The Town House Page 7

  And there was Kate, with some of the worry eased out of her face smiling at me with some of the old sweetness.

  To the poor so little means so much.

  When the sheep shearing time began and we started making journeys to outlying farms and sheep runs to bring in the fleeces there were more errands and more rewards. Now, with both of us in employment and a good deal of our food costing nothing we began to lay aside a penny here and there, in the renewed hope of being able to hire a house somewhere far from Squatters Row.

  There seemed no real reason why the secret of the work I was doing for Master Webster in addition to my pack-whacking, should ever have been discovered. He was a very cunning man. He knew that the other drivers would soon notice if, bringing in a horse with a loose shoe, or an unshod hoof over-night, they found it wearing a bright new shoe in the morning. So he made a new rule, the teams were to be driven in rotation. In this way, in the course of a few days, I went out with each team, and on our return to the stable, would take careful note of the state of the hoofs of the ponies with which I had made that journey. Crooky was well known to be unobservant and unheeding; he would leave a pony with a strained fetlock, or a sore back and walk straight away to his drinking. I always walked away, just as light-heartedly, but, when there was a job to be done, I went back, late at night, was admitted by Master Webster and went to work in the forge which he had set up in a little shed to which only I had the key. Every now and then, just to avert suspicion, a pony would be sent for shoeing to Armstrong or Smithson.

  So, for six months Master Webster saved himself money and all was well.

  One night, late in September, I had been working and was on my way home when I turned a corner and ran into a man who was lolling there by the wall. He reeled and had so much difficulty in recovering himself that I judged him to be drunk and clutched at him, steadying him with my hands. His hands clutched at mine, and at the same time he fell against me, his face buried in the shoulder of my jerkin.

  I said, ‘Hold up, man,’ or some such words and he pulled himself straight, let go of my hands and lurched off.

  I thought no more about him until, four or five days later when I came in with a load of fleeces from Clevely and reached home, I found Master Armstrong sitting on one of our stools.

  ‘I wanted to see you, Martin,’ he said. ‘Your wife said you might be back today, so I thought I’d wait a bit.’

  Kate turned from the hearth where she was cooking supper and over his shoulder made a face at me.

  ‘Master Armstrong came yesterday and waited a long time,’ she said.

  I had a wild hope that perhaps, in the last six months he had missed me, had persuaded the Guild to admit me, or, next best thing, was now willing to re-engage me at full journeyman’s wage and be hanged to the Guild.

  ‘What is it, master?’ I asked.

  ‘Thass this,’ he said. ‘You’re doing Webster’s smith work; and thass agin all the rules.’

  ‘Why should you say that?’ I put on an astonished face.

  ‘Now don’t play no fool’s game with me. We know. Smithson’s first man, Nobby, ran into you the other night. Your hands was black, he’d washed his, but he gripped yours and blacked his, see? And you reeked of the forge.’

  ‘I did indeed, after he’d reeled against me, and so would any man. As for my hands – I’d just helped to unload twelve ponies, three hundred pounds of filthy fleeces apiece, marked with tar some of them.’

  Armstrong grinned. ‘You’re a sharp one. Then how do you explain this? Ever since March, when you took up with Webster, that look like his ponies don’t wear out their shoes. I noticed, Smithson noticed, but it worn’t till we put our heads together we knew we’d both been done. I reckoned he was doing the jobs, he reckoned I was.’

  ‘Ponies don’t mind where they cast a shoe,’ I said. ‘And you can’t run a pack pony on three legs. We have to get work done at the nearest forge.’

  ‘That seem a rare rum thing that only this summer them ponies cast shoes so far afield so often. Me and Smithson, we still got our memories, mark you. ‘Twasn’t this way last summer, nor the one afore. Where’s the difference? The difference is that Webster hev now got, working for him, the rascal I took and trained out of goodness of heart and is now plying the trade I taught him to do honest men out of work.’

  That, in a way, I could deny. I wasn’t doing it to spite honest men. I was doing it to keep myself alive. So I said,

  ‘That is not true, master.’

  ‘Thass true. And you know it. And now I’m giving you fair warning. There’s ways of dealing with fellows who run agin the rules. Either you stop doing Webster’s smith work, or we’ll find a way to make you.’ He stood up and stamped out of our hut.

