The Midsummer Crown (2 page)

I stared into the interlacing branches overhead where leaves clustered in pendants of lime and jade-green, stirred gently by the faintest of breezes as it went whispering among the trees. A ladybird, emerging from its hideaway, crawled down my arm like a drop of blood oozing from an unseen wound, and a chorus of insects chattered among the grass on which I sprawled. Silence and sunlight were both golden and a bee droned past my ear, searching for clover. I was where I liked to be best on my own, out of the world, where no one could find me.

Don't mistake me. Anyone who has done me the honour of reading these chronicles thus far will know that I am a devoted family man. We-ell . . . all right! Devoted may be too strong a word, but I love my wife and children. The trouble is, I love my freedom more. It was why, after I left Glastonbury Abbey and my life as a novice there, I became a pedlar. Not the life my mother had intended for me, nor one really suitable for an educated man (and my education at the abbey had been of the best: it was noted for its learning). But the open road, the happy encounters with fellow travellers, the protracted silences of early summer mornings or winter afternoons, the decisions when to eat and when to sleep that were mine alone, above all, the luxury of enjoying my own company undisturbed, these were the things that bolstered my determination never to renounce the calling I had chosen for myself.

Naturally, there was a reverse side to the coin. After weeks, even months, of tramping the roads in all weathers, there was nothing pleasanter than returning to a warm house, a loving wife, adoring children and a dog who regarded me as the hero of his canine dreams. (And if you believe that about the children and the dog, you're more credulous than I gave you credit for being.) For a while at least I enjoyed the domesticity, the comfort of a settled life, the petty trivialities of day-to-day existence, the drinking sessions and meetings with friends in my favourite among Bristol's numerous alehouses, the Green Lattis (alias the New Inn, alias Abingdon's; it has had many names in its time). But in the end, the desire for solitude, for freedom continued to assert itself, making me increasingly short-tempered and restless until my understanding wife, God bless her, handed me my pack and my cudgel and told me to get out from under her feet, to go and earn some money further afield than the local villages and hamlets around the city. (It's different nowadays, of course. Old age and the infirmities of the body make you a prisoner more surely than stone walls or iron bars because there's no reprieve.)

So, as I said, I lay on my back that sunny afternoon in late spring, basking in the unexpected warmth and sunshine, grateful to be on my own again, particularly as the past week or so had been crowded with too much activity and too many people. I congratulated myself that I had successfully eluded Timothy Plummer should he come chasing after me when he had read my letter, and planning the long, slow route home to Bristol. I would go, I decided, through Avebury and see again the weird and ancient hump of Silbury Hill and the remains of the stone circles raised by our Celtic forebears hundreds upon hundreds of years ago. I had only seen them once before, whereas I had visited the great Giant's Dance on Salisbury Plain on more than one occasion.

My belly rumbled and I realized that it must be getting on for four o'clock and supper time. I reckoned it was all of six hours since I had stopped at a wayside cottage to buy bread and cheese and home-made ale which I had swallowed sitting on a stone bench in the cottage garden. I also needed to find shelter for the night, although dusk was still some hours distant. But it was always well to be prepared, to have somewhere in mind unless the night was fine and dry enough to spend it under a hedge or in the lee of a barn. Tonight might well be such a night, but May, as I said at the beginning, is a notoriously fickle month and rain could easily arrive with darkness. Besides, I had a fancy for the comfort of a bed such as I had occupied at the Godsloves' house. I was not yet ready to sleep rough.

I rolled on to my left side, propping myself on one elbow, and looked down again into the farmhouse courtyard. It was still as quiet as the grave, devoid of life, almost eerie in its silence, and I was just wondering if perhaps it really was uninhabited when the door burst open and a child, a young girl, her skirts bunched awkwardly in one hand, went laughing and screaming across the compacted earth towards the gate, scattering the indignant hens as she ran. She was plainly escaping from someone, hell-bent on mischief, and a moment later that someone appeared. A middle-aged woman, the girl's mother I guessed, also laughing and shouting, emerged from the house in pursuit of her errant daughter, catching her just as she was about to make her bid for freedom. For a moment or two, the girl fought her captor, wriggling and squirming. The woman continued to laugh, at the same time giving the child what seemed to be an affectionate scold, holding her gently but firmly in one arm while wagging a finger of her other hand in mock severity. Eventually, tiring of a game she knew she couldn't win, the girl collapsed against the woman's side and allowed herself to be taken back indoors.

