Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (7 page)

“How could you be? You hadn’t seen
him
. But you knew
I
was there. Why didn’t you tell? Then they might have believed him. Did you lie when you’d sworn on the Bible?”

“Never. I said I saw no fat boy, which was exactly true.”

“Oh!” This was her honest hero! “But you knew it was me. If you’d said so you could have saved the man. You made him a liar.”

He was looking at her in astonishment. “Did you want your father to know you’d been playing with me, worn my breeches?”

“I don’t care about his anger. If you’d spoken up they might not have hung that man.”

“Why not? What are you saying?
You
fired the stack?”

“Of course not!” She rushed the words out. “How could you think I would do such a thing?”

“Nay, I didn’t. So I protected you. You should be grateful. I knew if he’d seen you he must have been hanging about – watching for the coast to be clear, hoping to get another hen even after he was shot at. But when he couldn’t he took his revenge. Why should you speak up for him? I think he was a simpleton. He seemed to be trying to lay the blame on this fat boy but at last he admitted he must have dreamt it. I wondered where he saw you. Your brother Robert never knew you were there.”

She shook her head. “I was by the beech tree. The man looked right at me. He frightened me. But he had two eyes then.” She couldn’t go on.

“You did see the bonfire was out, didn’t you?” he demanded now.

She nodded. Then muttered, “I put more earth on to be sure.”

He grunted. “I knew it wasn’t a spark from there. Much too far. No, he did it –no doubt. Well, people are hung all the time. But little girls don’t have to go looking.”

She bit her lip. Then pleaded in a whisper, “But now he has only
one
eye?”

“What? Oh,” he laughed. “Crows do that.” He drew the horse up by the farm. “I suppose my mother could walk you home if she’s not in the dairy churning butter.”

“I’ll run and I’ll never come back.”

“No, don’t. I think you’re trouble.” He was still laughing. “Promise you’ll go straight back then?”

She nodded, speechless again and took off. He had been hateful, almost as bad as Robert. He despised her like everyone else. Laughing! Oh, he was utterly demolished as a noble hero. He was a coarse uncaring farm boy.

She was hot with shame and anger. Hot too in her velvet dress. After the mist the sun was going to be fierce. Oh that it would burn up everything, herself included!

The picture on the hill was with her again. However hard she ran for the rest of her life she was never going to escape it.

CHAPTER 6

Nat made a late start on the second morning because the mist robbed him of all sense of place and direction. He had earned himself a supper the night before when he finally reached a ford which he could pass dry shod and found a few cottages clustered on the south bank. A group of girls were sitting in a ring on the grass cherishing something in their midst when three boys broke in amongst them and with shouts of glee snatched it up.

Nat saw it was a young thrush so he called out, “Nay, lads, don’t hurt it.” They looked up in surprise at the stranger and the bird fluttered to the ground and flapped along lopsidedly. “Let me see.” He took it up and found one wing bent awkwardly. With gentle hands he straightened it and smoothed the feathers into place.

“We chased a cat from it,” one of the girls said. “But the boys are worse than the cat. They’ve hurt it more.” She glared at them.

Nat shook his head. “We’ll not quarrel over it.” He motioned them all into a ring, set the bird down in the middle and took out his recorder. “See if we can cheer it up. It’s still not sure if it can fly.”

He played a sweet lilting tune and after a few moments the thrush made a little run and flew into the air. The children clapped and cheered and asked him to play some more.

“Stand up then and dance,” he said and played a lively reel. They took hands and pranced about to the music. Soon he saw women gathering from the cottages to listen and watch. Men were coming from the fields and in a few minutes he had the tiny hamlet all dancing. He was readily invited then to join the family supper in the home of the three boys.

“They’re always teasing the lasses,” their mother said. “If you can tame them like that, stranger, you must be an angel from God.”

“Just a wanderer,” Nat said.

Her husband questioned him about where he had come from and whether they were true rumours that the Scots were come over the border.

“Ay,” Nat told him, “but it’s mostly quiet now. I’m no fighter so I keep away, but I believe they’ll only stay in Newcastle till King Charles gives them what they want.”

“I hope that’s not our sheep and cattle,” the farmer said.

“I should have said rather if the King takes from them what they
don’t
want.”

The man scratched his head. “And what would that be?”

“Bishops.” Nat laughed, expecting that in this remote spot the answer would be meaningless.

“Bishops! Ay well, I hear the Bishop of Durham lives fat and comfortable and he would never come this far, so if they dinna want them ower the border I reckon that’s their business. It’s not a thing we should be fighting about.”

After supper they wanted him to sleep in the barn but while there was still daylight he pressed on south by the way they had directed him to a drove road. When dusk fell he turned aside and walked over the moor till he found a hollow where he could curl up out of sight in the heather. The kindliness of the people soothed his mind and he was soon asleep.

But finding thick whiteness about him when daylight came he dare not move in case he blundered further and further from the road. The delay frustrated him and because his body was inactive his mind worked feverishly, comparing these hill people with the village that poor Daniel had blundered into. Were they not all ordinary human beings? He went over the whole story the angler had told him, feeling his wretchedness at Daniel’s loss turning to bitter anger towards those responsible for his death. Could Sir John Horden not see that Daniel was slow-witted? Why had he allowed his vicious son to incite the mob to hang him so peremptorily? Why had no effort been made to find the fat boy who could be the key to the horrible mistake?

Daniel said it was a dream. Ah but they didn’t know him, he thought. I could always sort his dreams from reality and when he spoke to me that night in the hut he was telling me what he had just seen. It was no dream, for he was well awake with the pain of his wound. What sort of a magistrate is Sir John that he could allow a verdict of guilty on such slight evidence?

