Wintercombe, page 45
part #1 of Wintercombe Series
The war might have diminished the numbers of both buyers and sellers, but those who had braved these troubled times, out of curiosity, merriment or necessity, seemed to be enjoying themselves with undiminished vigour. Once, merchants, farmers and country people had come from all over the West Country to Philip’s Norton Fair, and many small pedlars, thieves, vagrants and cutpurses from much further afield than that: the Justices were always kept busy in the weeks afterwards, dealing with minor felonies. But now there were no ballad-singers from London, no Scottish dancers with bare legs and wild hair, no incomprehensible hardware men from the Middle Shires with knives and pots and pans to sell. There were tumblers, though, a dark and brightly dressed trio who displayed such an inhuman flexibility that Deb’s eyes almost fell from her head, and Silence felt quite ill. There was a dog dressed in a ruff, that could do all kinds of tricks, and for a finale walked a few steps on its back legs. The little ones applauded wildly, but Tabby saw its skinny ribs and haunted eyes, and the tail curled fearfully beneath its belly, and turned away.
At each step Silence was greeted by people she knew: villagers who doffed their hats humbly, and those who called themselves gentry and went through the appropriate rituals of courtesy. Many of them she had not seen for some months, friends of her husband or her father-in-law, from villages round about. She became aware, fairly early on, that Nick had quietly detached himself from her. She knew where he was, for William still sat on his shoulders and made him for once taller than anyone. And although she wanted him by her side, missed his amusing conversation and flow of hilarious comment on the life of the Fair, she knew that the identity of her escort would give rise to scandalous gossip and speculation. Quite untrue, of course — but all the same, she suddenly had no wish to draw attention to herself.
Tabby was with Nat, Mally stood as ever at her shoulder and Deb, hot and sticky and desperate to sample yet more delights, her excuse to move on. She bought ribbons for the children, and some pins and needles and thread, always in short supply, and embroidery silks in vivid colours; some wooden pattens, cheap because the winter mud was almost gone; laces and trimmings for new gowns, a purse for Nat from the leather stall, and on impulse a blue collar for Lily’s slender, pale neck. All these went into her maid’s soft rush basket, or her own. The crush, the noise, the variety of goods on sale, reminded her overpoweringly of London, of walking down Cheapside or Paternoster Row, beset by hawkers and shopkeepers. She broke out into a sweat, which the hot sun did nothing to dispel, and took several deep breaths to calm herself. She was Lady St. Barbe: she would not be panicked by a crowded Fair.
A shriek of raucous laughter, somehow familiar, drew her sudden attention. A knot of young people was standing by the booth selling sweetmeats and gingerbread. She recognised Eleanor Flower, her brother Thomas, the dubious Fulke Tovie with his hot, wandering eyes and hands, and the three Baylie girls. Surely she had imagined it?
But no: the laugh erupted again, unmistakable. Silence made her excuses to Mistress Sloper, another capable widow with claims to gentility that the College of Arms had firmly rejected twenty years ago, and, with Deb still by the hand, walked through the press of people to where her stepdaughter Rachael was standing, in blatant defiance of her instructions.
The girl had not seen her, but Kitty Baylie had. Her face flushed with sudden alarm, she dug Rachael none too gently in the ribs and bade her turn. Silence, more disappointed than angry, surveyed her stepdaughter’s defiant, chalk-white face and said softly, ‘Why are you here, Rachael?’
The young Flowers, who always contrived to extract themselves from awkward situations, were already slinking back into the crowd. Fulke Tovie, his hand resting on Eleanor’s shoulder, was with them. The Baylie girls looked uneasily at each other, obviously well aware of the situation. Rachael said, rather loudly, ‘I wanted to come to the Fair, and I didn’t see any harm in it.’
‘You disobeyed me,’ said Silence. She was aware that the girl deserved a beating, and George would certainly have given her a sound one, but she knew in her heart that it was no answer to the perennial problem of this difficult, wayward, moody and secretive child. ‘You know the reasons for my instructions, and you disobeyed me. They were for your own safety, Rachael — not because I wanted to spoil your happiness, not from spite nor whim — but because you are in danger if you wander about the village. Can’t you understand that?’
For the first time, she saw a flicker of fear behind the bravado. If she could speak to her alone, she knew that Rachael would soon crack, but the presence of the other girls stiffened her defiance. ‘There isn’t any harm in it,’ said her stepdaughter belligerently. ‘He’s not here, is he? He’s still in bed because Mally keeps putting senna in his broth.’
One of the younger girls giggled. Rachael went on. ‘Anyway, I asked Mistress Baylie, and she said I could come. And I’m supposed to be in her household at the moment, aren’t I?’
‘You should go back,’ said Silence, feeling, as so often with Rachael in this intransigent mood, that she was banging her head against a stone wall. ‘You should go back now, before the soldiers see you.’
‘I can’t go back on my own,’ her stepdaughter pointed out. ‘And it wouldn’t be fair to Moll and Kitty and Bess to make them go home with me, when we’ve only just come.’ She stared at Silence, her bright blue eyes daring her to make a scene. ‘But I promise I’ll go back as soon as we’re ready, and Mistress Baylie says. And I’ll be very very careful, and always stay with my friends.’ She gave a bright, false smile. ‘Thank you, Mother.’
Silence, manipulated into a corner, stood staring after Rachael’s wilful, head-tossing figure, surrounded by Baylies, and did not know whether to laugh, or weep, or stamp her foot in a fury.
It was only then that she realised that Deb, taking advantage of the distraction afforded by her half-sister, her mother’s attention and Mally’s both diverted from her, had slipped free of Silence’s loosened hand and vanished into the crowd.
For an instant, a wave of blind, suffocating panic — or was it rage? — swept over her. Oh, Deb, you fool, you silly, disobedient, wilful little girl! Then her usual calm, with an effort, achieved supremacy. She turned to Mally and said, as if discussing an acquaintance briefly glimpsed, ‘Did you see which way she went?’
‘That I diden,’ said Mally apologetically. ‘I be despeard sorry, m’lady, I diden even see she were gone. Shall I go look for she?’
‘Yes — you work that way round the Close,’ said Silence, indicating the clockwise direction. ‘And I’ll go the other, and we’ll meet at the gate. Oh, and Mally — you have my full permission to spank her when you find her.’
‘I’ll do en willingly when I do get a hold of that forweend little wench,’ said Mally, with a grin, and dived purposefully into the throng.
Silence, wishing suddenly for the cheerful support of Nick Hellier, turned and made her way back through the heaving, merry, raucous crowd, in the direction they had already followed. Deb had expressed a yearning to look at a stall crammed with tawdry trinkets and beset by giggling girls and their sweethearts, and Silence had by means of timely distraction (‘Oh, Deb, look at that boy walking on his hands!’), steered her past. Perhaps she had gone back with the idea of spending her coins on some cheap bauble — and why not, thought Silence ruefully, when I myself gave her the pennies to spend as she wished?
But Deb was not there. Admittedly, she was only five, but she was sturdy and big for her age, and Silence was certain she had not missed her. Also, the little girl was well-known to the villagers, and no one whom her mother questioned had seen her. Hot, perspiring, anxiety and annoyance mingling, she arrived at the gate of the Fair Close, where one of the Flower family servants was collecting the toll money from every eager entrant. He had not seen Deb either, but she did not have much faith in his powers of observation. Then Mally appeared, dishevelled, her cap askew, her hands empty, and shook her head. ‘No sign of she, m’lady, and none I’ve asked have seed her either.’
It was as if, thought Silence, her all-too-substantial daughter had vanished off the face of the earth. Realising that they were blocking the entrance, she drew Mally out of the way, and found Nat and Tabby beside them arrived suddenly and out of breath. ‘Will Tovie said you’d lost Deb,’ Nat explained. ‘I saw her just now, nipping out of the gate here — I’m sure it was her, I haven’t seen another little girl in that particular shade of blue. And before you ask, I didn’t see which way she went, the crowds were much too thick.’
‘Have you seen Ni — Captain Hellier?’ Silence asked. ‘He has the misfortune to have William on his shoulders — or he did when last I saw him.’
‘He didn’t when I saw him,’ said Tabby. ‘He had him by the hanging strings, and he was finding pennies in his ears — William’s ears, I mean.’ Her voice had an amused, wistful quality, as if she wished that Captain Hellier, with his seemingly inexhaustible fund of unexpected and delightful diversions, would find coins in her own ears. She added, on a different note, ‘What was Rachael doing here? I thought she was supposed to be hiding from the soldiers somewhere.’
‘She’s going back to the place very soon,’ said Silence hastily, unwilling to raise the difficult spectre of her stepdaughter, threatening to spoil the afternoon. ‘Now, I really do think we ought to find Deb before she gets into mischief.’
It was agreed that Nat and Tabby should take the less crowded road down to the churchyard, where Deb might have gone to play. Mally and Silence would make their way up West Street to the Market Cross and the George, where the crowds were thickest.
She was not particularly worried: the child was well-known in Norton, obviously of gentle birth, and possessed of a stalwart pair of lungs. But she knew that Deb, who had all of Rachael’s wilfulness, and little of her cunning, could quite easily do something foolish, something that might demean the St. Barbes — saying something rude to the vicar sprang to mind. And she had no fear, and some of those beribboned horses tied to the Fair Close wall were exceedingly frisky…
There was a great press of people at the top of West Street, where the four roads met: from Bath, from Wells, from Farleigh, and from Frome. There was the Market Cross, that so far had survived the efforts of Parson Willis to have it flung down as Papist and idolatrous, largely because Sir Samuel St. Barbe had resisted it. Here the two inns faced each other across the broad cobbles of the market place: the George, ancient, mellow, famous throughout Somerset and beyond, run by the Tovie family for generations, was a respectable house patronised by wealthy travellers and the better sort of villager. Opposite lay the Fleur-de-Lys, or, as invariably known in Norton, the Flower, an upstart rival rather less respectable, condemned by the vicar as a den of drunkenness and vice, and run by the Parsons family, whose morals were not above reproach — one of the daughters had produced a bastard son who, very properly, had been boarded out, and now laboured as a scullion at Wintercombe.
Silence and Mally came up at the edge of the crowd, out of sight of the Market Cross, and before the junction with North Street. People were peering, jostling, trying to get a better view. Mally prodded the woman in front of her, and said something. The woman, one of the Stents, gave her an anxious glance and said, loud enough for Silence to hear, ‘They soldiers be back again, but I can’t hear what he do say.’
‘Who?’ Silence asked, but she had no need of an answer: Ridgeley’s stentorian tones, the words inaudible but the threat all too apparent, burst suddenly on her ears. Mally, using heels and elbows ruthlessly, gave her lady a meaningful glance and plunged into the crowd. Somewhere in that packed, dense mass was surely Deb, alone, perhaps frightened, possibly in danger. Silence, uttering a heartfelt prayer for her daughter’s safety, took a deep breath and did likewise, taking the right-hand side as Mally had taken the left.
It was quite easy to thread her way through, uttering polite excuses: those who recognised her made way for her, saying in answer to her hasty enquiry that they were tarblish sorry, m’lady, but they had seed no sign of the little maid. Gasping and hot, though this part of the crowd was in the shade, she found herself at last by the George, without Deb but with a decidedly better sight, and sound, of the Market Cross.
There were perhaps a score of troopers crowded round it, their horses sidling, restless, dangerous in such a close-packed, limited space. And on his big, heavy-boned bay, made much thinner by his illness but still exuding brutal vitality and unmistakable menace, sat Lieutenant-Colonel Ridgeley.
‘Is that clear, you ignorant, uncouth hobbledehoys?’ His voice’s power was undiminished, carrying to all save the furthest fringes of the crowd. ‘You seem to have plenty to sell, so we’ll take our share. It’s the price you pay for our protection, anyway. And remember — we serve your lawful anointed King. To resist us is to commit treason, and will invite a swift and merciless response.’
The stillness was total, sullen and bitter. Silence, in the doorway of the George, glanced about her at the men and women and children, poor and wealthy, who lived here and at Wellow, Charterhouse Hinton, Farleigh and Beckington, Tellisford and Hemington and Rode, who had suffered the depredations of these men all through the winter, had thought themselves reprieved, and were now angrily realising their error. They were powerless against even so few soldiers, and no one sane would care to begin a riot when so many innocents stood in danger. But, Silence thought, her skin prickling at the fear and tension and hatred emanating from the people around her, it would only take one or two hotheads inflamed with drink, some thrown pebbles or abuse, and the match would be set to the fire with a vengeance.
Where, oh where was Deb? And Rachael, oblivious of the danger in which she stood? And Nick, who could possibly check some of his Colonel’s worst excesses?
Forcing herself to keep calm, Silence searched the faces in the crowd, and saw no sign of any of them. As she did so, Ridgeley spoke again. ‘There is another duty which your loyalty to our cause must lay upon some of you. This does not apply to those of you who are willing and able to contribute fully to our maintenance, but those who are poor, or intransigent, may instead work upon the fortifications of our garrison.’
There was no hiding the murmurs of dismay and resentment. A man cried from the body of the crowd, ‘Your Captain said as how we weren’t needed no more!’
‘My Captain erred. My orders are quite clear. When this Fair is ended, my men will be coming amongst you each week. Those who can pay, in cash or kind, need trouble themselves no further. Those who cannot, or will not contribute to our cause in other ways, will labour on the fortifications, men and women alike, on pain of severe punishment. Do you understand me?’
‘Aye, we understand you well enough, you ungodly limb of Satan!’ someone bawled from the centre of the crowd. Ridgeley’s face suffused darkly; he dug spurs into his horse, and the animal leaped and shouldered its way forward into the mass of people. Fearful, half-panicking, they pushed backwards, opening up a path to a young man whom Silence could not recognise at this distance. Deliberately, Ridgeley removed the heavy pistol from his holster and pointed it down at his opponent’s face. For a moment, the crowd hung poised between terror and fury. There were moans of fear, and a woman cried out. Then, with a contemptuous laugh, the Colonel turned the pistol in his hand and struck the young man viciously across the face with the butt. ‘That will teach you manners, perhaps,’ he said curtly, and turned his horse back towards the Cross.
No one else said anything, but if looks and intent could have killed, the combined malevolence of Philip’s Norton would have slain Ridgeley there and then.
For a moment later, he surveyed the packed, hate-filled faces, and then laughed. ‘Good. Now, I’m told there are beasts for sale further down that street. If all you people would kindly make way, my men and I will go investigate. I have a fancy for roast beef tonight.’
Sullenly mute, they shuffled back, like a many-hued, living version of the Red Sea; and, thought Silence grimly, it would not take much more provocation for them to roll forward again, to engulf the loathsome Colonel and his hated minions.
Nick Hellier, walking up West Street, still with William firmly in tow, was unaware that Ridgeley had arrived in Norton until he rounded the corner and saw the soldiers, amid a hostile, silent throng, picking their way down. His first instinct was to make himself scarce: it would not do any good to his already low stock to be seen holding the hanging strings of a traitor’s brat. Then a woman, weeping, ran up to him, crying something about thievery and blood, and a man behind her added urgently, ‘Can’t ee do summat to stop en, Captain? He’ll rob us all blind and kill anyone as stands in his way!’
He had told them, outside the church a month ago, that he could help them. Now, faced with their need, he knew the futility of what he had said. Short of killing Ridgeley, and thereby signing his own death warrant, he could do nothing. The man might make a show of reason, in that unpleasantly elaborate style that was more of an insult than plain words would be: but underneath the thin veneer of civility, the Colonel was as ugly and implacable as a charging bull.
Nick was not, he had told Silence once, the kind of man to be reckless with his life, or his liberty. Moreover, he had William, three years old, clutching his hand. But as more people saw him and came clamouring, begging for his help, and Ridgeley’s big, bad-tempered bay approached even nearer, he knew he could not refuse. He thrust William’s hanging strings at the first person he recognised, which happened to be the red-haired scullion who was Mally’s brother, and stepped out into the middle of West Street.
