sneaking about our yard. It brought me in mind of the highwaymen. I looked at the empty hook where the meat had hung, and shuddered.

  Our pooled supplies soon ran out. None of us had any money. We debated what to sell, and finally settled on the spare harness in the tack room. Cutch was sent into the village with Abi’s pony, Pepper, and the cart to sell it.

  He returned disheartened, with the saddlery still in the cart. ‘They would not buy,’ he said. ‘They know I’m from the manor. I tried Soper at the hiring yard, and he said nobody would touch anything from the manor. It brings bad luck, he said. They believe you are cursed, that you bring death to those you are close to.’

  My heart sank. ‘Did you try the blacksmiths?’ I asked.

  ‘Same story. Except he was even more insulting. Said he’d heard rumours you were housing dissenters, and he wants nothing to do with us. It’s not good news. He said Downall’s already put in a report to the Protectorate to suggest you should be stopped.’

  ‘Oh Lord. I thought with more of us, it might persuade them, that they would trade with us.’

  ‘No. Banding together’s made it worse. They see you as a real threat now to their Puritan order. Cromwell always spat on the Levellers and the Diggers – thought they divided his army. He liked them even less than the Royalists. Don’t suppose his opinion has changed much, either.’

  ‘What do you suggest, then? Try St Albans?’

  Cutch sighed. ‘Don’t know. It’s a fair ride over there, and daylight’s short this time of year. But we must feed people, or they can’t work. I’ve no easy answers. Maybe someone else has. We should ask them. Tonight over supper.’

  Supper was a thin soup of barley and root vegetables. I was hungry. All at once, from being too grief-stricken to hold anything down, I craved something to fill my belly.

  Abi read my thoughts, as I surveyed my empty bowl. ‘Sorry, Kate. There wasn’t much left to make a meal.’

  ‘Aye, the last of the leeks came up today, and the clamping pit for the winter parsnips is empty,’ Whistler said. ‘We’ve just eaten the last of them. Don’t know what we’ll do now. We sowed chard, but the rain’s washed it out. Wasted all that work. And another thing – the temperature’s dropped. Reckon we might have another frost tonight.’

  ‘We’re out of wood for burning too,’ Margery said. ‘We can’t cook without wood.’

  ‘We gathered what we could, but it will be too damp to burn for a fortnight,’ Barton said. His depressed manner irritated me.

  ‘No need to get downhearted,’ I said. ‘At least you’ve shelter, and land to plough and sow. More than some folks.’ I tried not to make this sound pointed, but a few of the men frowned. I tried to rescue it, ‘Maybe it is hard right now, but it will come right for us if we just persevere. We should ask God for his guidance.’

  ‘It’s hard not being able to trade,’ Whistler grumbled. ‘And that’s because you’re not well liked.’

  ‘It is none of my doing,’ I said. ‘It was ever so for the Diggers. We shouldn’t have to rely on trade. We should be sufficient unto ourselves, isn’t that what Winstanley said?’

  ‘Ah, but he gave it up as unworkable. So’s everyone else,’ Whistler said. ‘We’re the only ones left.’

  ‘All the more reason to stick to it then,’ I said.

  At this everyone stared glumly at their empty plates. Except for me, not one of the women had spoken; all had let their menfolk talk for them. So much for Winstanley’s ideas of women being equal to men. I wondered though if it was the fact of my class that made me confident to speak. Had I been a serving woman by birth, would I have been so outspoken? Clearly this idea of living in community was harder than I had imagined.

  Nobody had an answer, and in the end we women took away the dishes to wash, and asked the men to leave their boots in the kitchen to be cleaned. As I chipped mud off Whistler’s boots, and cursed him for his miserable attitude, I wondered if I had done the right thing inviting this ungrateful horde into my house.

  *

  That night I dreamt Ralph stood before me, in his doeskin breeches and brown twill doublet, standing in the middle of the room, his hair even blonder in the candlelight. I cried out, and took a step back. Even dreaming, I knew him to be a phantom, yet he appeared so real.

  For a moment I could not move, my hand was clasped to my throat. ‘Ralph?’

  He did not answer, or maybe he could not. He gazed at me with such love, his eyes soft pools of brown, shadowed by pain. He was still, just staring down at me.

  ‘Ralph, I need you…’ In my dream I walked towards him to feel his arms circle me, to take comfort, but as soon as I moved he began to fade, like the mist when the sun comes out. My ears buzzed, my skin prickled. I reached out a hand, but it touched empty air. I was too late. He was gone. I cried out for him again.

  Abi clambered out of her truckle bed and went downstairs. A few moments later she returned, passing me a hot posset.

  ‘Drink,’ she said. ‘All this, filling the house with strangers – it won’t bring him back, you know,’ she said.

  ‘I see him sometimes,’ I said.

  She shook her head.

  ‘You don’t believe me, do you?’ I said.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe. I just know that it’s eating you up, that you are always looking over your shoulder. And he’s dead, Kate. He’s not coming back.’