Nat worked himself into a passion as he paced about in the hollow to keep warm. He had water but no food to eat while he waited for the sunrise when the autumn warmth would surely suck up this cursed fog. His heart yearned to hear Dan’s voice soothing him. “Don’t be angry, Nat. Don’t be sad.” It always distressed Dan to see him give way to emotion, unless it was happiness, when he would laugh with him over the smallest and most absurd things.

Nat thought of their boyhood with stabbing pangs of regret for the times he had been impatient with Daniel, when he had wanted to study and Daniel had begged to play. Mother would shout at me, he thought. “Go play with him at once. How can you stop being the little runt if you don’t exercise yourself!” How I hated her for that and my fury made me do everything in our play faster than Dan. I would be up a tree before he could haul himself onto the lowest branch. I always beat him in races and he never minded. And of course I could read before he even knew the letters. I had Father’s praise but it was he who warned me not to gloat over Dan’s slowness nor be jealous of Mother’s special love for him. It was still hard to take but never hard after that to love Daniel because he loved me with such a passion. Ah, but did I ever show him enough how much I loved him. And now I never can.

Nat sank again into his heather hollow and gave way to a burst of weeping which he thought would never end. But at last he sensed through his fingers a lightening of the sky. The mist was thinning. The east was that way and so was the drove road.

“God be praised.” He hoisted his knapsack and walked forward. He must complete his journey and face the horror of the homecoming. Beyond that he couldn’t see. It was shrouded as the distant hills were still shrouded. Perhaps he could talk to Dan as he walked of all that he experienced this day and find comfort in the telling.

Bel sat on her bed and stared at the wooden bars that had been screwed into the window-frame in her absence. They didn’t matter. Nothing did. Her hands were sore from the caning Nurse had given her on her mother’s orders, but she remembered that monks and even nuns used to wear hair shirts and flagellate themselves in their cells. What a pity all those places had been wiped off the face of England! She could have run away and joined one.

Only I can’t run away, she remembered, looking at the bars.

She was to have only bread and water and she didn’t expect anyone to visit her but about noon her father came in and locked the door behind him. She stood warily by her bed while he sat down in the box chair by the window. He looked at her gravely while she studied him, thinking, he is all precise points – his beard, the lace collar over his doublet, the triangular seams at his narrow waist, and the V-shapes of the doublet below aiming at his boots. Even the bows on his boots come to points. Why is he so neat and clean and his grey hair so smoothly brushed onto his shoulders when that poor man this morning ...?

“I’m sorry you had a caning, Arabella,” he began. “Such punishment is for children and I want you to start behaving like a young lady. In two years’ time, you could be married to young William Horden, your second cousin. You know you have always been intended for him. He is seventeen now, a suitable age. My father and his grandfather were brothers. I am not in favour of girls being married before fifteen, but knowing it will happen should give you a sense of purpose and security.”

She stared back into his eyes, furious. “Why are you talking about marriage when people are fighting and dying?”

He moved his hands in a dismissive gesture. “No, no, child. The fighting is over. The Scots have promised to pay for any provisions they need. Many in Newcastle welcome them. They say the Mayor has entertained the Scots General Leslie to dinner. This is not a conflict between barbarians.”

“Oh and was that not barbaric – hanging a simpleton yesterday on no evidence at all?” Bel was glad to see his eyes became hooded with shame and anguish – till her own guilt reared up her gorge and nearly choked her. She shut her eyes tight and hung her head. But shutting her eyes was worse because she could see the gallows and the body and the face with its one eye ... She looked up, aware of her father’s silence.

“I believe you went out to see the gallows, Arabella? Why did you do that?” His voice was quiet, gentle, even troubled.

She shook her head, unable to speak.

“There has to be punishment or evil would run rampant through the world. You are being punished now for breaking your last punishment.”

Words burst from her. “That man didn’t need to be punished. He was innocent.”

“What can
you
know? He was certainly guilty of attempted robbery –”

“No, I don’t know.” Again the words came in a rush of fear that she was betraying herself. “I only know what I heard you and Robert saying when you rode back yesterday and what I learnt in the village. Why did you let them hang him?”

She could see he was moved but he rose up, shaking his head. “It is not a child’s place to question a father. As always you are assertive and rebellious in spirit. I know not what we can do with you. They say there are fine preachers come, following the Scots army. I think I must take you to hear one of them. Maybe you will ponder some of their words in your heart. If we can tame that wildness you may yet be a fit bride for young William when the time is right.” He unlocked the door.

“Which it will never be,” she yelled at him and he almost ran out of the room.

She heard the key turn and threw herself on the bed in a paroxysm of weeping. They had been close to a real conversation.. He was unhappy about the mockery of a trial and the sudden brutality of the people. Who could he confide in? Robert had enjoyed the scene and neither her mother nor Henrietta would be interested.

She sat up. I am the only one he could have talked to. If only he had I might have told him what really happened but I mar all speech because I am still a child in his eyes and must be meek which I don’t know how to be. I nearly had a friend in Sam Turner but he is not the hero I thought he was. And I could never tell
him
. He would despise me for minding about a robber. I am just a troublesome girl. He told me so. So now I can never tell anyone and it’s inside me for the rest of my life. Awake or asleep that face, that eye will never go away.

She was let out next day and brought to sit at the table in the family dining-room which her great-grandfather had had constructed next to a small parlour at one end of the original medieval hall. It was this room that had been reduced in length when the priest’s hiding-place had been built.