The Wilding (25 page)

‘Well, Father,’ I said, ‘would you have given up Robin like this?’

He said, ‘You try my patience,’ but I saw I had played a winning card: his eyes avoided mine. At last he said, ‘If it sets your mind at rest –’

‘Mathew,’ my mother said warningly.

He shook his head. ‘I don’t undertake to answer every question. Very well, what do you want to know?’

I thought rapidly. ‘What class of persons are they lodged with?’

‘With a gentlewoman. They form part of her private household.’

‘How did you persuade her to take them on?’

He laughed at this. ‘How do you think? I pay her.’

‘That can’t be much, Father. They’re used to living on so little.’

He rolled his eyes. ‘Nothing at all, just a doctor for Joan, bedding, linen, food … They have a blazing fire day and night, and there Joan sits, hugging it.’

He paused and sat watching me.

‘She must think she’s in paradise,’ I remarked.

He waited a little longer. Then: ‘Ask after Tamar.’

‘Can I ask anything?’

‘Anything I think fit to answer.’

‘How do they treat her?’

‘Their hostess believes her guests to be gentlewomen like herself, but disinherited and degraded by the war. Tamar was presented to her as a girl of good family, raised like a peasant and forced to marry beneath her station; the lady takes it upon herself as a Christian duty to raise her from the mire.’

‘Raise her, how?’

‘By instructing her in breeding and manners. A schoolmaster is employed for the rest and he finds her an apt scholar.’

‘She would be.’ I wondered what Tamar was teaching the schoolmaster. ‘And the child? What of that?’

‘Tamar’s a widow.’ He put his hand on mine as if to comfort me. ‘That makes her safe, son. While she stays where she is, none can expose her.’

‘So I’m dead,’ I said, more to myself than to him. ‘You’ve put an end to me.’

‘To your folly; not to you.’

Sometimes reason is less bearable than rage. ‘Is she happy?’ I burst out. ‘Does she cry, does she ever ask after me?’

‘Of course not,’ Father said. He was in command of himself now, sure of his ground. ‘She has everything she needs. You would be happier, Jon, if you followed her example.’

*

Mother gave way over the damson trees, so Father set me to mark out a plot for them. I hammered in the stakes, feeling as if I were nailing down my coffin lid. This was to be my life, then: making marks wherever my father pointed out the place, marrying where he wanted me to marry. I had rebelled once, and it had cost me dear.

Both he and Mother talked more frequently now of the desirability of my taking a wife. The woman they had set their hearts on was Poll Parfitt.

* * *

It was not until the beginning of March that Master Blackett came to the house with news. He had also brought the miniature left me by Uncle Robin, so while Mother went off to fetch some wine, Father and I unwrapped my legacy. For the first time I was face to face with the lad the village girls called Absalom. There was no hint of the coarse, ruddy uncle I had found so distasteful. As a young man Robin had a neck like a tower of ivory, as the Bible says, and carried his head proudly atop of it. He had crinkled blond hair, a broad jaw, a full mouth. As far as the hair and the mouth went, I could have sat for the picture. I thought how Aunt Harriet must have hated me for that.

‘I suppose it’s like?’ I asked.

Father nodded. I wondered what it was that Robin had, and I did not, that so drew women to him.

Mother returned and served the three of us with wine and cake before returning to the kitchen.

Wiping his eyes, which were wet from looking on his brother’s picture, Father now said huskily to the lawyer, ‘How did you get this? Not from my sister-in-law?’

‘It was left with Ousby,’ Blackett answered. ‘The only bequest that your brother chose to leave in his keeping. Finding
that
was nothing, compared with finding Abel Canning.’ He set down his goblet and I noticed that my mother had poured me a much smaller measure.

Father frowned. ‘Is he dishonest, this Canning?’

‘Oh, no. After Master Ousby’s decease he couldn’t find another place; he went to live with some cousins in Gloucester. He’s seen the will now, and your Seatons are lucky: he remembers witnessing it.’

‘I don’t see that, myself,’ said Father. ‘Why would he?’

‘Because Mr Dymond seemed so fearful.’

