The Town House (3 page)

I had warned Kate not to make herself look pretty. I still, in my serf’s heart, admitted the old lord’s right, but by the mere action of forestalling him I had taken a step out of bondage. I had risen up, under the moon and said,‘You belong to me’; later I saw the falseness of that. If you lay claim to a piece of land you should be able to prove your right in the face of all men; if you cannot do so any man who trespasses there does you more wrong than if he walked on common land. I was anxious, therefore, that she should not appear in the hall with her hair newly washed and streaming over her shoulders, wearing the wreath of flowers which marked the bride-to-be. Kate had laughed and asked,‘Shall I smear wood ash on my face?’

Even had she done so it would not have hidden the fine shapeliness of her bones, the thickness of her honey-coloured hair or the blue of her eyes. I saw the old man look at her; first with that pitiable, old-man lustful look, wishing he were ten, twenty years younger; then in another fashion. Even as the steward hastily named us, Walter, the smith’s son, Kate, the shepherd’s daughter, no relation according to the Kin Book, I saw the old man straighten himself and shift a little in his seat.

‘Both of this manor which will neither gain nor lose labour thereby,’ chanted the steward.

‘Have done,’ said my lord. He dragged his eyes away from Kate, and shifting a little more, turned to me.

‘You’re my smith, eh?’

‘Yes, my lord.’

‘Then this is an ill choice, surely. You need a wench capable of working the bellows for you at a pinch, and breeding good strong boys. This
little maid is altogether too fine and delicate for your purpose.’ His face had grown fat and purple since I last looked at him; in it his eyes shone, his lips were wet, with lechery. He leaned forward a little and reached out his great mottled hand to take Kate by the wrist.

‘I can find you better employment; in the still room of my house at Abhurst. You’d like that, eh?’

Without giving her time to answer – for what did it matter whether she said yes or no? – he said to the steward, ‘Have her ready to ride, pillion to Jack or Will, when I go.’

To describe a moment of boundless rage, folks often speak of ‘seeing red’. A true word. I saw red then. My Lord Bowdegrave, the chair upon which he sat, the tapestry on the wall behind him, the steward standing by, were all gulped up before my eyes in a great red wave into which I plunged my fist with all my might behind it. I felt, but did not see, the smash of my knuckles upon the great leering face. The next instant something hit me across the back of my skull and the redness gave way to burst of sparks and then to blackness.

The utter black pricked out with stars, and there I was, lying flat on my back with my face to the sky. There was not an inch of me that was not in pain. My hide had been broken in a score of places and the whole of my body was set stiff in a case of dried blood. Somebody had given me a monstrous fine thrashing. I moved myself carefully and found that none of my main bones were broken; then I rolled over on my face and was sick and felt better for it. Bit by bit I came to myself. I was stark, stripped of my hose and shirt, and I lay on the dung-heap. Left for dead, I thought to myself. Remembering what I had done, and why, it struck me that maybe I should have been better dead, which thought, naturally, brought me fully back to life. I gathered myself together, piece by piece, and reeled into the forge which was handy, and where we always kept a bucket of clean water to slake our thirst. Feeling my way to it I dipped the horn mug and drank again and again, taking in, with the cool blessed water, the full sense of the plight I was in. I must get away, and I could not go naked. I staggered to our hut.

There was a strong smell of onions and the fire upon which my father had cooked his supper was still a small pink glimmer on the hearthstone. He lay in his bed. I threw a handful of dry sticks on the embers and as the flames leaped he moved, lifted his head, saw me and crossed himself hurriedly, saying,‘God betwixt me and harm.’

‘It’s only me, Father.’

‘A ghost,’ he whispered.

‘My living self.’ The flames gained power and he could see me, horrid as my ghost, stripped and all bloody.

‘I gave you up for dead,’ he said.

I was his son; we had lived together in fair amity for twenty years and of late I had carried the weight of the work. I did not blame him for leaving me where I lay; I had done an unforgivable thing and he had his own safety to look to. But he had come home, cooked his onions, laid down to sleep. At the back of my mind something stirred, a whole thought in a breathing space. That was to be a serf. A serf had no right even to human feelings; it was only by throwing away all claim to human feelings a serf could support his way of life. I had, this very morning, acted like a man, not a serf; and with what result!

