Devil Water (16 page)

Charles neared the Roman Wall, along which ran the main road between Newcastle and Carlisle. There were occasional passersby -- market wagons, peddlers, a shepherd with his flock, chance travelers. Charles was tired of the road and seized with an urge to strike west across the moors towards a Roman ruin Mr. Brown had told him of. A ruin where they said one might find an old coin or even the statue of a heathen god. He flicked the mare and plunged into the waste of rough hummocks and little hills, covered with grass and patches of heather.

“Ah-h --” said John Snowdon with a majestic nod. “He’s off into the moss, we’ve got him!” He signaled to his sons, who obeyed silently, watching their quarry and yet keeping themselves hidden behind bushes and hummocks. This was a game they knew well in the dales. Nor had the Union with Scotland three years ago lessened their skill in tracking Border thieves. Rob had no such skill, and it was his small distant form on the Galloway that Charles noticed with annoyance, since he was not eager to have some urchin’s company. Charles quickened his pace down the great grassy outcropping of the Whinsill. The mare plunged her hoof in a rabbit hole and stumbled. John Snowdon, seeing this and noting that they were well out of sight of the highway, raised his arm in signal and began to gallop, his sons converging with him.

Charles, who had pulled up the mare and was relieved to find she had not hurt herself, stared in surprise. He saw the three gaunt figures on raw-boned horses, saw that they wore bonnets like the Scots’, that their plaids were streaming behind them. And an unearthly battle cry came from their throats: “Yet! Yet! Yet! A-Snawdon! A-Snawdon!”

What in Mary’s name are they doing? Charles thought, convinced he had stumbled into some sort of sport. The two young men were off their horses and had yanked Charles off his before he knew enough to struggle. He felt his arms jerked behind his back, saw a flash of stout cord in somebody’s hand, and tried to fight then, though still bewildered. Charles had strength and courage, but these adversaries were not like the ridiculous Paulet, whom Charles had bested on Twelfth Night. These men were as rugged and grim as their own mountains. Charles’s twistings and writhings produced only a violent pain in his arm as Roger Snowdon tied his wrists behind his back.

“Gin ye kick like that, I’ll break your leg fur ye,” said Will Snowdon, clutching Charles’s ankles in a vicious grip. “An’ they’ll be no use yalping,” he added as Charles tried to shout for help. He dealt Charles a great blow across the mouth with his open hand.

“Hist him up on his nag,” said the father, who had been watching quietly. “Then lead on!” His sons obeyed. They threw Charles onto his horse and lashed the stirrups to his boots. Will pulled the reins over the mare’s head and began to lead her. Charles swayed in the saddle, blood trickled down his chin from the blow. The cavalcade set out over the bleak and trackless moors. “What do you
want
of me?” mumbled Charles when he could speak over the pain in his teeth. “I’ve no money on me.”

Nobody answered him. John Snowdon and Will, leading the mare, rode silently on ahead, Roger Snowdon behind. And now a little way to the left Charles saw the urchin on the pony, and recognized him. It was the sight of Rob Wilson that penetrated Charles’s daze and washed him in fear. A blind animal panic, while he strained at the bonds which held his wrists, then hammered with his lashed feet against the mare’s flanks. She started and reared and tried to bolt, and Charles fell off sidewise, though his feet were not free of the stirrups and the saddle turned under him. He hit his right cheek against a sharp rock. The gash spurted red from his ear to his jawbone, while he was dragged a few feet half on half off the mare.

“Ye blarsted young fule!” cried John Snowdon, as Will quieted the mare and hoisted Charles back on the regirthed saddle. “A bonny face ye’ve gi’en yoursel’! The lasses’ll not favor ye so much now. Here.” He threw a dirty brown kerchief to his son. “Stanch his wound. We’d not ha’ him bleed to deeth yet.”

Will mopped at the gash on Charles’s cheek with a handful of grass, then bound the kerchief tight around his head and chin. “Na mair o’ your tricks,” he growled. “We’ve a lang way t’get hame as ‘tis.”

Charles slumped down in the saddle. The procession started off again. They went on for an hour over moors and through copses, splashing along burns, sometimes trotting on a disused cart road. Twice they passed a farmhouse at a distance. Once a man with a gun and dog shaded his eyes to peer at them from a nearby hillock. Will Snowdon waved in a friendly way, the man waved back and disappeared.

The fitful sun had vanished for good behind a black cloudbank when they reached the lake called Sweethope Lough, and saw the high sandstone Wanny Crags behind it. The country grew wilder, ravens circled over the crags, and a curlew shrilled three times through the heavy air.

“Sune we’ll be i’ the forest,” said John Snowdon with satisfaction. “Hurry on, lads.”

