The Ballad of John Clare (20 page)

“No soul will stir from my kitchen until the grease has been washed from your faces. Kitty, put the kettle on its hook and fill a bowl with hot water. We can’t have you straggling into Helpston like a company of imps and devils …you’ll give poor Mossop his death of fright …and Richard Royce will think you’ve come to fetch him home.”

He went to the side of the fireplace and pulled a big earthenware jug from the shadows. It was filled to the brim with ale and spices – cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves. He pulled a glowing iron poker from the heart of the fire and thrust it into the jug, there was a rush of steam and the ale hissed and bubbled.

“There. Mary! Fetch some mugs.”

The mulled ale was poured and passed around.

“Now, who’ll lead us in a carol? Parker, if you ain’t too fuddled with alicumpane! I’m told you’re a man with as many songs as there are days to the year.”

Parker Clare stood.

“Ay, I’ll give you a verse or two of God rest ye Merry Gentlemen.”

As he sang, one by one, the Helpston players knelt over the bowl of steaming water that had been set on the hearthstone and washed the black grease from their faces. When the carol was finished and the mugs were drained they made their way out of the warm kitchen and across the yard. Farmer Joyce walked them to the churchyard gate.

One by one he clasped their hands.

It was only when he came back to the kitchen that he discovered that not all the Helpston company was gone. John Clare sat fast asleep in one of the wooden chairs before the kitchen fire. His coat was on. His head was slumped backwards wearing its hat. His mouth was open and his legs stretched out before him.

“None of us had the heart to wake him,” whispered Lizzie Tucker.

Farmer Joyce looked down at him:

“Ay, leave him be.”

Then he added, half under his breath:

“The days are short, but this will have been a long one for John Clare.”

*******

It was not until the Glinton church clock struck three of the morning that John woke, and then only because he was disturbed. He opened his eyes and for a moment was unsure as to where he might be. He looked about himself. He cast his eyes on the glowing embers of the kitchen fire, on the moon that shone through the window and filled the room with silver-grey light and dark shadow. And then, with a sudden jolt of wakefulness he knew he was not alone. He turned his head and saw Mary. She had pulled a chair close beside him. She was dressed in her nightdress, with a blanket drawn across her shoulders. And she was holding his hand to the warmth of her body. Her eyes were closed, but he could see by her upright posture that she was not asleep.

He whispered:

“Mary.”

She opened her eyes and turned to him:

“John.”

There was silence for a while between them, then she said:

“John, is he really away? Is he safe? I could not sleep for thinking.”

John nodded:

“He is away …to the north.”

“Thank God. And shall we ever see him again?”

“Who knows Mary …I doubt it …but would we have seen him again had he been transported? Or hanged? He is alive and has his sweet liberty …”

“And I pray he can keep it …or it will go hard for him.”

She pressed his hand, then lifted it to her lips and kissed it.

“John, come with me. I have something for you.”

She stood up and tugged him to his feet. She led him to the doorway where the kitchen opened onto the parlour. A sprig of mistletoe was hanging from it, its berries like little moons in the silver-grey light. When they were both beneath it she wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tight, her face pressed to his collar, her breath warm through the coat he was still wearing. Then she pulled away and lifted her face to him and their lips met. John could taste the salty wetness of her tears upon her mouth as they kissed.

“There,” she said. “That was all. Merry Christmas, and I love you John Clare.”

“And I love you Mary.”

“And maybe one day we shall be wed.”

“Maybe we shall.”

They crossed the kitchen and pulled their two chairs to the edge of the hearthstone. Mary threw some kindling onto the embers. As the flames danced and reddened their faces they sat side by side, holding hands and saying nothing.

Then John whispered:

“Mary.”

“Ay.”

“We could be betrothed, you and me.”

She shook her head vigorously:

“Father would not hear of it. He thinks me too young, and he sees no prospects in you. He bears you no malice, John, but he sees in us some childhood courtship that is innocent of all the trappings and settlements of a marriage …we must wait, bide our time.”