  Kate pulled the pot to the side of the hearth and came and gripped my arm.

  ‘Oh Martin, what will they do?’

  ‘Tackle Webster. He’s a Guildsman too. He’ll be savage at having to give up his fine penny-saving scheme and sack me. He never wanted to employ me anyway. He called me a foreigner.’

  ‘We never make any headway,’ Kate said drearily. ‘Every time we do a bit better and begin to hope, something happens.’

  Next morning, as soon as Master Webster appeared in the yard I told him of Armstrong’s visit and threat.

  ‘Did you admit doing the work?’

  ‘I denied it, but he is sure none the less.’

  ‘Then his case stands on the word of a drunken apprentice who ran into someone in the dark. And that against mine, mark you. We’ll take no notice. The next pony to need a shoe shall go to Smithson and that will keep him from siding too hearty with Armstrong. For the rest we’ll go on as we were. It suits me well.’

  ‘It suits me. But Master Armstrong said there were ways of dealing with those who went against the rules.’

  ‘He said truly. But they must first prove that I’m breaking a rule. And of that I’m not so sure. I never seen any rule saying a man may not employ his private smith if he wants. I ain’t flaunting the business, as you well know, there’s nowt to be gained by falling out with your fellows. But first they must prove thass agin the rules. And all that will take time. We’ll go as we were.’

  By mid-October all that year’s fleeces were in and our journeys to outlying places ceased. From then on, until winter weather closed the road, we carried the picked-over wool to Bywater, Lavenham and Melford.

  On our outward journeys, when the ponies were loaded, we never travelled after dusk. Wool was valuable and there was always the risk that the pony train might be set upon by rogues who could easily find, in any port, some ship’s captain who was not too nice in his inquiries as to where the wool came from and whose it was. Our summer journeys were different, the raw dirty fleeces were not so immediately marketable, and to pick them over demanded some settled headquarters, which robbers lacked. In summer we often moved loads at night but in the winter we only travelled after dark when the ponies were unladen and we were making for home.

  Crooky and I were doing that, rattling along at a good pace, coming back from Bywater one November night. He rode the first pony, I the last, and we were urging the string along because there was fog about. We rode easily, having nothing of value to care for, our one concern was to get back home as soon as possible.

  We reached a place where a narrow bridge spanned the river, some five miles out of Baildon. It was the same river which ran through Baildon and turned the Abbey mill at Flaxham St. Giles. Once we were over the bridge the river ran alongside the road on our left hand and for us the bridge had become a landmark. Many a time Crooky and I, crossing it, had shouted to one another,‘Nearly home.’

  This evening, Crooky, riding ahead of me, shouted back,

  ‘Nearly home!’

  ‘God be thanked,’ I shouted back. I heard his ponie’s hoofs sound hollow over the bridge, and the next and the next. … I was almost on the bridge myself when something dropped in front of my face; it fell to my waist and ther
e pulled tight and jerked me off the back of the pony, which kept up its trot. I shouted,

  ‘Crooky! Crooky!’ but he didn’t hear, or took no notice. And as I fell over the pony’s tail and hit the road, blows began to shower down on me. The rope which had lassooed me held my arms fast, I was utterly defenceless. I remember thinking that this was how they dealt with those who went against the rules. Then somebody hit me on the leg, causing such sharp agony that I cried aloud. Another blow fell on my head and the pain ceased.

  When it began again I thought I was back at Rede. It was like waking from a dream, all about running away and trying to make a life in a place called Baildon, and having two children and a makeshift hut in Squatters Row. I was Walter, the smith’s son, who had hit his lord in the face and must get away sharply if he wished to live. I tried to raise myself and a quiet voice said,

  ‘You must lie still or you will undo my work.’

  I opened my eyes then and saw, not the dung heap in Rede yard, but a smooth white-washed wall. Yet there was a connection with Rede – that same thirst which had sent me staggering to the bucket in our forge.

  ‘I’m thirsty,’ I moaned.

