Plague Child (28 page)

He stared at me a moment longer, before abruptly running away. I shouted after him: ‘What would you say if I was your step-brother?’

He stopped at the church door, shouting, ‘I’d say you were a liar, sir!’ before running out.

There was one more thing I had to do. I walked between the gravestones, some blank, others with skulls or winged angels. One after another the servants were picking up earth and scattering it on the coffin. The barrel-chested man picked up his handful of soil. Unlike the others he stared at me again directly, meeting my eyes, but my attention was drawn elsewhere.

Phillip was talking urgently to his mother, making his hand into a pistol. Perhaps he often told stories because, with incredulity on her face she tried to gesture him into silence, only giving her stunned attention when Edward’s voice faltered and, in the most familiar passage of all, he put ashes and dust in the wrong order. This disjunction spread along the line of mourners: two, bending to scoop up soil, bumped into one another, one almost falling into the pile of earth, with hurriedly stifled laughter. The regular patter of stones on wood was broken. As I went past, I caught Mrs Stonehouse urging her husband to set the men on me for my insolent blasphemy.

‘Be quiet!’

The two words rang round the graveyard. Her mouth dropped open with the astonishment of a woman who had never been spoken to like that in her life. Before she could respond, he continued, hoping Mrs Morland would find eternal life, speaking at such speed he spurred the mourners on so the rattle of stones on the lid became almost continuous.

By some instinct I moved to the north aspect, to a wild overgrown section near the sheep, which scattered as I approached, their bells a thin skeleton of sound. Here, most graves were buried in the undergrowth, few had stones, and fewer still were marked. Burrs clung to my breeches, and the fluffy white seeds of old man’s beard eddied around me, drifting where the wind carried them as I searched among the stones.

‘Margaret Pearce is there –’

Edward had appeared by my side. He pointed to a stone, jammed against the drystone wall, barely visible among brambles and weeds. I tore them aside, ignoring thorns and nettles. It had no name but at one time had been scratched and scrawled with some obscenity in redding, the dye with which farmers mark their sheep. I fell on my knees and scrabbled the weeds away with both hands.

‘Tear away!’ Edward said. ‘The weeds will grow all the faster – that spot will support nothing else!’

I leapt up. ‘I will put a fresh stone there!’

‘You will not!’

‘I have a right.’

‘You have no rights here! Neither has she! She is lucky to be buried on consecrated ground. If it still is! She has soured it, cursed it – nothing will grow in this corner but weeds!’

His chest was rising and falling. He still had the prayer book in his hands, plucking fretfully at a tear in its spine. Everyone had moved from the grave to stare at us. The youngest child, a toddler, was walking towards us before Phillip grabbed him and, imitating his mother’s scolds, thrust him at the governess.

‘If you do not go, I will have you arrested!’

‘For checking marriage records?’

Mrs Stonehouse was moving towards him with a determined expression on her face but he rounded on her so violently she stopped, holding her hat on in the wind, straining to hear.

‘Why was a page torn out in 1625?’

He lost all colour and I thought he was going to faint. In spite of everything, in spite of the long journey I had taken to find the truth, my heart went out to him. I was a confused jumble of emotions: anger at his complicity in what had happened to my mother, joy that I might at last have found my father.

‘Can we talk elsewhere? Later?’

‘There is nothing to talk about!’ he said violently.

His reaction was so extreme, his face so full of guilt, I could not stop the word coming to my lips. ‘Father –’

For the barest split second he took it as a term of his calling, then jumped as if I had stabbed him. ‘I am not your father!’ His wife must have heard him, for she now came forward with a look that a cavalry charge could not have stopped.

‘The marriage was declared illegal!’ Edward said.

‘By who? By Lord Stonehouse?’ I said.

Suddenly we were all talking at once. The mourners edged forward, open-mouthed.

‘What marriage?’ Edward’s wife said. ‘What are you talking about? Who is this man? Is he the b—’

‘Bastard? No, madam,’ I said, taking off my hat. ‘I no longer think you can call me that.’

She stared at Edward, who suddenly turned not on me, but on my mother’s grave, over which the weeds and nettles already seemed to be creeping back. ‘
Origo mali
!’ he said, spitting out the words. Then he swung round on me, losing control of himself completely. ‘She was a cheat and a thief! She tricked me into agreeing to go away with her, claiming she had money. Money! The only money she had was the pendant she stole that afternoon. That was nothing to do with me – I had no part in it, nothing. I was horrified when she showed me it – horrified!’ His voice was now full of bitterness. ‘She fooled everyone – she certainly fooled me! You are base born, you are nothing to do with me,
nothing
– and
that
is the whole truth of it!’

