Devil Water (46 page)

“No,” she said, and added in a low voice, “Rob, what is the coil about my mother?”

He did not answer for a bit, while he thought of what Will had reluctantly told him. Meg had never complained, indeed during the last year she seldom spoke at all, yet through the planks of the loft Will had heard her groaning many nights, and by days she often held her hand to her breast as though it hurt. She wasted away until the yellowing flesh shriveled from the sharp bones. It was old Snowdon himself who found her dead on her pallet one morning, Will told Rob, shrugging, and no wonder, for Meg had had the look and smell of death for months. Will was not there at the end. He had been off to Jedburgh selling some wedders. When he came back there was no sign of Meg’s body, and the old man would not say what he’d done with it, though he muttered once that her kind of death was a judgment on them for their sins -- and must be hid from all the world. To which his son indifferently agreed.

Meg’s death might never have been known, if it weren’t for Nan, to whom Will wrote a laconic note, bidding her come and care for their father. It was Nan who had seen the decency of telling Charles Radcliffe about an event so important to him. The Snowdon men, as Rob soon discovered, were not only indifferent but actively hostile. The hatred they had felt for Radcliffe when they forced him into marriage had intensified when they heard of his part in the Rebellion.

“Your mother must’ve died some time the end of March,” said Rob at length answering Jenny, “but there’s no proof when. And the ould man, he won’t speak of it, says only that she’s gan awa’ -- lang lang awa’.”

“Then what can I
do?”
Jenny cried, remembering with dismay her father’s anxious face.

“I divven’t knaw, lass,” said Rob more naturally than he had spoken yet. “But Snawdon, he used to be fond o’ ye. ‘Twas the only way Nan an’ I could see to get Mr. Radcliffe’s due.
We
couldna.”

“It’s good of you to be so friendly to my father, Rob,” she said softly. “It makes me happy.”

Again he was silent. It was not so much friendliness for Radcliffe which had moved Rob to connive at his escape from Newgate and now made him try to help in the matter of Meg’s death. It was the love of freedom and justice springing from his own passionate, often thwarted, desire for both. Yet now for the first time he apprehended a new element which had, perhaps, always been there.

Was it because of Jenny herself that he felt inclined to aid the father? He looked quickly up at her face. It was luminous in the twilight, tendrils of golden hair blew back over the green riding hood. Her surprisingly full red lips were slightly parted in a worried little smile. Rob thought of a lass on Tyneside, an alderman’s buxom daughter. They had been betrothed, during the brief period when Rob had thought himself a man of means -- and a landowner. Her father had broken it off when Rob found himself penniless again. Bitter and desolate, Rob went to work in the keelboats, but the girl had felt the same -- willing to throw her cap over the windmill for him -- and he was pleased, and had lusted for her.

Now he did not. She seemed coarse, brash and huggermugger.

“Ah, there it is . . .” whispered Jenny, letting the reins fall on Coquet’s neck while she gazed at the oblong thatched shape of the peel, dark against white birches beyond at the burn. The peel was smaller than she had thought, lower. She sniffed the pungent smell of warm dung and peat smoke. An old sheepdog barked warning from the byre on the ground floor. The second-story door opened above the long flight of stone steps, and she saw a woman’s form there holding a candle. Suddenly Jenny slid back through the years and waited for her mother’s voice to call, “Bairnie, bairnie, haste thee hame -- thy supper’s cooling on the hob!”

Jenny’s eyes stung with hot tears, she did not look again, or heed the actual greeting which Nan was giving. She dismounted so clumsily that Rob put his arm out to steady her. Far beyond embarrassment now, she clung to him, and buried her face on his shoulder. “I thought I’d forgot her,” she whispered, half sobbing. “I thought I’d forgot her, but I haven’t.”

He understood, and after a second in which he held himself stiff, his arms tightened around the girl, he bent his face to her soft hair and murmured, “Hush, hinny, hush. The sorrow’ll pass -- the sorrow’ll pass.”

Nan at the top of the steps and Alec on the ground both watched with astonished disapproval, while Rob was aware of nothing but the piercing sweetness of the feel of her body against him, and Jenny knew nothing except that there had been anguish and now there was comfort. For the next few minutes Jennie was in a daze. She greeted her Aunt Nan, a thin sallow sad-eyed woman, and was relieved to see that there seemed to be nobody else in the stone room, which shocked her by its chilly bareness and dinginess. She stood forlornly by the fire. The horses stamped and whickered in the byre below them. The cow mooed inquiringly.

“Where’re the men?” asked Rob of his sister-in-law.

