The Ballad of John Clare (8 page)

He wormed his way from his sleeping place and they both walked across to the fire and sat side by side, holding out their hands to the heat.

“There is to be a shearing supper tonight, Wisdom, at Joyce’s in Glinton. His table will be groaning with frumity and ale and good vittles. Bring your fiddle and I’ll warrant he’ll find a place for you …or if he won’t Mary will.”

Wisdom shook his head.

“I can’t John, not tonight.”

“Why not?”

“There are other plans afoot.”

He lowered his voice to a whisper.

“I tell you but I’d tell no other. There will be a full moon and ….”

“Tel te jib!”

From behind the door-flap of an ancient, patched, military tent that bordered the fire came a voice as gruff and abrupt as the bark of a mastiff. Wisdom fell suddenly silent. The flap lifted and King Boswell’s ancient head appeared. Two dogs that had been dozing placidly jumped up and danced about John, snapping at his ankles. King Boswell lifted one of his huge hands and waved it at them.

“Shhhhhh.”

They quietened and lay down again.

He looked at John, his eyes sharp as a hawk’s beneath great shaggy over-arching eyebrows, his face as wrinkled and brown as an old dish-clout, his hair jackdaw-black.

He uncurled a finger and pointed it at him.

“Ja! Ja! Go!”

He looked at Wisdom.

“Tell your boshomengro friend to keep to his own.”

He looked back at John.

“And mind to his own, and ask no more questions …and we shan’t have to tell him no lies.”

He disappeared back into his tent. Wisdom rolled his eyes and shrugged, and John could see that there was nothing he could do to make things otherwise. He nodded and got up to his feet.

“I’ll see you another time Wisdom.”

Then he remembered a phrase he’d heard King Boswell use before.

“And the luck of the blessed be with you.”

From inside the tent he heard King Boswell’s rumbling voice again, as though it came from beneath a pool of phlegm in the deep of his belly:

“You’re a good boy John Clare, for all you’re a gorgio, now piss off and keep your own council!”

John made his way back across the fields. The village had wakened now and Jack Ward and the rest of the threshing team were waiting for him at Butter Cross. Together they trudged along the track through Woodcroft Field to Farmer Joyce’s threshing barn.

*******

The sheep were huddled tight into a corner of the barn, fenced in with hurdles. The shearing platform was laid out ready upon the floor as it had been these last four days. As soon as they had sharpened their shears against the whet-stones the team started work. Jack Ward, as Captain, set the pace.

John dragged a ewe across to him from the holding pen. Jack seized her, flung her onto her back and clipped the tresses of wool from her forehead, neck and shoulders, then, with his knee on her head, he opened up the front as though he was unbuttoning a waistcoat. He cut away the wool down to her back legs where it hung thick. Then he sat the ewe up on her backside and clipped the fleece away from her flank. He spun her round as though she was his partner in some dance that was not of her choosing and did the same to the other side. With a final flourish he snipped the last of the wool from the top of her tail so that the whole fleece fell away from her like a coat.

There was no mark or cut upon her body for the gentils to get in by, she was pink as a babe. For a moment she stood in amaze, then she bleated and trotted back towards the rest of the flock. John seized her, lifted her up in his arms and carried her over to the empty pen where the tar pot was waiting.

Farmer Joyce stood watching Jack with an indulgent eye. He came forwards and clapped him on the back and filled his mug with small ale from the barrel against the wall, he pressed it into Jack’s hand. Jack grinned and nodded his thanks and drank.

As Jack worked, so with varied skill did his lieutenants in the shearing team. Wherever they nicked or cut the creature’s hides with their shears John had to staunch them with tar, so the sheared sheep in their pens bore a speckled testament to the skill – or lack of it – of their barbers. It was John’s job too to roll and tie the fleeces, and to stamp the new-shorn sheep with Farmer Joyce’s mark ‘JJ’. So he laboured and sweated in the June heat as busy as the rest of them.

Slowly the long day passed, the barn echoed with grunting and clipping and bleating, and with every five sheep shorn there would be the pause for a ‘pull up and sharp’ when shears were whetted and thirsts quenched. As the afternoon dwindled, so did the sheep still wearing their ragged, slomekin fleeces.

