The Lonely Furrow Read online

‘Shall I tell Sawyer, then, Master?’ There might be a ha’penny to be gained in that way. It was a good order.

  All the men of Intake were skilled at woodwork and could make spoons, bowls, buckets as well as keeping houses and out-buildings in repair but, over the years, a certain amount of specialisation had developed. Sawyer made coffins and Gurth made most of the high-soled clogs in which people clumped about in very bad weather.

  ‘I should be much obliged to you,’ Henry said.

  ‘At the moment of the elevation,’ Mistress Captoft said, ‘I saw you wince with pain. You must have hurt yourself when you fell. Where?’

  ‘It is nothing,’ Father Benedict said, courageously. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

  But she was insistent and by now he was actually longing for the comfort of a hot salt bag to press to the hurt or one of her willow-bark plasters to draw out the bruise. And some of her pain-killing draughts.

  ‘It was not the fall, my dear. It was the other leg of the stool. It hit me here.’

  ‘Let me see.’

  ‘There is nothing to see. I looked myself before I dressed.’ But she must see and he was right; there was nothing to see. Also the site of the pain was ill-defined. ‘Here,’ he said and then, after a deeper breath, moved his hand slightly higher. ‘No, here.’

  An inward bruise. Worse than an outer one; but she knew exactly what to do.

  He lay flat in his bed, that position was most comfortable; the warmth of the salt bag was soothing and so were the opiate drops with which, for once, Mistress Captoft had been generous.

  ‘You should sleep now,’ she had said, taking away the cup which had contained not only the drops but a good measure of the best wine.

  He drifted, up to the very border of sleep and there stayed, floating somewhere high, not in the little Intake room but from a point where he could see his whole life, the whole world, like a map, with people moving in it, unrolled before him.

  A clever boy, not one of the poorest, a second son whose labour was not needed on the family holding. He’d gone to the monks’ school at Norwich. The Church offered the best road—perhaps the only one, to an ambitious boy. Not that he had ever been inordinately ambitious. During his studies, and at the time he took orders, the most he had wanted and hoped for was a pleasant, quiet post, something to do with books and a chance of associating with men of like mind. He had never seen himself as a parish priest, possibly the only man in the community who could read. And he knew that he had no talent for dealing with people. An undemanding post on the staff or in the library of some important cleric would have suited him well. It had never come his way. No particular reason except that there were more candidates than jobs of that kind and some young men, whose families had closer connections with a manorial lord than his had, often benefited by a slight push from behind; the right word spoken at the right time into the right ear.

  Still there was always a market—not highly paid but steady—for men who could read and write and count without making notches in tally sticks. It was an anomalous position; respected as priest, regarded as a hireling and sometimes despised—a mere clerk. He had had a variety of jobs, hours spent in cold, ill-lit rooms, by the time he had drifted to Dunwich and become general amanuensis to a prosperous man who not only shipped wool out to Low Countries but shipped in the finished cloth. There, in the course of his work, he had met Mistress Captoft, acting in a similar capacity for her aged, ailing husband. This situation had come about because she was young, had a smattering of education and a managing way with her; a habit of saying: I will see to it all. She could ride, she could count, she could manage.

  Mutually and violently attracted they had been, up to a point, scrupulous. Benedict had never cuckolded the old man, Mattie had never committed adultery. Then the old man died, leaving her well provided for, and she had hired a house in Dunwich and invited him to live with her. ‘I could at least see that you were well fed and your clothes kept in order.’ The outcome was inevitable.

  In Dunwich there were neighbours who thought it queer that a widow, with a decent income, should take a lodger. There was also Benedict’s employer who refused to add a penny to his wage. ‘You had bed and board here. You made the change; you can’t expect me to pay for it. I can get another man, half a dozen of them, on the old terms.’

  Benedict had an uncle, Father Thomas at Moyidan, and when he knew that his nephew was anxious for a living, in however poor or remote a place, he was willing to help. Intake, poor and remote indeed, fell vacant and Lady Emma Tallboys, then in complete control of Moyidan and of the Intake church and house and living since another Tallboys lady, long ago, had built the church and endowed it, had accepted Father Thomas’s plea.

