by Lynch, R J
Blakiston expected a pale face, for millers work constantly in an atmosphere alive with flour, but he thought he detected an additional pallor when he introduced Margery Cooper’s name into the conversation.
‘A sad business,’ said Hetherington. ‘But, you know, in the midst of life we are in death. Childbirth takes away so many.’
‘Was she a good maid?’
Blakiston realised with a start that the weird contortions passing over the miller’s face were intended to be a smile. ‘That expression has two meanings. We found no fault with her work, if that is what you mean. But, in the other sense, she was no maid, and she was not good as the Church uses that word.’
‘Mister Wale was taken with her, nevertheless?’
Again a sign of caution on the miller’s face. ‘Mister Wale always behaved towards her like a Christian.’
‘I expected nothing less. And let me say that, if there had been impropriety, I am sure it would not have taken place under your roof.’
‘I am glad we understand each other.’
‘Nevertheless,’ Blakiston said, ‘someone got Margery Cooper with child.’
‘It was not the curate,’ said Hetherington. ‘And nor, if your mind should be running that way, was it me.’
Blakiston spread his hands as if to say, “My dear fellow,” though in truth he knew that, when a maid was pregnant, her employer was as often as not the father. ‘Did she ever tell you who the father was?’
‘She did not.’
‘Your wife, perhaps?’
‘You may ask her.’ It was not Hetherington who said this, but the miller’s wife herself. Her husband showed no surprise at her sudden appearance, which could only have been possible if she had been listening at the door.
Blakiston bowed. ‘Mistress Hetherington. A pleasure.’
The woman did not smile, nor advance to take his proffered hand. ‘Margery Cooper was a child of God,’ she said. ‘As are we all. God tests His children, Mister Blakiston.’
‘He tested Margery Cooper?’
‘He tests us all.’ Shrewd eyes rested unblinking on Blakiston’s. ‘He tested you. You would not be here, else, in this parish.’
‘What do you know of my history?’
Rebecca Hetherington carried on as though she had not heard Blakiston’s interruption. ‘Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight.’
Blakiston glanced at Rebecca’s husband. ‘Where God leads us, there must we go,’ said the miller. ‘It is not given to us to know the place before we reach it, and we must not ask. Sometimes the way will be hard.’
‘It was hard for Margery?’
Hetherington’s eyes glittered. ‘You lead us always back to the girl. Perhaps you believe we would draw you away from her?’
‘Perhaps I might be right to think that.’
‘Margery Cooper was with child by her father,’ said Rebecca.
‘She told you that?’
But she had turned and walked away to the window overlooking the mill race.
‘This is important,’ Blakiston said to the miller. ‘An old man was beaten to death and his body burned. If he is to have justice...’
‘Justice! Justice is no business of thine, or mine, or of Lord Ravenshead in his castle. Reuben Cooper knows God’s justice now. His daughter knows it too. They have no need of yours.’
Blakiston knew that to become irritated was a mistake, but he could not help himself. He wanted to shock this rigid man out of his complacency. ‘What of Mary Stone?’ he asked. ‘Shall she have justice?’
‘That foul harlot? What has she to do with the matter?’
‘I have heard that, when the Reverend Wale is in need of comfort, he finds it between her thighs. Will judgement against her be tempered for this act of charity?’
There was a gasp from the window, where the miller’s wife stood. Hetherington was puce with rage. He held a shaking finger in Blakiston’s face. ‘That is a lie! A vile, disgusting lie!’
‘You know it to be untrue?’ asked Blakiston. ‘Or you wish it so?’
‘Mister Wale is a man of God. The only one we have in this parish that God seems to have forsaken.’
‘There are those who say otherwise.’
‘When you repeat the lie you join your own guilt to the guilt of those who slander this good man. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.’
‘And if the slander be not a slander?’
‘And the tongue is a fire, a world of iniquity: so is the tongue among our members, that it defileth the whole body, and setteth on fire the course of nature; and it is set on fire of hell.’
The closed face told Blakiston he would get no more here today. He put down his empty pot. ‘Thank you for the ale,’ he said, but there was no reply. Nor did anyone accompany him down the creaking wooden steps to where his horse grazed by the stream near the turning wheel. Gathering the reins in his hand, he raised his eyes to the first storey window. The miller and his wife stood side by side, close together, looking down at him, their faces quite without expression. The miller still held his ale pot in his hand.
Blakiston raised his hand in salute.
Not a flicker passed across the faces of the motionless couple in the window.
When Blakiston told the rector of his visit to the mill, the only part he left out was the suggestion that Martin Wale had sampled Mary Stone’s charms. He had not mentioned this when first he heard it, and he did not now. Claverley listened with a quiet smile.
‘Are they mad people, would you say?’ asked the overseer.
‘Mad. What is mad, Blakiston? They are people of God. They believe as Paul did when he said he was not mad, but spoke forth the words of truth and soberness.’
‘It was not the words of truth and soberness I heard from the miller with his pot of ale. And if his wife be not crazed...’
‘She is strange, Blakiston, passing strange. That I grant you. There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.’
‘I never heard of an Horatio in the Bible.’
‘Nor I. When I was at the university, I saw Mister Garrick play Hamlet. I saw him, too, in The Winter’s Tale. You smile, Blakiston, but I learned more of human nature from hearing Shakespeare’s words while I drank my ale than from all the professors of divinity in Oxford.’
‘You are a strange priest, Thomas.’
‘And the Hetheringtons are strange people. But I am not mad, and neither are they.’
‘What caused the breach between you and your curate?’
‘Breach?’
‘According to Eliza Swain, he lived here in the rectory with you when he first came. She said there was trouble and he left. What was the nature of the trouble?’
‘Eliza Swain would do well to mind her own business. This is a big rectory, with many rooms. Too many, you might say, for how we live now. There was a time when a number of curates would live here with the Rector and his family. Just as apprentices would live in their master’s house. Privacy is more important to us now than in my grandfather’s time. It is not so easy as once it was to live in peace with lodgers.
‘But it was not that only. Martin is zealous for the Lord. His zeal sometimes oversteps the limits of politeness. He called Lady Isabella to task for overseeing the cook on a Sunday...’
‘Good God.’
‘But in fact my wife was already furious with him. It was winter when he came here, and a particularly cold one at that. His poverty was evident in everything he wore, but what especially grieved her was that he had no coat. And no gloves. My wife has a tender heart. She knitted him gloves with her own hands, from woollen yarn spun here in th
e rectory, and she made him a present of a coat. To spare his feelings, she let him believe it had belonged to her father and was taking up space in the rectory but in fact it cost her almost fifty shillings.’
‘A fine coat indeed.’
‘It was made in Newcastle by John Taylor from good woollen broad cloth and lined with silk. Anyone would have been proud to wear such a coat. As, indeed, he appeared to be. For a while. And then the coat was seen no more. We said nothing, though we were sore puzzled. Difficulties had begun to emerge between us and perhaps he was embarrassed to receive visible signs of charity. And then my wife called on John Taylor to order a gown and learned that he had seen the coat being worn by a schoolteacher.’
‘Wale had given it away?’
‘He had sold it. Or so we understood. My wife’s anger was something to behold.’
‘I do not doubt you.’
‘I never spoke of the coat to Martin, but I had to ask him to go. And in truth I was happy to see him leave. He was an uncomfortable boarder. My conscience is not so thick of hide that it cannot be pricked, and Martin believes the pricking of consciences to be what God sent him here to do. I like a glass of wine, and a pipe of tobacco and the company of a godless rascal like yourself, and those are things Martin Wale can never approve.’
‘I...’
‘Divven’t fash thysen, as they say in these parts. I know how much harm it would do you to have your lack of faith talked about in public and I shall not do so, but I know you are no believer.’
‘Is it not your duty to persuade me?’
‘I know I could not do it. God will call you back when He wills.’
‘And if he does not?’
‘Then you will burn in Hell for all eternity. You will not lack company there, I promise you. But were you never at the university yourself, Blakiston?’
‘I...no. That is...for a while only.’
‘You are an educated man. You come of a decent family; that I can tell. What befell you? Do you wish to tell me?’
Blakiston shrugged. ‘My father was a squire, but no man of affairs. He invested most of what he had in foolish ventures. Then, to win back what was lost, he borrowed and invested what he had not. He died in the Marshalsea.’
‘A sad story. Thank you for telling it to me. You have weathered the storm well.’
‘We do what we must. A cousin on my mother’s side bought a naval commission for my brother and spoke for me to Lord Ravenshead. I had to give up the woman I was engaged to marry. Or perhaps it would be more true to say that she and her father gave me up. It is worse for women. My sister is governess to the children of the Earl of Cromer. I shudder for her. Hers would be a cheerless story even if she liked children, which I fear she does not. But enough of this gloom. What can you tell me of the village of Wall?’
Chapter 29
When Mistress Wortley told Kate that her brother had died and left her a handsome estate in Hampshire, and that she intended to go to live there, Kate’s sense of loss pierced the self-possession that she normally showed to the world. Kate knew that people saw her as cool and distant and she was happy that that should be so. She knew the passion that burned so often in her heart, and there was no need for others to witness it. When she had watched the Earl of Wrekin treating Lizzie like a whore she had known such fury that, afterwards, it had frightened her. When Blakiston had spoken slightingly of her sister as someone spurned by a suitor, she had been so angry that, although she knew that failure to apologise could destroy her family, she could not do it. And, when Lizzie had told her, “That man is drawn to you,” her answering thought had been “And I to him.” The realisation that here was a man who, had the circumstances of their birth been different, she could love without reservation, were things she had kept a tight control over. There were dangers here that she was not prepared to take on. She longed for Blakiston to speak to her of his love, and yet she knew that, if he did so, she would not respond. The risk was simply too great. Though, in fact, who knew what she might do in that wonderful, terrifying situation?
Now, though, she could not prevent shock and sadness from passing across her usually reserved face.
‘My dear,’ said Mistress Wortley, ‘I am not leaving you half way. You have been the most apt pupil any teacher could hope for. You wanted to read and you can read. You can also write, though it is true I should have liked to spend a little more time on that.’
‘I know, ma’am,’ said Kate. ‘And I am very happy. For me and for you. I can read the bible for myself now, and that is what I always wanted above all else. But I shall miss you.’
Mistress Wortley held out her arms, and Kate allowed herself to be hugged. ‘And I shall miss you,’ said Mistress Wortley. ‘You have spoken to me of a world I knew not. I have enjoyed our conversation. I am sad to lose it. But that may not be, for I have a proposal to make to you.’
‘Yes, Miss?’
‘Yes, Mistress Wortley. Come with me, Katherine.’
‘With you, Mistress Wortley?’
‘To Hampshire. I shall need a Lady’s Maid, and what pleasure it would give me to have an intelligent, articulate young woman with whom I can converse almost as with a sister.’
‘But, Mistress Wortley. I cannot be a Lady’s Maid. I do not know what a Lady’s Maid does.’
Mistress Wortley stepped back. ‘Then I shall teach you. You did not know how to read, and now you do. Believe me, Katherine, reading is a much harder thing to learn than caring for a lady’s attire and personal needs. Especially for one as neat in her habits as you. And I shall pay you well. And you shall have two weeks holiday each year, when I shall pay for you to return home if that is what you wish. And I shall travel to London and to Florence and to Paris and to Venice. And you shall go with me.’
‘Oh! Oh, Mistress Wortley, I should like that with all my heart. But I cannot.’
‘But why, child?’
‘Ma’am, I am needed at home. Lizzie is to have a child, and I must be there to help her care for it and to be a proper aunt to it. And I have taken on the care of the chickens and soon there will be pigs, and I am to learn to make butter and cheese.’
‘Chickens? Pigs? Butter and cheese? My dear Katherine, I am offering you the chance to be seen in the most stylish cities the world has to show and you speak to me of chickens and pigs?’
‘I am sorry, Mistress Wortley.’
‘Well. I understand your need to be with your sister when her child is born. But I shall not forget you, Katherine. I shall give you time and then I shall write to you to renew the invitation. I hope by then you will have tired of butter and cheese. And now, let me kiss you. I hope we shall meet again. And sooner rather than later.’
Kate had a further shock when she came out into the road, for there on horseback was the man who was so often in her thoughts, and it was clear that he was waiting for something—or someone. She dropped a curtsey.
Blakiston smiled. ‘Kate Greener. Hello.’
She would have liked not to smile back, but that was beyond her and she did not fail to notice the pleasure her smile gave Blakiston. There was a question here and she found that she wished to ask it, whatever the risk.
‘Mister Blakiston,’ she said. ‘I know that you are a busy man. And yet it seems that you are often here in the road when I have been for my lesson with Mistress Wortley.’
Blakiston coloured, and her heart gave a little jump when she saw this. A man who has it in him to be loved should be able to blush, and when Blakiston turned red anyone’s resolve might weaken.
He remained silent for a time. Then he said, ‘I know when you take your lessons. I make it my business to be here when I can.’
Kate’s firmness of purpose wobbled. In a moment she would be leading him on to declare love for her, if that in fact was what he felt, and who knew where that
might end? If he did, and she responded, she would bring on herself the condemnation of all the gentry in Ryton, of that she was sure. And if he simply sought a conquest, as seemed likely given the gap between their stations, she would rebuff him for she was not that kind of girl, and that might bring suffering on her family. Instead, she said, ‘You will not be able to do so again. Mistress Wortley is to move to Hampshire, though I don’t rightly know where that is. This was my last lesson.’ And she began to walk away, as she had done once before.
And he, as he had done on that occasion, rode alongside her. ‘It is a pretty county,’ he said, ‘far to the south. It is near Sussex, where I grew up. A most attractive place.’
‘That is good to hear,’ said Kate. ‘Mistress Wortley has asked me to go with her as her Lady’s Maid.’
‘You’re not going to go?’
How could she miss the urgency in his voice? ‘Not yet, at any rate,’ she said. ‘Not until Lizzie’s bairn is here, at the very least.’
‘Then I hope the child is never born,’ blurted Blakiston.
Kate came to a decision. She stopped walking and turned towards him, hands firmly on hips to show she meant what she said. ‘Mister Blakiston, please. You are gentry and I am a labourer’s daughter. You must not speak to me like that. I believe you like me, but you can never show me to your friends and say, “This is the girl I...the girl I like,”’ she said weakly, for what she longed to say was “love.” ‘They would lock you up to protect you from yourself. And if you wanted me in any other way then you would have to take me as the Earl took Lizzie, and I would hate you as much for it, for I will never give myself willingly to any man who has not spoken for me in church.’