  ‘A good sign,’ said the quiet voice. And in a moment my head was lifted a little and the cool hard rim of a mug touched my lips. Beyond it, hanging in space it seemed, above me, was an old man’s face, pink fleshed, deeply wrinkled, with faded blue eyes, the whole enclosed in a monk s cowl.

  ‘Brother … brother …’ I said in a fumbling way.

  ‘Sebastian,’ he said. ‘I am the Infirmarian. You are safe and not much hurt except that your leg is broken.’

  He lowered my head and I lay still, thinking, my leg is broken. Broken bones will knot themselves together, but like a thread which has been tied they are shortened. I thought that. Then I remembered that what I had just lately thought to be a dream was real enough. I lived in Baildon, had a wife and two children, and had found it hard to make a living when I was whole and well. Henceforth I should be a cripple, a beggar.

  ‘It had better been my neck,’ I said.

  ‘And who are you to be giving orders to God?’ asked Brother Sebastian, in a humorously rebuking voice. ‘You should lie there and be thankful. You could have lain in the road until you died, but for a mule’s cast shoe. Brother Bartholomew was collecting the Nettleton rents and should have been home before Vespers, but he was delayed. So he found you. And here you are in experienced hands. I mended the leg of a lay brother who fell from a ladder two years since and a bad job I made of it. But I know where I went wrong and with you I have made good my error. Poor Edgar’s set like a dog’s back leg, but on yours I have tried a new trick. A broomstick, tied firmly in three places. Aha, that wayward leg may think to set all crooked, but governed by that broomstick it shall be.’

  ‘I am thankful,’ I said. Then I thought for a moment and asked, ‘Is it Thursday still?’

  ‘No. The bell for Matins sounded half an hour ago. It is Friday.’

  ‘I have a wife. She expected me back for supper on Thursday. She will be worried.’

  ‘She knows. Brother Stephen recognized you and a message was sent. So calm yourself; lie still and be thankful and let your wounds heal.’

  Lie still, perforce, I must, but I was neither calm nor thankful. Brother Sebastian, along with his tender, careful ministrations to my body, tried to minister to my soul. He spoke often of faith in God, of the will of God, of the beauty and virtue of unquestioning acceptance. I listened with my ears, while my mind went its own way; it was all very well for him, who had never had to grapple with the world, who if he hungered did it voluntarily and would be rewarded for his abstinence in Heaven. He could look down along the years – those few that remained to him, and see his life, peaceful, neatly ordered by the ringing of bells, pottering along until he died. I lay there, a young man yet, a man with a wife and two children, and saw myself limping and starving through the years.

  Brother Sebastian and every other monk who came in contact with me, showed me kindness. Brother Stephen sent frequent messages, and alms sometimes, to Kate, and every time she sent back word that all was well. My most urgent question – Is Master Webster holding my job open for me? – was either never asked, or never answered, or the answer suppressed.

  ‘Time enough to fret about work when you are fitted to do it,’ Brother Sebastian would say.

  Despite my fretting my flesh wounds healed and my broken bone knitted. The day came when Brother Sebastian removed the broomstick and having allowed two more days for the limb to strengthen, helped me to stand up and test the virtue of his new experiment. Up to a point it was good. My leg was straight enough, but it had set quite stiff and about two inches shorter than the other. I walked, if anything, more clumsily and painfully than Peg-Leg.

  The straightness was all Brother Sebastian cared about. Fingering my shin gloatingly he said,

  ‘Thanks be to God who brought the broomstick to my mind. The stiffness will wear off with use, you will find. And I will myself make the shortness of that leg the subject of a Novena.’

  ‘Do you hope for a miracle?’

  ‘Why not? I shall pray, and so must you, and you must have faith. Many much lamer than you have been restored at St. Egbert’s shrine.’

