Lady of the Highway Read online

  ‘How dare you suggest such a thing? I respect women well enough, but not those who lord themselves above us. We came here in good faith, yet our labour’s been abused from the very start.’

  ‘Then go. I don’t want you here if you’re going to be so unmannerly.’

  ‘The Lady of the Manor’s showing her true colours and giving us our marching orders, is she? Well we’re going anyway. I’m not taking cheek like that from a young flibbertigibbet like you, Lady of the Manor or not.’

  Margery had been watching this unfold in silent horror. ‘Seth! We’re not going, not in this weather. You must be mad.’

  ‘You’ll do as I say. Am I your husband or not?’

  Margery stammered, and stuttered, unable to speak for a moment before she said, ‘I’m not bringing my childer out in that snow, Seth Barton, so you can just think again.’

  Barton turned on me, undisguised hostility burning in his eyes, ‘Look! Look what you’ve done, with your talk of women speaking their mind. This is your doing. You breed trouble, it follows you like a hound at heel. You’re no better than your kin. The Fanshawes always bring a bad smell with them.’

  ‘Now wait—’ Margery stood up to remonstrate with him, but she was too late, he slapped her hand away. Moments later the door slammed behind him and a drift of snow skittered across the flagstone floor.

  Margery rushed after him, calling, ‘Seth! Wait a minute! Seth!’ She threw up her hands, ‘He’s gone off across the back field. Stupid man.’

  I was too shocked to speak for a moment. When I finally found words I whispered, ‘Do you think he meant it? That I’m making myself above you?’

  ‘He’s a fool. Men and their pride. It gets in the way of everything. He don’t like to be beholden, see. And you can’t help what you are. But I’ll not go after him, not in this weather. I’ve to think of the little ones. He’ll be back soon as supper’s ready, if he’s got any sense.’

  *

  It hurt me to pluck those robins, such tiny birds, and the hare was mostly bone too. But everything went into the pot; we could not afford to waste a scrap. But by that evening there was still no sign of Barton. The men had assumed he was in the house, but when he did not appear at the table, Cutch asked me where he was.

  ‘We had a disagreement,’ I said, feeling heat rise to my face, ‘and he left.’

  ‘Left? In this?’ Whistler was puzzled. The men looked to each other. ‘Why? Where was he going?’

  ‘Back to the village,’ Margery said. ‘He was in one of his moods.’

  ‘When?’ asked Susan Whistler.

  ‘About four.’

  ‘But that’s hours ago!’ Deep wrinkles appeared on Cutch’s brow.

  ‘We’d best look for him.’ Whistler stood wearily and put on his hat.

  ‘Not now, don’t go now, not whilst the food’s hot,’ Susan said, putting out a hand to restrain him.

  ‘No. It’ll taste better when he’s at the table,’ Whistler said. ‘We can’t sit and eat whilst we’re wondering where he is.’ He turned to me. ‘What did you say to him?’

  ‘She said nothing,’ Margery scowled. ‘He was just being awkward, the way he is sometimes.’

  ‘Still, I don’t like the idea of him out in this blizzard; the wind’s up and it’s snowing again. We’d best fetch him in.’

  ‘I vote we eat first,’ another man said. ‘It’s his own damned fault, anyway. I say we let him fend for himself.’

  Whistler rubbed his beard. ‘Those don’t sound like Diggers thoughts, Ben. Where’s your charity?’

  ‘Don’t you preach at me,’ Ben wagged a warning finger. ‘I’m not giving up a hot supper for some damned fool who’s stupid enough to go out on such a night.’

  Whistler ignored him. ‘It will get harder to catch up with him, the longer we leave it. I say we go now,’ he said.

  ‘Whistler’s right,’ Cutch agreed. ‘The snow might be deeper then.’

  ‘We’d best take a vote. All those who want to look for him—’ eight men raised their hands. ‘All against?’ Four men sullenly stuck their hands in the air, knowing they were outnumbered. Within a few minutes the kitchen was empty again.

  ‘Should we eat?’ I asked.

  Margery nodded. ‘Seth’s caused a deal of trouble. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ Abi said. ‘They’ll be back soon enough. Let’s feed the children, then we’ll see what’s left.’

