Mist Over Pendle (28 page)

“We’re in your debt for ever,” she told Margery. “I do hope you were not hurt. Horses are such dreadful things to fall from.”

“Madam, I . . .” Margery felt baffled. This was too blatant. However much these people knew or guessed, there was surely a limit to what should be said aloud. But Roger came skilfully to her help.

“How is Master Miles?” he asked, as he had once done before; and, as before, it was bait enough for Mistress Crook. Miles was charming. She did so hope affairs would turn out well for Miles. He surely deserved it. And then indiscretion had his aunt by the ear again.

“I hope you’ll think so too,” she told Margery. “I hear he has been much in your company of late, and I was so glad you went with him to the Rough Lee. You’ll be there again soon, let us hope?”

Once again it was Roger who answered for her.

“I doubt that,” he said dryly. “Margery is no doubt shy to speak of it, but she’s avoiding those parts for a while.”

Mistress Crook reared, and Margery became tense and alert. This was not an answer she would have expected. It had an air of indiscretion, and that was not Roger’s way. But his tone had not been idle, and again Margery asked herself what the purpose was that had brought him to this house this day. And had he not said that he would put his trust in Mistress Crook? But now he was speaking again.

“The truth is,” he was saying, “that Margery is presently shy of the Rough Lee. She had some encounter there with the Redfern woman.”

“That creature!” Mistress Crook began to bristle. “What has she done now? Pray tell me of it.”

Roger sat at ease and answered lightly.

“Done? She can scarce be said to have done anything. She presumed to a resentment that Margery should be on that land. That’s all.”

“Brother Dick’s land?”

“So I’d have said. But from what Margery says, the Redfern fancies it as her own land.”

Margery sat in silence and left him to it. This, of course, was not at all what she had said, but Roger evidently knew what he was about. Mistress Crook was becoming angry.

“Her own!” she snapped. “Her own indeed! I never could understand why Dick allows that family on the land at all.”

“He doesn’t,” said Tony quietly. “It’s Alice who does that, as we all know.”

“Alice, then. It’s the same thing.”

“Not quite--thank Heaven!”

“Don’t say that, Tony. But to allow these Chattox there after what Robert said---“

Tony looked at her indulgently.

“That was a long time agone,” he said slowly.

“And what of that? He said it, just the same. And then he died--all alone there, and away from us all.”

“Not quite alone.”

Tony’s quiet answer struck coldly, and Margery sat very still, her thoughts flying back to what Roger had told her of the Robert Nutter who had died at Chester. Tony’s meaning had been plain, for Robert had not been alone; there had been a servant with him.

“No. Not alone.” There was a smouldering anger in her voice now. “And I still tell you, Tony, you know what Robert said.”

Roger came quietly into the talk.

“You speak in mysteries,” he complained. “What did your brother say?”

Tony gave him the short answer.

“Robert? He said he was bewitched--by the Chattox.”

Roger turned slowly to Margaret Crook.

“You think, then, that your brother was indeed bewitched?”

“Of course he was.” Margaret was indignant. “What else could it be--with such women and after such a quarrel?”

“I can’t judge that,” said Roger. “I know something of the women, but nothing of a quarrel.”

“Then never mind about that. But there was a quarrel, a dreadful quarrel, and Robert wanted the women put off the land and our father wouldn’t. He said he didn’t believe it, but of course it was our grandfather that wouldn’t when you come down to the truth of it.”

She was growing incoherent, and Roger lifted a protesting hand.

“Please,” he said. “I get lost. Tell me, when was this?” “Just before Robert died--the summer before.”

“And Robert died when?”

“Twenty years come Candlemas.” Roger nodded.

“So there was a quarrel, and your brother asked your father to turn these people off the land? Is that it?”

“Yes.”

“But they were not turned off?”

“No. And that’s what I’ve been telling you. It would have been our grandfather.”

“How?”

Margaret looked pitying at Roger, as though surprised at his stupidity. The understanding Tony intervened to make it plain.

“Margaret means,” he said, “that our mother had died, and our father had therefore taken us to live for a time with his own parents--our grandparents. So the fact was our father did not at that time own the land. He’d not yet inherited, and he could not have turned these people off it. It would have needed our grandfather to do that.”