Chapter 33

He had every reason to lie. His wife was standing there. His children had stopped playing, gazing awe-struck at their normally mild-mannered father ranting with the venom of a radical preacher at me, stabbing a finger towards my mother’s grave. They had on their faces the look only children have, when they have some terrible foreboding that a disaster is about to strike, but do not understand why or what is happening. The two youngest had run to their governess’s arms, and she was whispering to them, comforting them.

Origo mali
– the source of the evil. He was wrong to point to my mother’s grave. The source of the evil was all around me. The land. The rich valley below me that led to Highpoint and beyond to what had once been the Pearces’. That was the source of the evil, the reason for the feud between the Stonehouses and the Pearces, which probably went back to Tudor times or even further, the true source long forgotten, buried generations back. And I was prolonging it. I could understand now why Kate kept urging me to leave. If I did find out the truth, would that be the end of it? No – it would lead only to more bitterness and conflict. I suddenly had a great longing to be with Will, Luke and Ben in a righteous conflict I could understand, and, if I survived, to return to Anne. I could feel her in my arms. I longed for her and London – the whole wretched stink of it!

But that urge lasted only as long as it took me to find my horse. If I rode away, it would not end. Ever since I had been born, the Stonehouses had tried to kill me. First the father. Then Richard. Now Edward, at the end of his tether, looked capable of doing so. My hands as I gripped the reins were blotched red and white with the nettles and scored with scratches from the brambles I had torn from my mother’s grave. I knew her now. Whatever else I was, I was my mother’s son. I would finish what she had begun, or end with her in that limbo of weeds, more suited to my nature as to hers than any comfortable, tended, consecrated spot. I could hear her voice, whispering in the wind:
I shall have one of them . . . The father is my lord . . . the estate is entailed to Richard . . . a complete boor! . . . Edward has a head on his shoulders, but is as weak as water . . .

I had thought for a time I was Lord Stonehouse’s son, but now it looked as if I was Edward’s. He admitted he had been prepared to run away with Margaret Pearce, but when the money did not appear and she stole the pendant, that was too much for him. He would have been not much older than me. Young. Gullible. Easy to catch. And all the time Lord Stonehouse was, in his cautious, secretive way, harbouring a passion for her.

She laughed, Mrs Morland said: ‘Marriage! That’s what I want to talk to you about!’ Laughter has different meanings, according to who hears it. Mrs Morland heard the mocking laughter of a whore. I heard laughter that was bitter, ironic. If only she had waited, she would have landed the biggest fish of all.

I turned into the lane that ran past the church. Edward was closing the door, talking to the verger who held the parish records. The children, chattering in the coach, became silent when I appeared. So did the mourners in the carts. Perhaps they expected me to follow them, as I had done on the way here, as a curlew follows a traveller over a moor. But I turned Patch the other way.

* * *

On our way to Highpoint, Eaton had pointed out the way to Upper Vale, where the coachman, Henry, had told me I would find Mark Stevens. It was less than an hour’s ride from Shadwell, but was as different again as Shadwell from Highpoint.

It was strange, barren land I rode through, rock and heath from which even sheep would derive little sustenance. Strange, yet curiously familiar. It was like the marshland round Poplar; it was Stonehouse without – outside his jurisdiction.

The land improved as I descended from the heath to a straggle of small villages, of which Upper Vale was the first. And the first building, a little distance from the village, was a run-down church. The cottage next to it looked more prosperous, the thatch new and the chimney smoking. A clattering sound came from the yard at the back as I approached. Perhaps I had been stupid to trust Henry. He seemed genuine but, after all, he worked for Lord Stonehouse. I slipped from the saddle, eased out my pistol and crept round the back. A sudden movement made me cock my pistol. I found myself staring into the face of a sorry-looking nag who had just kicked over his pail of water. I righted the pail so he could take the last mouthful and tethered Patch next to him.

The back door was invitingly half-open. Still suspecting a trap, I thrust my boot at it. The draught blew a tang of woodsmoke at me. It did not take long to see the cottage was empty: it was one room, with a ladder to an upper-storey for sleeping. The fire was almost out, producing more smoke than warmth. It was neat and tidy, but there was no sign of a clergyman living here: no books, no papers, only a shelf of herbs.

As I approached the church, I realised it was not run-down, but pillaged. Brasses had been ripped from their matrices. Spikes of broken stained glass were strewn outside a window. Shards of it crunched under my boots as I walked up the aisle. The glass was mixed with splinters of wood from the altar rails, which had been hacked away, as Eaton and I had seen some Parliamentary troops doing on our journey to Highpoint, in an excess of religious zeal and alcohol. They took the rails for firewood, and as a substitute for burning Catholics.

