Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (5 page)

Nat, weak from hunger, began to tremble. “What are you saying, man?”

The angler leant his rod in the corner, set his back to the wall and slithered down to a crouched position. He motioned Nat to come down close beside him and put out a hand to his shoulder. Before he spoke he shook his head several times, his breathing still coming fast. Then he burst out, “You must run. They’ll kill you too.”

“Too? Oh God! Speak, man. What has happened to Dan?”

“They’ve hung him.”

“No!
Hung
him?” A horrible coldness descended on Nat. He looked into the man’s face. “Say that’s not true.”

The man had the sweet timeless look of one who had sat for hours in silence by gently flowing water. His eyes glistened with tears as Nat’s sought in vain for hope. “I was there,” he said. “God forgive me, I could do nothing, but I believed him innocent.”

“Of course he was innocent,” Nat gasped out. “Daniel could do no wrong.”

The man seized his hands. “I believe you. I have a son myself who is slow-witted. When he spoke – your brother – I knew the signs. You say you were ill? Had he gone to seek food for you?”

Nat nodded.

“He took a chicken from the Turners’ farm but the squire’s son, young Robert Horden was passing and fired at him.”

Dan’s coming in the night burst into Nat’s brain. “Yes, yes, my brother was here. He told me. He was shot at. He gave me fresh water. He was sorry he had dropped the chicken. We lay down together. I must have fallen asleep again.”

“He
did
drop the chicken. It was unhurt –”

“Unhurt and they hanged him!”

“Nay, there was more. The haystack was fired and they were sure he had done it. He seemed to confess to it but the questions muddled him. And he spoke of a fat boy he had seen, but no one believed that. There are no fat bairns about here.”

“There was – he told me.” Nat withdrew his hands from the man’s grasp and pressed them to his temples. Dan had fallen asleep first. He always slept speedily whereas he himself had lain a while with Dan’s words going over and over in his head, puzzling his feverish brain. He could repeat them now aloud. “I know what he said, the very words. ‘The fat boy saw me but he went away after the bang. There was some fire. The wind was blowing it along.’ I asked him if he meant gunfire – the wind carrying the sound – but he said quite plainly, ‘Fire on the ground.’ I wasn’t sure what he meant but I drank the water he gave me and he lay down to keep me warm because I was shivering. Then he fell asleep. Oh I will curse myself for ever for not waking this morning. He must have gone to find food again. There
was
fire. He saw it but he couldn’t have done it. Why, his tinder box is here in his knapsack” He picked it up as the enormity of what had happened rushed over him. Dan had gone. He bowed his head over the knapsack and burst into sobbing.

The angler was shaking him. “Listen, man, you must get away. Grieve later. You are young. Save yourself. Think of your father and mother if they lose you both.”

Nat’s hands fell to his side. Father! No, there were no circumstances in life when he could not face
him
, but Mother! Daniel was her sweet babe who did all she said without question. Till he had grown too heavy she would take him on her lap and pet him and sing to him. When he became a great strong man she made him sit at her feet and she would stroke his head and massage his big shoulders. His big shoulders!

“What happened?
How
did they take him?” he demanded fiercely of the angler. “Tell me it all. I’ll go nowhere till you tell me everything.”

The story was dragged from him with many questions. He said he had just emerged from his own cottage to go fishing when he had seen Daniel knock at a door and begin to ask for food. “Peg Blakely should have told Sir John that,” he added sadly. “Your brother wasn’t trying to
take
this time, he was
begging
, but the trial all ended in a rush because of the fears the Scots were coming. They
have
come but only a small troop and their officer said your poor brother’s body must stay as a warning to all that there is to be no more looting or violence on any side.”

Nat recoiled in horror.. “Tell it straight,” he cried. “There
was
a trial then.”

The man told him everything he had seen.

At the end Nat repeated the names, “Sir John Horden, the justice of the peace who held a mockery of a trial, his son, Robert Horden, a vindictive beast, Farmer Turner, too angry at his loss to listen to reason, young Samuel Turner who surely must have failed to put out his bonfire, or else the mysterious fat boy blew it up again and fired the stack himself.” He jumped to his feet. “I must find the fat boy and prove Daniel’s innocence.”

“Nay, I fear that’s hopeless. Your brother admitted that was a dream. I’d wager the wind that got up after sunset did stir the fire to life and a spark could have lit the dried grasses round about. We’ve had little rain of late. Fire running along the ground. Ay, that was it. Some straw blew up against the stack. Look, man, the deed is done. Save yourself. Go home. Where are you from? You are not from round these parts by your speech.”

“Darrowswick in Yorkshire, near the town of Easingwold. But how can I go back without Daniel? He must be buried at home.” He broke into weeping again. “I must have his body.”

“They’ll kill you. They say our own soldiers beat to death one of their officers for being a Papist.”

“I heard that, I was in the army, but we are not Papists.”

“Your brother crossed himself –”

“I know, you said so. Our father is a parson. He obeys Archbishop Laud and holds to the old ways. That’s why a passing rabble wrecked our church – tore out the rails, smashed the saints’ windows. They even broke into the house and stole our goods with my mother following them about and yelling that we were faithful followers of the King and the Prayer Book. One of them said, ‘We are not so sure o’ the King with his French wife.’ But they went away at last. No, we are not Papists.”

The thought of Daniel crossing himself in his last moments cut him to the quick.

“You and your brother were both in the army? I’m afraid the mob took him for a deserter.”