“That’s plainer.” Roger spoke thoughtfully. “And your grandfather, being asked, would not? Is that it?”

“That was his wife.”

“His wife? You mean that your grandfather might have turned these people off, but that his wife, being your grandmother, hindered him in that?”

“I take it so. But it’s an old tale and best let die.”

Tony Nutter spoke as though he would gladly change the topic, but Roger would have none of it.

“Why,” he asked gently, “should your grandmother protect a witch-brood against her own grandson?”

“Because she was a witch herself.”

Margaret had snapped the answer before her brother could speak. When he did speak, he was almost chiding.

“Margaret, my dear!” was all he said.

“But it’s true,” she insisted. “You know very well it’s true. Why else did she stop him? And why else did she make Robert have that dreadful Tom Redfern as his servant? And if it come to that, why else did she bring Alice here and marry her to Dick?”

She ended in a silence that chilled. Roger sat impassive, and Margery, catching his eye, read in it a warning which she did not need; she had no intention of intruding herself while the Nutter secrets were tumbling out.

Tony Nutter turned to face Roger squarely. There was a flush in his cheeks and he was plainly embarrassed, but he spoke calmly.

“Since it’s gone so far, you’d best have the rest of it,” he said slowly.

“I’d be grateful.” Tony smiled wistfully.

“Near twenty years agone, remember. Anne Redfern was sweet seventeen then, and sweet she was to look on. She was newly wed to this Thomas Redfern, and brother Robert--here’s nothing of credit, but it’s the truth--brother Robert tried to have his pleasure of her. Which she would have none of---“

“That being the quarrel?”

“Just that. Even then, she’d a tongue like a sewer, and Robert had the reek of it. That angered him and he threatened.”

“Threatened what?”

“Anything and everything, though I never learned the rights of it. He was taken of a fever, you see, and for a week he retched and vomited--till Margaret here took him in charge, and he thrived on a broth she made. But in all his ravings he cursed the Chattox, vowing it was their foul arts had struck him.”

Margery stole a glance at Roger and saw him staring at the floor. And Tony went on quietly.

“That was when our grandmother came nosing into the thing --she and Alice.”

“Alice?” Roger looked up at that.

“No other.” Tony was speaking deliberately now. “Alice had come out of Trawden a month before. Grandmother said she was kin, and called her cousin. And already she’d been pressing Robert to marry her.”

“Robert, was it? Not Dick?”

“Robert it was--at first. But he liked her as little as the rest of us did, and he was man enough to say so. Maybe it was that. Or maybe Alice turned cool of him when he was taken with the Redfern. Or maybe it was because he fell sick just then. We’ll never know. But at least there was no more heard of his marrying Alice. But they pressed him to another thing.”

“Yes?”

“Grandmother, with virtuous Alice at her side, must needs have it that he owed amends to these Redferns for wrongs done-- though in truth it hadn’t gone so far. But that’s how it was, and by what acts they pressed him, none of us ever knew. All that’s certain is that when he went into Wales with Shuttleworth, he took Tom Redfern with him as body-servant--and I mind the fellow’s leer as they rode off.”

“Don’t speak of it, Tony. It was dreadful.”

Margaret’s voice was shaking, and her brother went over to her, standing by her side and stroking her shoulder softly as she turned away from them. Margery, glancing again at Roger, saw him with a face of stone, and she knew he was probing because he felt he must.

“I take it then,” he said quietly, “that your brother took this fellow only because he had to. He had not come to love the Chattox brood?”

Tony smiled wanly.

“I mind his saying, before he took horse, that whenever he should be home again he’d clap the whole brood where they’d be glad to chew their own lice.”

And Tony Nutter turned to the fire, his face white and wretched. His sister’s face was buried in her cupped hands.

“And Alice?” said Roger softly.

“She turned on Dick and married him out of hand.” Tony was speaking with his back to them, his face still to the fire. “Dick’s softer than Robert ever was, and he could not stand against them. He was wed at Christmas that year. And the next we knew was Tom Redfern back among us, to tell of Robert dead at Chester.”

Tony’s foot stirred the fire viciously. Then he turned quickly to face them.