  But the night grew colder and still the men had not returned. A dark foreboding weighed on me like a stone.

  Abi stood at the window and shook her head. ‘What shall we do? It’s still snowing, and it’s that deep. It’d be easy to get lost in this blizzard, it would soon cover any signs.’

  I went to join her, so we could talk. I put my hand on her arm, ‘We can’t do anything, except keep the fire in, and the food hot. Where’s Margery?’

  ‘Gone up with the little ones. She and Susan took hot bricks for the beds, and she’s seeing to Martha for me. But it’s that cold in the rooms upstairs you can see your breath. I expect she’ll be back soon. She keeps apologising for Seth, poor soul.’

  It was gone midnight when the party returned. ‘I can see them,’ called Abi. ‘I can see Cutch.’ We all rushed to the window. The men were moving slowly, plastered with white, stumbling through the snow. They carried something between them.

  The door opened.

  ‘Clear the table, Kate.’ Something about Cutch’s tone made me jump to his bidding.

  I scooped up the trenchers and spoons and piled them hastily on the sideboard. An instinct told me to move away from the door.

  The noise of the men’s return brought Susan and Margery hurrying downstairs, all smiles. But they froze on their faces.

  Barton was dead. They had found him lying half buried in snow where he had tripped over a hidden rock. He had crawled only a few yards before succumbing to the cold. Now he was laid out on the kitchen table, his weeping wife squeezing at his hand as if the squeezing might bring him back to life. But his blue lips were silent, his heart still in his grey chest. One foot lay at an odd angle.

  ‘We couldn’t find him,’ Cutch said. ‘His leg’s broke. Once he’d fallen, the snow covered him over. Then Ben saw something. Seth’s shoulder poking out from a drift. We scraped off the snow, tried to blow heat into him. Rubbed his hands, his chest. But he never moved, though we chafed him and chafed him.’

  Margery turned to me, her features screwed tight with anguish. ‘It’s your doing. He said you were bad luck, but I didn’t believe him. He was trying to get away from you. I should have listened to him.’

  There was an awkward silence in the room, but nobody denied it. It was as if they were all thinking the same.

  ‘He’ll need to go home. To be buried in the church,’ Margery said, staring at the white face on the table.

  ‘We can’t get there,’ Whistler said. ‘We’ll have to wait for the thaw.’

  ‘Or bury him here, in the chapel grounds,’ Abi said.

  ‘No,’ Margery said, with sudden venom. ‘Not here. I want him buried in a proper churchyard, not in Fanshawe ground.’

  ‘He was a Digger, wasn’t he? Surely he didn’t hold with all that churchifying,’ Cutch said. ‘He won’t mind where he’s laid to rest.’

  ‘Hush your mouth.’ Margery pulled back her shoulders and made the sign of the cross. ‘Maybe God don’t approve of the Diggers. Bible says He sees everything we do. I’m not about to gamble with Seth’s immortal soul. A proper church burial, and do it right.’

  Of course Seth could not come back to chastise her, whatever she did. But I could no longer recognise the Margery I knew. This woman was blank-eyed with a kind of terror, she kept staring at Seth as if staring at him might make him suddenly sit up again.

  But of course he did not and that night we were all awoken by a sudden wailing, ‘Seth, come back to me, come back to me,’ over and over, as if shouting for him might help her understand where he’d gone.


  In the icy chamber I put my pillow over my head, but her keening voice sent chills of apprehension through me. They’d know it was my fault. I should never have argued with him. He might have stayed at home, if I’d held my tongue.

  *

  Barton’s death seemed to change something in the atmosphere. Though Cutch tried to motivate the men with tasks in the yard, the lack of food made us all listless. My stomach made strange flutterings, but I ignored them. We were down to eating a stew that was more hot water than anything else. The men had spent hours digging through the snow to unearth a single turnip, and we had taken dried peas from a pillow and boiled those too. The children had to come first, for I was damned if I would let the men accuse me of taking food from the mouths of children.

  The snow continued unabated and we still could not dig our way to the village. Reluctantly we had to bury Seth Barton in the manor grounds. The snow was hard packed ice now, and digging the plot took a whole day for all the men, chipping away at the frozen ground with picks and spades. When the time came to lay him to rest, we did not linger. The wind blew icy round our ears, and our hands and feet were bloodless and numb.

