Part 18 (2/2)

”Mary Rosgof, do you admit your fault?” called Hornwynk.

”I do in all humility,” she answered, her voice low.

”Speak louder for all to hear, and state its nature,” he cried. The wretched woman, her pale face flus.h.i.+ng, raised her head and looked towards Joanna.

”I lay with another man, my husband not six months dead, thus forfeiting the lands I held in trust for my son. I crave indulgence of my lady and the manor court, and beg for the restoration of my lands, confessing my incontinence. Should I give birth to a base-born child, my son will take possession of the lands and do with me as he pleases.” Joanna beckoned the new steward to her side, and he bent low as she whispered something in his ear. Then he turned once more and addressed the penitent.

My gracious lady cannot condone your fault, which is of a nature abhorrent to all people, but since you have admitted it in person, and before the manor court and others of this parish, she will, in great clemency, restore the forfeited lands you rent from her.

The woman bowed her head and murmured grat.i.tude, then asked with swimming eyes if there was further penance she must do.

”Aye,” returned the steward. ”Descend from the sheep that carried you in your shame, proceed to the chapel here, crawling on your knees, and confess your sin before the altar. Brother John will hear your confession.”

The two men who held the sheep pulled the woman from its back, forcing her to her knees, and as she dragged herself along the path towards the chapel, hampered by her skirts, a groan arose from the watching crowd, as if this total degradation could in some way appease their own sense of shame.

The monk waited until she had crawled to his feet, then turned into the chapel, where she followed him. Her escort, at a sign from Hornwynk, set the sheep free, whereupon it ran in terror amongst the crowd, scattering them to either side, and a great shout of hysterical laughter burst forth, as they drove it back along the road to Treesmill, pelting it with pieces of packed snow, sticks, anything they could find. With the sudden release from tension everyone was in a moment laughing, joking, running, seized by a holiday mood, what was happening making a break between winter and the Lenten season just begun. Soon they had all dispersed, and no one was left before the geld-house but Joanna herself, Hornwynk the steward, and Roger and Trefrengy standing to one side.

”So be it,” said Joanna. ”Tell my servants I am ready to leave. There is nothing further to keep me here in Tywardreath save a certain business which I can attend to on the road home.”

The steward went down the path to prepare for her departure, the servants opening the carriage door in readiness, and Joanna, pausing, looked across the path at Roger.

”The people were well satisfied if you are not,” she said, ”and will pay their rents the sooner for it in the future. The custom has its merits if it inspires fear, and may well spread to other manors.”

”G.o.d forbid,” answered Roger.

Geoffrey Lampetho had been right about the paint on her face, or perhaps the atmosphere inside the geld-house had been close. It ran in streaks now on either cheek, which, with increasing weight, were a puffy puce. She seemed to have aged, since I saw her last, a good ten years. The splendour had gone from her brown eyes, turning them hard like agate. She put out her hand now and touched Roger's arm. ”Come,” she said, ”we have known one another too long for lies and subterfuge. I have a message for the Lady Isolda from her brother Sir William Ferrers, which I have promised to deliver to her in person. If you bar your door to me now I can summon fifty men from the manor to break it down.”

”And I another fifty between here and Fowey to withstand them,” answered Roger. ”But you may follow me to Kylmerth if you wish, and beg an interview. Whether it will be granted or not I cannot say.”

Joanna smiled. ”It will,” she said, ”it will,” and taking her skirts in her hands she swept down the path towards the carriage, followed by the monk. Once it would have been Roger who helped her mount the steps into the waiting vehicle; today it was the new steward Hornwynk, flushed with self-esteem and bowing low, while Roger, crossing to a gate behind the chapel, where his pony was tethered, leapt upon its back, and kicking his heels into its side rode out into the road. The lumbering chariot rumbled after him, Joanna and the monk inside it, and the few stragglers at the top of the hill stared to watch it pa.s.s down the icy road to the village green and the Priory walls beyond. A bell sounded from the Priory chapel and the vehicle began to draw away from me, and Roger too, and I started running, fearing to lose both. Then a pounding in my heart began, and a singing in my ears, and I saw the carriage lurch to a standstill; the window was lowered, and Joanna herself looked out of it, waving her hand and beckoning to me. I stumbled to the window, breathless, the singing increasing to a roar. Then it ceased, absolutely, and I was swaying on my feet, with the clock in Saint Andrew's church striking seven, and the Buick had drawn up on the road ahead of me, with Vita waving from the window, and the surprised faces of the boys and Mrs. Collins looking out.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO.