“Aye,” said Will tugging the mare’s bridle. “I’d not wish to meet the bogle o’ Fallowlees after dark, nor yet the wee folk who dwell i’ Selby’s Cove.” He gave an uneasy laugh. Rothbury Forest was well known to be haunted.

“Who
are
you men?” said Charles speaking at last. “Where’re you taking me? What have I done to you?”

John Snowdon did not hear. Will and little Rob did not answer, but Roger, who had in him a trace of his dead mother’s softness, was impressed by the numb desperation in their captive’s voice. He came up beside the mare, and said, “Is it truth ye dinna ken who we are? Did ye think the wicked ruin o’ a poor lass’ld gan unavenged fur aye?”

“You
are
Snowdons then,” whispered Charles after a moment. “But what I did with Meg is over long ago, and is no more than happens every day in London!” He didn’t understand, and the pain in his wrists and ankles and the throbbing of his cheek wound confused his thinking.

“We ken naught o’ your mucky Papist ways, nor what they do i’ Lunnon!” cried Roger with sudden anger. “We live by the Good Book, an’ the Covenant o’ God, and we don’t suffer sin amangst us!”

“Aye,” said John Snowdon, hearing this and turning in his saddle. “Weel spoke, Roger. Will, are ye sure Master Dean’ll be waiting?”

“Aye, Faither,” said Will. “Tarn went to Falstone fur him yes-tere’en.” Again there was silence, except for the dry thuds of the horses’ hoofs on the young bracken and the heather.

They’re mad, Charles thought. Mad. Are they going to kill me? I must keep my wits somehow. When we get where we’re going, they’ll have to take me off the mare. They won’t butcher me in cold blood, or they’d have done it sooner. I must keep my wits and watch my chance. Holy Mother of God, help me to think! But his mind was leaden and when he saw the country grow yet wilder and more desolate, fear rose tight in his throat. At gloaming the Simonside Hills loomed up ahead. The ancient bare-topped crags had an air of brooding mystery. Eagles nested in these cliffs. The wastes of heather became darkened at times by streaks of brown peat. They passed a ring of stones and ancient earthworks which had been made by the little folk of the North long before the Romans came. John Snowdon led them on a track around the foot of Dove’s Crag, then struck sharply upwards over a spur of gritty sandstone, where the horses slipped and scuffled. They had passed no dwellings for hours, but now for a moment Charles saw a few scattered candles glimmering out of windows down in the Coquet valley. He looked towards them with sudden hope, which the old man extinguished. “Roger,” he said to his son. “We’ll not go nigh Tosson. Can ye guide us hame, by Wolvershiels? Ye’re een’re better than mine i’ this gloaming. But mind the bog!”

“Aye, Faither,” said Roger moving up ahead. The interminable ride continued. Charles’s tired mare stumbled more often and Will jerked her head up. When they disturbed three sheep, which went scurrying and bleating into the darkness, the mare shied and Charles, very nearly thrown again, felt with new dismay that the numbness of his arms had spread to his thighs. I won’t swoon, he said to himself. Blessed Virgin, help me. I must keep my wits. But they seemed as numb as the rest of him.

The long May twilight had nearly vanished when they came suddenly on a tiny burn, and beside it, solitary, tucked away and hidden beneath Ravensheugh crag, stood a small high peel. It was made entirely of stone except for the thatching, and it was built like an upended roofed box. It consisted of a cattle-byre below and one room above for humans. It had stood there for centuries, and sheltered many a family with their precious sheep and cattle against sudden thieving raids by Scots or by Redesdalers, who were also hereditary enemies of the Coquet dalesmen.

Two dogs rushed up barking as the horses approached and were silenced at once by their master’s voice. The Snowdons and Rob dismounted. Roger unlashed Charles’s feet and wrists, then pushed him from the saddle. “Ye’ll na get awa’ from us now, laddie!” he said not unkindly, and added a grunt of laughter as Charles, whose legs would not support him, collapsed on a patch of grass and tried to rub his throbbing wrists. An outside flight of narrow stone steps was the only approach to the Snowdon living quarters. At the top of them, halfway up the building, the door opened and in a slit of yellow light there showed a woman’s tall stout figure. “Did ye get him?” she called down. “We did,” snapped John Snowdon. “Is Master Dean here?”

“Aye, since noon. Meg’s took worse. Greeting and moaning most pitiful. Ye shouldna ha’ beat her so, Jock Snawdon, but Snawdons’re a harsh breed as I s’ld knaw who married one.”

“ ‘Tis atwixt me an’ the Lord what I do wi’ my datter, Belle,” retorted the old man. “She’ll sune stop greeting when she sees what we’ve brought her.” He leaned over and jerked Charles to his feet by the coat collar. “Get up, ye wretch! We didna fetch ye here to loll on the sward.” He and the young men shoved Charles up the stone steps and through the door into a square smoky room which smelled of dung from the byre beneath. A peat fire burned in the crude fireplace. There was no furniture but a table and stools. The woman, Belle Snowdon, held the candle high. She had been Isabel Jack from Hepple and long married to John Snowdon’s brother, Edward. Of all the Snowdons who lived hereabouts only she had come to be with Meg, for John Snowdon did not like his other kin, who were none of them Dissenters.

Belle stared hard at Charles. “Ah, he’s verra young,” she said quickly. “An’ what ha’ ye done to his face?” The blood from the gash had oozed through the kerchief and caked in dark splotches. Meg had been huddled on a stool near the fire moaning to herself; when her Aunt Belle spoke she raised her head and gave a cry. She staggered to her feet and walked heavily across the stone floor to Charles. “Ye’re hurt!” she cried. “Oh, sir, for-r-give me, I didna want this. I ne’er meant them to knaw. I didna tell them, ‘twas the Faw who told!”

Charles wet his lips and gaped down at her. He saw that her brown eyes were filled with anguish. He saw that there was a lump on her forehead and bruises on her arms. Then he saw her great swollen belly under the homespun apron. “You’re with child,” he whispered. “Did I get you with child, Meg?”

“I didna mean ye to knaw,” she repeated. “ ‘Twas all
my
sin.”

“ ‘Twas foul sin in both!” shouted John Snowdon. “An’ they’ll be no bastards in
my
family! Master Dean, are ye ready?”

A man in a shabby homespun suit had been standing in the shadows by the small shelfful of sermons which were John Snowdon’s constant reading. He was John Dean, the Dissenting minister from the Border church at Falstone. He adjusted his wrinkled cotton falling bands, and strode towards the table, where he laid the big Snowdon Bible in the precise center. “Aye, ready,” he said in measured tones. “Stand here, you two!” And he pointed from Meg to Charles and indicated the front of the table.

“No, no!” cried Meg, wringing her hands and looking wildly from one to another of the implacable Snowdon faces. “Mr. Radcliffe can’t wed
me!
I told ye that, Faither. ‘Tis not seemly, and he’s betrothed to a great lady in London. He doesna want me, he niver did!”

“Hush thy clatter, lass,” said John Snowdon. “The babe mun ha’ a name, and he’ll wed thee, willy-nilly, gin he values his life.” The old man glanced towards his huge blackthorn cudgel which stood by the hearth. Will Snowdon put his hand on his pistol, and watched Charles, who stood rooted by the door, staring at Meg and at her great belly. It is
my
child in there, he thought. Mine, and for it Meg has suffered greatly. A spasm of wondering pity gripped him. Around him the other figures seemed to recede. They grew unreal as the actors in plays he had seen in London. Their menace seemed unreal. He did not feel the menace. Once, at the theater with Betty, a scene had grown tiresome and they had got up and left. Charles felt the same way now, that he might leave this smoky room, these mouthing actors. Meg alone was real. The piteous little face which he had once so eagerly kissed was real -- and real too was the fruit of the love-makings which she so incredibly carried within her.

“I will wed you, Meg,” he said, walking over beside her.

Belle Snowdon exhaled a great sigh. The Snowdon men and little Rob, who were peering from behind, all slackened their tense muscles, and Will Snowdon said with a curt laugh, “Better a wife than a shroud.”

The minister held up his hand. “We will proceed without more ado. Margaret Snowdon, hold the Book of God’s Holy Word and swear that this is the father of the child with which you are quick -- and will you take him for your wedded husband? . . . Charles Radcliffe . . .” Charles heard neither Meg’s tremulous whispers nor his own voice answering “I do” and “I will.”

He heard instead the restless stamping of the cattle beneath them, heard the feeble bleating of a sick lamb. How strange, he thought, to have cattle crammed in the house with one. And I wonder if the mare has been properly watered and fed down there. I must see to her. He did not hear when the minister said, “I now pronounce you man and wife.” But he was startled when John Snowdon came up to him and shook his hand. “ ‘Tis the last time I’ll do this, Radcliffe,” said the old man solemnly. “I like neither your ways nor your religion, nor your name. Yet it
is
a name that now my datter bears, and can hold her head up again wi’ God-fearing folk. Come, we mun all sign the paper.” Snowdon had provided a marriage certificate in case anyone might question a Nonconformist marriage performed within Rothbury’s Church of England parish. So they signed. And when Meg had finished she gave a sharp cry and put her hand to her back. Then she went to the stool and doubled over, her arms across her belly.