  That, I knew, was true. The wealth and fame of Baildon Abbey was rooted in the miraculous reputation of the saint, I knew his story by this time. In life he had been King of a tiny kingdom, part in Suffolk and part in Essex. This was in time long past, before one king ruled all England, in the dim ages, before the Normans came. Egbert’s enemies had been the Danes, wild heathen men who had come to rob and burn and rape in that part of England that lay along the sea. In one of his battles Egbert had been captured; but he had been so doughty and valiant a foe that the Danes’ leader had offered to make an ally of him, give him high rank in their order, provided he would abandon the Christian faith and worship the heathen gods. He had refused and been killed. The monks of Baildon – then a small, poor wooden convent – had sought for his body and buried it in their tiny church; and then the miracles had begun. Then had come the pilgrims in search of further miracles, and the gifts poured in. The miracles could hardly be disputed. During my three years in Baildon there had been several; a young girl had been led to the shrine, jerking and twitching in the throes of St. Vitus’s Dance, and walked away in full control of her limbs; a man set fast in all his joints, just able to put one foot before the other, leaning on two sticks, had hobbled into the Abbey church and walked out, firm and upright, leaving his sticks laid across one another in the form of a cross at the spot where he had prayed and been healed. There were others, all well vouched for. But – and this was what stuck in my mind – both my afflicted neighbours the deaf-and-dumb man and the man with one leg, had, in their time, asked a miracle and come empty away. And it seemed to me that Peg-Leg at least, had asked the impossible. Had he really expected a brand new leg to grow out of his stump, and how, all at once, or inch by inch? And had their failure been due to lack of faith in themselves?

  I was not pondering these questions for the first time. I had often thought about them while I was working. I had come to the conclusion – which may be a blasphemous one – that St. Egbert’s miracles acted, not on the affliction, but upon the person who was afflicted. The jumping, jerking victim of St. Vitus’s Dance, for instance, might have stood by the shrine and prayed and believed that St. Egbert was helping her to hold herself still, and in that belief held herself still and then known that if she could control herself for one minute she could do it for ever. The same with the man who had stiffened. Maybe he had waked one morning a little stiff, and coddled himself and grown stiffer; maybe he liked to be pitied, maybe he welcomed and traded upon his affliction. Then a time came when he wished, for some reason, to be like other men, so he made his pilgrimage and standing there, leaning on his sticks, thought that he could stand upright and unaided if he tried.

  In such miracles I could believe. But i
n a miracle that would add two inches to my short leg, no.

  However, all that day Brother Sebastian kept me on the move; two other beds in the Infirmary were occupied and he made me help to wait upon the invalids. After each clumsy walk he would say, ‘Rest now,’ and then, when I was rested, set me in motion again.

  That evening he gave me an enormous supper.

  ‘Eat heartily,’ he said, ‘tomorrow I shall dismiss you and you will need all your strength.’ When I had eaten he said,

  ‘And now we will go and see what St. Egbert has to say.’

  I had noticed before that they always spoke of their saint as though he were alive and aware.

  For me it was a tiring and worrying walk. The Infirmary lay in a remote part of the Abbey, rightly, for often it housed sufferers from diseases which could be caught by others. We went along passages, up and down stairs, once across a piece of garden; and as I walked, my hand on Brother Sebastian’s shoulder, I thought miserably that if this were the best I could do, with aid, it did not matter whether Master Webster had held my place for me or not. I could never work as a pack-whacker again. And though I could perhaps at a pinch have stood on my toes on the short side, and plied my smith’s trade, nobody would employ me now, even at half rate.

  I was panting hard when we reached a great doorway with torches in sconces on either side, and with a small door set in the one half of the large ones.

  ‘Get your breath,’ Brother Sebastian said. ‘And pray!’

  We went up the steps and in at the small door. The vast church was but dimly lighted, just enough for us to see our way. The tall columns of the nave soared up into darkness, but at its end there was a light and a sparkle.

  We walked towards it, side by side, Brother Sebastian silently in his soft cloth shoes, I going stamp and shuffle as I put down my good leg and then swung the stiff one round.

  The light and the glitter came from two sources. There was the altar which lay beyond the reredos screen, and the shrine itself which was on this side, slightly to the left. There were candles innumerable and their lights were taken up and thrown back at us, many times magnified by a thousand shining surfaces. The shrine, and this is true, was invisible under a thick pelt of gold and silver ornaments and jewels of every colour. Hundreds of people every year through hundreds of years had lain their offerings there. It was like looking at the sun at mid-day in the summer; the eyes blinked and squinted, unable to take in any one thing because the whole was so dazzling.