THEY WERE ALL talking at once, and the boys were laughing. I heard Micky say, ”We saw you running down the hill, you looked so funny...” and Teddy chimed in, ”Mom waved and called, but you didn't hear at first, you seemed to look the other way.” Vita was staring at me from the open window by the driving seat. ”You'd best get in, she said, you can hardly stand,” and Mrs. Collins, red in the face and fl.u.s.tered, opened the door for me the other side. I obeyed mechanically, forgetting my own car parked in the lay-by, and squeezed in beside Mrs. Collins, as we continued along the lane skirting the village towards Polmear.

”A good thing we drove this way,” said Vita. ”Mrs. Collins said it was quicker than going down through Saint Blazey and Par.” I could not remember where they had been or what they were doing, and although the singing in my ears had stopped my heart was thumping still, and vertigo was not far away.

”Bude was super,” said Teddy. ”We had surf-boards, but Mom wouldn't let us go out of our depth. And the ocean was rolling in, huge great waves, much better than here. You ought to have come with us.” Bude, that was right. They had gone to spend the day at Bude, leaving me alone in the house. But what was I doing wandering in Tywardreath? As we pa.s.sed the alms-houses at the bottom of Polmear hill and I looked across to Polpey and the Lampetho valley, I remembered how Julian Polpey had not waited for the loathsome spectacle outside the geld-house but had walked home, and Geoffrey Lampetho had been one of those amongst the crowd who had pelted the sheep with stones.

It was over and done with, finished. It was not happening any more. Mrs. Collins was saying something to Vita about dropping her at the top of Polkerris hill, and the next thing I knew was that she had disappeared and Vita had drawn up outside Kilmarth.

”Run along in,” she said sharply to the boys. ”Put your swimming-trunks in the hot cupboard and start laying the supper,” and when they had vanished up the steps into the house she turned to me and said, ”Can you make it?”

”Make what?” I was still dazed, and could not follow her.

”Make the steps,” she said. ”You were rocking on your feet when we came on you just now. I felt terrible in front of Mrs. Collins and the boys. However much have you had to drink?”

”Drink?” I repeated. ”I haven't drunk a thing.”

”Oh, for heaven's sake,” she said, ”don't start lying. It's been a long day, and I'm tired. Come on, I'll help you into the house.” Perhaps this was the answer. Perhaps it was best she should think I had been sitting in some pub. I got out of the car, and she was right-I was still rocking on my feet, and I was glad of her arm to steady me up the garden and into the house.

”I'll be all right,” I said. ”I'll go and sit in the library.”

”I'd rather you went straight to bed,” she said. ”The boys have never seen you like this. They're bound to notice.”

”I don't want to go to bed. I'll just sit in the library and shut the door. They needn't come in.”

”Oh well, if you insist on being obstinate...” She shrugged in exasperation. ”I'll tell them we'll eat in the kitchen. For heaven's sake don't join us-I'll bring you something later.” I heard her walk through the hall to the kitchen, and slam the door. I flopped on a chair in the library and closed my eyes. A strange lethargy crept over me; I wanted to sleep.

Vita was right, I should have gone to bed, but I hadn't the energy even to get up out of the chair. If I stayed here quietly, in the stillness and the silence, the feeling of exhaustion, of being drained, would pa.s.s away. Tough luck on the boys, if there was some programme they hoped to watch on TV, but I would make it up to them tomorrow, take them sailing, go to Chapel Point. I must make up to Vita too; this business would set us back again, the sweat of reconciliation would have to start all over again.

I awoke with a sudden jerk, to find the room in darkness. I glanced at my watch, and it was almost half-past nine. I had slept for nearly two hours. I felt quite normal, hungry too. I went through the dining-room into the hall, and heard the sound of the gramophone coming from the music-room, but the door was shut. They must have finished eating ages ago, for the lights were turned out in the kitchen. I rummaged in the fridge to find eggs and bacon to fry, and I had just put the frying-pan on the stove when I heard someone moving about in the bas.e.m.e.nt. I went to the top of the back stairs and called, thinking it was one of the boys, who might report to me on Vita's mood. n.o.body answered. Teddy? I shouted. Micky?