  There was one small falsity. By implication, rather than definite statement, Lady Emma had been given to understand that Father Benedict was recently ordained.

  So they had come here; parish priest with his aunt as housekeeper; and they had been happy. He was no longer the hired clerk, bound to given hours. Mattie had acted as a bulwark between him and the trivialities of parochial work. There were no neighbours.

  From his point of view it could hardly have been better: What about hers?

  So splendid, so admirable, so lovable a woman surely deserved something better than this furtive relationship. Sinful? But sinful only because some men, dead to all human feeling, had sat at Westminster, years ago, and decreed that the clergy must be celibate. Before that clerics had had wives and, when the new rule was made, so many had threatened to resign rather than abandon them that some slight mitigation was made; those already married and determined to remain so could continue to hold their posts and offices. Future candidates for ordination must forswear the joys of matrimony—and of children. It was a stupid, cruel law, made by stupid men; for what had it resulted in? Every kind of squalid subterfuge, endless pretence and the dearth of good children.

  He thought of Amsterdam. He had never seen the place, though on his employer’s behalf he had written letters to and received letters from it. He had gathered—again rather by implication than by positive evidence—that learning was respected there.

  Now, even nearer the verge of drugged sleep, he thought that there were ways of renouncing vows, of getting oneself defrocked; but they took time and had the inevitable consequences of commotion and scandal. He could do better.

  Mattie peeped in and saw him asleep, thank God. She tiptoed away, busied herself with the willow bark plaster and another posset. When the dusk crept in she mended the fire, lighted candles, wondered whether perhaps she had overdone the drowsy drops. Heated another salt bag to place outside the plaster. Sleep, like Time, was a healer but he needed nourishment. The night and the day had now gone their full round and he’d only taken a few sops. Far less than a full-sized body needed in good health; how much more so a body trying to heal itself from within?

  Finally she ventured, carrying the wooden tray; salt bag, plaster, posset and candle.

  He was awake.

  He said, ‘My love, I have been thinking. We will go to Amsterdam and get married.’

  Afterwards she was ashamed of the way she had behaved, priding herself, as she did, upon being level-headed, able to deal…

  She gave a cry and dropped everything.

  ‘No great harm done,’ she said. The candle had rolled but was still burning; the salt bag and the plaster were just as they had been, only the posset was spilled. Setting things to rights gave her time to regain her composure; time to think that perhaps this astounding proposal was due to the drops. They were known to have a curious effect upon some people. Perhaps Benny had been dreaming and was not yet fully conscious of where he was, of who he was. Marriage had never once been mentioned between them even by so little as—If only… He was a priest before he became her lover and, inconsistent as it might seem, she had respect for his office. Enough respect, in the early days, to make her feel guilty since she could not distinguish so clearly, as he seemed to do, between the
law of God and the rule made by some men at Westminster. In fact, her conscience was so uneasy in these early days that once a month, deeply hooded, she would steal out to some church where she was not known and confess and ask absolution. There were plenty to choose from for, although the sea had begun its relentless erosion, of the forty-two churches in Dunwich only one or two had collapsed or been abandoned as dangerous. The sin to which she confessed was fornication. One was under no compulsion to name one’s partner in sin. Now and again a conscientious confessor would ask did she mean adultery? So many people seemed to be unable to distinguish between the two. Mistress Captoft could truly say no. She was a widow. And the man? Unmarried. Usually the penance was light, almost derisory. Usually it was accompanied by the order to avoid the occasion for sin—a thing she had no intention of doing; and gradually, her good sense saw that such half-confessions were worthless and had ceased to bother. But she still thought of herself as a pious woman and was careful about most outward forms.

  Father Benedict said, ‘Did I take too much for granted? Should I have asked, first?’

  ‘I dared not answer. For fear I had not heard aright. For fear that the drops had made you—not quite yourself.’

