Harvest A Novel (12 page)

“The man is dead.”

“The dead men are the ones to fear. A soul can’t rest until it’s satisfied, until the fellow is revenged.”

“He’s far too short to reach the horse’s head.” I’m trying to be reasonable.

She stares as if I am the world’s buffoon. “Everybody’s short, when they’re kneeling down,” she says, and looks at me cock-eyed. Of course, she’s right. I’ve been half-witted. The horse wasn’t standing; it was down and sleeping when it died. It was in the hollows of the night. What does a horse do, then, other than to fold itself into the straw and sleep? The killer didn’t have to be familiar. The killer didn’t have to reach. The killer didn’t even have to lift that finger-stretching rock far from the ground. The killer might have used two hands. Far from being the work of a hefty, muscle-fisted man, the killer could have been a woman or a child. Not counting widow Gosse’s ghost and his pilloried companion but including Mr. Quill and Master Kent’s six manor house guests, there are more than sixty sons and daughters of Cain who might have crept back to their cot last night with horse blood on their hands and clothes.

Indeed, that is the stain that Master Jordan wants to chase, once everyone is gathered in the threshing house ready for another day of barley work. Horses have enormous pumping hearts. A loop of blood fountained out of Willowjack’s head the moment that the prong went in. The straw is black and sticky with its splash. Whoever was responsible for this death will not have escaped entirely dry and unspoiled. All the masters need to do is find the pile of red and sodden clothes. The cottagers are told, therefore, that none of them must stray a step beyond the barn today. Their dwellings and their gardens will be searched. And we must prepare ourselves, in the absence of a lawful gibbet, to see a neighbor hanging from an oak before the end of day.

“And who are you?” That is a question no one dares to ask as Master Jordan stands before them. The cousin does not even give his name or offer the briefest account of his status and intentions. All my neighbors see is a man of blunt authority attended by three menservants who are affecting to be dangerously bored. They all four look extremely clean and pale. Spotless is the word. No worthy flea
would want to spend a night with them. The menservants are dressed in matching breeches, jerkins with flaxen collars and brimless caps, like foot soldiers. From behind, where I am standing at Master Kent’s shoulder, they are indistinguishable from one another. Their lord—for it must seem that he’s at least a lord—has thrown aside the leather riding coat and padded doublet he was wearing yesterday and, as befits the summer warmth, is attired more loosely in trunk-hose—or onion pants as they might as well be called—and an embroidered linen smock. There’s not a tuft of wool on him, I see. His beard is barbered and his hair, so far as we can tell, is pinned. But what holds our attention and most persuades he is a man we should not trifle with is his high-crowned hat, his copotain, which he’s adorned not only with the Jordan family badge but with both a feather and a gemstone clip. That hat alone says power, wealth and provenance. That hat alone could purchase each of us.

In truth, this lord, this gentleman, is having trouble keeping his hat in place. He has to raise his hand and hold its brim as he describes—in gestures and in words—what he expects from us today. In brief, he wants an end to all the nonsense that has disturbed our country peace so thoroughly of late. We are too far from “ordinance and regulation,” he says. We have forgotten Benefits of Law, Just Punishment, the Dues and Customs of all citizens “and countrymen,” he adds. So far “the reckoning,” for which we all could well be held to account, comprises only property of the manor house—some buildings and some creatures of great consequence.

“Someone among you here, beneath this roof, will be found and held responsible for the theft of a mare of great value,” he says. “That person cannot expect to walk these lanes tomorrow, nor should he hope to claim a holy burial … He will meet the rotting carcass of the horse he killed, in your charnel field. He will meet his brother miscreant
too—the one who foolishly thought he could set fire to barns and doves and only pay the meager price of one week, at leisure in the pillory, but has instead today been dragged by his bloody heels to join the skeletons.”

I cannot help but look for the twins and Brooker Higgs among the silent gathering. When they’re not gaping, they’re swallowing. They’re picturing the pair of carcasses already at Turd and Turf and wondering which of them now standing in the barn will sleep forever with Willowjack and with the pig-chewed, throttled newcomer. But that’s the same for everybody here. It’s as clear as any thunder cloud that troubles are approaching fast, that lightning is bound to strike a villager. This high-hatted man, whoever he might be, whatever his conjunction with the Jordan family badge, will not be satisfied until the reckoning is paid.