A man was there, a cleric. I saw at first only the fluttering of his black surplice in the breeze from the broken windows, a gentle movement in the darkness of the chancel; I thought he had ascended the pulpit and was gazing towards the ceiling. Then I realised: he was hanging from the tie beam, the knot in the rope tilting his head upwards. I scrambled up to the pulpit, struggling to reach him. The more I tried, the more he spun away from me, like an erratic pendulum. His hand moved with the motion, as if it was trying to reach mine. At last, I managed to grab him and cut at the rope, but he pulled me away with him. For a nightmare moment I was swinging alongside him; the rope seemed alive, wriggling like a snake, about to wrap itself round my neck before it snapped under the double weight and we fell to the floor together.

I broke a nail clawing the rope away from the deepening purple groove in his neck. There was no heartbeat. He was cold, but there was no resistance when I moved his arms: he had been dead just over an hour, perhaps two. There was blood on my hands. No, not blood – dye. It looked like redding, the same dye that had marked my mother’s grave. Gently I smoothed out the crumpled surplice. The letters were smeared and incomplete, but I could still make them out: PAPIST. Not far from his body was a scarf – the same orange colour I was wearing which identified the Parliamentary troops.

I was so deep in the horror of this I scarcely registered Patch’s distant whinny and snort, until it was combined with his hooves on the flags and the grating creak of a gate. I ran towards the cottage. A man was riding the nag I had given water to and letting my horse out of the yard. If the gate had not stuck he would have succeeded. I dived forward, catching at the edge of his coat. I glimpsed a beard, a mouth bared with few teeth as he tried to bring his whip down on me but I pulled him off and we were on the ground together. I brought back my fist before I saw who it was.

‘Matthew!’

He stared at me for such a long, long moment I began to think I was mistaken. I was too young to realise that the distance between forty and fifty, given the losing of teeth and a good deal of hair is much less than that between eight and seventeen. He stretched out a tentative hand, feeling my stubbly beard, touching my red hair, then gave me a very slow, crooked, almost toothless smile.

‘Why, Tom!’ he said. ‘How are you?’

We had no time for a leisurely reunion – if we had stayed much longer, I would have been hanged myself.

Matthew pointed to an angry crowd gathering where the village began, a short distance away, armed with clubs and pitchforks. One man had a hammer, and was still wearing his blacksmith’s soot-stained apron. Later in the war, villagers, maddened by the atrocities and plundering they suffered from both Cavaliers and Roundheads, formed themselves into large associations called Clubmen, to protect themselves. Incidents like this were the seeds of it.

‘I thought you were one of the people who killed poor Mark,’ Matthew said. ‘So do they. Take off that orange scarf, for God’s sake, otherwise they’ll hang you! I’ll pretend to be chasing you, otherwise I’ll not be able to return.’ He threw a punch at me which caught me in the face. I staggered backwards. ‘Go on!’

There was a roar from the crowd. ‘Get him, Matt!’

I scrambled on to my horse as the blacksmith came running towards me. He threw his hammer, which glanced off the wall as I galloped away. He ran beside me, grabbing at my saddle. Tight as I had the girths, he was immensely strong and I felt the saddle twisting round. The ground and his grinning face swayed towards me. I saw myself hanging from that beam. I wrenched at the reins. Patch reared. The blacksmith’s momentum flung him forward, but still he clung on to the slipping saddle. I lashed out with my boot, the spur catching him in his face. He gave a single grunt and fell. I righted myself in the saddle. The crowd had stopped, silent now their leader was down, blood pouring from his face. I stopped, full of guilt and bewilderment. What was I doing, what were we all doing, fighting one another? They were like me, like the crowd who had fought and demonstrated for those words I had rescued from the mud. I would help him, talk to them! So I thought wildly, until the blacksmith stirred, the crowd began to mutter angrily and I kicked my heels into Patch and rode on.

I waited on the heath, by a stream, until Matthew joined me. He marvelled at my height, at my beard, while I could not believe he was so small and, well, so . . .

‘Shrunk and wizened?’ he said. ‘It’s good for business as a cunning man. The older I get, the more people believe me.’

I laughed, touching him, still not quite able to take in that he was here, that he would not disappear at any minute; in one moment I could look at him in awe, the next in disbelief. I hugged him with delight and wonder, for he was my past, all the stories he had told me . . . but then, as I felt his bony chest against me, my hands crept down to where, under his shirt, he kept the belt and the pouch.

I had dreamed of this moment ever since Eaton and I had travelled together. Just as it had been in front of the flickering dockyard fire he would take the pouch from his belt and the pendant from the pouch. I could feel nothing but skin and bone. I pointed back towards the village.

‘Is it down there?’

He looked as directly at me as he had ever done in my life.

‘I don’t have it, Tom.’

‘You’re lying! Where is it?’

‘I don’t have it!’

‘Tell me! Tell me!’ I shook him. I was like a maniac. He pulled backwards, stumbled and almost fell in the stream, then yanked his shirt so violently from his britches the old, rotting fabric tore. His ribs stood out in the greying, puckering flesh.

‘I don’t have it, I tell you! I did what Kate told me to and got rid of it – and that’s the truth!’