The Ballad of John Clare (7 page)

*******

“It’s Bill Henderson you’ll be after.”

One of the grooms pointed towards a broad door that stood half open beyond the stables. Nailed to it, with their wings stretched out, were the dried up carcasses of a heron, a couple of kites and a barn-owl, remnants of the last season’s keeping. John crossed the cobbled enclosure and knocked. The stiff carcasses rattled and whispered with the strike of his fist.

The Head Keeper, William Henderson, was cleaning the Earl’s sporting guns. He was sitting in the sunlight with one of them laid across his knee. The others lay side by side on a wide wooden table. He was still dressed in his Sunday best, with an old leather apron over his claret livery. Beside the guns his prayer book sat on a corner of the table. Behind him row upon row of traps and snares were hanging from iron hooks on the wall.

He lifted his grizzled head, took off his spectacles, and nodded to John:

“What are you after lad?”

John held out the bundle he was holding in his hands:

“I’ve brought some buzzard’s eggs.”

Bill Henderson got to his feet. He laid the gun down beside the others, as tenderly as a mother might lay a new-born babe in its cradle.

“Let’s be havin’ a look then.”

John set the bundle gently on the table and began to unfold Wisdom’s blood-stained rag. Bill Henderson waved his hands at him:

“Now, now, you keep your filth away from these guns … take them up to the far end of my table.”

John lifted them and set them down again. When he’d unfolded the rag and revealed the cluster of three eggs wrapped in moss, Bill Henderson picked them up and weighed them in his palm. He put them down and put his spectacles back onto his nose. He leaned forwards and peered down at them.

“Ay, these have the look of buzzard’s eggs …but we must make sure of it before I part with the Earl’s money. First we’ll put them under the pump to ascertain that you ain’t painted a clutch of hen’s eggs …for I’ve had village lads try that caper afore …then we’ll set them against the Earl’s collection and make certain-sure. Follow me.”

John followed him to the stable pump.

“You work the pump arm I’ll watch the eggs.”

John moved the pump arm up and down and as the water glugged and spurted Bill Henderson held each egg in turn under its torrent. The colours stayed firm.

“Good, good. Now come with me.”

He put the eggs into the pocket of his apron.

John followed him to the back of Milton Hall. They made their way through the kitchen. Bill Henderson pushed open a door and suddenly the stone flags of the floor gave way to carpeted corridors. There was a wooden box full of leather slippers.

“Boots off lad, stocking feet from here onward.”

John pulled off his boots.

“I ain’t got any stockings.”

His bare feet were stained brown from the leather and were black with dirt between the toes. Bill looked at them and shook his head most sorrowful.”

“These won’t do at all ….they’ll have to be washed. Back to the pump lad.”

They went outside again. This time Bill Henderson worked the pump and John held each foot in turn under the chill water.

“That’s more like it …”

They went back to the kitchen. Bill nodded to the great open fire.

“Dry them off.”

John sat on a wooden stool and stretched his feet out to the heat as the cooks bustled about on either side of him. All around him copper pans of all shapes and sizes hung from the walls, polished as bright as mirrors and reflecting the flickering light. As soon as John’s feet were dry Bill threw him a pair of slippers.

“Try these for size, they’ll fit you close enough I reckon.”

John pulled the slippers over his feet and followed the Head Keeper through a maze of corridors. They came to a white door with a polished brass knob. Bill turned it and the door swung open.

In front of him John saw a great hall, and at the far end of it a curving staircase of polished oak. Portraits of men and women in gilded frames were hanging from the walls, their eyes stern or solemn or amused in equal measure. He stood dumb-founded, in amaze, as though he had stumbled into the court of Queen Mab, or had entered the pages of one of his chap-books:
Beauty and the Beast
perhaps, or
Mister Fox
. This was beyond all he’d ever known. For a moment he could not move.

“Come on lad.”

Bill Henderson broke the enchantment. He strode across the hall and climbed the stairs. John followed.