They were quiet again for a while. Then John said:

“But what if it was a secret, Mary …just between you and me …what if it was an understanding that no others knew of? Then, in the fullness of time, when I have made something of myself, we could announce it to your father and my father and all the wide world.”

She turned to him and smiled:

“Ay John, we could do that, we could keep it secret.”

She leaned across, curled her arm around his neck, and whispered fiercely, like a child:

“We must make a pledge, a secret one. I must pledge myself to you and you to me, formal-like and sincere, and no breaking it …cross my heart and hope to die.”

John grinned:

“Ay.”

“Name a time and a place.”

John thought for a moment:

“St Valentines day …the fourteenth day of February …at Helpston church porch …at nine o’clock in the morning …I shall be there come snow or hail.”

“And so shall I.”

She pressed her mouth to his, tugged the blanket over her shoulders, ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs to bed.

John got to his feet, picked up his fiddle, tightened his scarf, and set off for home.

*******

And now it is nine of the clock, the Helpston bells are ringing full swing and Sophie is shaking him into wakefulness:

“John! Merry Christmas! Wake up! Wake up!”

He sits up and rubs his eyes.

From downstairs Ann shouts:

“Wake up John, the band will be tuning their music even now!”

“Ay John,” says Sophie, “And you a slug-a-bed …” Then she lowers her voice. “And I heard you creepin’ upstairs as the church clock struck four, where had ye been John?”

He pushes away the blankets and stands.

“And still in your coat!”

Then, from downstairs:

“I’ve warmed a pan of water for you!”

He stumbles down the stairs and splashes the water over his face and neck.

“And there’s your clean shirt over the chair.”

He unbuttons his coat, tugs his old shirt over his head and pulls on the clean one. He seizes his fiddle that lies on the chair where he’d dropped it five hours before. There’s a bowl of wrinkled winter apples on the window-sill. He grabs one and bites into the soft sweet flesh.

“Take another one in your pocket, John.”

Ann pushes an apple into his coat pocket, then hands him the coat. She kisses his cheek.

“There’ll be more to eat soon enough.”

John runs along the street, pulling on his coat as he goes, passing his fiddle from one hand to the other as he pushes in his arms. He runs past Butter Cross and through the churchyard, dodging the first of the congregation who are making their way towards the church porch dressed in their Christmas best.

Already the church band are midway through ‘Christchurch Bells’. John tightens the tuning pegs, lifts the fiddle to his chin and draws the bow across the strings. When the tune is done Dick Turnill leans across to him and whispers most urgent:

“Have ye heard the news?”

“What news?”

“About Will Bloodworth?”

“No.”

“He is vanished.”

“Vanished?”

“Ay. Last night. He was passing Christmas with his sister. When supper was done ‘tis said, he went upstairs to bed …and when she brought him up a cup of spiced wine as a cordial … Will Bloodworth was gone.”

John stares at Dick:

“How d’ye mean, gone?”

“Gone John. She called and searched the house and yard and could find no sign. She raised servants and neighbours who helped her … but they have found nothing. She is quite beside herself they say.”

“There is no clue?”

“No sign of a struggle, no mark of a ladder to the window-sill, his bed-clothes still folded on the pillow. There are no footprints, the ground being frozen. She sent word to Milton Hall but they have not seen him. He has quite disappeared.”

“Shhh.”

Parson Mossop coughs. Sam Billings taps the time on the edge of his drum and the band strikes up ‘While Shepherds Watched’.

Slowly, steadily, the congregation fills the church. And in every pew, from mouth to muffled ear, it is the same story whispered.

Twelfth Night is over and Plough Monday is past. Now it is Tuesday and work resumes and hard labour wastes no time in wiping the slate clean of the sweets of holiday and all the misrule of the day before, leaving only the aching limbs, the numbed fingers and the harsh coughs of winter.

Yesterday, Plough Monday, is the day that custom dictates that all men return to work and the season of ploughing begin. But custom is long-since beggared by usage, for the ploughs have been working the fields since October. And there are few men under thirty who, on Plough Monday, have their eyes on anything but the pint pot and the pie?