“It’s true. I could feel this fever coming on and Daniel wouldn’t leave me. But it was worse than that. Daniel had loved to watch the trained bands exercising in the Market Place in Easingwold and kept telling our mother he wanted to be a soldier. When a troop came through our village and the officer was calling all young men to the King’s standard he was jumping up and down like a child. Mother said, ‘Yes, go,’ because she loved to give him his way. ‘I have always longed to see Daniel fight the King’s enemies. There will be no greater warrior.’ That’s what she said. I had to go too. We’ve always done everything together.” He broke down again and sobbed. “How can I go back and tell her I made Daniel throw away his pike when we were left behind as the rest of our troop went on to Newburn. I was ill but it wasn’t that. Daniel was never violent. He hated the training to use his pike to kill the cavalry horses or prod the riders off. So did I. I kept hearing my father say, ‘The Scots are not our enemies. They only wish to worship God in their own way.’ He was right.”

“Well, son, I too am a man of peace, but I urge you to make your way home. This war will end when it’s scarce begun. The Scots will not venture further south but if they take you you’ll be a prisoner of war and if you are found by the local people who hung your brother they will string you up beside him. For God’s sake, man, go.”

“I’d be better to die by Dan and meet in heaven.”

“Never. Your duty is here. Who will care for your ageing parents?” He pulled Nat to his feet and pushed him to the door. “Keep your hat down over that flaxen hair. I would say wait till dark but other anglers come here. No, you are best to head west as fast as you can travel. Make for the hill country before you turn south. Then cross the valleys where the rivers are but streams. The Tyne, the Derwent, then, I believe, the Wear and the Tees but I have never travelled so far. You may meet lawless folk but no one there will know of today’s doings and the Scots will not spread that way. They will move east along the Tyne to the sea where all the coal ships go to London.”

“But Dan – hanging on a gallows!”

“You cannot take him all that way home and you’d be slaughtered if you tried. Take the knapsacks. Have you food?”

Nat shook his head. “That’s why Dan died,” he choked out.

The man fumbled in his pouch and produced a hunk of bread and a piece of cheese in a scrap of cloth. “You have water?”

Nat picked up the water bottle from the floor. “I can’t take your day’s ration.”

“Nay, I may catch a fish. The day will cloud after noon.” He peeped out. “You’ll have cover for a few miles in the woods but you must skirt the villages at first till you are well clear.”

Nat clasped his hand. “How can I thank you?”

“By forgiving me for not saving your brother.”

“You could have done nothing against a mob.”

“Thank you, son, and God go with you.”

Nat, tears streaming down his cheeks, stumbled out and headed, as the man had told him, west.

Bel sat with her arms clasped round her body and her chin pressed to her chest. It seemed the only way she could stop herself from disintegrating at the awful thought that she had caused the haystack fire and an innocent man had hung for it. The memory of her stick and the burning grasses seared her mind. And he had seen her. Wouldn’t he have told his accusers he was not alone there? If he had would
Sam
believe she was to blame? That was a fearful thought. She had to know the whole truth of it. When had the man been taken? What had been said?

She paced her room, from the old-fashioned box chair in the window to the chest in the corner and back again. As she passed her dinner tray she kicked it in fury and frustration – just as Nurse opened the door and reached down for the dish.

“What’s this, then?” It was still full of stewed beef, onions and chopped turnip. She took it up and held it out to Bel, “You’re to eat it, Missy, every bit.”

Bel screamed at her, “I
must
be let out.”

“So you will be tomorrow morning. Now don’t you waste good food!”

Bel dashed it from her hand, the earthenware dish broke and bits of food were scattered on the bed and the floor.

Taking advantage of Nurse’s shock she made to rush past her out of the door, but her foot slithered on a piece of turnip. She landed on her rear and burst into tears.

Nurse turned and locked the door behind her and put the key in the deep pocket of her apron. She pulled Bel to her feet none too gently. “You bad, bad girl. What are your poor Mother and Father to do with you?” She picked her way over the spilt food to the chest and found a small bundle of clean rags used for dusting. Abstracting one she held it out to Bel.

“You will clean up the mess onto the tray along with the pieces of plate. It’s lucky her ladyship doesn’t allow you the porcelain with the family crest on or you would be in worse trouble. I shall tell her you’re to have wooden platters like the kitchen maid till you can learn to be a good child.” She sat down on the oak chair and directed operations.

Bel itched to refuse outright but the fear of having her imprisonment extended held her back. Somehow she must go tomorrow to see Sam Turner and find out all he knew or had guessed at. She scraped the food up without a word.

CHAPTER 5

Nathaniel Wilson guessed he had been walking fast for about two hours, the pain of hunger and thirst helping to mask the agony of his grief. He was becoming lightheaded and finding himself passing under an oak he put out a hand to it, feeling comfort from its solidity. He must eat and drink or he could not go on. His shoulders were stiff and sore from carrying the two knapsacks. He sank down and with his back to the trunk he took out the angler’s provisions and his water bottle.

A long drink cleared his head and at once the horror of his solitariness came upon him. He had never been apart from Daniel in his life except for study time with his father. Even then, when Daniel had completed his chores, chopping wood for the fire and tending Mother’s vegetable patch under her supervision, he would come in and sit on the floor and nod his head as if he was following the lesson and then perhaps lie back on a cushion and fall asleep. It wasn’t possible that he would never see him again. They were part of each other. When his father had said, “You are so good at your books, Nat, you should go to the university as I did,” he had replied, “If I went away it would break Daniel’s heart, sir.”

But it would have broken
my
heart, he thought, and now how can it not be broken?

He tried to bite on the dry hunk of bread but it almost choked him as his mother’s face, fierce as an eagle in her wrath, rose up before him. “You can eat with Daniel hanging on a gibbet?”