There were only a few waiting in the pens when young Jim Crowson cut the best part of a ewe’s ear off with his shears. It was his first season with the team and he was tiring. His hand slipped and the damage was done. The ewe cried most pitiful and the platform was awash with blood.

“What the devil!”

Farmer Joyce strode forwards.

“I ain’t paying you to butcher my flock.”

He seized the shears from Jim’s hands and finished the job himself without doing any more damage to the ewe, but by the time he’d finished he was daubed with blood from head to foot like a butcher. He turned to the shearing team and grinned:

“There, I ain’t altogether lost the knack boys.”

He nodded to Jim, who grabbed hold of the ewe while John staunched the blood as best he could.

“You leave the shears to the old hands now.”

The work continued. Jim helped John. As the clock struck five the last of the sheep was dragged onto the polished platform. By six o’clock the threshing barn had been cleared of all but its heap of tied fleeces.

John and the rest of the team wasted no time. They washed away the dirt of the day under the pump in the yard. They piled their greasy smocks against the barn door and pulled clean shirts over their shoulders. Bone-weary and famished they made their way round to the back of the farm house.

Farmer Joyce was waiting for them, scrubbed and fresh-dressed. The great kitchen table had been carried out onto the lawn and covered with a clean white cloth. Benches had been set to either side of it. John Fell the shepherd, Nathaniel Cushion, Will Farrell and a few other farm-hands were already seated. The shearing team sat down beside them. Farmer Joyce turned on his heel and strode into the house. Soon he returned carrying in his hands a large beech-wood bowl filled with frumity. He set it down. Mary Joyce and Kate Dyball followed with pewter bowls and horn spoons, one to each of the team. The men at the table cheered. John tried to catch Mary’s eye as she hurried past him but she seemed to pay him no heed. Farmer Joyce served his men with his own hands, ladling the sweet, thick, spicy, creamy mixture into the bowls

They supped it down in silence.

Then a great steaming rack of lamb was fetched and set on the table, with fresh bread, onions, new potatoes, peas, beans, cabbage and thick gravy. The tap was opened on a barrel of Joyce’s strong beer,

“Let it run like a well,” said Farmer Joyce, “and not be staunched ‘til it is dry.”

Pewter mugs were filled and filled again. Plates were piled with food. More and more was brought to the table: cheeses, hams, bowls of strawberries and redcurrants. Little was said, the sound of the scraping of knives and forks against pewter and the chomping of jaws was a conversation all its own.

From inside the house the women watched the men through the window.

“Just look at ‘em,” said Lizzie Tucker shaking her head, “the flower of English manhood!”

“Heads down, tails up, like porkers at the trough,” said Hope Farrell. “And if the Frenchie come, what then? They’d only have to show this lot a ripe cheese and they’d be kissing Boney’s arse afore ye could say ‘bonjeer’.”

Mary Joyce stood at the window too and smiled. She was watching John Clare, who she’s barely seen these five weeks of the shearing, and waiting for her moment. She’d been out that afternoon when there was a lull in the cooking and had gathered a Clipping Posey from the garden: pansies, roses, sweet-peas, honey-suckle, snap-dragons, pinks, fox-gloves, lavender. She’d tied them with a ribbon and hidden them among the shadows by the pantry door.

Her secret had not passed unnoticed, though the other women had bitten their tongues and said nought. But now, seeing Mary’s fixed attention on the table Lizzie Tucker raised an eye-brow:

“What Mary? Has one of them fine beaus caught your eye?”

Mary didn’t answer but blushed.

“Is it the one wiping its mouth against its shirt sleeve I wonder, or the one that’s licking its plate?”

Then Hope Farrell nudged Mary:

“I’ll tell you what Mary, steer clear of any that ain’t Glinton men, for you know that what they keep in their breeches is the same as what they keep in their belfries.”

Then the two chanted the old rhyme together:

“Helpston cracked pippins, Northborough cracked pans,

Glinton fine organs, Peakirk tin cans.”

When at last even the heartiest eater had pushed his plate away and loosened his belt, Lizzie, Mary and Hope gathered up the empty vessels and carried them indoors. Now that the cooking and serving was done it was their turn to sit down at table.

“It’ll do the dirty dishes no harm to stand awhile,” said Lizzie, “and there’s plenty of good lean left on the lamb yet.”