As they were about to vanish inside, I got to my feet, stretching my arms above my head to ease the cramp in my shoulders. The woman must have glimpsed the movement out of the corner of one eye for she stopped and stared up at the ridge on which I was standing. I raised a hand in greeting, but she gave no answering wave, merely pushing the girl ahead of her through the open doorway and following herself with all speed. I felt somewhat aggrieved by this unfriendly treatment but decided that there was probably a good reason for it. Perhaps the lass, although she looked young, had an eye for the men; perhaps that was why she had been attempting to escape, to keep a tryst with some youth of the district. In which case, my request for a bed for the night might not be well received, but there was no harm in trying. I therefore shouldered the canvas sack containing the clothes I had taken with me to London, picked up my cudgel and descended the path to the farmhouse gate.

All was now peaceful, so I crossed the courtyard and rapped loudly on the door. Nothing happened, and I had raised my hand to knock again when a snarling sound made me whirl about just in time to see a man and dog appear around the corner of the building. The latter was one of the largest dogs I had ever encountered, with small, malicious eyes and excellent teeth. Heaven alone knew what mixed parentage had gone towards its making. With mounting horror I saw it crouch, ready to spring, and clutched my cudgel horizontally in both hands. My one hope was to thrust it between the animal's jaws as it launched itself at me, and I braced myself for the attack.

It did not come. Instead, there was a thunderous roar of ‘Stay!' and the dog, almost in mid-jump, lay down obediently at his master's feet, although his beady eyes never left my face and he slobbered in frustration. The man himself was hardly more prepossessing than the beast; a big fellow both tall and heavily built with a bull neck and powerful thighs. His hair was grizzled and there were wrinkles around the slightly protuberant brown eyes. I judged him to be somewhere in his late fifties.

‘What do you want?' His voice was harsh, suspicious.

‘I was hoping to beg supper and a bed for the night,' I said, adding, ‘I'm an honest pedlar on his way home to Bristol.'

His gaze sharpened. ‘A pedlar, are you? Then where's your pack?'

I cursed silently. For the moment I had forgotten that I didn't have my pack with me. There had seemed no reason to take it to London when I had set out in pursuit of Adela, and indeed I had not needed it these past few weeks.

‘I – er . . .' I was beginning lamely, but the man gave me no chance to explain.

‘Be off with you!' he shouted (or words to that effect), and indicated his inability to control the dog for much longer.

I held up my hands placatingly. ‘All right, all right! I'm going,' I said and turned away just as the door of the farmhouse opened yet again and the woman I had seen earlier reappeared.

‘What's the trouble?' she asked. ‘Lower your voice, John. You're disturbing the child.'

Close to, I could see that she was much younger than the man, perhaps by about as much as twenty years, but she wore a wedding ring and spoke in that proprietary way wives do when taking husbands to task; a way that is easily recognizable but difficult to describe. She was a pleasant enough looking woman with a pair of fine hazel eyes but a nose that was, unfortunately, somewhat too large for her face. Her apron, over a gown of grey homespun, was scrupulously clean, as was her coif, and she had pinned a sprig of greenery to one shoulder with a small, round pewter brooch in a seeming celebration of the newly burgeoning spring.

‘I'm afraid it's my fault, mistress,' I interposed before the man could speak. ‘I was hoping to find a meal and shelter here for the night, but my request seems to have given offence.'

The woman shot her husband – if I was correct and such he was – a venomous look from beneath lowered lids before she turned a smiling face towards me.

‘I'm sorry, master, if my husband was rude, but our daughter is sick and we are both very worried about her.'

‘That would be the young girl I saw running across the yard just now, would it?' I enquired caustically. ‘She didn't look very ill to me.'