  All the way through our prayers we could hear the anguished neighing of Pepper from his stall. His supply of hay had run out and the horses’ corn and bran had long since been used for human consumption. How much longer could we survive without sending someone begging?

  ‘We could kill the horse, it might stop that infernal noise,’ Ben Potter said. I gave the man a look that could freeze him solid as the ground, and was grateful Abi was not able to hear him.

  Worse, the men now seemed to regard me as their enemy, as if it was my fault this calamity of the bad weather had befallen us. We were cooped up too close. The big house seemed useless when we could not heat it and were all huddled together in one room.

  ‘Seth said no good would come of this. Might as well be living in a barn,’ grumbled Whistler.

  Abi told me to ignore their hostility, that once we were warm and fed, all would come right. But the tension in the atmosphere was drawn taut, like a bowstring.

  8: An Uneasy Alliance

  The day the thaw came I heard it before I got out of bed. Even in the dark I could hear dripping, the slide and whump of snow slipping from the roof, the sharp cries of mallards alighting on the flooded fields.

  I saw a messenger on horseback pick his way through the slush and went to greet him. Another letter. Cutch was scraping the yard with a shovel, but I could see him watching me. At the sight of my stricken face he put down the spade and came to lay a hand on my shoulder.

  ‘What’s in it? What ails you?’

  ‘Sir Simon’s in England. Already. What are we going to do? He won’t want the Diggers here.’ Fear crawled up my spine at the thought that Sir Simon was already riding the road towards us.

  ‘When will he arrive?’ Cutch was ever practical.

  ‘The letter was sent from Dover.’

  ‘Maybe we’ll have a few days’ grace then, to plan what to do, move people out.’

  ‘I can’t do that. I owe them too much, they saved Ralph from the noose. And they trusted me. Things haven’t been exactly easy either…’

  ‘Well it’s either turn them out, or take your chances and face your stepfather’s wrath.’

  ‘I’m not giving up. It was Ralph’s dream.’

  Cutch picked up the spade again. ‘Aye. But Ralph’s not here to see it, is he? You have to live by your own ideals, not his.’ He took a shovel of snow and heaped it to one side, then pausing, turned to me. ‘Are you sure you want to do this? You’ll be blamed by both sides, you know that?’

  I sighed. ‘I can’t put these people out. What will Whistler think? I need to prove I’m on their side. Otherwise they’ll just see me as tarred with my stepfather’s brush.’

  ‘What then?’

  ‘Pray, Cutch. Pray that God sees fit to provide him with an accident before he gets here.’

  ‘Don’t say such things. It is blasphemy to even think them.’

  *

  As soon as the road cleared, our first visitor was Jacob Mallinson. Abi rushed out to greet him, and they went into the main chamber to talk. As I was going out to the horses she blundered past me, eyes brimming with tears. I tried to stop her, but she wouldn’t speak, and just hurried on.

  ‘What’s happened to Abi?’ I said to him.

  ‘Nothing. Why? What’s the matter?’

  ‘She seemed upset. What did you say to her?’

  ‘We were just talking about the highway thieves. People have had things stolen from their barns, and from their dairies. I was asking her if anything had gone missing here, that’s all.’

  ‘We had a flitch of beef stolen.’

  ‘Yes, she told me, but she couldn’t give me any clues as to who took it.’

  ‘It’s good the snow’s gone, you’ll be able to ride over more often.’

  ‘Well, that’s what I was explaining to Abi. Now I’m deputy to my father I’ll have less time for visiting. We can’t have folks scared to go about their business.’

  ‘Have you set a date for the wedding?’

  Jacob dropped his gaze. ‘Father says it’s not a priority at the moment. There’ll be time for that later.’

  ‘Did you tell Abi that?’

  ‘Not in so many words… but you have to understand, things have changed now I’m deputy constable. I have a whole community to look to.’

  ‘And so you’re too busy to even call on Abi are you? What’s going on, Jacob?’

  ‘Nothing. I’m just busy.’ He backed away then and went to collect his horse. I hurried inside to find Abi chopping carrots in the kitchen.

