Harvest A Novel (6 page)

It takes several steps before I realize how heavily it’s raining. My neighbors have already scurried to their cottages, so far as I can tell. I do not see the outlines of another human soul. I ought to scurry home myself and save my tasks and promises until it is more dry. But the rain is pleasurable. It’s washing out impurities. My fingers and my chin are soon rid of veal grease. My mouth is washed by water more pure and rewarding to the taste than anything our ponds and our obliging brook have to offer. Even my damaged hand becomes less painful in the salving of the rain. I run my tongue across my upper lip and savor the downpour. It’s not quite sweet and not quite flavorless. It’s sobering but, then, my drinking has been more moderate and tame than most.

Tonight, there is no moon in view, of course. The low clouds as I imagine them are a heavy blanket, woven out of black and gray. As yet, there’s not the slightest trace of wind to take the rain away and irrigate our distant neighbors’ lands instead of ours. We can expect this storm to settle in and persevere till dawn. Tomorrow will provide a motley of pools and puddles in our lanes and fields. Our ponds and cisterns will be full, and we’ll be glad of that. Although it may not
feel so now for anyone that’s caught in it, we are the beneficiaries of Nature’s dowry. Nevertheless, I doubt that Mistress Beldam will take much persuading that the barn is where she should seek safe haven from the weather.

I take the mud-caked lane away from my master’s buildings, past his orchard gardens and his byres, toward the dreamed-of spire. I would benefit from light, though no lantern in the world, no matter how enclosed, could survive the volume of this rain for long. I have to trust the scratchings and the marks that my dozen years of being here and working here and walking here have etched in me. The storm has robbed us of all colors—the usual blues and mauves that finesse the night. But I make out silhouettes; that crouching oak, its swishing sleeves of ivy, that little dusty elm that should be taken down and logged before it blocks the path. I recognize the billows and the swells of the hedges, either side, where there are gaps and gates, where there are peaks and branching pinnacles, where damsons can be scrumped. I pick up smells that I can name. The master’s byres, of course. The sweating of his silage heaps. But other gentler odors too. The acrid smell—exaggerated by the rain—of elder trees. The bread-and-biscuit smell of rotting wood. The piss-and-honey tang of apple trees. I navigate my midnight village as a blind man would, by nose and ears and touch and by the vaguest, blackest forms.

I see the men before they hear or notice me, or that’s to say I see the outline of their wide-winged cross and how bulked and heavy it’s become, draped as it is with sodden prisoners. I stand and watch, not daring for a while to make my presence known but still enjoying what must be a further penalty for them, the unrelenting rain. They cannot harm me, that is certain. Their arms are pinioned and their necks are caught. My only risk can be a backward kicking. I’ll have to treat them like a pair of tethered horses and not inspect their tails or rumps. I am holding my breath, not to be discovered. How silent it has become,
beyond the pelting of the rain. I fear there’s no one living anywhere. The night is ponderous. No owl or fox is keen to interrupt the darkness. It seems that even the trees have stopped their stretching and their creaking, their making wishes in the wind, to hold their breaths and stare like me toward the pillory.

If I could, if I had the powers of a wizard or a god, I’d build that church gate right away. I’d make it arch above the pillory. I’d build it with a canopy to keep these two men dry. Now that my eyes are more accustomed to the dark, I see them more clearly. This morning I persuaded myself that probably it’s wise for all of us to hold our tongues for the time being and let these newcomers soak up the blame. But now, beneath these weighty clouds, I recognize my foolishness; no, let us name it as it is, my lack of courage and of honesty.
Soak up
is not a happy phrase, I think. This rain is pleasurable only for those not fixed in it, those who can look forward to a square of drying cloth, a roof, a bed, sweet dreams. Tonight’s beneficiaries of Nature’s dowry do not include Mistress Beldam’s family.

So I approach them, and I speak. “My name is Walter Thirsk … It’s Walt.” There’s no response. “I was not there, this morning, when you drew your bows,” I say. They need to understand at once, I should not be numbered among their accusers. I did not shake my stick at them. I did not help to shave their heads. I did not march them to the pillory. They cannot know I failed to speak on their behalf. Indeed, I am the only one among the villagers against whom they shouldn’t harbor any grudge. Still, they do not offer a response. They are like cattle feeding; their faces strain toward the ground. The rain drops unabated on their shoulders and their necks, channels down their spines. They each have a ropy tail of rain. The younger lifts his chin and looks at me, then drops his head again. He is exhausted by the weight of his own head, it seems. The shorter shuffles on his stretching toes.

