Mischief Acts, page 10
Canter was approaching him now, pulling up a stool, clashing his tankard down against Elliot’s. ‘What’s afoot, old friend?’ he said. Dribbles of ale had smeared the soot on his chin and it showed red beneath the streaks. ‘Got the latest on our favourite, have you?’
Elliot shrugged. ‘No more than you,’ he said, and returned his gaze to the window, though there was nothing to see beyond the glass.
Canter swigged, and belched. ‘So, you haven’t heard,’ he said, and made to stand.
Elliot knew this trick, but still his heart clenched a moment. There had been much talk that evening, but he had not listened. He stared at Canter.
‘Hue and cry’s up,’ Canter said, and pretended to look out of the window himself. Elliot caught his reflection, smirking. ‘Won’t be long now.’ He sauntered back to join Old Graves and Pullet.
Elliot watched them, Old Graves waggling that wrinkled head of his, Pullet intent on his whittling, but all three grinned, the red of their mouths raw in their blackened faces. Compulsions jostled within him. His feet shifted with impatience. Without finishing his ale, he found himself walking towards the door, not turning to raise a hand goodbye, not looking, but hurrying out into the night.
He took his lantern from the tavern wall but left it cold. It was not long before he could make out the road across the heath, that lonely treeless bridge. To his right stood the gallows, blacker than the night, thirsty-looking.
He had heard no hue and cry. The last hanging of a highwayman had been in May, and a woman had been ridiculed for scattering blossom on the ground, as if at a wedding. But he could not risk disbelieving the weaselly Canter. For the men of Thornton Heath would pass on a hue and cry faster than the women their gossip, and their eagerness for a catch, a kill, to brighten the drear days until Christmastide, meant they would pass on a lie just as quick. Canter had made the first wager, but the true price for Oberon would be too high for Elliot to bear. This he acknowledged, in his sooty heart, as he set off fast along the heath road, then broke into a run.
As Elliot Brown reached the boundary of the wood, a horse and coach came hurtling towards him from between the trees. He stepped into the verge and, as it passed, he saw by the light swinging within the grimace on Lowell Bearmont’s face as he peered out across the heath. Elliot did not wait to watch the coach’s progress. Taking Lowell’s grimace to be one of fear, which in turn gave Elliot hope, he quickened his pace and was soon amidst the trees, breathing the dank fungal scent of autumn.
*
On this Friday evening in November, Carolina Pye shivered against the side wall of the vicarage, wrapped in a cloak, a travelling bag at her feet. It had not taken her long to concoct a plan. Certainly, it was devious, and carried no small amount of risk, to herself and her honour. But there seemed no better way she could contrive to place herself in a coach, on a road through the wood, in darkness, and she did not hesitate.
She had forced herself to pack the bag as if she really would never return. She had wept real tears as she carried it down the darkened staircase, pausing only to ask her mother’s portrait for forgiveness, imagining her father’s face when he returned from his visit to Salisbury. Carolina did not distinguish between her pangs of dread and those of guilt, though the latter were strong indeed. Her scheme necessitated deception, but the explanations she might be forced to give because of it would cause her more pain and humiliation than she inflicted. It might prove worth it. And she might never return home, but instead live in some gypsy encampment, in blissful devotion to Oberon, their lives made all the more harmonious by the chorus of robins.
So, she dreamed, and shivered, and pushed away tears, until the rattle of the coach came on the lane, and then Lowell’s footsteps, sprinting towards the vicarage. In the darkness he whispered, ‘Carolina, Carolina,’ over and over, until she hissed his name, and then his mouth covered hers and she endured it.
‘I came as fast as I could,’ he said, breathing into her face, clasping her tightly to him. ‘My darling, I thought my heart would burst. Let us go, now, and on the way you must repeat to me all that you wrote in your letter, and all of the details behind it that you could not write, and we will be in Southwark before we know it.’
She permitted him to lead her along the lane.
‘You are absolutely certain?’ asked Lowell, when he looked at her in the light of the coach’s lantern. ‘You don’t mind the danger? I don’t mind it because I love you so, my sweet Carolina. And because now I know you love me.’
He leant to kiss her once more and she turned her cheek. ‘Wait until we are in London, and we are free,’ she said.
To make Lowell believe that the yearning she felt, and heard in her own voice, was for him, but to keep him at bay: this was the line she must tread. Silently she prayed it would not be for long, and that the freedom of London would never be theirs.
As the coach pulled away and turned towards the heath, Lowell let go her hands. ‘Do not be afraid, this time,’ he said. He delved inside his coat and fumbled near his heart. His eyes flashed with some meaning that Carolina refused to catch. Already her mind was intent on the wood beyond, her vision filling with black trunks, moon shadows, the crowding in of the trees on the forest road.
Elliot Brown threaded his way so swiftly through the obscure undergrowth, he might have been a spirit of the wood itself. He swept beneath low branch and around boggy hole, tripping on neither briar nor bramble, made nimble by sheer will.
He cut first up the slope that would bring him past the gypsy camp, where nothing stirred but a stealthy fox, its eyes staring insolently up at him from beside the damped fire. He climbed thence to a clearing not far from the road – a useful spot, he knew, to catch some small moonlight, should an arrow fletch need straightening, or a bowstring pulling taut.
The rustle there, ahead of him, might well have been a snuffling boar, or a badger scratching up worms, but Elliot’s heart swung, magnetised, towards it. The darkest stretch of forest road lay just beyond. He strained his eyes for a flash of red, or blue, or gold, an impossible sign in the midnight dark, and plunged through the trees in pursuit. Already, the rattle of a coming coach, as tiny as a rolling acorn, grew nearer. Elliot Brown, the throb of his heart now matching that of his lips, prepared to make the first irrevocable gesture of his life. Never had he uttered more than a whisper, or a sigh, when alone at night in the Great North Wood. He begged his own throat to do as he bid. He bargained with the trees, promising a return to companionable silence if they would only forgive him this unnatural, selfish act. As he hurtled towards the road he took a great gulp of cold forest air, and with tears springing in his eyes, at the top of his rusty, unused voice he cried, ‘Oberon. Oberon!’
Faster and faster still the coach drove, heading as Carolina hoped it might for the track that crossed directly from the green to the wood. The heath spread out either side of them as they lurched along, and she imagined this was what it would be like, to cross a stormy sea in the dead of night, water black and deep to right and left, and only the stars for compass.
As the wood loomed, blocking out the sky, she longed to whisper that name, Oberon, and the sheer ache of preventing it caused her to give a small cry.
‘Fear not,’ said Lowell, and drew her close. She felt his hand still clenched against his breast, under the rough wool of his coat. ‘We will go at a gallop. And when we are out of the wood, then we will talk.’ He thumped on the roof of the coach, and soon Carolina clung to the seat, and to Lowell, as they were thrown about.
‘Please, not quite so fast,’ she whimpered, not out of fear at the pace itself, but at the damage it did to their chances of an encounter there, deep in the heart of the wood. But Lowell’s wide eyes had a look of such fierce determination, and did not glance at her for a moment but rather stared ahead, as if he saw straight past the coach, the driver and the horse, saw even beyond the road and into the future.
Perhaps it was this prescience that made Lowell gasp for no seeming reason at all, before they rounded a long bend, the coach leaning so that wheels lifted from the ground, only to shudder into a crazed zigzag. Carolina heard the horse skidding as the coach twisted this way and that behind it. She heard the horse’s terrible shriek of pain.
Lowell’s eyes gleamed, even as the coach began to drag along sideways. ‘Stay down,’ he said. ‘Hide.’ He pulled down the rug and flung it at her.
The coach lantern guttered out as they slowed to a stop. A sensation like that of pouring cream spread rapidly across Carolina’s skin, right to her scalp, and she could resist no longer. ‘Oberon,’ she whispered. Lowell did not hear her. His face was pressed against the glass of the small window.
In one swift movement Carolina pushed the door and slipped from the coach. The road, lit only by vague moonlight, seemed a thread of smoke amongst the trees. But she could make out a figure, hovering in the smoke, and by its stature, slight yet made tall by its noble horns, she knew that it was Oberon. Lowell called her name, but Carolina heard only the throb of her own heartbeat, the light rasp of her feet upon the road. She heard her own whisper, Oberon, as she advanced.
The figure grew more distinct. She saw the bow drawn taut, the trailing gown. Though the weak moonlight denied the wood all colour, she was sure the gown was forest green, and the face above it, more beautiful than ever. Behind her, the panting of the horse and the scrabble of the coachman as he hurried to descend were muffled, as if she had left them far away. Voices murmured from the coach, but she cared as little as if it stood a mile hence. A few steps closer, and she would see Oberon clearly. Oberon would see her.
She began to walk forward, along the faint river of mist, and felt herself like a spirit, come to meet her fellow soul of the forest. Oberon did not stir, only held the bow stretched and perfectly still. The stillness itself excited her, its enigma filled with unspoken passion, a stillness in which a heart surely beat as hers did, the thud of it louder now and faster, until all at once Carolina realised that the thudding was of footsteps, running along the road behind Oberon. She did not stop walking. There were no footsteps that mattered, in this moment, not even Lowell’s, which crunched behind her now until she could feel his agitated breath, hot on her ear.
‘Carolina, get back,’ he hissed.
His words lost their meaning as soon as she heard them. She sped up.
He kept pace. ‘Get back.’
They were within a dozen yards of Oberon, whose serene stance contrasted so cruelly with Lowell’s abject fear that Carolina wanted to laugh. She must get rid of him.
She turned, and saw that he held out in front of him a pistol. It was pointed at Oberon, who had shown no sign of alarm but still stood, watching them.