Outside Jack Ward got up to his feet and struck the table with his fist. He lifted his tankard and began to sing in a voice that proved that whatever Helpston men may keep in their breeches there is some truth in the old rhyme when it comes to their throats.

Farmer Joyce called for pipes and tobacco, that were a little slow in coming, the women being loath to leave their table. And song followed song, the choruses filling the fragrant air and growing more raucous as the evening darkened and mugs were emptied over and over again.

A full moon was sliding up through the hedge and the horn lanterns were being lit and set upon the table when Mary seized her moment. She grabbed the posey from its hiding place, slipped out of a side door and ran behind the yew hedge that divided the lawn and flowerbeds from the orchard. She lowered her head and followed it to the woodbine arch, halfway along its length. She peered through. The men were singing still, her father at the head of the table, John at the near end, his back to her.

“Old Reynolds finding shifts in vain

While hounds and horns pursue,

Now leaves the wood to try the plain,

The bugle sounds a view …”

And now came the chorus. She knew their eyes would be half-closed, heads tipped back. She darted forwards, quick as a fish.

“This day the fox must die

Brave boys,

This day the fox must die.”

John’s belly was full, his head was swimming with ale, his muscles aching with the day’s exertion …and he was lost in a sweet oblivion of song. Suddenly he felt something cool being thrust between his fingers. He looked down and saw the bright nose-gay. Its strong scent filled his nostrils. He turned his head and glimpsed Mary disappearing behind the hedge. His head cleared as though it had been thrust beneath the spurting pump in the yard. Here was a Clipping Posey in his hand. A pursuit was demanded and expected of him. He clambered to his feet. He put his hand on his neighbour’s shoulder and stepped over the bench. He left the song behind him.

He ran behind the hedge. There she was! Slipping through the little wicker gate in the garden wall. He followed her, a trifle unsteady on his feet. He pushed open the gate and ran through. He looked to left and right. She seemed to have vanished. He started forwards …

“Well?”

He stopped and turned and saw that she was standing behind him with her back pressed to the wall.

“Ain’t you going to kiss me then?”

Suddenly shy despite the beer, John paused, then he leaned forward to kiss her decorously upon the cheek, but Mary turned her face so that their lips met and lingered. For the first time they kissed.

“There.” She said.

Then she threw her arms around his neck and they kissed again, drinking of each other as though there was no slaking their thirst. And there they would be still if John hadn’t heard his name shouted from beyond the wall.

“John Clare!”

The song had finished and Farmer Joyce was calling him. They broke away from each other.

“John Clare!”

“You’d best go John.”

He ran through the gate and back along the hedge to the table. The Clipping Posey was still in his hand. Every eye was on him as he climbed back on to the bench and sat down. Farmer Joyce was standing at the head of the table. He looked at John for a moment, savouring his discomfiture and the mingled laughter and envy in the eyes of the other men.

“Well John Clare, you sang to me like a throstle on Mayday morning …but they tell me as you can scrape a passing tune from a fiddle as well.”

A fiddle was passed down the line of men to John. He took it and looked down at it, a little sheepish:

“Ay, I play a little. What tune would you favour?”

“Well, we’ve seen that you’re a fair hand at ‘Off She Goes’ and ‘Come To The Bower’ and ‘Kiss My Lady’ …but what the devil else can you play?”

John, his blushes hidden by the night, tucked the fiddle under his chin and played a horn-pipe. The lilting melody rose and fell upon the beat with such a sweet, skipping enchantment that soon every tankard was striking the table in time to the tune.

And Mary Joyce, behind the hedge, unseen by any, had lifted her skirts and was stepping the dance with no partner but the moon.

The shearing supper was done. The shearing team had taken their wage from Farmer Joyce. As they were staggering home through Woodcroft Field, another line of men was making its way out of the parish. They were crossing Emmonsales Heath in the silver moonlight. They were skirting the fields north of Castor. They were climbing the stone wall of the Milton estate and threading their way between the oaks and beeches of the park woodland.

The light of the moon shining through the leaves made it easy for them to find their way. King Boswell was leading. Behind him, in single file, five men followed. Their feet cracked no twigs. They were silent as their own shadows. A soft breeze was blowing into their faces.