Of course, I cannot find a log for the father to stand on, not in this darkness or this weather. The nearest fallen timber is a walk away, beyond our fields. I don’t intend to go foraging so late at night. I should have planned this earlier. I could have sent a pair of boys out of the barn to fetch a log. I forgot. But I know there is a pile of large, roughly prepared stones intended for the church only a score of paces from the pillory. It isn’t hard to pull one loose and lift it that short distance—at least, it isn’t hard at first. Then my weeping hand, which for the moment I have not remembered, starts to hurt again. I’ve treated it too roughly, tested it too much tonight. Any crust that has been forming over it must now have torn again. I cannot see the damage, but I certainly can feel it. I drop the stone and try to roll it forward with my one good hand. The ground is far too rough and the stone is far too square for that. I tip and topple it once or twice but it has a mind of its own and none of the progress I induce in it is quite in the direction of the pillory.

I cannot think of anything at home that could serve as the older man’s perch. I have a bench outside my cottage, but that is oak and heavy too. It takes two sets of hands to carry it. I have a chest and a smaller coffer, but not iron-bound and so too flimsy to support a man, even a short one. And both my kegs are full and too heavy to be moved about. Short of laying on the sodden ground myself and having him stand on my back, there’s nothing I can do for him before tomorrow. I have to take care of my hand, if I ever hope to work again. Anyway, this problem at the pillory is not mine alone—and probably it’s not as urgent as I thought. The older man has already endured the most part of the day on tiptoe. Surely he can tolerate the night. Then at first light I will call on John Carr and we can either share the burden of the stone or take, one-handed, an end each of the bench. Better, I can find those boys and send them log hunting. For now I
have to guard my wound. I am suddenly embarrassed. I walk again into the downpour and the dark. Those men have not exchanged a word with me.

It is only now I can address myself to Mistress Beldam, and Master Kent’s request, instruction actually, that I should hunt her down and bring her to his barn. I have seldom disappointed him before. I take great pride in that. My father was his father’s clerk. My mother was his milk nurse. We are almost of an age and so must have been ear-to-ear when we were nuzzling infants, growing plump on the same breasts. I do not want to say he is my brother; our stations are too different. But we were playmates in his father’s yards. He sometimes shared his books with me, and I was let to write and read and calculate. I managed these less clumsily than him, I dare to say. I have been his serving man since both of us were satin-chinned. I was the only one he brought with him when Lucy Jordan agreed to be his wife and he took charge of these estates and this old manor farm. And he was friend enough to me to let me go from his direct employ when I discovered my own wife, my own sweet Cecily, and found such unexpected solace, for a man most used to market towns, in working with her and her neighbors in these isolated fields. I told him I was in love with Cecily, her hearty laugh, her freckled throat, her sturdiness, but also with the very crumble of this village earth. He said, “Then you should go and plow the earth.” That is my history.

I will not forget those early playmate days or my family debt to Master Kent. I have always taken it as my particular duty to speak up on his behalf among my neighbors, if anyone’s disgruntled. Or even to venture a casual word to him myself about any negligence or grievance that could damage his standing here. If Master Kent has ever taken me aside, to ask me to assess his stock, perhaps, or prune his fruiting trees, or patch some damage to his roof, I have done so at a snap and without a murmur or requiring an advantage in return. I do not mean
to paint myself as some enameled saint, haloed by obedience. I have been sensible—and loyal, in both our interests.
To all of our advantages
, let’s say. Despite the shared and joshing friendship of our youths, I’ve never said, Your roof can wait. There’re our own oxen need attending to. Or asked, What have you hanging at your sides, Charles Kent? They look like arms and hands to me. So prune your orchard trees yourself. No, I have warranted his respect by always helping him. So he relies on me and will be distressed—and disappointed, probably—if I go to him tomorrow to report I did not even try to bring the woman to his barn because my hand was painful. He’ll think, Why does it take a pain-free hand to do what I have asked? He hasn’t said that I should lift Mistress Beldam above my head and carry her.