Master Kent himself says nothing to explain. Everyone can tell by how he hangs his hands behind his back and bows his head, nodding too self-consciously—he’s nothing but a listener today—that, whoever this new gentleman might be, their own master of the manor is balancing on a lower rung than him, and knows it. This is a new experience, and baffling. No one has seen the master standing with such anxious deference before. We’re used to knowing he’s in charge even though he’s never been too keen to remind us of that fact. He has always tried to be an even-handed, subtle Caesar in our midst, more ready to achieve his purposes by throwing an arm around our shoulders than shouting in our ears. Our Caesar now seems powerless. Of course, he has been saddened by the loss of Willowjack and might have such a heavy heart that it has dragged his tongue into his throat. We can expect him soon to lift his head and take our reins again. But, no, this evident submission to the younger man is touching on the servile now. It’s almost fearful. And made all the more so by the
other man’s officious bearing, his icy forthright manners which expect and get compliance from everybody. “God bless you all,” he says at last. “And God help one of you.”

Master Kent is glad to have me at his side once we have left the barn. He needs “a calming hand.” Not only has he lost his mare, he’s had to fight to save her body from the profiteers. “My cousin tells me I am wasteful, not to have the ‘useless’ carcass baked for its grease,” he says. “I told him that the horse was far too loyal and loved for such rewards.” And Master Jordan’s reply was that he himself had valued his mastiff, Blunt, just as much. He evidently was a dog as fierce and unimpeachable as any constable. But he still yielded thirteen pounds of grease when he was too old for the job and had to be dispatched.

“I am improvident for not putting Willowjack to the same good use,” adds my master, leaning closer so that he is not overheard. “But I have insisted on my way, and won the argument … for once. If only I could always win the argument with cousin Edmund …” He puts a finger to his lips, nervous suddenly. “The two of us should hold our tongues. You understand?”

My master assumes that Mr. Quill has, by now, explained to me the cause and reason of his cousin’s country trip. He is asking that I keep secret from my neighbors not only what surely now seems obvious—his cousin’s lawful usurpment of the manor and the land—but also the details of our coming woolly plight. He hopes to win some further arguments, before any cloven hoofs make their first imprint on our land. He means first to negotiate some blunting of his cousin’s blades before he talks to us, his friends. It will have been his plan, I’m sure, as soon as he was warned, before the barley was cleared, that Master Jordan was descending by road to harvest his inheritance, to make a fight of it, to protect us with his arguments, to find some means of, say, saving at least some common ground where we—the shearers and the shepherds of next year—can let loose our beasts, to do his best, as
well, to preserve some forestry. “So long as all my neighbors here are safe,” he’d say, “and they have work and food and dwellings that are assured until the thresholds of their graves, then I am equally assured your flock of sheep will meet with hospitality …”

But it has not been so. Somehow the village was already burdened by misfortune before its future rode in on a horse, before the Dream of Golden Hoofs came near. There were the fires. There were the doves. There were those raised, unfriendly bows. There was the woman and her disquieting face, breaking short the dance. There was the body at the pillory, or that much of the body left behind by pigs. It feels as if some impish force has come out of the forest in the past few days to see what pleasure it can take in causing turmoil in a tranquil place. And now, the worst—if it is right to count the death of a horse as worse than the death of a man—his Willowjack is dead. That is heartbreaking. She was Mistress Kent’s own horse. And it is frightening too, because whoever killed the mare was stabbing Master Kent as well. Of course, he cannot talk to me or open up his heart just yet. We are surrounded by the cousin’s men. And Master Jordan himself is never out of hearing. My master only offers me a shrug, a pulse of hands and chin and mouth but sadly eloquent. It says, These are the blackest days for us, old friend. I raise my eyebrows in reply. Indeed, we’ve never known a more alarming day.