  ‘I saw him. Under the old oak.’

  Abi sighed, her face resigned, eyes dark shadows. ‘You have to let him go, Kate.’

  ‘You think I’m losing my wits, don’t you?’

  ‘No, no. But it worries me. It’s not healthy. It’s as if you can’t settle to anything. This wild idea with the Diggers—’

  ‘No!’ I stood up. ‘It’s you who can’t settle. You used to be the hardest worker I know, but these last weeks, nothing has been done. Look at the place – the fires upstairs are cold, dust lies over everything.’ I saw her face tighten with indignation, but I couldn’t
stop my mouth, though I knew it was hurting her. ‘The sheets are damp on the beds, my laundry basket is overflowing.’

  ‘I’ve been ill. What do you expect? And I miss him too you know. He was my brother.’ Abi’s voice cracked.

  I took a sip of the posset, but it was still too hot, and my hand was shaking. I pushed it away.

  Abi stood up in one quick movement, and grabbed the cup, thrusting it towards me so it spilled over the lip and onto the coverlet. ‘You’ll drink it, if I have to pour it down your throat! Do you think it’s easy for me? To wait on you here of all places? Well do you? My brother murdered up there in that bedroom?’

  ‘Don’t shout, you’ll wake Martha.’

  ‘And haven’t you noticed, there’s been no sign of Jacob. Not hide not hair of him. He’s not been near us for nigh on a month.’

  ‘I hadn’t—’

  ‘You’ve never noticed. You’ve never even asked after him. You’re so self-obsessed you haven’t even thought how I might be feeling…’ She stopped. Closed her mouth tight shut, as if she had suddenly realised she was my servant, not my friend. ‘I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Tired of being alive when the rest of my family…’ A sob, and she turned without a word, grabbed the rushlight from the wall sconce and left me. Her footsteps echoed away, down the broad sweeping stairway, down the stone kitchen steps to the kitchen.

  I drank the posset though it made me gag. She was right. I was immediately sorry. I hadn’t thought of her enough. Her loss was as great as mine – worse, for she had lost her mother to the vengeful Copthorne, as well as her brother Ralph. My Ralph.

  And now she mentioned it, she was right. I’d been so busy I’d forgotten Jacob. Though Abi had always seemed tough on the outside, I sensed the insecurity in her that deafness brought. Her mother used to push her forward, make her do more than she thought she could, but she was gone. And now it looked like she’d lost Jacob too, and I knew how painful that must feel. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but somehow I seemed to be better at losing friends than keeping them.

  *

  The next morning I’d no time to find Abi before there was a rap at the door, and a messenger on horseback bringing me a letter. The cold red wax bore the imprint of the Fanshawe fleur-de-lis. It was addressed in Sir Simon’s florid, cursive hand to my husband, Thomas. I took it to my chamber, my throat suddenly tight with anxiety. If Sir Simon was writing to Thomas here, then Thomas obviously had not yet reached my stepfather in exile.

  But it had been months. If Thomas had not got to France, what had become of him? My mind rushed through the possibilities. I could not help but hope he’d met some ill fortune on the way.

  I rushed downstairs to find Abi, and took her to one side to show her the letter. ‘What should I do?’

  She was somewhat cool with me. ‘What you wish.’

  ‘I’m asking your advice.’

  ‘The letter must have taken weeks to get here, and Thomas has probably got to Sir Simon in France by now. Just put it to one side.’ Her look was a warning, she saw I was in mind to open it, and because I knew she’d disapprove, I left it.

  Over the next few days it sat there, like an accusation. The presence of this letter was highly disturbing, almost as if my stepfather himself were in the room. He would not approve of my ‘lodgers’, this I knew. I hoped word would not get back to him, but I assumed that he would not return to bother us whilst ever he was on Cromwell’s list of undesirables. The letter reminded me I was treading a thin line, one over a chasm that could finish me for good.

  Over the next weeks more letters came with Sir Simon’s seal, until finally a letter came addressed to me. The fact that Sir Simon should consider writing to me at all was a wonder.

  Katherine,

  Is Thomas ill? He has not replied to my letters. Are they reaching you? If so, why no reply? Please write and advise me at the earliest convenience. S.F.

  His usual rudeness. Not a ‘how are you?’ or a greeting. I wrote a curt letter back explaining that Thomas had fled after a disturbance in the village and was on his way to him in France. I had not seen Thomas since September. I thought of him, out somewhere in this freezing weather, and could not help but wonder what had become of him. I was sorry for him. He had always seemed so weak, caught under his uncle’s thumb. Besides, I had no love for him, Ralph consumed all my love. Even now Ralph was gone, not an hour went by that I did not think of him.

  But two weeks later another letter with the Fanshawe seal arrived, again addressed to me.

  My stepfather wanted to make enquiries about his nephew. He was coming home to Markyate Manor.