“Will’s out i’ the moor,” said Nan. “Faither’s dozing,” she pointed to a still figure in a dark corner, half screened by the plank wall of the women’s cubicle. Old John Snowdon sat in his wooden armchair, a musket resting in the slitted window which commanded the northwest, from whence the plundering Scots used to attack. His big leather Bible lay on his lap, where his white beard half concealed it. His gaunt grizzled head rested against the chair back, and he slept. “I put laudanum in his beer-r,” said Nan. “Faither was wild earlier an’ I was afleyed Mr. Radcliffe maught be wi’ ye. Wey, set ye down, ye mun all be empty as a tyum.”

Nan fed them heather ale, oatcakes, and a hare stew, while she chatted politely with Alec about Tyneside. Rob and Jenny were silent. The old man snored spasmodically. Jenny herself was half asleep, worn out by a forty-mile ride and a variety of emotions, which had all simmered down to dreamy contentment that Rob was near her. Through half-shut eyes she watched him, the straight black hair which fell below his ears, the bluish cast of his close-shaven cheeks, his big brown fingers, as they spooned or knifed up the food. She noted the black hairs on his chest where his homespun shirt fell open, and the thick muscles of his neck. Compared to her father, Rob might be thought ugly, the realization drifted in and out of her mind! To her he was just Rob, and she longed to be held close to him, as in the moment when he comforted her. She did not think of the mission Charles had sent her on.

Nan thought of the mission. She ceased talking to Alec, and was watching the girl, perturbed by the expression on the lovely innocent face. What’s this? she thought. ‘Tis but a callow lassie, though raised to be a lady as poor Meg sent her off to be. What is this way she looks at Robbie? And he who never raises his eyes from the table! Was it a blunder to summon the girl here? Rob had suffered miseries enough already from wanting to get above his class, without adding yet another heartsick muddle with Radcliffes. God blast them all! She’d send the lass back where she belonged tomorrow! And yet this was Meg’s child, and it was not only for doing justice to Charles Radcliffe that Nan wanted Jenny to try to find out about her mother’s death, it was so Meg’s body might be found, and the poor tormented thing given a Christian burial. Now was the time to try! Now! While the old man was hazed with the drink she’d given him.

“Play the pipes, Rob!” she said sharply. He looked at her in surprise. “Aye, play ‘On Cheviot Side’ or ‘When the Battle Is O’er’!” said Nan. “They’ll awaken Faither, and Jenny do ye gan to him an’ try your wiles.”

Rob walked to a wall peg where his small-pipes hung. He placed the thongs around his arm and body, the bellows under his right elbow, the goatskin bag and its straight wooden drones at his waist. He fingered the chanter, pressed the bellows with his elbow, and the first sweet, plaintive flutelike notes came out. As Rob played his face altered, a subtle radiance imbued it. He played masterfully -- though no one there was capable of judging how much he surpassed the playing of his teacher, Jem Bailey, the Faw; yet Jenny knew that the music was truly beautiful, and that this was a side of Rob she had not guessed. He did not play either of the tunes Nan had suggested. He improvised something which had in it the wild magic of the moors, the sighing of the wind, and the song of the lavrocks; underneath there was an urgency, almost a command. The old man felt it, and stirred restlessly, he jerked himself upright, and clutched the Bible to his chest.

Jenny felt it, and going to her grandfather, stood beside him. She put her hand on his shoulder, looking down into his blurred vacant eyes. John Snowdon blinked. The fair face and its nimbus of gold hair seemed unearthly, as the music of the pipes seemed unearthly. Is it deid I am? the old man wondered. Is’t the promised land, at lang last? “Wha’ manner o’ body be ye?” he breathed, gazing at Jenny.

Rob played very soft. Nan and Alec watched intently from the other side of the room.

“I’m Meg’s daughter, Grandfather,” said Jenny, smiling into the bewildered old face. “I’ve come a long way to see you.”

He waggled his head. “Ye speak lak’ a Southron,” he said sharply. Did angels speak like Southrons? he thought in dismay.

“I dinna ha’ t’speak lak’ a Southron, Granfaither,” said Jenny, her voice taking on the lilt. “I was bor-rn in this peel, d’ye remember-r?”

“Ye wor?” he said slowly. “Mony’s been bor-run i’ this peel, Iang-syners back an’ back. Which be ye?”

She leaned closer, full of pity, trying to penetrate the mists. “I’m thy gran’datter,” she said with emphasis. “I’m Meg’s bairn.”

