Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (6 page)

I were better to die here and now as face her with this horror. I should at least have Dan’s body for her to hold and caress.

He leapt up, driven by a cry within, “Go back and get it.” He had even taken a dozen paces along the bank stumbling in his weakness and with the crust of bread held out in his hand when his father’s quiet reasonableness which was deeply embedded in his soul took over. He turned and walked back to the tree and sat down and swallowed the crumbs in his mouth and took a bite of the cheese. Then he sat very still with compressed lips trying to think calmly.

Father will accept that I was feverish. He will understand our quitting the army – letting it go on without us. He will see how Daniel would seek food for us both and fall into trouble from which he couldn’t extricate himself. He’ll listen quietly if I can just get through the tale without utterly breaking down. He will forgive me for leaving him on the gallows. I can hear his words. “Dan was bigger and heavier than you. You were weak from the fever. If they had let you take him down you couldn’t have carried him. And you could have been shot as a deserter. After all what is a body but dust? Daniel’s soul is with the Lord. He was a faithful servant of God all his life.”

Nat put his head on his knees and sobbed for many minutes. Looking with his father’s wider vision had moved him and there was some relief in tears but the pain of loss would never go away and his dread of facing his mother was undiminished.

At last he lifted his head and made himself finish the food. He must logically assess his situation. Following the stream had brought him to its confluence with a substantial river – presumably the Tyne again, flowing west to east. He and Daniel had crossed it after they had hidden their pikes and uniforms in a ditch. It seemed safer to hide in the woods they could see in the distance to the north. Now he must head south if he was to get back home. The Scots army would spread into the country for provisions round Newcastle but the angler was right that he should head west and find a ford or a bridge where the river was narrower. He packed everything necessary into one knapsack and pushed the other into the dark cavern beneath a holly bush.

Ninety to a hundred miles must lie between this spot and home. The immediate task was to earn his bread and travel the distance. From Daniel’s knapsack he had taken the recorder they could both play. Dan managed simple tunes but he could never achieve the sweet, moving sound Nat could make. When they were alone in the hills near home Daniel would beg him to play to him and Nat would lap up his wonder and admiration but at home their mother allowed only Daniel to entertain guests. Now perhaps he could pass himself off as a wandering minstrel and if folk in the hill villages could spare him a bite to eat he might make his way south at last and reach home in less than a week.

Home, he remembered bleakly, had been sorely ravaged, leaving them in poverty despite the collections the parish had made for the whole family. But the sufferings they had had were nothing to the horror he would bring with him. The kind angler had spoken of him supporting his ageing parents but his mother could banish him from the house if he confessed the truth about Daniel’s end.

No, that thought must be pushed to the back of his mind. He shivered and realised that the sun – as the angler had foretold – had given way to a mass of cloud from the west. He watched a flotilla of brown leaves float past on the grey water like baby ducklings. When they were out of sight he would resume his journey.

Bel woke next morning and found it barely light. Her punishment, she remembered, was over but she felt no sense of freedom as she slid out of bed and opened the shutters. A chill mist filled the stable yard and hung over the woods behind. She couldn’t guess at the time. She listened at the door but there was no sound of the servants moving about yet, so it must be very early. She tried the handle gently but the door was still locked.

A farm wakes early, she reminded herself. If I could get there I might see Sam.

No more thought was needed except that she would not try to saddle Paddy her pony as it might bring the boy Adam from his loft above the stables. Besides, her special short cut through the woods was quicker than the road. She dressed herself somehow, choosing a dress of green velvet which would keep her warm without petticoats. The bodice had lacings at the front that she could do up herself and she found in the chest her only attempt at knitting – a shapeless dark cap – which she pulled down over her cropped hair to just above her eyes. It didn’t matter what she looked like but at least she would be inconspicuous if she hid among the trees.

Racing against time she dragged off her bed sheets and tied them together, testing the knot with all her strength. Then she drew one end round a leg of the heavy box chair, pushing it with difficulty close below the window. She tied a tight knot and, forcing open the casement as far as it would go, she lowered the other end through. Peering out over the sheets she saw they ended a good way from the ground but once over the stone lintel above the kitchen window she would be able to balance on the window sill below and jump from there. Her only fear now was that someone might be in the kitchen. She must take her chance.

Climbing onto the chair seat she squeezed feet-first through the aperture and twisting the sheet in her hands she began to let herself down a little at a time, her feet feeling for protuberances in the stonework. She was not in the least frightened, only driven by the desperate urge to be away. The lintel of the kitchen window gave her a foothold and she took one hand off the sheet and nearly fell as her other shoe missed the stone. Her hands were scraped as she let herself slither down and feel for the stone sill below the window. She was at the end of the sheet. She turned round with her back to the window and jumped. Landing perfectly with bended knees as she had seen tumblers do she was instantly running out of the stable yard and heading for the woods. No shouts pursued her.

The fronds of mist among the trees slowed her after a few moments as they obscured her marks. It was best to look down and follow where the summers’ weeds were crushed by her own feet. There was enough light for that.

As soon as she reached the farm track she saw through the hanging silvery veil the horrid blackened boards where the stack had stood. How it must have blazed! She saw in her mind’s eye her own glowing stick and the grasses it had lit. It must have been only a few minutes later when she was scuttling home that the evil wind had wafted that helpless little fire against the stack. Now that she saw it she was sure in her heart how it had been. She knew where her careless hand had tossed the stick. She remembered how she had not even thought of stopping to stamp it out.

Do I
want
to speak to Sam, she wondered. I can’t ever confess about the stick. But perhaps he was beaten for having a bonfire. She looked to her right towards the plank bridge. No, his fire was far over there.
I
did it. My stick did it. But there was a trial of that poor man.. What was said? I need to know why they hanged him.