‘Small thanks to those who beat me that I am not dead. And if I am here by morning dead I shall be.’ I forced my bruised, stiff limbs to move more briskly. I had dressed in my best to wait upon my lord; so now I must don my stinking working clothes. Then, because our hoard was hidden in the earth under his bed, I had to ask him,

‘Give me my share of the money we have saved.’

He got up grumbling.

‘Less the price of the three geese your share is,’ he said.

‘But I am leaving the geese with you. Father, I must go far away. Who knows what may befall me? A penny may mean life or death to me.’

‘And who is to blame for that?’ Recovering from his fear of being visited by a dead man’s ghost he began to rate me. Mad, reckless, ingrate. That ever son of his should lift violent hand against his lord. Shame, shame, undying shame, and worse. Punishment for him for breeding and raising such a rogue.

‘You showed your colours plain enough when you left me for dead on the dung heap and came home and roasted your onions. You have nothing to fear. Who else, when I am gone, can shoe a horse within ten miles?’

‘That is true,’ he said, comforted again.

Yet, when he had unearthed our little hoard, he divided the coins into two heaps, then took from mine the sum I had paid for the three geese and added it to his own. I protested at that.

‘The six pence for the geese should be laid aside first, then the sum should be divided. The way you have it now, you are twelve pence to the good.’

‘You talk like the fool you are. You took out six pence in April to buy the three geese. Now we divide into fair shares and I take six pence from your share and put to my own since I did not buy geese.’

Nothing would make him see differently, and I dared not stay to beat it out with him. I took the twenty-one pence which was my share, put them, a half loaf, a piece of cheese, my knife and a length of good cord into the little bag in which, when I worked away from home, I carried my noon piece, and then I was ready.

‘You never saw me,’ I told him. ‘For all you know the crows picked out my eyes and the dogs ran off with my bones. If any speak to you of me, rail against me as you have just done.’

I was on my way out, ducking at the low doorway, when he said in an uncertain voice, ‘God go with you, Walter.’ I remembered then that he was my father, growing old, and tremulous, his working days almost numbered and with no one now to depend upon. And he had taught me my trade without too much clouting. So I forgave him his supper, and the unfair division and made him a fair answer.

‘God be with you,’ I said; and went out into the night.

The river bank, near to the place where Kate had been washing that day, was dotted with clumps of gorse bushes. I chose one close to the path worn between the shepherd’s hut and the stepping stones where the family dipped their water, and there I hid myself. The gorse made an uncomfortable hiding place, but I was so sore all over that a few scratches mattered little. It was in my mind that I was most ill at ease. I had no certainty at all that Kate had been sent back home; it seemed far more likely that she had spent the night at the hall, in my lord’s bed most like. But there was a faint, faint chance that she had come home and I could not leave Rede for ever without snatching at that chance.

Day dawned. A thin blue thread of smoke rose from the hole in the roof hut: the shepherd came out, eased himself by the wall, and went in again. Presently Kate herself came out, carrying a bucket. She must have cried all through the night; her face was swollen with tears. She looked stupid with misery and moved listlessly. When she was as near my bush as the path to the water would bring her I said, softly,

‘Don’t look round.’ I had debated with myself whether to say that first, or ‘Don’t be frightened.’ It seemed to me that a fright she would get over, whereas for me to be observed would be fatal. I quickly added, ‘Don’t be frightened; and don’t speak.’

I cannot understand why all the mummers in the world – even when it is the Blessed Virgin to be represented – should be men. Women are natural mummers. Apart from a slight start when she first heard my voice, Kate gave no sign at all. She walked down to the river, dipped the bucket and came back, leaning sideways against the weight. Level with me she set it down and stood rubbing her arm and shoulder, at the same time yawning heartily.

I jerked out a few words, telling her that I meant to slip away to the woods.

‘I’m not asking you to come. Every man’s hand will be against me. And you could live soft at Abhurst. But if you
want
to come, I shall wait in Tuck’s Oak till dusk.’

I was not being unselfish. At that moment, much as I loved her I was not sure that I wanted her with me. I felt weak and sick and sore, and I was about to do something new and dangerous, something I had never heard of anyone else doing successfully. A man about to jump from a great height, or swim a wide stream in the dark is better off without a woman clinging about his neck, however well-beloved she may be. Yet in my heart, if not in my head, I must have wanted her to come, else why had I not made straight for the woods and got away under cover of darkness; why was I prepared to risk waiting all day?

Kate took up the bucket and moved away and in a moment I heard the voice of her step-mother, intent now upon currying favour with one who shortly might have benefits to bestow.

