Apples and Prayers (13 page)

‘As a barrel is round,' he'd say, ‘a Protestant will rob you of your faith and your money, for where he lacks one, there's nothing he enjoys more than hoarding the other.' 

In our cellars, the last year's apple juice had been sitting in his barrels for months. In a few more weeks we'd begin decanting it, filling up the cider jars and drinking off the pleasures of our labour. We waited to crack the barrels from wassailing, through Easter, to bud burst and blossom set. The time would soon be upon us. Like the growth of a child in the womb, the transformation in the barrel is a miracle of a kind, from solid fruit, to liquid juice, to the sharp delight of cider. In the orchard, the first leaves were out on the apple trees, tiny flags of green on the light brown branches, spurred on by rising warmth those April days.

Of all the trees that grow in my Lord's woods, the hardest is the holly. Woodbine and Coppin made neat work of their tough branches, turning them into flail handles for threshing corn in the coming winter. What was left on the forest floor, chippings and sawdust, they gathered up for slow burning; the April nights were still quite cold and biting. Once their work was finished, they planted out new saplings in the stead of fallen trees, to aid the woodland's healing and regrowth after felling. In this way – and by coppicing the light, strong hazel for hurdles and handles, the sallow wood for farmyard rakes – the woodlands of my Lord's estate were managed skillfully by these fellows in trade.

John Toucher's last few lambs came in those April weeks. With twins inside the fatter ewes, he hoped that both would come out live and strong. 

‘A weaker brother loses at the teat,' he said, ordering me to fetch him straw and water, as I helped him with lambing.

I watched the ewes nudge their blunt muzzles at their newly born lambs in the straw, licking them into life and prodding them until they rose on shaky legs. Two weak and infirm lambs lay abandoned by their mothers. Alford wished to take them in and keep them warm by the hearth, but the lambs died before she even had them through the farmyard. Others became distressed in their nativity and needed turning round inside the ewe when presented in the breach. John Toucher blindly fumbled inside the mother with his fingers, to make the lambs lie correctly.

‘It's hard to tell which leg belongs to which,' he said, ‘when you can't see. All you can do is feel around inside her.' 

He guessed which way the lambs should be turned and, more often than not, experience proved his choice to be the right one. He only tended a few sheep, but John Toucher knew how to handle them, as he knew the whole of his trade inside out.

One ewe, however, did die that month in birthing. As it was, her lambs survived and the orphans needed caring for. Other dead lambs had already been skinned, their fleeces ready to be draped over the back of an orphan. It's a bloody trick, but it tricked the other ewe to thinking that the orphans were her own, knowing them each by scent. When she smells their fleeces, she'll suckle them. The disguised lambs get their meal. From one lamb's death comes another's resurrection, the hope we all share as we face our end. The skinning is unpleasant work, but crucial for survival of the orphans. John Toucher's sheep pen was draped with the tiny, stripped fleeces of the dead ones. Their bodies and bones made stock for the pot. We kept Alford away from such scenes. She surely wouldn't have been able to stomach such prospects in the lambing pens, not in her condition.

By the end of April, much of the necessary groundwork had been done and the summer lay in wait ahead of us with all her promise, showing herself from time to time like a demure lady shaded behind an Arras curtain. But I had no time for daydreams of summer. One day it was starch making from the early bluebells, for stiffening my Lord and Lady's clothes; the next it was washday for those very same items. When I wasn't scrubbing them in the clear spring leat, I was starching them and hanging them out to dry between the showers.

By the month's end, my Lord's son, Robert, was ready to return to Exeter. It would have been fortunate if he'd made his arrangements to leave promptly, but he was an ill-organised young man, forgive me, seldom punctual with anything. I don't know how he kept his business running. 

He was still there, then, when his brother, Walter, rode back to the Barton, returning from his business in the capital. With his arrival, I wondered what argument would come to pass between the two of them. 