She glanced about in an agony of indecision. Nobody seemed to be stirring when she looked towards the farmhouse. All the same she skirted round the back of it through the trees. And then the cock crew, making her heart bump and startling her into a panic as if a devil was chasing her. She was past the farm and running now at the edge of the track to cover the ground more easily, but heading as she knew for the village of Nether Horden. She was sure it wasn’t light enough for six o’clock but the mist was dimming everything. She mustn’t be seen in the village but she knew now what she had to do. She must punish herself by going and looking at the gallows.

Crouched behind a wall and peeping at the village between the rough stones on top she saw the first sign of the new day. A grey wisp from a chimney curled into the whiteness of the mist which was thicker down here. People were lighting their fires. Bent double she scuttled behind the walls of the vegetable plots at the backs of the houses, till she came to the grassy slope of Gallows’ Hill as it had always been called. Now she made a circuit to approach the crest out of sight of the village. The mist was a kindly cloak as she scampered into the open and began the ascent, her shoes slithering on the wet cropped grass. A few tethered goats and roaming sheep stared at her as she had to move on all fours in the steepest places.

Then her head was out into clear air. She stood up and right above her was the huge framework of the gallows against a brightening sky. And a body. Oh horror of horrors! She hadn’t expected a body. It looked enormous, dangling towards her, but what made her flesh crinkle and her stomach shrivel within her was the discoloured face twisted down at her with one popping eye meeting hers. The other was a reddened hollow.

She dropped to her knees and covered her head with her arms, her eyes tight shut but still seeing the look of accusation in that one eye. Silently screaming she dare not move in case she saw the thing again. She had no idea how long she crouched there, horribly aware that it was still above her. Then a breeze came fluttering from the east and brought a sudden creak from the vast structure. In a panic that the thing would fall on top of her she squirmed round without opening her eyes and began to slide back down the slope, her whole body racked with panting sobs. Then she let herself roll and ended up in a heap, pressing her clenched hands against her mouth to hold in the sight that could never go away. She lay still.

“Why it’s young mistress Arabella from the Hall! Goodness me, is she hurt?” The woman’s voice was kindly but Bel dare not open her eyes. She feared what she would see. Was it possible she would ever see ordinary things again? The woman touched her, patting her shoulder and then trying to turn her over. “Here, Gideon. Pick her up, she’s hurt.”

Bel at once scrambled to her feet and opening her eyes a chink saw only a swelling bosom under the grubby bib of an apron. “I’m all right,” she mumbled. “I’ll go home.”

“What are you doing out here so early on your own?” It was a man’s voice. Bel could smell him. “Nay, little lady, you’ll have to stop this wandering about. You had everyone a-searching two nights ago and that’s when Farmer Turner’s stack was fired for there was no one watching out.”

“Ah, but she was at home all the time,” the woman said. “Our Mary said she’d been hiding somewhere. The Hall’s such a warren of rooms they’d never found her till she was tucked up in bed.”

“Well, she still caused a deal o’ trouble,” the man answered. “And who is to see her home now?” He had gripped Bel’s arm.

Bel lifted her eyes then. “I can go myself. Loose me at once.”

“Nay now, young Madam, we’d be in trouble ourselves if you went a-wandering again.”

There came the rattling of cartwheels on the track round the village green.

“There’s the Turners’ cart,” the woman said. “She can go back on that as far as the farm and then maybe they’ll spare someone to take her home from there. I’ll just run in for the jug and do you bring her round the house, Gideon.”

Bel found herself hustled past a cabbage patch and out onto the corner of the green where suddenly there was life and activity, children running across the grass with earthenware jugs, a few Scottish soldiers loitering about, and Sam Turner standing up on the farm cart ladling out milk from the churn. Fingers of sunlight stroked the green between the elongated shadows of the cottages. The mist had lifted. It wasn’t how she had hoped to see Sam but somehow life was in progress again and the complete indifference of the people to the horrible thing above the village helped her to put on a show of normality herself.

Sam looked down at her with raised brows but lifted his hat in a mock salute and shrugged his shoulders when the man Gideon asked him to take her to the farm.

“Ay, when I’m done here. Who wants eggs as well?” He was collecting the pennies in a leather pouch slung round him and Bel, in all her torment of mind, found a little flame of admiration spurting up at his cool self-possession and handsome looks. What she would say to him she had no idea.

When he was finished with customers he held out one hand to her and she felt the man Gideon lift her up to grab it. She scrambled into the cart beside him. Sam clicked his tongue and the horse moved off round the track. Bel kept her eyes well averted from the hill behind them.

“So Mistress Arabella, why were you up so early?” he asked. When she said nothing he peered at her. “Of course you don’t answer to that. So, Bel, what were you doing? You’ve been crying.”

It was hard to speak when she couldn’t wipe out the image on the hill. Her voice came out in a squeak. “They hanged that man. I saw him. Why is he still there?”

He shrugged again. “What did you go and look for? He’s there as a warning. I daresay they’ll take him down in a few days.” He was looking at her again, a little curiously. “Whatever are you wearing on your head?”

She snatched off the cap. “I knitted it. Don’t laugh.”

He did laugh and she wanted to die.

Then he said seriously, “That evening – when the stack was fired – why did you not go home at once? The robber saw you He said there was a fat boy.” He chuckled. “Of course I knew it was you though no one else believed him.”

A coldness like a knife went down her spine. “He said that? Yes, I saw him. After he went away I took your breeches off. But tell me about it. What did he say?”

“Your father gave him a sort of trial with a jury an’ all. Didn’t you know that? I had to be a witness.”