  ‘You all right?’

  She didn’t answer, but she would not look up.

  I took hold of her shoulders to look into her face. ‘Don’t fret,’ I said. ‘Jacob’s just got a little over-zealous with his new position. He’ll go back to being the Jacob we knew soon enough.’

  ‘But he hasn’t mentioned anything about our betrothal. Not a thing. Not since Ralph died. And he hasn’t tried to… well to kiss me, or anything. Do you think he’s having second thoughts?’

  I cursed Jacob soundly in my mind. ‘I’m sure not. He says he’s just busy.’

  ‘He wasn’t too busy to call again on my sister.’

  The bastard. I should have guessed. ‘He’s been to see Elizabeth?’

  ‘Jacob says she’s helping him with scribing his evidence. Why didn’t he ask me? I could have—’ She stopped as Cutch poked his head around the door.

  ‘Has he gone?’

  Abi rubbed her eyes with the back of her hand, picked up the knife again.

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘Just asking if we’d had anything stolen. I told him about the beef.’

  Cutch was staring at Abi’s red face. He frowned. ‘Still after them thieves, is he? Stupid dolt couldn’t catch a cold, despite all his galloping about. Don’t suppose he’s heard anything of your stepfather on his travels?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘But we should have a few more days to think what’s best to do.’

  *

  ‘They’re here!’ Abigail burst into my chamber.

  Her face was panicked enough to send me to the window, my heart almost leaping from my chest. ‘Already. What shall we do?’

  Below in the yard the party of men dismounted heavily into the slush, and slung the reins of their horses to the rings in the wall.

  ‘Hoy!’ shouted my stepfather, obviously looking for a servant, but naturally nobody appeared. The Diggers were out in the low meadow near the river, sowing winter crops, the women in the kitchen.

  I counted my stepfather’s men and saw that apart from the corpulent bulk of Sir Simon, I was looking down on the soaked hats and shoulders of three men and a boy.

  I heard no warning knock downstairs. Sir Simon simply threw open the front door, and the party clattered in, their swords cl
anking against the wall.

  ‘What? No welcome?’ I heard him exclaim.

  ‘Shall I go down?’ Abi looked as scared as I was.

  ‘We’ll go together.’

  When we entered the parlour, Sir Simon turned, ill humour etched in his frown, ‘Well, Katherine, isn’t someone going to fetch us ale and a bite to eat? That damn road is full of potholes and boulders, it’s taken us all morning from St Albans, and your servants seem a scurvy bunch; not one of them has offered to take our cloaks.’ He swivelled his gaze to Abi, whose expression was one of terrified consternation. ‘You girl, take our wet cloaks and dry them.’

  Abi gathered up the heavy cloaks dripping over a chair, gave a curtsey and like a startled hare, disappeared below.

  My stepfather stepped forward, proffered his hand, and I took it, though his flabby face was dour and his eyes held mine with a steely look. You’ve not changed, I thought. His sheer maleness was intimidating. He dropped my hand as if it was a piece of dirt, and moved away.

  I glanced at his servants; a youth, probably a messenger boy, and two heavy-set men. ‘I’ll go and ask Cutch to fetch wood, get a fire lit,’ I began. The servant who was staring out of the window turned. My words blocked my throat.

  It was Downall, Mallinson’s man. Would I never be rid of him? What was he doing here this time? And what business did he have with my stepfather?

  He saw my expression and gave me a slight, knowing smile. I folded my arms across my chest. I was rigid, my lack of movement belying the turmoil in my thoughts.

  ‘Your serving maid – have her make up beds for the men,’ Sir Simon said, seemingly oblivious to the charge in the air. ‘We will be staying only one night, then Downall will be in charge.’

  ‘No.’ The word exploded out of me. ‘Thomas would forbid it.’ I rounded on Downall. ‘How dare you. Do you think you can just walk in here and—’

  ‘Enough, Katherine.’ My stepfather’s voice cut over mine.

  ‘But he broke down our door when—’

  ‘Constable Mallinson recommended him. He says he is familiar with the house.’ Sir Simon raised his voice over my objections. ‘Besides, the war is done. Over, do you hear? Our differences have been repaired. Bygones are bygones. We need to think to the future.’