All is white with snow, and has been since Christmas night when the sky opened and the snow settled like feathers on the frozen ground, so that every battered, tattered, familiar place is become strange and beautiful, softened by the white fall that has folded its cold bright coverlet over thatch, stack, stable, street and field. The Earl of Fitzwilliam has given a sack of coal to every pauper that’s on the parish, and even so there is a rash of new dug earth against the churchyard wall.

Mrs Elizabeth Wright has knocked on every door in her slow relentless search for some clue as to Will Bloodworth’s whereabouts. The ice at Lolham Bridge has been broken and the river dragged. But all to no avail, and the village is agog with gossip and speculation. Everywhere the same conversation is played out:

“I put it down to that damned gypsy.”

“Ay, when all’s said an’ done, ‘tis more than chance.”

“That Boswell youth breaking free on the very night …”

“And him with a grudge, for was it not Will Bloodworth as apprehended him?”

“Ay, the youth tried for his life once, and now he’s doubtless tried again.”

“And if he didn’t hang for it the first time he shall now, by God.”

Every rumoured hiding place has been probed and pulled apart. The Clare’s cottage has been searched as has Old Otter’s squat but nothing has been found. The Earl of Fitzwilliam has sent militia-men riding north and south on the Great North Road, but all have returned empty-handed.

*******

As the red sun rose over the white orison on the morning of Plough Monday the streets and lanes were already busy. From every cottage and farm house the young men of the parish, buttoned up against the snow that crumped beneath their feet, were all tramping towards James Bain’s forge.

James had thrown new coals onto the fire and put the bellows under, so that as each new man arrived he could stretch his hands to the heat and feel the fire upon his face, even as the winter chilled his back. There was a circle of warmth, and soon there was a circle of men marking its outer edge.

In the hot and chill air there was a quickened mood of expectation. A barrel had been broached and James was heating the sooty pokers among the coals and thrusting them into jugs of ale. Behind him the forge, with its black iron tools hanging from their nails, lightened and darkened every time the bellows reddened the coals. The jugs were passed around the circle.

John Clare and Dick Turnill, much against his father’s pleasure, were there. Dick had brought two leather harnesses glinting with horse brasses. He gave one to John. They slung them around their necks. When all the team were gathered they dipped their fingers into a bucket of axle-grease and smeared their cheeks. They scraped soot from the chimney of the forge and sprinkled it onto their faces until they were striped as savages.

Then from the open doorway came a roaring voice:

“Only two bollocks between us …and both of them mine!”

Richard Royce beamed at them, with the gap-toothed grin of one of the snowmen in the street. The Lord of the Harvest is always Ploughman come winter, with six youths before him as Plough Bullocks.

He went forwards, dipped his hands into the grease, and rubbed them across his face as though he was washing himself at the pump. He stuck his head into the chimney, and when he pulled it out he was black as pitch. He grabbed a jug from one of the lads and emptied it with one long gulp.

“Aaaaaah!”

Some of the men who were to be Plough Witches were stuffing straw into the backs of their smocks to make hunch-backs, they had besoms and ladles filled with sooty grease to smear any poor soul that crossed their path.

The rest were Bullocks. When all were well greased and sooted they made their way out of the forge. Lying on the ground was a pole with three short cross-pieces that had been lashed and tied with rope. Joined to the end of the pole by a piece of frayed leather was an ancient wooden plough without share or coulter.

The Plough Bullocks, in pairs, took their places, three to either side of the pole, each behind a cross piece. Dick and John were side by side. They lifted the pole. Richard Royce got between the stilts of the plough. James Bain brought a jug of ale to each bullock in turn and lifted the spout to his lips so that he could gulp it down. The ale splashed into their faces. Already the team was half cut.

“Our team must be fed and watered!”

“And so must their ploughman …come on you tight-arsed bugger, I’m dry as a witch’s tit.”

James came and lifted the jug to Richard’s lips, but as he drew it away Richard grabbed it from him and emptied it.

He lifted his whip and cracked it over the team’s heads: