Mist Over Pendle (23 page)

Then he became practical.

“This child must have decent burial, to be sure. But can it be at the Newchurch, or indeed at any church? Can we suppose there has been Baptism?”

That took Margery by surprise, and she all but blurted out too much. She checked just in time, and hastily sought for an answer. But she had not been bred among divines without learning something of equivocation.

“I think,” she told him carefully, “that our Church permits Baptism by those who are not its Ministers when there is
extremis.”

“Ha!” His eyes lit at that. “So much was done then? This child was alive when found?”

“Yes. Alive, and was then baptized.”

“Thanks be to God! I ask now, who thought of that?”

“Does it signify?”

“I’ll take that as my answer. I make you my compliments.”

She accepted them placidly, telling herself that she had earned them in one way, if not in another. She thought she had managed that adroitly, and without an untruth.

“That being so,” he said, “there’s no reason why the child should not be in the ground of the Newchurch, and I’ll urge that on Master Town. A well-intentioned man, mistress--well-intentioned I’ll grant, but he errs. He errs grievously. You’ve noted he’s corroded with the Arminian pestilence, but he has errors added to that. Now this day he goes to Burnley where he’s to uphold---“

He was still expounding what he called the Infralapsarian heresies of the curate when Grace came in to call them to dinner. He continued his discourse throughout the meal, and Margery had to keep her mind alert lest she make some foolish answer. One thing eased her; she noted that Miles Nutter was no longer to be seen But when dinner was done and Thanks had been given, she looked appealingly to Grace, who at once carried her off to her own small room on pretext of tidying hair.

“Thanks!” said Margery briefly.

Grace laughed.

“I thought you were very brave. Listening to such talk can be trying work.”

“I’ve served a sound apprenticeship to it.” Margery smiled ruefully. “It runs in my family at home.”

“You were very tactful.” Grace seated herself on her bed and left the only chair to Margery. “And you were very tactful with Miles before-dinner.”

Grace was obviously making an opening and Margery was anxious to help her; the sooner this was cleared, the better.

“As to that,” she answered, “to be perfectly plain, I begin to find Master Nutter an embarrassment.”

“I’m sure you do. You’ve been treated with too little courtesy, and it’s time you knew the truth of this.”

“There’s no reason why I should. It’s his affair and perhaps yours, but it’s not mine. I’m not a maker of trouble.”

“Listen, Margery---“ Grace was insistent. “It’s best for us all that you should know the truth of this. So listen.”

It was not an easy tale for Grace to tell, and she looked at her bed more than at Margery. But in the end she had it plain.

Margery had supposed correctly that something lay between Grace and Miles Nutter. It was indeed more than that, and it would have ripened into a betrothal but for one thing--the uncompromising opposition of Alice Nutter. On that, Grace was forthright. Alice Nutter, she said, had no mind that her Miles should, as she phrased it, throw himself at a yeoman’s girl. Dick Nutter, himself a yeoman, would have made no trouble; Richard Baldwin might have been persuaded; but Alice would have none of it. Her son was to rise in the world; he was to end as an Esquire, and he must find a wife in the family of an Esquire. Nothing less would do, and Miles was straitly forbidden to have dealings of any kind with Grace. Forbidden meetings naturally followed.

“You make it very plain,” said Margery. “It explains what seemed odd discourtesies. I perceive his embarrassments. But it does not explain why he sought me at all. Why could he not leave me in peace?”

Grace hesitated.

“Judge him not too harshly for that,” she said at length. “It would truly bring blame on most. But not only Miles. With such a mother, and with her so insistent, what could he do but comply? You’ve met Alice Nutter, Margery? You know the force that’s in her.”

“I do. But are you saying that it was Alice Nutter who set him on to go a-riding with me?” “No less.”

“But why? In the name of what makes sense--why?”

“Are you not kin to an Esquire?”

“God’s Grace!” Roger’s exclamation came from her before she could check it. “It was for
that
that he rode with me?”

“At her insistence. Only at that. Though it’s sour hearing for you.”

“Pay no heed to that. I don’t want your Miles, and I’ve taken no hurt. But how of your father? Had he no word to say?”

“That Miles visits me, he knows. It could not be otherwise. And he has said no word against it--or against Miles. Why should he? Miles is a yeoman’s son, and---“ Grace had coloured as she sought for words. “And it might be thought a proper match.”

“Proper indeed. But if it be forbidden by----”

“Don’t you see it? My father knows all things of it but that. Miles has not spoken of his mother’s commands.”

“But she herself? Surely she---“

“Then you don’t know Alice Nutter. Trust her for that! A most kindly gracious lady, our Alice! She’s friend to all the world---and lays her commands in secret.”

Margery sat silent. Unbelievable though it was, she believed it. It fitted, she thought, with what else she knew--and fitted, too, with what had been darkly hinted. Was nothing done with decency in Pendle? Was there nothing here but misery? The child dead in the night; the hunted priest; Anne Nutter, darkly dead; Margaret Baldwin; and now this! And what would come next?

“My poor Grace!” she said quietly. “I think I see it all--and believe it too. Now what would you have me do? I’m yours to serve in all things.”

Grace lifted moist eyes to Margery’s.

“Just this,” she answered steadily. “Forgive Miles. Be understanding. And if he’s driven to call on you again, resent it not but show him some courtesies.”

Margery agreed at once.

“All that most willingly, and it’s little enough. But would it not be better if I were to refuse to see him? Even his mother could scarcely insist on his visits after that.”

But Grace would not agree. She showed instead some signs of alarm.

“God forbid!” she burst out. “Margery, you don’t know Alice Nutter as Miles and I do. She’s wicked, Margery. Truly she is, and she’s dangerous. God forgive me for saying it, but she is. I know not what would follow if you drove it so. For pity’s sake, let it be.”

Margery clung to a coolness that was slipping from her. This, from the gentle Grace, was perturbing; and again she had Roger’s dark thoughts surging in her mind. Then she forced herself to be steady, and she phrased her question carefully.

“This wickedness of Alice Nutter, Grace. I think I could believe in that. But tell me, what form does it take?”

“I’d feel safer if I knew. Even Miles does not know. I think he guesses something, but he has not told me. All being said, how could he?”

“He couldn’t. I perceive that.” Margery came to her feet. “But Grace, you’re looking strained. You’ll be better beyond doors at your spinning wheel. And I’ll be better on my road. But be sure I’ll do as you’ve asked.”

They parted amiably, and Margery took due and cordial leave of Richard Baldwin. But once she was round the bend and out of their sight she rode fast. She was in haste to talk with Roger, and there was a chaos in her mind that was not pleasant. Until yesterday Pendle had been a rustic place, unhappily plagued by some vicious women. Now the picture had changed, and a much more formidable person had come into view; vaguely indeed, but not less alarmingly for that.

In the end she hurried too much, and she was home before Roger; and not until supper was done were they free from attendance and able to talk at ease. But once they were back in the parlour, with the fire and the candles and the wine, Roger lost no time in coming to what was in his mind.

“You took order with Baldwin for that burial?” he asked without prelude.

“Yes.” She did not trouble to explain how. “But there’s some more. It was a secret, to speak truly. Nevertheless---“

“You take no risk with me,” he assured her. “Country gossip’s not among my faults.”

“I know.” She told him briefly of Grace’s tale and of the doings of Miles Nutter.

It stung his pride and angered him.

“Here’s a tale!” he snapped. “She’d make you a creature for her advancement, would she? She’d link her lad with you, and through you with me, and through me with half the quality of Lancashire? Was she drunk when she thought of it?”

But he cooled and listened calmly to the rest of it. Then he grew heated again when he learned that Miles Nutter might yet be calling on Margery.

“Do you lend yourself to this?” he asked angrily. But he cooled again when she explained the matter.

“You may lay this to your credit,” he told her. “If I thought less well of your wits, I’d forbid it shortly. As it is----” He regarded her smilingly. “As it is, you’ve a face that will call men from afar, but you’ve some cool sense within it--or I’d not talk with you as I do. Have it your way then. Be civil to the lad if you wish. But let him not call too often, lest neighbours gossip.”

That was well said, and Margery knew it. She promised that at once, and then waited for his next. He came to it without pause.

“First,” he said, “a detail about Anne Nutter. A little before she died they had Alizon Device come a-begging to the house. She got into the kitchen, where Anne, a charitable soul, seems to have given her some small thing. And apparently there was some talk. After all the two- girls were of an age, and Alizon can be a lively chit when she tries. There was a jest, it seems, and a laugh or two. Into which comes the Chattox, also a-begging, and at once she starts cursing--holding that Anne was laughing at
her.”

“And then?”

Roger shrugged.

“Who knows? But Anne took sick the next day and died within the month.”

“So soon?” Margery frowned over it. “On the face of it there’s no link with Mistress Nutter there.”

“No.” Roger hesitated. “Except the profit that may fall to Miles. And this: these Chattox dwell on the Nutter land, and none believes they pay a rent. Do they perhaps pay by service done?”

Margery nodded, seeing the point in that.

“One other matter.” There was a grimmer note now in Roger’s voice. “I’ve been looking into that affair of the earlier Nutter, and I’ve learned at least something from Tony.”

He paused, and Margery was erect in her chair. Roger’s tone was ominous.

“Dick Nutter was
not
the eldest son. He was the second son, Tony being the third. The eldest, and hence the heir, was Robert.”

“Yes?”

“This Robert, some twenty years back, was in the service of Sir Richard Shuttleworth of Gawthorpe, and while in that service he died. That’s known to all.”

“So that Dick inherited in his place?”

“And Alice with him.”

Margery’s voice came softly.

“How did this Robert die?”

“That’s what I’ve been learning. He went to Wales with Sir Richard. On the way home he took sick, and he was left at Chester with his body-servant. He died there at Candlemas.”

Margery made her thoughts stay cool.

“If there was none with him but his servant, it can hardly have been the work of our Pendle witches--or of Alice Nutter.”

Roger eyed her steadily, and an odd smile lurked in the corners of his mouth.

“That servant,” he said, “was Thomas Redfern, now dead. Thomas Redfern, husband of Anne Redfern and son-in-law to the Chattox--who dwells on the Nutter land.”

To Anthony Nutter it was Martinmas; to Richard Baldwin, who had abrogated the Saints, it was the eleventh of November; to Margery and some others it was Roger Nowell’s birthday, a day marked off from other days.

At breakfast he had Margery’s congratulations, to which he brusquely answered that it was his fiftieth birthday and he could wish that it were not; but he accepted with obvious pleasure the leather riding-gloves she had decorated for him in silver lace-- first fruits of her dealings with Fat Jack the chapman. And after breakfast, the day being Monday, came Nick Banister from Altham with flint and tinder neat in a silver box, with Roger’s initials worked on the spring-loaded lid. That pleased Roger too, and the three of them were in high good humour when they went to the weekly administration of justice. And when this work was done and they were back in the parlour, they found another visitor. Thomas Heber, Roger’s son-in-law, had ridden over from Marton, his home in Craven, with gifts and good wishes, and a special letter from Anne Heber to her father.

Margery was presented, and he looked her over with such unconcealed thoroughness that she suspected he had a special wifely commission to observe and report. She hoped her own inspection of him was better concealed, but it was certainly as thorough. He was a short and thick-set man of perhaps a year or two beyond thirty, heavier of body and redder of face than he need have been, and having some air of dullness about him; well intentioned, perhaps, but none too intelligent, and surely too fond of the table and the bottle. But he was hearty and friendly, and he bore a pressing invitation that Roger and Margery should be guests at Marton over Christmas.

They went happily in to dinner, sociable from the wine that Roger had for once brought out at noon. Margery enjoyed it, for she found that she was expected to play hostess to the guests; and this, after some preliminary nervousness, she found to be a matter much to her liking. Nor was it difficult, for Tom Heber wanted no entertaining. He was a jovial fellow, loud-voiced and self-assured, and it soon emerged that he had some esteem of himself as a teller of tales. But little by little, as the wine sank lower, his tales became more and more of the stable, until it dawned on Margery that here was a social problem.

It was Nick Banister who showed her how to solve it. He began to talk of the troubles that beset a Justice of the Peace, and as Tom Heber was lately in the Commission for Yorkshire, and vastly proud of it, he must needs cap anything that was said; and when Roger had a word to say about the way Lieutenants of a County had of issuing peremptory orders to Justices, Tom Heber could not hold back an instant. He had a tale to tell, he said, that bore on exactly that. He had caught a Jesuit and---