‘Give me that bucket,’ she said, her scolding voice over-laid with forced good humour. ‘You don’t want blisters on your hands tomorrow.’

They went indoors; the thread of smoke thickened. Soon, I judged, they would be breaking their fast. I began to move. I went on my belly like a snake, from gorse bush to gorse bush, keeping alongside the river until I was out of sight of the hut. Then I went to the water’s-edge and laid down my leather apron and the little round cap which all careful smiths wear to save their hair from rubbing against the horses’ hides and picking up the running itch. I walked into the water, careful to make clear footmarks in the mud. I waded downstream in the water until my legs were so benumbed that they failed me; then I climbed out and made for the woods. I hoped that I had broken the scent which the hounds and my lord’s huntsman would soon be following. I hoped that my off-cast apron and cap would look as though I had drowned myself.

Once safe in the great forest I regretted having made tryst with Kate. ‘All for love’ sing the singing men and in their songs love risks all, conquers
all, never doubts and never falters. But the Bible says,‘All that a man has will he give for his life’, and for ordinary, frightened men like me, that is a true saying. I was in the forest by mid-day and could have made good progress during the hours of daylight, had I not promised to wait. I climbed Tuck’s Oak and lay along a stout branch, sweating with fear at the thought of the hounds casting up and down the river bank. Would any see through my trick? Would the search be long enough and patient enough to pick up my trail again? I remembered the way my fist had smashed into my lord’s face; he would feel the damage this morning; he would be after me for vengeance as well as for my value. The longest day’s labour had never seemed so long as the few hours I waited; and they were few, for Kate came while it was still broad day. She brought a basket into which she had packed four goose eggs, some cold mutton, a loaf of bread and some apples. She had thought to bring her winter’s cloak.

At the sight of her, the realization that she had chosen to be hunted with me, rather than to live at ease with our master, love leaped up in me again. I was glad that I had lain in the gorse and waited in the tree, and glad beyond all measure that she had come. I dropped from the bough, took the basket from her and holding her by the hand set off in a southerly direction. She told me that the huntsman and two brace of hounds had found my hiding place in the gorse, followed it until it ended, and then, after casting about for an hour, returned. The man was carrying my cap and apron.

‘And how did you get away so soon?’

‘I said I must carry my father’s dinner – for the last time. And for once she did not stand over me, weighing with her eye all that I put into the basket.’ She laughed. ‘Father said goodbye and he hoped that when I was in the still-room at Abhurst I should remember that he was a poor man with several mouths to feed. I said I would. Then, when I left him I came here.’

‘The hounds. If they are brought out on
your
trail?’

She laughed again. ‘The sheep always loved me. I had but to call and they would follow. They came after me almost to the wood’s edge – Father too busy with his dinner to mind them. When I was ready I turned and scattered them. It would be a rare hound that could scent me on ground sheep had been over twice.’

‘So it would. And you, my Kate, are rarer among women than that hound among hounds.’ I slackened pace long enough to kiss her heartily and then pressed on.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘The only answer I can give you is away from Norwich. That is where they will seek us. So we must walk in the other direction until we reach a walled town.’

That was another thing which every serf knew, it was part of his serf’s heritage, the knowledge that if by some miracle he could ever escape from his manor and reach a walled town and there spend one year and one day, without being reclaimed, or committing any offence against the town laws, then he would be a free man. Alongside this knowledge – which one might think any serf would try to use to his advantage almost as soon as he could walk – lay other knowledge all concerned with the risks and the difficulties and the ferocious punishments which awaited any who made an unsuccessful attempt. Once off his manor without leave a serf was a marked man; for miles around a rider on a swift horse would raise the hue-and-cry, and while that was on any stranger would be challenged and asked to explain himself. When he was overtaken, he would be brought back, whipped and branded. Such a fate few serfs were prepared to face in order to gain ‘freedom’ which was just a word to them. The dues and the duties of villeinage might be heavy or light – it depended upon the lord of the manor, upon his steward or bailiff, upon old custom, but whether heavy or light they had worn calloused places upon the bodies and minds of the bondsmen and unless something out of the ordinary disagreeable happened, as it had happened in my case, no man in his senses would throw himself out into the unknown world. At least, so it was at Rede, which, as I have said before, was much behind the times in every way. I had never known a man to run away, and should never have done so myself had I not been driven. Having run I intended, if possible, to make good my attempt.