We have gone beyond the hearing of the threshing barn. The flailing and winnowing continue steadily behind. Only Mr. Quill, the steward Baynham and the groom are unaccounted for, though I imagine the first two are working as an awkward pair on manuscripts and charts. I hope to be at Mr. Quill’s side this afternoon preparing paints and parchments as originally intended, but for the moment I am regarded as “cousin Charles’s fellow” and required to lead our party to the family homes, the heart of everything, identify the absent occupants by name and then stand by with Master Kent while Lucy
Kent’s cousin-by-blood and his sidemen step indoors to pull away the coverings, lift the matting and the reeds, upturn all the storage chests, and shift the barrels and the benches in search of bloody rags. It’s rare for me to peer into so many private rooms, to glimpse how cramped some places are, how full the beds, how modest their possessions, how buckled is the furniture. I am surprised by neatness and by dirt, by evidence of last night’s food and evidence of none. It’s certain that you cannot tell from how a person works or how a person strolls behind her hens what kind of life they live in secrecy.

I am embarrassed when we reach the Carrs’ dwelling. John and I do not put up our feet at each other’s hearths. We are good friends but meet and talk only in the open air. We sit outside and understand that neighbors should not pry. Neighbors should be deaf and blind. “Take care,” I ask the men as they go in. But they are too impatient and detached to take much care. I sense my request has only made them more suspicious of the Carrs. I have to step away. I cannot bear to listen to the evident disruption. John will never understand why I did not go in to try to stop the breakages.

It is embarrassing as well to wait outside the widow’s house and hear the thudding of the overturning bed, still warm, as I suppose, from me and her. Still rocking, possibly. But thus far there has not been any sign of butchery, not even in Abel Saxton’s cottage. The only blood they find is on a kerchief in my place. I have to match my hand to it and have the master vouch for me, report my “courage” in the burning stable block. I evidently saved the best part of his hay. Only then can Master Jordan be persuaded I am not a suspect.

So we reach the last of the village’s twenty or so inhabited dwellings and we are allowed to rest while the sidemen go to check the sties and byres, the whitehouse and latrines, the brewing shed, the outbuildings and any nooks and crannies where a bloody shirt might readily be hid. It is Master Jordan himself who walks up the tangled
path toward the tenement where Cecily was raised. And it is Master Jordan himself who almost at once reemerges into the light with a cry of satisfaction and holding a heavy, bloodstained wrap of cloth. At first the master and I think it is too dark to be the woman’s velvet shawl. But all too soon the truth is unignorable. First, the sunshine catches on its silver threads, and then the shawl is opened up and the color is confirmed, the rich and heavy Turkish mauve. Shake it one more time, I want to call out to the man, and see who topples out into that thistle bed.

Actually I hold my tongue, and so does Master Kent, even when his cousin throws the shawl across a fence and invites us to identify its owner.

“Give me her name,” the cousin says, addressing me, the villager, but one he seems to trust, though possibly only because I’m not as stolid or corn-haired as the rest.

“I truly do not have a name for her,” I say, and indeed it’s not entirely a lie. I can put a face to her. I can describe her roughly sheared scalp which must by now be softening and blackening with hair. I’d not mistake her dark and shiny belladonna eyes for any other woman’s in the village. But other than the byname Mistress Beldam conferred on her by Master Kent, she has no title of identity. “I’ve never seen one of my neighbors wearing that. By all my heart,” I say.

I leave it to my master to recognize the garment and the culprit, and do his heavy duty. He will have judged by now that the woman who spat at Willowjack also slaughtered her. She crept into the barn, where so recently she brought the dancing to an end, searched the tool chest for a spike and somehow lifted up that heavy churchyard stone to bring it down with spiteful and indignant force. From any other man but Master Kent I would expect a response of matching spite and indignation. He loved his Willowjack. But he does not even seem surprised to link the woman and the horse. He does not think
her actions justified. Why visit anger on a horse? But clearly she was righteous in a way. Her kin—and still we do not know what kin he was, her father probably—was taken to the pillory on Master Kent’s command and was abandoned there to be consumed by pigs. What man with any heart could say the woman had no grounds? And so I am not surprised when Master Kent does not identify the owner of the shawl for cousin Edmund Jordan. He is prepared to blame himself for Willowjack. But neither does he hide behind a tricky truth, as I have done. Instead he says, “That shawl was my wife’s, your cousin Lucy Kent’s.” There’s not a cottager round here who’d have the means to gain a shawl like that, nor the opportunity. That much is clearly true.