Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (4 page)

“Did you see anyone?”

“No sir. Master Robert said he’d dropped the hen and run away. Then we all went to look for your young daughter but we didn’t find her at the village.”

“Why did you stop looking?”

“Someone shouted that they could see fire and we knew it must be at the farm so we all ran back.”

“Did you see anyone then?”

“No sir.”

“Are you certain your bonfire was out?”

“Oh yes, sir. Dead and cold. But it was a long way from the stack. I would never make a bonfire near the stack.”

“And all afternoon you never saw a stranger lurking about.”

“No, sir.”

“I understand you found a pair of your own breeches on the ground?”

“My mother saw them first, sir, and asked me why I’d made them dirty again when she’d cleaned them the day before.”

There was a ripple of laughter at that, quickly dying away. Daniel understood about dirty clothes. Jenny, the maidservant at the parsonage, was always grumbling at him for making his clothes dirty.

“What did you tell your mother?” Sir John asked.

“
I
didn’t make them dirty, sir.”

“Thank you, young man. I think you have said all you know.”

The boy bowed his head and was stepping away when Sir John exclaimed, “Ah, one moment. Did you see a fat boy anywhere about?”

The boy looked startled but said quickly, “Why, no, sir.”

“Right, you may return to your place.”

Sir John now called his own son. Daniel’s heart quailed when the thin cruel voice swore on the Bible.

“Have you seen this man before?”

“Yes, sir. Yesterday at Turner’s Farm.”

“Recount what happened, exactly.”

The cruel eyes burnt into him so Daniel looked down at his breeches. They were ripped at the knee, perhaps on a tree stump when he slithered down the bank.

“As I walked from the Hall to the Turner’s Farm,” the cruel young man said, “I saw a fair head in the field behind the haystack. It caught the last light of the sunset and I thought, what’s he up to? He’s a stranger, so I stepped off the track onto the grassy edge and trod softly. I saw him eying the hens running up the field. He peeped round the haystack to see if anyone was about and then suddenly grabbed a hen as it ran past him. I gave him a warning shout and then fired. Thanks to my good French pistol I hit his shoulder and he squealed out. You can see the blood on his shirt this minute. He disappeared from sight behind the trees on the bank and I thought he had run away but it seems he hid down there –”

“Now you are guessing. You didn’t look.”

“Turner and his folk came out. The rest you know from young Sam. But it’s plain enough the man was hiding till we’d all gone the other way. No one else was about. He went for the breeches – see his own rags – and when they didn’t fit and his wound was paining him he went wild and fired the stack. Get the man hung.” There were murmurs of approval from the crowd behind Daniel.

“By what means could he have set fire to the stack?”

“Soldiers carry tinder boxes.”

One of the pitchfork men shouted out from the witnesses’ line, “He had nothing with him when we took him, Sir John, but he’d throw it away. He’s a deserter.”

“You will have your say in a moment,” Sir John said. “Robert, if you have nothing more to say you may stand aside.”

Daniel was shocked to see the young man raise his black brows and curl his thin lips to frame the word, “Fool!” Honour thy father and mother, he had been taught. It was one of the Ten Commandments.

The woman who had opened the door to him was pushed forward now and sworn in. “Oh, Sir John,” she cried, “I’d been told the robber was very fair and here he was stood at my own door, his clothes all bloody and torn. I slammed the door and shouted to my lads and they grabbed their pitchforks and ran round the house and seized him. I gave them my clothesline to tie him up when they had him safe. That’s it there and I’ll be wanting it back. It’s good rope, that.”

Now there was a sudden commotion among the crowd gathered in the doorway. Daniel looked round. Perhaps it was Nat come to rescue him. No, it was a man leaping from a horse. Daniel saw its big head shaking up and down behind the people.

“Is Sir John Horden there?” The man was pushing his way in. “The Scots are on the march here. They’ve orders to turn us out of our houses.”

Amid the shouts and cries of dismay Sir John called to the messenger, “How long till they are here?”

“Half an hour at the most.”

“We will conclude this properly. Pray do not run away any of you. The Scots will ask to billet here, that’s all. They will not turn you out. Prisoner, what is your name?”

“Daniel Wilson, my lord.”

“Answer me at once. You’ve heard what’s been said – that you tried to steal a hen, you set a fire, you were going to steal the breeches but they were too small, you saw a fat boy whom you are blaming for these things. Are you guilty?”

Daniel stared at him. How could he answer so many words? Nat always said, “Line the pictures in your head and use them when words come hard to you.”

Sometimes he could count his pictures on his fingers. That was what he must do now. He spread the fingers of his right hand that was trapped against his side and looked down at it. The hen picture first. He curled back his forefinger and said, “The hen, yes, my Lord, but I dropped it with the bang and the pain.” The fire picture. He curled back his second finger. “The fire, yes my Lord, there was fire and a wind. It blew the fire.”

Murmurings came from the crowd at that but he mustn’t let himself be stopped. He curled back his third finger. “Breeches?” He shook his head and then looked at his knee. “Yes, torn.” That was a present picture so he could be sure of it. He curled back his little finger. “Fat boy.” He could see the round shape slide down the tree trunk, the pale blob of face looking at him. But sometimes dreams were as clear as that and it was obvious that nobody else had seen that picture. The only children he had seen in the crowd were thin and the little boy who had thrown the stone – his poor arms were like sticks. Speaking of a fat boy had made the people angry. He looked up at Sir John’s frowning face and sensed the desperate impatience of the crowd. He shook his head. “Fat boy – a dream.”

Cheering broke out and the sharp cruel voice shouted, “To the gallows with him. You are still the law here, sir.”

Daniel looked up at the face of Sir John.

Sir John turned to the jurymen. “Do you find Daniel Wilson guilty or not guilty?”

They all yelled “Guilty.”

He sighed. “Daniel Wilson, I would commit you to the care of a constable till the sentence be pronounced by a more regular court –” He got no further.

His son, Robert, of the sharp, cruel voice shouted out, “Do your duty, men. He has been condemned to hang.”

There was not a second’s pause. Daniel found himself manhandled out of the building, the crowd pressing on every side. His legs scrabbled along the ground as they ran with him across the green, out between the houses and up a hill. At the top he could see a gallows, a stark shape against the blue heaven. There was one just like it back home outside the nearest town. He had seen figures hang there and had hidden his eyes because he couldn’t bear to think what it must feel like in the moments before you became a corpse. They were rushing him towards it.

He couldn’t die away from Nat. Nat and he did everything together. Surely Nat would come. He gave a scream. “Na-a-a-a-at! Na-a-a-at!”

“Is he saying ‘not that’? But yes indeed that. You should have thought of that before you fired my stack.”

Daniel had shut his eyes to the sight. He saw a picture of his father kneeling by a dying woman and forgiving her her sins. Her eyes had smiled through her pain.

I have to be forgiven if I am going to die. I know I am a sinner. We are all sinners. I have to pray. Father signs the cross over them as they are going.

All at once he felt his arm loosened. They needed the rope. His hand flew up to his chest and he made the cross as he had seen his father do. His lips cried out, “Father! Father!”

“By the Lord,” voices cried all around him, “he’s a filthy papist too.” Something heavy struck him on the head. Stars. A rushing in his ears. Darkness. Oblivion.

He knew nothing of the moment he had dreaded.

Bel roused herself. She could hear horses’ hooves in the stable yard below and the raised voices of her father and Robert. She flew to the window but then opened the casement gently so it wouldn’t creak. She could see and hear plainly.

“I say it was bungled,” her father exclaimed. “I am not comfortable in my mind. He was big but he was no more than a lad and simple at that.”

“The only bungling was Turner clubbing him for a papist. He was knocked out so we couldn’t see him squirm.”

“He will have a family somewhere who will want to know what happened. We are not even sure whether he was in the army or where he came from. There could be an officer in whose troop he served – if I could trace him in all this chaos.”

“If you found him he’d shoot him for desertion, so you’ve saved him the trouble.”

“I will have the old dame’s notes written over properly and the whole thing put in the judicial records. I have a reputation, my son, that I value and I hope to God that you will one day deserve men’s respect yourself.”

Robert laughed his thin high laugh which Bel loathed. “I think
I
was more in tune with the people today than you were, sir.”

Peering down while keeping out of sight, she saw Tom the old groom come to take Lady’s bridle and as her father dismounted he replied with sorrow, “Their baser instincts, indeed, Robert. Men in our position should seek to raise them to higher things.”

Robert flung himself down, chuckling. “We certainly raised Daniel Wilson to higher things, but I wager he plummeted straight to hell.”

Her father began walking to the servants’ door, his shoulders stooped a little. She knew that dispirited look well. As Robert followed with a sharp word to Adam, the stable boy, to rub down Caesar properly, her father looked round.

“We must do something for Turner. He was hasty and vindictive but I can understand his anger. I will see to it he doesn’t suffer for this. That lad of his is a fine, upstanding youth.”

They disappeared below. Bel closed the window. She was smiling deep inside at the last remark. Oh true, true and my father knows it. Maybe he will be so pleased to be rid of an unmarriageable daughter that he’ll give me to a tenant farmer after all. Then she sat down on the bed and, with nothing else to do, tried to work out what exactly had happened that morning. It seemed certain that they had hanged the robber but how could Farmer Turner have suffered when he hadn’t even lost one hen?

The door key rattled in the lock and Nurse popped her dinner tray round.

“Don’t go, sweet Nan,” cried Bel leaping to the door. “Tell me what’s been going on?”

“I’m not to speak to you, her ladyship says. But I daresay there’s no harm in you knowing Farmer Turner’s haystack was fired last night and they’ve hung the man for it. So you see how bad deeds gets punished. Eat your dinner now.” She went out and locked the door.

Bel sank down onto the bed, her mouth agape. The haystack! My glowing stick – the flaming straw – the wind! It wasn’t the robber. What have I done? I’ve killed an innocent man. He didn’t even keep the hen and he was hungry – like the poor folk Sam spoke of. And now he’s dead.

An hour later her dinner was still untouched.

CHAPTER 4

When Nathaniel Wilson woke his head was clear. He felt a firm shape against his back.

“Dan?” There was no answer. He rolled over and found the two knapsacks pressed together behind him. He jumped to his feet and struggled to remember this wooden hut and how he had got here. Streaks of sunshine criss-crossed the floor from all the cracks, the largest a long thin triangle of light from the lopsided door.

As he stood staring at this gap and piecing together memories of Daniel being there in the night a figure appeared outside.

Nat took a step back. It was not Daniel.

Eyes, growing round with terror, were riveted at the opening. A choked off scream came from the lips. The figure scuttled away.

Nat leapt to the door and dragged it open. “Hey, you, come back here. Is this your hut? I meant no harm. I just slept here.”

The figure, an angler he could tell from the rod over his shoulder, hesitated and with obvious fear turned round, poised to run off again.

Nat spread out his arms to show he had no weapon. “Forgive me for startling you, friend. I have just awakened. The sun is high but I was unwell and slept long. May I ask you, have you seen a man like me anywhere about? My twin brother.”

At this the man stood very still, then suddenly scampered back towards him, hustled him inside and, following, pulled the door behind him to close the gap as best he could. He held his hand to his heart to still its pounding and when he could speak he gasped out, “Oh the Lord, I took you for a ghost.” The colour crept back into his white face.