North Side of the Tree

I rush after him. I can hear Verity sobbing behind me. The tower door is standing open. Outside, Father is striding unevenly down towards the barmkin. I hear the high-pitched whinny of Caligula, his black stallion, greeting him.

“Oh no…” I run after him. “Father!” He is puffing with the effort, and I catch him up easily. “Father, stop! You’re not fit…” I lower my voice. “You’re not fit to go out robbing. You’ll get caught. I beg you, Father, don’t go out now. Please, let us talk some more. If you wish me to come back, then…” but he is not listening. I pray that John, James and the bishop are keeping out of sight as Father proceeds at a lolloping run round the barmkin wall towards the entrance.

Suddenly he stops, and turns back to me, gasping. “He vexes me, your parson, Beatrice. He vexes me greatly. Your babbling bishop vexes me worst of all. Mayhap this night his lordship will learn it is more blessed to give than to receive.” He struggles to regain his breath. After a moment he lays his hand on my head and says, “I hope you shall be here when I return, Beatrice. Pig sticking this week, I think? It will never salt down enough, else. Speak to Leo. You know best which of the swine to choose. Fare thee well, Daughter.”

I watch him open the barmkin gate and duck into the turf-roofed overhang of the saddlery. Caligula comes trotting up to him. For a moment, faintly on the wind, I hear the sound of the drum again.

Chapter 8

I do my best to persuade the bishop not to leave, but he is expected at Hagditch for Matins early the following morning, and at Kerne Forth for Vespers the following afternoon, and he puts my anxious insistence merely down to good manners.

Verity has given me Meadowsweet, her dimwitted, golden-eyed mare, since she does not wish to endanger her unborn child by riding any longer, and anyway will soon be too big. Mother has given her the carretta from the tower, to be drawn by one of James’s slower and less flighty horses. I feel reluctant to replace dead Saint Hilda with any other horse, yet as we ride back to Wraithwaite, taking the long way round the edge of the woods rather than haul the bishop up the rockface, the sound of Meadowsweet’s hooves tapping along the rocky bridleway cheers me more than I had expected.

This path, which borders James’s land, is hedged along with blackthorn bushes. They have lost most of their leaves now, and only a few slack black sloes remain on the bare branches. Instead, rows of dead moles hang there, upside down like colonies of bats, their tiny, rosy hands outspread. We pass more and more of them, flapping at our passing with a brief mockery of life. James will be wearing new moleskin breeches this winter.

I kick Meadowsweet into a gallop and leave John and the bishop behind. The moles are such an embodiment of mute helplessness that I cannot bear them. They seem to represent all that is inarticulate – James too tongue-tied to be taken seriously by people such as my father, my father himself whose attempts to express affection are nullified by incoherent rage, all of us who are bound to keep Father’s own criminal secret, myself locked into the secret I now share with Leo, and worse still, the secret knowledge of everything I shared with Robert, which can never be told. The moles are silent, writhing on their thorn trees. I must outrun them.

My hat ribbons lash my face, and one flicks me in the eye, making it water. My eyes are streaming by the time the bishop catches me up. He says, “Forgive me that I could not help you more, Beatrice.” He edges ahead and turns his horse, so that I have to slow down. “Please, do not distress yourself, my dear. I pray that your father will relent, now that he is banished from Communion. John will perform Verity and James’s betrothal immediately, without your father’s permission, and the first banns will be published this Sunday. All shall be well. I shall visit you again soon.”

He repeats his promise later, as he leaves, with just enough time to reach Hagditch before light fades. I look up at the words carved into the lintel as we bid him goodbye at the parsonage gate. Truth and grace be to this place. I could tell him the truth. It is clearly wrong to let this man go out on to the highway, conspicuous in his red and gold coach, when I know what probably lies in wait for him. Yet if I were to tell him that my father is a highway robber, not only my father but also my mother would be ruined. Nor, I realise for the first time, would it bode well for John’s career in the church if his house guest were revealed to have such scandalous connections. Take an extra lanthorn; take the coast road not the high road; wait for George and Martinus to join you at the crossroads in case of highway robbers. Verity and I have done and said all we can. Now we must just pray.

“I love you,” says John under his breath, as we watch the bishop’s coachman whip up the elegant piebald gelding which pulls his coach. The bishop waves and the coach moves off.

My state of distraction is such that it takes a moment for John’s words to sink in. I look up at him. Here is someone who does not have secrets, who says what he thinks, regardless of the consequences, who says it in measured terms, and then listens to a person’s reply, whatever it might be. I have a moment of feeling quite overcome by wonder. “I could love you very easily, John,” I tell him. “Perhaps I already do.”

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