Sarum (185 page)
Authors: Edward Rutherfurd
He never spoke. That was as it should be. All that happened was in the great silence of the afternoon, broken only by faint sounds that to her seemed as faint and distant as the tiny cries of the birds on the ridges above.
How was it he knew her so well?
“You are somewhat late, my dear,” her Uncle Stephen complained. “Your rides are too long.”
“Only this afternoon, uncle,” she replied.
As she sat in the hip-bath that Lizzie had prepared for her, in the familiar surroundings of the house in the close, she knew one thing with absolute certainty.
The impossible had happened. It could never happen again.
She was sure she could trust Jethro: he understood as well as she. She did not believe the boy tending the sheep above had any idea; neither the old woman nor the farmhand had been there.
For naturally, if any notion of what had taken place that afternoon reached Sarum close, then she would be finished for ever. Not a door in the place would be open to her. Her Uncle Stephen as head of the family would rightly ask her to leave the area. She could never marry and the name of Shockley would be permanently dishonoured.
She wanted none of those things. They filled her with a sense of horror. It was as though she had stepped out, over a vast chasm, as in a dream, and managed to get back. But from now on, she vowed, she would be circumspect.
For three weeks she did not go back to the farm.
When she did, he seemed to understand. He was exactly his normal self, touched his hat in front of the farmhand and his boy, and he could discern nothing in their glances that suggested they had any inkling of what had passed.
Alone with him for a moment she said simply: “It must be forgotten.” And he nodded calmly and said nothing more.
But when later he took her foot as usual to lift her into the saddle, she found that she was trembling.
The rest of that year went quietly by. She went to the farm only every two weeks now, and spent less time there. The thatch was not mended. But at the cattle sales in December, Jethro did well again, and with luck the lambing season would bring a goodly addition to the new Hampshires as well.
During the month of January, when there were snows, she only visited the place once, and in February, another of Stephen Shockley’s solemn flirtations with death took place and kept her in the city throughout the month.
Yet all that winter, alone in her room at night, she would lie awake and think of Jethro and admit to herself frankly: I ache for him. More than once she had decided on impulse to ride out to the farm and reached the door of the house – once she had even ridden to Old Sarum and the edge of the high ground – before deciding sadly to turn back.
In the first week of March, Stephen Shockley, was, reluctantly, nearly well again, and since the lease on Jethro’s farm was due for renewal at the end of the month, she had decided to make a long visit there at the end of the second week.
Before this, however, there were other things to think of. For that spring, an important and joyful event took place in England, which necessitated a considerable celebration in the town: this was the wedding of Queen Victoria’s eldest son, the Prince of Wales, which was to be celebrated with feasts and a grand parade on March 10.
It was on the morning of that day that Jane went out for one of her customary walks around the cathedral and the cloisters. She was interested that day to find the door of the chapter house open and one of the canons ushering Bishop Hamilton himself and a group of men she did not know out of the place. After saluting the bishop as he passed, she paused, looking curiously into the chapter house.
“Do you know who that was, Miss Shockley?” the canon asked.
“No.”
“The great Sir Gilbert Scott, who is undertaking the restoration in the cathedral. He was seeing what Clutton did in the chapter house. Do you want to come in?”
It was some time since she had entered the fine octagonal building with its slender central column and huge windows. She admired it. Clutton had done his work so well: as she walked around and surveyed the wall carvings, she could not help smiling at the scenes so densely crammed with action between the severe arches: even their slightly foreshortened, clumsy figures had, she thought, an archaic grace, and gave her a hint of the former, medieval Sarum that she thought was almost gone. The figure of Adam and Eve in particular caught her eye. Adam’s head had been beautifully restored, and his little body and Eve’s remained just as they had first been carved. She smiled, and thought of Jethro.
She was walking from the north door of the cathedral towards the choristers’ green when she met Daniel Mason. He bustled up to her.
“I have a commission to you, Miss Shockley,” he announced. “The money owed you by Jethro Wilson. With, I believe, some interest.” He smiled with satisfaction at this last proof of the drunkard’s reform. “I told him five per cent was acceptable.”
She stared at him, bemused. What was he talking about?
“Have you not heard? He is gone.”
She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Where?”
“He has a cousin in the north, who died this last month and left him his farm.” He laughed. “Not only the meek, but reformed drinkers inherit the earth, it seems.”
She was still staring at him. It seemed to her, suddenly, that all the houses in the close had begun to perform a strange and solemn dance.
“But his farm?”
“At Winterbourne? He has given it up: the lease was due, as you may know. He has returned your loan – with interest, as I say – collected his children from Barford and gone. I understand the farm is up on the edge of the cheese country– small but quite respectable.” He smiled. “He has the chance to do very well now.”
She hardly heard him. Jethro had gone. With not a word to her.
“Where is the farm?”
“That I do not know.”
“Thank you.” She began to stride towards the house.
“Your money, Miss Shockley.”
“Later.”
She was leaving the close in fifteen minutes, having told the new maid not to expect her until evening. Dressed in her black riding habit, she strode quickly through the gate into the High Street.
He had gone. Why should he not? Had she not avoided him? She knew the sensible answer to these and many other questions. And she knew also that it felt like being stabbed with a knife.