“The one satisfaction I had,” he said grimly, “was the end of Tom Redfern.”

“Don’t, Tony. Don’t,” whispered Margaret miserably.

“Of Tom Redfern?” Roger was quietly insistent.

“Aye. He swaggered it for a week, as one knowing more than his betters. Then the sickness had him, and he retched his way to Hell.”

He ended, and the strained silence wrapped the room. Margery stirred uneasily, and Roger drew deep breath.

“An odd sickness, that,” he remarked dryly.

“Yes.” Tony looked him squarely in the eye. “In the summer it took my father, and he was dead by Michaelmas. And before the year was out, my grandfather was gone. And brother Dick ruled at the Rough Lee.”

“Ruled, do you say?”

Tony smiled sourly.

“Owned might be the better word,” he agreed. Roger nodded and seemed to consider. Then he spoke deliberately.

“These sicknesses, Tony--did no thought ever come to you about them?”

But Tony Nutter would not answer that. He looked at the fire, and evaded.

“Some things are with God,” he said quietly. “And best left with Him.”

But Roger thought, and then slowly shook his head.

“All things are with God, Tony, and the more so when they’re left undone by men. But have we therefore a duty to leave all things undone?”

He came quietly to his feet.

“I had meant to make pretence,” he said, “that we’d come on you by chance. I’ll not tell that tale now. You see which way I drift.” Tony nodded.

“I’ll pray that God be with you,” he answered. “May He keep us all!”

“Amen to that! And now we’ll take our leave. I’m grateful for your tale.”

Margery was on her feet at once. This room was oppressive to her now, and she was glad of the cool fresh air as they rode down to the brook.

Roger had only one comment to make.

“lf
I take to retching,” he said tersely, “cook my broth yourself.”

Tony Nutter’s tale did what few things could do; it spoiled Margery’s sleep.

Neither she nor Roger had much to say of it that evening; they seemed to agree that it was best left in a decent quiet. But their minds were on it, as they both knew, and Margery brooded unhappily. She had had a glimpse into a home that must have been horrible; for the Rough Lee, twenty years before, could have been nothing less than that. Margery’s thoughts were on the motherless children in that fear-drenched house: the doomed Robert, linked by hate to a gloating servant; the soft and friendly Dick, forced to a marriage he must have loathed; the sensitive keen-eyed Tony, seeing all and hating all; the kindly talkative Margaret, clinging perhaps to Tony as the shadows deepened round her; and all of them young, eager and helpless. They must have been near Margery’s present age when a prim, dark Alice had come into their home from Trawden, come to stay, and wed, and rule. And that dreadful grandmother who had called this Alice kin: what of her? Margery shivered as the picture came alive in her mind.

She was not eager to blow her candles that night, and when at last she did blow them, she slept badly; and as she passed fitfully from sleep to waking, and from waking to sleep, and most of all when she was in the twilight, that is neither, scenes and figures began to float before her in a strange mad medley. There was Alice Nutter, sitting like a frozen rock in a cold that spread and numbed; there was a slim young Nutter, riding into Wales with a monstrous black-cloaked servant leering at his back; there was a grandmother, vague and misty, who chuckled spitefully and lifted a finger to bring dark Alice running; there was Tony, always with his face twisted in misery; and Margaret, sometimes as a young girl slim and cowering, and sometimes as she had been yesterday, hunched by a fire with her head buried in her hands. And between them all, with them and yet not of them, was Frank Hilliard, flitting strangely from one picture to another, and always in danger from the chuckle or the cold.

The darkness of exhaustion dimmed the pictures in the end, and Margery slept heavily. When she came down to breakfast heavy-eyed and late, Roger took one look at her and then jerked her thoughts to other matters.

“Tom Peyton had a word for me while you were still abed,” he told her. “There’s some trouble, it seems, at Wheathead, though I don’t yet know the rights of it. The Device woman’s been here with some complaint. Apparently Baldwin’s whip caressed her shoulders--though why she thinks that’s matter for complaint the Devil knows best.”

Margery nodded.

“Which Device would that be, sir?”

“Elizabeth--the one that squints. So I’d have you ride to Wheathead and get the truth of it for me.”