Suddenly there was a commotion. Two little children with long curling hair, both dressed in linen smocks so that it was hard to tell whether they were boys or girls, burst out of a room and chased one another headlong down the stairs. Behind them came a harassed woman dressed in fine rustling silks. She hurried towards John, who stood aside to let her pass. For one moment she paused and looked him up and down with such an expression of distaste writ upon her features that John wished, for all the world, that he was anywhere in the world but here. Then she tossed her head and was gone.

At the head of the stairs there was another door, Bill Henderson pushed it open and disappeared inside. John followed. Wonder followed wonder. He found himself in a study with great windows looking out across the park. There were shelves lined with leather-bound books, more than John had ever seen in the bookshops of Stamford where he has pressed his face to the glass many times and felt the hollow promise of a labourer’s wage mocking his ambition.

It was to a polished wooden chest of shallow drawers that Bill Henderson made his way. Each drawer was marked with a letter of the alphabet. He took the little ivory handles of the drawer marked ‘B’ and slid it open. Beneath a sheet of glass there were birds eggs in rows, laid in nests of green felt, each with its label. Bill ran his finger down the glass:

“Bittern, blackbird, black-cap, brambling, bullfinch, bunting …buzzard. Here we are lad, now then …”

He reached into his apron pocket and pulled out one of John’s eggs. He laid it on the glass. The two matched perfectly.

“Ay lad, there’s no denying it. ‘Tis a buzzard and you shall be paid according.”

John looked down at the rows of eggs, every one of them was known to him, but he’d never seen them laid in rows before, like soldiers outside the barrack gate.

“Who collected these?”

Bill Henderson’s face softened.

“When the Earl was but a boy it was his passion. Every spring when we was on our rounds we’d keep our eyes open and take note of any nests we found. And the old Earl, God rest his soul, would send him out with us, I can see him now skipping alongside us, and we’d help him take the eggs himself, as long as he were’nt put into too much danger. Ay, and he’d blow them too, and cook would make him an omelette of their meat. By the time they sent him away for his schooling he’d collected most of the common-place eggs, and the old Earl had this little chest o’ drawers made for him special, for his ninth birthday as I remember. But look here …”

Bill pushed the drawer to, and pulled open another marked ‘N’. He ran his finger down the glass again.

“See here. This empty place. This waits on the nightingale. It was the one nest we could not find …and haven’t yet. The Earl is in his forties now and with sons of his own, and he ain’t forgotten. We’ll be out shooting and he’ll turn to me: ‘What about that nightingale’s nest Mr Henderson?’ he’ll say, and I’ll have to own that of all the songbirds ‘tis the most cunning concealed.”

He pushed the drawer gently in.

“I reckon he’d pay a florin apiece, two shillings an egg, to any as could bring a clutch of ‘em to Milton Hall.”

He turned to John:

“I don’t suppose it’s a nest that you’ve ever clapped eyes on?”

John shook his head.

“I never have Mr Henderson, nor know of any as have.”

Bill Henderson looked the squat, awkward village youth up and down: the tousled hair, the thick neck, the greasy smock and tattered breeches. He remembered the caked boots that lay beside the kitchen door and the filthy unstockinged feet beneath them. He shook his head and said, kindly enough but not without condescension:

“No lad, I don’t suppose you have.”

*******

Half an hour later John found Wisdom. He was stretched out fast asleep in the place beneath the trees where he had left him. He shook his shoulder:

“Wisdom!”

Wisdom sleepily opened his eyes, then sat straight up.

“John. How did ye fare?”

“Look.”

John reached into his pocket and scooped out eighteen pennies. He cupped them in his hands and rattled them under Wisdom’s nose. Then he dropped the fat coppers onto the ground one at a time. Each of them struck the moist earth with a soft thud.

Wisdom grinned his lop-sided grin and punched John’s shoulder.

“Good work bau …did you see Bloodworth?”

“No, only Bill Henderson, the Head Keeper. He seemed a kindly old soul.”

Wisdom shook his head:

“Not if you’re a Romany he ain’t. King Boswell reckons we ain’t no better than stoats or foxes to him, and he’d be happy to see us swinging from a keeper’s gibbet.”

He divided the pennies into two piles.

“Here’s good work though, God bless the Earl of Fitzwilliam for these. Nine for you and nine for me.”

He dropped his nine pennies into his shirt.