The old man recoiled, his skinny arms clutched the Bible tighter, his eyes narrowed in a look of defensive cunning. “Meg’s gan awa’ --” he said. “Far awa’ -- an’ she’s washed i’ the blood o’ the lamb!”

“Where’s she gan to?” said Jenny, her heart beating fast. “Ye mun
tell
me where Meg’s gan to!” Her voice rang with sudden authority, strength came to her from Rob’s music, and from un-plumbed depths in her own nature. Rob ceased playing, Nan held her breath, while the cunning faded from the old man’s eyes, which became puzzled, uncertain. Jenny had straightened, and the stern expression of her face beneath the glittering hair gave him a quiver of superstitious awe. He made a helpless gesture. “She’s i’ the lough,” he said plaintively like a child. “I carried her in ma arms an’ put her i’ Darden Lough, sae the watters o’ eternal life’ll wash her sins awa’.”

Nan gave a low keening cry. Rob shook his head violently at her, and hastily covered the sound with his music, for Snowdon turned, almost aware of the listeners. In a moment he went on speaking to Jenny in the same plaintive voice. “The Lord tould me to hide her shame -- she’d a canker i’ her breast -- ‘twas the de’il gnawing her -- ye’d no want
them--”
he pointed in the direction of Tosson and Rothbury, “the unsealed, the unhallowed -- to see Meg’s shame, wad ye?”

Jenny shut her eyes a moment. Her strength was ebbing. She heard Rob’s urgent whisper, “Get the Book from him!”

The girl did not quite understand, but Nan heard and in an instant knew what Rob was thinking. She glided over to her father, and said as briskly as she could, “We mun ha’ reading now from Holy Scripture -- Jenny s’all read to thee!”

The old man’s face darkened with quick fear, he crouched over the Bible as though he were protecting a baby. “Ye’ll not touch the Book, woman!”

“Not
I
,” said Nan drawing back. “Gi’e it to Jenny! She’s the reet to it.”

The old man hesitated. Jenny? Jane Snawdon had been his mother. Was this she? Or was there a bairn once called Jenny who nestled on his lap, prattling, in the sunny days long past? And this bairn, had he not taught her to read from this very Book? His arms went limp. “Weel --” he said with dignity. “Ye may tak’ the Book, lang enow to read me a Psalm, for m’een graw dim, an’ I canna m’sel.”

Jenny picked the Bible from his lap, and carried it to the table where the candle stood. The old man watched her without moving. The great leather volume fell open between the Old and New Testaments. Here there were separate pages, many of them covered with hand-written entries. Nan bent over and hastily turning a page whispered, “Look!”

Rob came out of the shadows, Alec crowded near. John Snowdon, mad as he was at times, had yet never neglected the patriarchal record of life and death in his family. Jenny saw her own birth date and the name Radcliffe. They all saw the last entry, written in a wavering crabbed hand, “Margaret my daughter, died Mar. 30, 1723 God have mercy.”

John Snowdon stared at the group. What were they looking at? There was something in the Book they should not see, something he’d kept hid these many months. And there was a strange man too gawping at the Book. A stranger! The old man glared at Alec, he reached out for his musket. Rob whirled and rushing forward grabbed the gun. “Nay, sir,” he said quietly, putting the musket behind him. “Nay Mr. Snawdon. There’s no need for this!”

The old man made a whimpering sound, his limbs went slack. “Meg’s gan awa’,” he said. “Far awa’ -- I tould ye so.” His chin sank on his chest, and he gave the sharp dry sobs of the aged.

Jenny ran to her grandfather and, kneeling, put her arms around him. “Dinna greet, oh dinna greet,” she said, her face against his beard. “Ye meant it weel, Granfaither. I know ye meant my mother to be washed clean, and she is now at peace.”

The old man listened, he put out his trembling hand and smoothed Jenny’s hair.

TWELVE

The next morning, Nan let Jenny sleep until the sun was high over the Simonsides. All night on the straw pallet they shared in the cubicle, the girl had scarcely moved. Nan went to wake her several times, it was growing over late for the journey back to Dilston, and Nan was anxious to get her off -- away from Rob. But she hadn’t the heart to disturb one who lay so childish and defenseless in her exhausted sleep. Nan came back into the outer room, shaking her head.

“I doubt ye’ll mak’ Dilston today,” she said gloomily. Alec was gloomy too, he had spent the night in the draughty loft, and was not anxious for another like it.

Rob, who was eating porridge, said, “Let her be, Nan! Let her ha’ one day here, afore she goes back to her other life.” And he sighed heavily.