‘No,' the woman answered reproachfully, ‘that was our younger daughter. She's been set to look after her sister while I do some of the household chores, but she's only thirteen and resents the enforced inactivity. She tries to sneak out every now and then when she thinks I'm not watching. Indeed, sir, our older child is very sick and we don't know what ails her. We wouldn't want a stranger to take anything from her. No doubt if my good man here –' she gave him another searing glance – ‘had explained the circumstances, instead of shouting and threatening you with the dog you would have understood immediately.'

‘Of course,' I said with a smile, ‘and I'm sorry for having bothered you. I'll be on my way at once.' I turned to leave, then turned back. ‘I seem to have wandered well off the beaten track. Do you happen to know of anywhere hereabouts where I might find a bed and supper for the night?'

It was the man who answered. ‘There's an alehouse about a mile or so along on the opposite side of the ridge,' he offered grudgingly, but then gave me a gap-toothed grin as though to apologize for his former incivility. ‘It's not much used except by a few locals. We don't get many strangers this far off the main roads to Bristol and Oxford and the like, but I daresay the landlord could find you food and a place to sleep if you're not too fussy.'

I thanked him and retraced my steps to the top of the ridge. Halfway up the slope, I glanced over my shoulder and saw the couple still arguing or having an altercation of some sort, but by the time I had regained the summit, the courtyard was once again silent and empty, the pair having obviously retreated indoors.

An hour or so later – or so I judged from the position of the sun, still glimmering between the overhanging branches – I was beginning to wonder if the farmer had been deliberately lying concerning the distance involved, or if his notion of a mile was a country one. I had still seen nothing resembling an alehouse; indeed, when I came to think of it I had seen no dwelling of any kind. The track along the crest of the ridge had dwindled to a mere footpath, and on occasions not even that. Underfoot, cuckoo-pint gleamed palely from beds of glossy, opulent leaves, and tattered spikes of purple orchis stood sentinel in a matted carpet of ground ivy and wood sorrel, whose tiny, white-starred flowers were starting to close against the dusk.

I paused in a clearing to rest my back against a tree trunk, listening to a silence broken only by the singing of the birds. Then, from somewhere behind me, I suddenly heard the snapping of a twig as though it had been stepped on by too heavy a foot. For some reason I felt the hairs rise on the nape of my neck, but told my self not to be so foolish. Even if someone else was walking the ridge, there was absolutely no reason why I should feel threatened. This was a common right of way used by the local inhabitants. How else would they reach the alehouse mentioned by the farmer? If I waited for the man to catch me up, perhaps he would be able to direct me to the elusive hostelry.

But then I heard the faint whine and snuffle of a dog and immediately, against all rhyme and reason, felt convinced that it was the same brute I had met earlier. And if it were? the more rational half of my mind enquired. Why should the farmer not be exercising the animal before shutting it up for the night? But an hour or more distant from the homestead? No; it didn't make sense.

I glanced hastily about me. The undergrowth had thickened hereabouts and an all-concealing brake of gorse and brambles offered cover. I scrambled behind it at the cost of no more than a scratched hand and a rent in my hose which Adela could easily repair, and crouched down, calling myself all sorts of an idiot, to wait.

The dog appeared first, followed by the man who paused in the middle of the clearing and stared around. I raised my head very slightly and noted a wicked-looking hunting-knife stuck in his belt, so I hastily hunched down again in my prickly hideaway and hoped that I had not been seen. But the movement, stealthy as it was, had attracted the attention of the dog who came bounding across, snuffling excitedly at the other side of the brake. I held my breath, certain of discovery, and found that the hand holding my cudgel was slimy with sweat.

‘Heel!' his master snapped. And then again, more viciously, ‘
Heel!
'

I was sure the dog could smell me by the way he whined and scrabbled at the earth, but to my astonishment, he backed away and lay down, whimpering. The man kicked him into silence. This was no friendly master and dog relationship, just fear on one side and brute force on the other. In some dim corner of his brain, the dog knew that I was there, just a few feet from them, but in the long run his mother-wit was only as great as his master's, and I had no very high opinion of the homesteader's.