Therefore, instead of squelching home, drying off, pulling on my quilted cap and sleeping out the storm, I only call in briefly to change my breeches and find my wide-brimmed hat and a leather jerkin. My one idea is to hurry down our lanes toward the clearing at The Bottom, where I saw this morning’s darkest plume of smoke. No,
yesterday
morning’s; the midnight has departed from us already. She will have sought the leaking shelter of her tumbled den. Where else? I will collect her there.

My thoughts are not entirely generous. Mistress Beldam has a hold on me, not like the enduring hold of my Cecily, but something new and different, something more uncomfortable. On first sight, my wife was at once a homely prospect, pretty, lively, comforting and warm. She left me calm and full of hope. To hold her on our marriage night—well, in truth,
before
our marriage night—was to arrive at a lasting destination from which I could not imagine departing for all and any of the years ahead. However, she was not the lightning strike that minstrels sing about. But that first sight of Mistress Beldam has put me out of character. Since seeing her in shaven silhouette I feel as if I have been feeding on Brooker Higgs’s fairy caps. And now that
I’m expecting to discover her, now that I am getting close to where she must have taken refuge, my head begins to dance with darker and more spectral lights; my heart is rippling; I feel a sudden fearlessness and then a sinking fear. I have been widowed for too long. If there’s a moon behind these clouds, it is sensual and blue. There is wanting in the air, and sorcery.

Clearly, I am not the only one to think it so. There are men about. I hear the splash of other feet and catch a glimpse of walking figures, too tall and too broad-shouldered to be the woman we are hunting for. No doubt they’re catching sight of me as well and saying to themselves, That wide-brimmed hat belongs to Walter Thirsk. What business can an old goat such as him have on a night like this, and so late? At least my errand is not clandestine. I’m doing what our master has desired. I do not have a wife or family to hide it from, like some of these other maddened figures in the night. I have not sinned against the woman yet, except the sin of thinking it, of thinking that she might not want to sleep alone in that great barn but would prefer a cottage bed. I will dry her with my damaged hand. My damaged hand will pay amends to her.

The den is hard to find but gradually my eyes have grown accustomed to the dark. The cloud to some extent has thinned. There is no moonlight but there is at least a muffled promise of the dawn to come, enough to make out shapes and outlines. There’s the great black wall of trees, now heavily and noisily shedding water. And there’s the pile of what was once her hurried, rough-and-ready walls. I’d call her name. It doesn’t matter if my lurking neighbors hear. Let them understand that I have come with proper cause. But we have been too remiss in our hospitality. We do not have the woman’s name. “Mistress Beldam” will not do. Just “Mistress,” then. I call it out. But no reply. And no response when I step forward like a moonstruck youth with shaking hands to pull aside the sacking and the timber.
The forest is a din of rain. Beyond the cascades and the waterfalls, I hear the fidgeting of feet that might belong to anyone or anything, a cough that could be human or a fox, the crack of snapping wood. I call out “Mistress” twenty times, to no avail. She must have taken refuge in some other den. Or else she hears but will not answer me.

4

S LUCK WOULD HAVE IT
, I have been assigned to be Mr. Quill’s assistant for the week. My wounded hand excuses me from hard work in the threshing barns. Master Kent insists on it. Once more he proves himself my friend. I shouldn’t try to grip tools or carry anything, he warns. Any pressure and I’ll burst the cushioning of water-whelks and blisters that are already forming at the edges of the burn. I’m not fit for laboring, “And never was,” he wants to say. (Perhaps he would employ me as his man again.) The grain can be separated from the chaff without my help for the next few days. My greater duty is to save my hand. There’re men and women both of us could name who’ve lost a limb and then their lives because a wound has not healed properly. I have to keep it cold and dry but open to the air, so that the savaged skin at the center can peel away or form a crust. At the moment it’s too swampy to dry and harden. It’s oozing liquids of the sort I’d normally expect to run out of my nose. And the pain, though not as searing as it was, is almost more than I can bear. It is unforgiving. I have not had a wink of sleep all night, well, that much of the
night I spent shivering in bed and not out in the rain hunting for the sorceress. And now I walk with one hand raised and cupped in front of me. I am a beggar for the day, I’m told. My neighbors look into my palm, raise their eyebrows, wish me well, but I suspect they’re jealous of my easy occupation. Already they have labeled me Quill-Carrier-in-Chief. They think we’ll make a comic pair: the stumbler and the beggar, both damaged on the left and with only a couple of useful hands between them.