She plunged into the busy street. She frowned impatiently at the thick crowds, pushing her way through them. And then, at the corner of New Street, she came face to face with the giant.
She had forgotten the parade. She had forgotten, too, that the old Salisbury giant of the ancient Tailors’ Guild, with his companion Hob Nob, was to have one of his periodic outings on this occasion. The giant moved steadily forward, but at a snail’s pace. The varnish on his huge face, in line with the upper windows of the old medieval houses, was black with age; he still wore a big tricorn hat from the previous century and smoked a long clay pipe. But she was in no mood for him now.
“Let me through.”
But the crowd would not. They seemed to bunch together more tightly than ever as she now brusquely elbowed her way through. It was like a dream, she thought, where one was straining to go forward but making no progress. Then, with a scream of pleasure, the line of children in front of her suddenly parted as the hobby-horse, Hob Nob, rushed to attack them. She saw her chance and darted through the gap, only to find, a moment later, that Hob Nob was attacking her – good-naturedly, but persistently. Every step she tried to take, he rushed in front of her, ducking, weaving, and harrying her. The crowd roared its delight at this by-play.
It was then that she lost her temper.
“Out of my way you fool,” she suddenly shouted, and raising her riding crop she struck, not in play, but hard, so that she almost broke the hobby’s head with her first blow and caused the fellow inside to howl with pain and rage from her second.
There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. She did not care, and strode away through them while they parted before her with looks of rage.
“If I wasn’t a lady they’d lynch me,” she muttered, but went on her way regardless.
Twenty minutes later, an astonished groom had saddled her horse, and she was gone.
The farmhouse was deserted. It looked emptier than ever. More of the thatch had come apart and she noticed where recent frosts had cracked the lower parts of the chalk wall. Discouraged, she started back into Winterbourne.
“Well.” The voice came from behind her. “Come looking for him have you?”
It was the old woman. She was standing by a tree in the lane, eyeing her coldly.
“Yes. Where is he?”
“Gone. As well for you.”
She ignored this. “Tell me where he is.”
“Where Jethro Wilson is? You’re not the first woman to ask that.” She laughed mockingly. Jane gave the old woman a severe look. How dare she be impertinent.
“The name of his new village, please,” she demanded curtly.
“’Tis over the other side of the plain, near Edington.” Reluctantly she explained how to find the place. But as Jane wheeled her horse round she called out for the first time with a hint of kindness in her voice: “Kind lady – you stay away from him.” Jane rode on.
The journey there and back would take her all day; but she was already well across the high ground, and she knew tracks that would take her swiftly to the right road.
As she came up over the familiar ridge and glanced back, the memories of their time together flashed back with a terrible vividness. She must find him, even if it was only for a few minutes, to see his face again.
The storm blew up in early afternoon. She had covered many miles. Before her stretched an expanse of open heathland, about five miles across, she believed: and after this the country gave way to the richer vales where Jethro’s new farm lay.
The storm was brooding and heavy; she licked her finger to determine the direction of the wind. By cutting across the heathland following a diagonal path she thought she could just head it off.
Five minutes later she was soaked, and could no longer make out the lie of the land. She pressed on.
The storm was so thick the sky over the heath did not seem to be grey, but brown. Twenty minutes later she was lost.
“And the trouble is,” she thought, “I may be heading back to the plain. I can’t tell.”
She was.
It was nearly half an hour more before she passed an ancient dewpond on a bare expanse of turf. It was filling rapidly. Another five minutes went by.
Then, through the driving rain, directly ahead of her, she saw them – a group of painted wagons, standing in the middle of nowhere.
She gave a little gasp of fear, and reined her horse sharply.
Gypsies.
The wagons seemed to be tight shut, their owners presumably inside them; but even so, she automatically looked around her anxiously in case there were figures lurking there.
She wheeled about, and urged her horse away. One could never be sure with gypsies.
Five more minutes passed. On a grassy slope, her horse slipped and almost fell, and she wondered whether to dismount and lead him. She had no idea what course she was following.
The wagons. They were in front of her again. All she had done was to approach them from another angle.
Once again she turned.
It was ten minutes later that she came upon them again.
She could have cried. She started to turn away again, then gave up. She was too tired to go on.
Slowly and gingerly she made her way towards them.
They eyed her strangely after she had rapped upon the caravan door; but they took her in, and to her relief a few moments later a gypsy woman was helping her to undress and wrap herself in a blanket. Then she sat in the crowded little space with its strange, rich smells, gazing at the heavy embroidered cushion on the bed along one wall, and at the little family in front of her, whose four children, after eyeing her with suspicion, were now staring at her with shy amusement.
The man gave her a sideways look.
“They’re waitin’ to see you catch cold.”
“I fear I shall. Wouldn’t you?”
He shook his head.
“No.”
And she remembered what she had always heard: gypsies did not catch cold.
What did she know about gypsies? That they were short and dark; that they stole sheep and hid them by burying the carcasses beneath their fires. Now she was sharing their caravan.
The storm did not abate until it was dusk, and when she looked out over the darkening, empty landscape and glanced back at her sodden clothes, she knew it was useless to go on. The nearest hamlet, they had told her, was some six miles away.
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