  ‘I’m myself. And I meant it. As soon as I’m on my feet again.’

  He was disturbed to discover, as soon as he moved or took a real breath that, despite everything, the pain was still there.

  He could, lying very still, taking little breaths, forget it as they made their plans; all the more urgent and delicious for having been non-existent yesterday.

  She would leave her property, two good farms with houses, and her sheep-run in the hands of the honest attorney who now collected her rents. But she would instruct him to sell when the time was right. She would then take passage to Amsterdam on a wool-carrying vessel. Mistress Captoft, intrepid, venturesome woman, making a visit to some relative who had settled there. Exchanges between the Low Countries and England were not confined entirely to wool and cloth; people and language made traffic to and fro. She would find a suitable house. And she would wait. He would finish here, give up what was called a living—really no living at all—and make for London where it was easy for a man to lose himself and change his identity. He would allow his tonsure to grow out—priests were for some reason as unwelcome aboard ship as corpses or donkeys. Then as Master Freebody, an apt name and one to which he had some tenuous claim since it had been his mother’s maiden name, he would go to Amsterdam. There he and Mistress Captoft would meet and get married.

  Joy would be complete. There might even be a child.

  Ever since her marriage at the age of fifteen and a half, Mistress Captoft had longed for a baby, completely hers, completely dependent; but Master Captoft had been too old and in her illicit relationship with Benny pregnancy must be guarded against with little bits of lambs’ wool soaked with vinegar. Now, though rather late, it was not too late.

  Of this hope she did not speak but as she busied herself, tending the sick man and beginning to sort and pack what she intended to take with her or what Benny should bring with him, she could at last confess how dull she had found life at Intake. Imagine, she said, the joy of being within reach of shops; of being able to look out of the window and see people in the street; of having neighbours and proper servants from whom nothing need be hidden.

  The only cloud on those few halcyon days was Benny’s condition. If only the bruise would come out! He insisted upon getting up, kept saying that he was better, but she knew by the way he looked and moved that he was still in pain. The position of it was still uncertain, it shifted, he said, and she continue to regard that as a hopeful sign; but his breathing was still careful and shallow and once, coming on him unawares, she saw him press his hand against his heart. Just a pang in another place, he said when she asked about it; only momentary. In fact the pain seemed to have taken possession of the whole of his rib-cage. But he would not give in. On Tuesday afternoon Mistress Captoft said, ‘My dearest, you are not well enough to officiate tomorrow. I will ride to Moyidan and ask your uncle to come and act for you.’

  ‘That would be absurd. Tomorrow I shall be better.’

  Talk reverted to Amsterdam, the golden city of their dreams.

  At Knight’s Acre things had gone more easily than Henry had dared to hope. The fact that there were two corpses had distracted from the one. What remained of Griselda, heavily shrouded, was coffined without question. John’s behaviour was a distraction, too. Sawyer and his assistant agreed that if you hadn’t known different you’d have thought he was the one who’d lost his wife.

  Indefatigable in her efforts to earn an extra penny or so, the old woman, Ethel, cheated of one laying-out, turned up again offering her services in another capacity.

  ‘You’ll need a sin-eater, Master Tallboys; the more so since they both died so sudden.’

  It was a very old custom, already dying out in many places but lingering on amongst the ignorant. It was simple. A man or woman stood at the foot of the bed where the corpse lay and ate a piece of bread which had been sprinkled with salt in the form of a Cross and called upon God and all those present to witness that by this act the sins of the dead were transferred to the sin-eater. The sin-eater then, as quickly as possible, sought absolution for all sins committed and all sins assumed.

  Henry, still, after all these years, influenced by Walter, that complete sceptic, said, ‘No.’ He had three good reasons for his refusal; the ritual was barbarous and silly; it cost money, sin-eaters rated their mystical service highly, probably sixpence; and although Griselda had died suddenly and unabsolved, she had always been pious. Certainly striking Father Benedict had, even in Henry’s lax view, been an act of impiety; but she was mad and the mad were not, could not be, held responsible.