“Did you sniff out any other ways that we might earn a few coins?”

John shook his head:

“No.”

He shoved his coins into his pocket.

“Come on, let’s get ourselves to Bachelor’s Hall and drink the Sabbath dry.”

Bright June has come, and the barley’s silken beard grows long and green, and on Lolham Bridge Field it nods and dances to every shifting whim of the wind.

From dawn to dusk the frantic bees wallow in fox-glove and bean flower as though no glut of labour or journeying could fill their store with honey enough for all. And from dawn to dusk, when the sun shines, the mowing teams are out upon Heath Field. The swish of their curved scythes is the sound of June breathing and the rasp of the whet-stones against the iron blades is the sound of June coughing. For sickness and health are as rain and shine, and all men know that for every week of fine weather there will be a debt to pay in slanting showers. And a closer look betrays the rotten teeth, the small-pox scars, the twisted spines, the swollen joints and all the curses that hard labour and a scant wage bring.

Parker Clare swings his blade in the mowing line, as ready as any though stiffer than some. From time to time he calls a halt to mop his face. Around him the cut swathes sweeten the air. Behind him the raking women turn and toss yesterday’s labour and at the far end of the field the lifted hay-cocks wait upon the wain.

On Woodcroft Field Ann and Sophie Clare have been gathering and shelling beans with the other women in John Close’s employ, Sophie’s ears acute to the rise and fall of the gossip that surrounds her, gleaning what she can.

John has joined a shearing team, working his way from farm to farm these last five weeks.

Such is the timeless round of summer labour upon the face of the parish, an old, hard, familiar melody. But there is a new sound alongside the sighing of the scythe, the bleating of the sheep and the rising and falling of the talk. It is the sound of posts being hammered into the ground and measuring chains pulled tight between. The sound of ropes being stretched across fields and commons where new boundaries will fall, of men shouting from mark to mark where roads will be cut or streams straightened, of splashes of red paint being daubed onto trees that are to be felled. The Earl of Fitzwilliam has sent surveyors out to mark the lie of the land for enclosure. Slowly, from day to day, a new pattern of squares, fine as the web of a net or a snare, is set across the looping, winding limbs of the parish.

But John Clare, moving from farm to farm in the accustomed way, has been too busy to pay it any heed. There are nine in all in the shearing team: Jack Ward is Captain. There are seven Lieutenants. And John, who catches and carries and folds up the fleeces, is Corporal.

Last week they worked for Ralph Wormstall, and were given a shearing supper of such pinch-purse, nip-cheese paucity that they had to spend their own wages at the Bluebell when it was done in order to feel their bellies comfortably lined with food and ale.

This week they have worked for Farmer Joyce at Glinton and their hope has been for kinder treatment and fuller fare at the week’s end. From Monday to Thursday they laboured in his threshing barn, stripped to the waist in the June heat as John Fell brought the sheep in from the fat grass at the fen margin. Yesterday was the fifth and last day and they had high hopes of Joyce’s hospitality, for he is known to be open-handed.

John was up before the dawn and when he had eaten a crust he made his way out of the cottage and along Heath Lane. The first birds were stirring and moistening their throttles. As he passed Snip Green the song began in earnest. He followed the stream across Heath Field, where the hay, cut and uncut, was too soaked with dew for any early mower to venture out. A family of hares were gambolling across the furlongs, stopping to lick the dew-fall, then dancing, squatting, loitering like happy thoughts. He walked on, past Swordy Well with its worked facing of yellow stone. Behind him the first smoke began to rise from the village chimneys and the bustling clatter of the village farmyards made itself distantly heard. There were no bounds to his exultation, though he gave it no more mind than did the singing birds.

When he came to Langdyke Bush there was smoke before him as well as behind. Lettuce Boswell was leaning an iron snottum over the flames and hanging a kettle from it. She looked up at John and nodded towards a cart.

“That’s where you’ll find him chal.”

John squatted down beside the cart and whistled between his fingers. There was a stirring from beneath it. A rustling of dried bracken and straw. Wisdom, wrapped in blankets, poked his lean head out into the morning. He looked up between the shafts and blinked blearily at John.

“What do you want brother, it’s scarcely dawn?”