I'd come of age in the house at the same age as both of them, give or take a few years here and there. I'd watched them grow into very different young men. Robert was shrewd and proud and wouldn't take a lesson from anyone. Although to some this seemed an arrogance, I have to say that he was seldom wrong in what he could achieve. He took to most things with a skill and passion that frustrated his older brother. But his sharp way with words, his haughty looks and his lazy eyes, like his lazy timing, gave the impression that he was, in his soul, naturally sour.

Walter, on the other hand was methodical and rigorous. He came by his skills through application, learning and practice. He knew the Psalms in Latin, while his brother did not. Where Robert made his gains in physical prowess and shows of skill, Walter always proved himself a careful thinker, adept at conversation and in argument, never too proud to take good advice, or a lesson from a man. He spoke kindly and generously of others and afforded them the benefit of doubt in contentious matters. For this reasonableness and charity, for his unfailing religious devotion, I respected Walter very highly.

I don't remember fighting with my own brothers and sisters, but then I was so much younger than they, who all had died, or left our home, by the time I felt any need to prove myself against them. It was too late. But my brothers, however, did tussle and struggle between themselves, sometimes out of anger, other times in play. For brothers, I imagine such rivalries are always present. Where the father favours one, the mother favours the other. Where the younger suspects they show the older favouritism, the older takes it on himself to dismiss the younger's jealousy. These things are written into most families, my Lord and Lady's hardly excepted.

‘Welcome home, master Walter,' I greeted him gladly, as he tethered his horse to the stable post. The horse was a chestnut charger Sir Walter had named Major. Both brothers shared their looks: thin, but muscular, with crowns of brown curls that tumbled on their narrow shoulders.

‘Morgan,' he greeted me. ‘You look as sweet as ever.' Always kind. Always the flatterer.

‘Thank you, Sir.' I must have blushed.

‘Are my Lord and Lady not at home?' he asked. ‘Didn't you receive word of my arrival?'

‘No Sir… I mean… yes… they are here. We've eagerly been awaiting your return.' He smiled at the news. I smiled to disguise my fib.

‘Good, good,' he said congenially, anticipating, I suppose, a promising stay.

‘Your brother's also here,' I offered warily, not wanting to deflate his aspiration. He stopped in his footsteps and nodded his head slowly. I fiddled with my skirts.

‘Well, we'll see what unfolds, Morgan, shall we not?' he said, in a slower, deeper voice that betrayed his misgivings. He went inside to meet his elders and I saw him no further that morning. I collected a bucket of chaff and let Major take his feed there in the yard.

As he may himself have predicted, it was, indeed, only a matter of hours before the brothers' rivalry rekindled itself and argument raised its unattractive head. And, as she had confessed to me, my Lady must have right away told her son of the accusations his brother had made against their father. 

From my kitchen window, I watched and listened as the newly arrived confronted his brother in the stable yard.

‘A word with you, Robert,' I heard him call forcibly.

‘A
word
about what?' came the curt reply. Robert was saddling his horse for the journey back to Exeter. ‘Having been away so long, I should have thought your ageing bones might need some rest, instead of talk,' he laughed.

‘This can't wait,' Walter corrected him. ‘You know what it is I'd like to have out with you.'

‘Do I? Have out? Sounds serious…'

‘Don't play with me, Robert.'

‘Play?' he mocked again. ‘Play would be a fine thing. You always did like a game. I wonder who'd win now?'

Walter came around to the animal's head and pulled the reins from his brother's hand.

‘It must be something gravely serious, brother. I can't imagine what it might be?' said Robert. ‘Shouldn't you be straight to your chamber with some music and a little rest?'

‘It would be unwise to provoke me further, Robert. I'm angry enough with you already.'

‘I beg your pardon?'

‘A little less feigned ignorance would serve you well. Although it's always come easily enough to you, hasn't it? Adding stupidity to ingratitude will only damn you further.'

From my covert spot, I watched Robert raise his shoulders, square up to his brother and jut his chin towards the elder's face. He wore his beard in a small point, like many fashionable young nobles. Walter's face on the other hand was shaven clean. His good looks required no covering. In this moment, however, both their faces were congested, reddened.

‘You malign me, brother,' the younger spat.

‘Not so. Brother.' Never did the word contain more disdain. ‘You malign our family when you accuse and offend our father.' 

With this, they clasped each other's arms and so began the grapple.

‘Since when was the Justice yours, pray tell?' said Robert.

‘Since age and inheritance made my father's concerns my own!' Walter shouted. He thrust his brother hard against the Barton's wall, bringing their faces close together. One arm braced him firmly against the brick, so that Robert couldn't move. Walter's other hand jabbed accusingly towards his brother's eyes.

‘And we're all well aware of where that inheritance has come from, are we not?' Robert cursed, trying to wriggle free from his brother's grip. ‘I can name many young Lords whose fathers once served the Holy monks,' he laughed.

‘Chose your words… very… carefully, Robert. You accuse our father of profiting at the Church's expense?' 

Again, Walter thrust his brother back against the wall, knocking the wind from him. Small clouds of dust were puffing up around their feet. A chicken squawked and flapped its wings beside them. The horse shook its mane and rattled out a breath of heavy air through its moist nostrils. Walter gripped his brother's jaw tightly with his free hand. I could see he'd won the wrestle, but had he held the argument?

‘I simply say,' Robert faltered, his face an animal grimace, ‘that some have turned away from the true Church's compassion.' He wheezed out his words, under the clamp of his brother's tightened fingers.

‘Listen to you,' said Walter. ‘It's merchants like
you
who exalt business and profits over God. There's the true betrayal of the Church.' With this, both fight and case seemed won to me.

‘Then I bow to your greater… wisdom… brother…' Robert coughed. ‘For you should know, having just returned from trade, yourself, in London…' 

The elder brother let the younger go, pushing his shoulder away with force. Robert stumbled back behind his horse and regained the reins. It was stamping a little on the cobbles and he soothed it by blowing onto its nose. Then he rubbed his own chafed chin, nursing his bruised pride. It seemed to me, however, that he was pleased to have put the last word in.

‘Make your preparations to leave,' his brother ordered him. ‘You've outstayed your welcome…'

‘I was leaving, before you halted me. Now you're here, what reason do I have to stay?'

‘Exeter's only a short ride away,' said Walter. ‘You'll be there by sundown. Don't bother coming back until you're master of yourself.' 

Nothing more was said. 

We wouldn't see Sir Robert again until the full height of summer was upon us.

With moments of discord such as these and my ongoing worries over John, over Alford's daily swelling, I was, by April's end, extremely worried. My thoughts hung heavily on me, the way a smoking back draught from a chimney hangs in a still room. I prayed by day and night to the Holy Virgin that it would soon lift, or that I might be mistaken in the meanings I drew from what was happening.

Even my dreams unsettled me. Often I would wake from midnight visions of a barren land, where barns and buildings burned in orange skies, where strange creatures and vessels flew, unaccountably, between storm clouds. There were boats in the air, with frogs for captains, fools and jesters in their liripip hoods, playing infernal music. The fields and streams of my dreams were peopled with rare, devilish creatures: malformed bodies, men with grillo legs, hog faced soldiers, dwarves, alchemists, lizard-tailed mannikins, covens of witches feeding souls into barrels, outlandish machines. These dreams brought me night sweats and torments. I thought I was losing my mind. And then I would wake in the darkness and pray for the wickedness and discontent to vanish. Sometimes they did and I was blessed once more with peace of mind and a quiet night's rest.

If there was one single night for dreaming though, it was Saint Mark's Eve. The custom is, for those who wish, to make their way that night up to the churchyard and, there, in some secretive nook, to conceal yourself for reveries, for unexpected pageants. It's said that the wraiths of all those who'll die in the coming year will troop around the churchyard before midnight, revealing themselves to the brave few who've made the trouble to attend their show. 

It was, if truth be told, entirely a piece of frivolity and, for my sins, I agreed to go to the churchyard with Alford. Our express purpose was to know if our own doubles would be there among the parading ghosts; to see if we would still be among the living at the same time next year, or if
we
would, Heaven forefend, number among the dead. But no one, in reality, wants to know that and we told ourselves that this was but a game.