  7: The Dangers of Snow

  I slept badly, wondering how on earth I could explain the Digger community to my stepfather. Sir Simon must be mighty keen to find Thomas to risk coming back here into Parliamentarian territory.

  I dragged myself from under the blankets, for the Diggers were up before daybreak and expected women to be in the kitchen early. When I tugged open the shutters, I gave a cry of surprise. Snow was falling thick and fast, eddying past the window like drifts of feathers. Already a thick quilt had dressed the world in white.

  Thank God. Sir Simon would not be able to travel in this weather.

  I went to wake Abi. ‘Snow,’ I mimed, smiling, and fluttering my fingers to imitate the falling flakes.

  Abi leapt up out of bed.

  ‘Dress warm,’ I said. ‘Your chest is still weak.’

  Downstairs, the men were clearing the yard, but as quick as they cleared it, more snow fell, until they could see no more than a few feet in front of them, and their shoulders and hats were plastered with white. Cutch was the last to come inside, after valiantly shovelling for all he was worth. But finally even he had to admit defeat.

  ‘It’s set in, good and proper,’ he said. ‘We can’t fight nature. Best do work indoors if we can.’

  The men sat down around the kitchen table. The room was full of dripping cloaks, muddy boots and the smell of wet cloth. The room seemed suddenly cramped. The fire smoked, seeming to cough for lack of wood. The men began to discuss what might happen if the winter crops could not be sown, and with a great deal of mumbling and grumbling. At length when they showed no sign of removing themselves from the kitchen or finding anything useful to do, Cutch stood up and said he needed help in the stables if anyone would care to join him.

  All seemed to think this work better than hanging around the house so they put on their coats and cloaks and followed him out into the blizzard.

  ‘What shall we cook?’ Abi asked. ‘There’s no flour left for bread, and only a handful of barley.’

  ‘We’ll just have to be hungry,’ Margery said. ‘We can go nowhere in this weather.’

  ‘Are there no apples stored in the roof space?’ I asked.

  ‘There are a few,’ Abi said, ‘but I was saving them for the Yule celebrations next week.’

  ‘There’ll be no Christmas, if Cromwell has his way,’ Margery said. ‘We’d best get them apples down, we need to feed the men something.’

  ‘Come on then,’ Abi said. ‘We’ll go and see what’s there. Kate, would you fetch some more wood?’

  I resisted the urge to refuse. I still could not get used to the idea that someone else could give me orders, and all Diggers must be equal.

  The woodpile was reduced to just a small pile of logs. The log basket bruised my hip as I lugged it back, my skirts dragging on the snow. My legs were leaden, the cold seemed to reach inside my bones. I could not understand why I was suddenly so tired. Perhaps grief made me so.

  There was not enough wood to feed anything other than the kitchen fire and the house was icy, marooned in a sea of white. Drifts had come as high as the window ledges, and it seemed unlikely anyone could get to the village, even if we had coin to buy food.

  The fare that night was an even thinner gruel, with no bread, but we had found the apples and made a mash, which at least was hot and sweet. Some of the children began to grizzle that they were
still hungry, but the mothers tried to distract them by playing cat’s cradle.

  The next week things were worse. We dare not mention Christmas because there was nothing at all in the larder and we were a big company. The men had set out through the drifts to try to snare a winter hare. They could not bear the sound of the children crying for food. Abi and I kept ourselves busy cutting down clothing to make extra layers. Unlike the men, the mending and sewing brought us women together, but then we were in the only warm place in the house. The hard task of hunting in this icy landscape made the men cantankerous.

  By nightfall there was still no sign of them, until at last the door burst open and the men brought in a draught of freezing air. Barton flung something down on the table. A skinny hare, and a brace of robins. The robins lay on the table; their necks broken, their eyes dull over their tiny beaks.

  ‘Not much, is it, for a day’s hunting,’ he said bitterly.

  ‘Better than nothing,’ I said.

  ‘We should never have left the village. At least there we could go to a neighbour,’ Barton said.

  ‘Your neighbours live here – that’s what being a community is about,’ I said.

  ‘Seems to me that we men do all the work and you sit by the fire.’

  ‘Now Seth, that’s not fair,’ Margery said. ‘We’ve been busy all day.’

  ‘Does she do her fair share though, or is this just another way she gets us to be her labour force? Who benefits from this most, eh? We’ve been fools, all of us. We’ve come here and done her labour for her with no pay or recompense. It’s not right, that.’

  I was so angry I could hardly breathe. ‘I invited you here from the goodness of my heart—’

  ‘You mean because you saw a way to profit from us.’

  ‘Profit from you? I have done all the same tasks you have, have not shirked a single one. Who salted the beef? Who sewed in the dark to give your children warm petticoats?’

  ‘Old habits die hard. You treat us like we’re servants, not equals.’

  ‘That’s not true. You can’t bear the fact that I treat you like an equal, because I’m a woman, and you’re not used to a woman speaking her mind so freely. Yet that’s what the Diggers creed tells you it is right to do.’