The footsteps were quite definite, pa.s.sing across the old kitchen and then on towards the boiler-room. I went down the stairs, fumbling for the lights, but they were not in the right place, I couldn't find the switch, and I had to grope my way to the old kitchen by feeling for the walls. Whoever it was ahead of me had pa.s.sed through the boiler-room on to the patio, for I could hear him stamping about there, and he was drawing water from the well that lay in the near corner and was covered up and never used. And now there were further footsteps, but not from the patio, from the stairs, and turning round I saw the stairs had gone and the footsteps were coming from the ladder leading to the floor above. It was no longer dark, but the murky grey of a winter afternoon, and a woman was coming down the ladder, bearing a lighted candle in her hands. The singing started in my ears, the bursting thunder-clap of sound, and the drug was taking effect all over again without having been renewed. I did not want it now, I was afraid, for it meant that past and present were merging, and Vita and the boys were with me, in my own time, in the front part of the house. The woman brushed past me, s.h.i.+elding the candle's flame from the draught. It was Isolda. I flattened myself against the wall, holding my breath, for surely she must dissolve if I as much as moved, and what I was seeing was a figment of the imagination, an aftermath of what had been that afternoon. She set the candle down on a bench, lighting another that stood beside it, and began humming under her breath, an odd sweet s.n.a.t.c.h of song, and all the time I could hear the distant throbbing of the radiogram from the music-room on the ground floor of the house.

”Robbie,” she called softly. ”Robbie, are you there?” The boy came in from the yard through the low arched doorway, setting his pail of water on the kitchen floor.

”Is it freezing still?” she asked.

”Aye,” he said, ”and will do until full moon is past. You must stay a few days yet, if you can bear with us.”

”Bear with you?” she smiled. ”Rejoice in you, rather, and willingly. I wish my daughters were as well-mannered as you and Bess, and minded what I tell them as you mind your brother Roger.”

”If we do it's from respect for you,” he answered. ”We got hard words from him, and a belting too, before you came.” He laughed, shaking the thick hair out of his eyes, and lifting the pail poured the water into a pitcher on the trestle table. ”We eat well, too, he added. Meat every day instead of salted fish, and the pig I slaughtered yesterday would have stayed in his sty until Quadragessima was done had you not graced our table. Bess and I would have you live with us forever and not leave us when the weather mends.”

”Ah, I understand,” said Isolda, mocking. ”It isn't for myself you like me here but for the ease of living.”

He frowned, uncertain what she meant, then his face cleared, and he smiled again. ”Nay, that's untrue,” he said. ”We feared when you first came that you'd play the lady and we couldn't please you. It's not so now, you could be one of us. Bess loves you, and so do I. As for Roger, G.o.d knows he has sung your praises to us these past two years or more.” He flushed, suddenly awkward, as if he had said too much, and she put out her hand to him and touched his arm.

”Dear Robbie,” she said gently, ”I love you too, and Bess, and the warm welcome you have given me these past weeks. I shall never forget it.”

The sound of footsteps made me raise my head to the loft above, but it was only the girl descending the ladder, certainly cleaner than when I saw her last, her long hair combed and smooth, her face well scrubbed.

”I can hear Roger riding through the copse,” she called. ”See to the pony, Robbie, when he comes, while I set the table.” The boy went out into the yard and his sister heaped fresh turf upon the hearth, and furze as well. The furze flickered and caught, throwing great tongues of flame upon the smoky walls, and as Bess looked over her shoulder, smiling at Isolda, I knew how it must have been here for the four of them, night after night, during the time of frost, seated at the trestle table with the candles set amongst the pewter plates.

”Here's your brother now,” said Isolda, and she went and stood by the open door as he rode into the yard and flung himself off the pony, throwing the reins to Robbie. It was not yet dark, and the yard, so much wider than the patio I knew, stretched to the wall above the fields, so that through the open gate I could see the fields sloping to the sea beyond and the wide expanse of bay. The mud in the yard was frosted hard, the air was sharply cold, and the small trees in the copse stood black and naked against the sky. Robbie led the pony to his shed beside the byre, as Roger crossed the yard towards Isolda.

”You bring bad news,” said Isolda. ”I can tell it from your face.”

”My lady knows you are here,” said Roger. ”She is on her way to see you, with a message from your brother. If you wish it I can turn the chariot back from the top of the hill. Robbie and I will have no trouble with her servants.”

”No trouble now, perhaps,” she answered, ”but later she could do harm to you, to Robbie and Bess, to this whole place. I would not have that happen for the world.”

”I would sooner she razed the house to the ground than cause you suffering,” he said.

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