  John was of another opinion; he was sodden, almost senseless from grief, remorse and sheer sentimentality. Just as he had wanted Nick properly coffined, so he wanted him to go to his grave accompanied by all the ritual, all the panoply.

  ‘Our Mother was laid to rest without such antics,’ Henry said harshly. He thought of other deaths, too. Walter had not even had a shroud or a Mass; he lay in unhallowed ground, under what was now no more than a weed-covered hump which marked the one side of the entrance to the yard. ‘I’d like it done,’ John said; and in Henry a thought of which he was instantly ashamed, took form: Then you pay for it! But he knew that John did not possess a penny. And if sixpence, however hardly spared, grudged, wasted because it could have been put to so much better use, did anything to stem the tears, the lugubrious self-reproaches, it would be well spent.

  Old Ethel ate Young Shep’s sins whatever they were, took her sixpence and then, avoiding the path which Sir Godfrey had thoughtfully left when he made his sheep-run, the shortest way between church and village, she went to the priest’s house where earlier that day she had, as usual, done heavy, menial jobs. She wanted to rid herself at the first possible moment of the sins she had, for sixpence, assumed.

  ‘No, you cannot,’ Mistress Captoft said in reply to Ethel’s request to see Father Benedict. She had always stood a firm, bristling barrier between him and parochial claims. ‘Father Benedict is unwell. As you well know! He is abed now and I hope asleep. He must gather strength for tomorrow.’ Ethel went, resentful, away.

  Lying flat, a wide mustard plaster covering his lower ribs and part of his stomach, a bag of hot salt cuddled against him and one of Mattie’s brews soothing the pain and blurring his mind, Father Benedict did feel better; felt inclined to think that he had made altogether too much of what, after all, was a trivial accident. The fact that his split lips had healed so rapidly was a sure sign of the health of his body. The fact that the pain had shifted, upwards and inwards, towards his heart, he, like Mattie, regarded as a favourable sign. Tomorrow he would be fully restored and his last thought, as he drifted off into a drugged dose, was of Amsterdam.

  ‘I must tell him something,’ Henry said, referring to Godfrey. The stran
ge thing was that the little boy had never once asked about or shown any concern for Griselda who had loved him, cosseted him, given him little secret meals and never let him out of her sight. He was intoxicated by his sudden new freedom.

  ‘The truth,’ Joanna said. ‘He’s bound to know sooner or later and death means nothing to the young.’ She spoke with the authority of first-hand experience. ‘You remember, Henry, that day when Robert and I went to church with Griselda and found old Father Ambrose dead. We came racing to tell you, quite excited.’

  The death of a very old, almost totally blind priest had left no mark at all; but there had been another death which had cut her to the heart; but there again, she had been young and had survived. The fact that she could now say Robert’s name in such a casual way proved that.

  She and Robert had been twins in all but fact, born on the same day but to different mothers; the Lady Sybilla’s boy baby, prematurely born, unlikely to survive, and Tana’s daughter, Joanna. They’d shared a cradle. Lady Sybilla, worn and old for child-bearing, had been ill, had in fact never fully recovered. Tana had suckled them both until she grew bored with the business.

  Joanna and Robert had never spent a day, had a meal apart until Henry’s absurd idea of what was fitting—not for himself but for others—had got the better of him and he had arranged for his young brother to go and live at Moyidan and share lessons and a tutor with Young Richard; by that time in the charge of Henry’s brother who, because he was a priest and also a Master of Arts at Cambridge, was known as Sir Richard.

  The parting had been agonising but what was worse was that Joanna, over a distance of five miles away, had known that Robert was bitterly unhappy. His misery flowed out and she was receptive to it. So one day, unable to bear any more—or to think of Robert bearing any more—she’d set out, dressed like a miniature plough boy, to rescue him from Young Richard’s sly persecution, from the tutor’s deliberate, cruel ignoring of facts and from Sir Richard’s complete carelessness of what was going on under his nose.