I said, ‘Mrs Dymond is a passionate woman.’

‘Hmm.’ Blackett took another sip of wine. ‘On that subject, I must ask something of you. You may wish to consider it before agreeing.’

Father and I pulled up our chairs as one man.

Blackett said, ‘I wish you to accompany me when I go to break the news to her.’

‘To Harriet!’ Father looked as if he didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. ‘What do you say, Jon? Shall we go?’

‘I’ll wait in the stable, most likely,’ I said. ‘I doubt she’ll let me into the house.’

* * *

I tied the miniature around my neck, under my shirt. I wished to have it about me, but not in any way that might pain my mother and father, or suggest I had rather be Robin’s child than theirs. Still, he sired me. There can only be one man who does that. The fear I once associated with him was gone entirely: the will was come to light and Robin was sunk back into his grave. I knew, now, why he had singled me out from all the rest, and like Aunt Harriet I could even find a part of me that would have clung to his ghost. Had he come to me one last night, and stood by the road in the old way, I might have called him Father – it was the only gift I could still bestow – but he never appeared again.

Was his spirit bound for Heaven or Hell? For Heaven, I hope. I would have him rest in peace; he was a sinner, but I know a worse one. Still, even should she sneak into Heaven, he will be safe from her. According to Scripture, there is no marrying there.

No, marriage is a thing of Earth, where my aunt’s good fame shines bright throughout Tetton. What took place within the Guild Hall is never spoken of. The soldiers, like sparks carried on wind, went off to lay waste to other lives; if any of them remembers, I would like to think he trembles, looking on his own daughters, when he calls to mind what was done here. A frail hope! More likely he recalls a willing whore; he smiles to think he came through the wars, after all, and sighs for his youthful time, and thinks he will take his wife early to bed. As for the village men, that despicable crew, their hands have been clean and their memories blank ever since that night. My poor lustful, cowardly father, you were weak, not merciless; compared with their sins yours were as nothing; and yet your wickedness opened the way to theirs and went on deepening the wound afterwards. Even so, I do not hate you. I am too like you for that.

* * *

When the time came to visit my aunt, Master Blackett took us in his own cart. The land was starting to show green and the trees thickening up, but the roads were still boggy; in places we were all obliged to get out and push, even the learned lawyer himself, so that it was dusk before we arrived.

‘Are you quite ready, Jon?’ my father asked as we came out from the wood into Tetton Green. I said I was, but when I saw the dark shape of End House backed up against the trees I felt myself grow cold. Father must have iced, for he said, ‘You’re with us, now.’

‘And we’re armed,’ Blackett said.

I stared. ‘Armed?’

He waved the satchel that contained the paper. I could barely smile in reply; the chill was spreading through my limbs and my teeth chattered in my head. It came to me that this was how I had felt after my near-drowning: my body remembered.

‘You’ve left a copy with your clerk?’ Father said for the third time. The lawyer smiled and clapped him on the shoulder.

Three men armed with law, about to ambush a solitary woman. One would say that woman had little chance, even though she was my aunt. The blood stung its way back into my cheeks and hands; the qualm had passed.

As we went by the Guild Hall with its altered windows, I found myself compelled to look inside, as if by so doing I might glimpse the riot and brutality once enacted there. The interior of the Hall was dark, so that I could barely make it out. Yet it seemed to me that the building must retain some trace, some distant echo too faint for human hearing, some tenth part of a tenth part of a fleck of dust from a soldier’s coat. The world is full of these gossamer threads, like Robin’s signature on the will, tying the present to the past; once perceived, they breed and multiply in the mind.

No matter where they lead us, we have need of them. That what once existed is lost utterly, that time’s river can never return to its source, is a thought more terrible than any act recorded here. So I choose to believe in such traces, of which I am one – the record of a certain act committed upon a certain day – and every man and woman on earth another.

I could wish that Robin had written to me, as well as to my father. Then I might trace back the trail of ink to his first mark upon the paper and see it as a thread stretching between his breathing, blooming time, long gone, and mine, which is now.

And now.