‘I’ll shoot,’ Lowell shouted. But his cry was drowned out by a louder, more desperate one, and the footsteps that had thudded behind Oberon resolved themselves into a shape that loomed out of the dark. ‘No,’ shouted Lowell, ‘get back!’
Carolina, furious at the dual invasion of her dream, clawed at the pistol in his hands. Lowell tried to twist her away. As they wrangled, the shot rang out.
The shock of it sent Carolina flying to the ground. She rolled over on the road, her ears singing, her heart breaking. But she looked up to see that Oberon still stood, and beside him, a figure writhed on the road just as she did. Oberon had let the bow slacken and was bending to attend to this creature, both unlucky but so very fortunate in Carolina’s eyes. She saw Oberon stroke the brow and clasp the shoulders of her mirror image, and there in the scanty moonlight, she wished herself into that person. She would be held, and succoured, and stroked.
Carolina began to crawl forwards, staring as the figure on the ground slowed in his flinches, and grew still. Somewhere in the trees beyond the road, a robin let fall a ribbon of notes. As her lips made the sweet plum of the only name in the world, Oberon began to grow faint in the mist. She rose to her feet and staggered towards him, her steps as blundering and hopelessly slow as those in a nightmare, yet on she forced herself, as the robin sang higher, wilder, and the mist closed around her head.
*
Carolina wakes in a shaft of sunlight, as she always does these days. The glade is shrill with the morning song of robins. She cannot see them, but she knows their gleaming shadows flit here and there about her. Oberon must still be near; the pillow they share is warm, and there is a scent that lingers, of crushed moss and sun-warmed leaves.
She nestles into the dint left by her lover, and pictures Oberon waking to gaze at her as she slept, pressing a kiss upon her parted lips. Margaret Finch, the gypsy queen, will be along soon, with a honeymoon breakfast of bramble berries and borage tea. She will hold up Oberon’s gowns in the dappling light and ask which it will be today: emerald, red or midnight blue? And as every morning, Oberon will choose instead to return to bed, sending Margaret Finch away on some invented errand, and the lovers will entwine there, in the web of robin song, until Carolina sleeps once more.
She never tires of this life, as consoling as a dream. Only in the evenings, when Oberon dresses and rides away, blowing kisses that land like moths on her cheeks, and she sits with Margaret Finch to read the cards, does a breath of melancholy cool her heart. She is never certain that Oberon will return. But the cards, in their flickering pool of candle light, show her the magician, the cups and the star, and always their message is one of love. Margaret Finch helps her to bathe and wash her hair, and from mysterious places beyond the glade she brings white and yellow flowers to freshen the lovers’ bed. They remind Carolina of the embroidered blooms on the pillow she once had. She spreads her hair amongst them and lies in the dark, in the lullaby of birds, waiting once more for Oberon.
*
On the morning of Christmas Eve, Lowell Bearmont paid a visit to the vicarage. He bore a package as large as a hatbox. He was speckled with snow that melted as he entered the hallway and greeted Reverend Pye. Everywhere, candles were lit. To Lowell they suggested not festive cheer, but vigil.
He was permitted to enter Carolina’s room alone. There she lay, her hair curling across the pillowcase embroidered with white and yellow flowers so that, in her white nightdress, she resembled a summer wood nymph. She would have resembled an angel, but for the expression on her face, which spoke unabashedly of pleasure, and a kind of pleasure that Carolina Pye, Lowell believed and fervently hoped, had never experienced. Her smile at him was sly, distracted.
Lowell placed the box at the end of the bed, and slowly lifted the lid. Then he dipped in his hand and brought out the robin. He had spent many weeks training the bird to take titbits of food, to come to his whistle, to perch on his reluctant finger. He had trained himself not to flinch when its beady eye turned upon him.
‘For you, my darling,’ he said, raising his hand gingerly before Carolina’s gaze.
She sighed, ‘Come back soon, dear love,’ and turned her head coquettishly to receive a precious, imagined kiss.
*
At the Heath Tavern, Old Graves’s head waggled, and his brow crumpled into a frown. ‘You’ll have no payout from me,’ he said, glaring at Canter’s outstretched palm. ‘A shame, it is. Her up there in that blessed frock.’
Canter grinned. ‘Man or woman, it makes no difference. I said Oberon would hang within the month.’ He stood to address the room. ‘Who will fill my cup? Old Graves weren’t the only one bet against me.’
The charcoal burners, their sooty faces bent over their tankards, went on with their talk. Canter turned to Pullet, who whittled as ever between his knees. ‘You were right. He was pretty enough,’ he said. Pullet did not reply. With a sigh, Canter slumped into his chair, and made much of draining his last drop of ale. ‘What’s that you’re carving, then?’ he asked Pullet, but Old Graves nudged him.
‘Leave him be,’ he mumbled. ‘Taken it hard.’ He scratched his neck.
Canter scoffed. ‘He no more knew Oberon than the rest of us.’
Old Graves looked pointedly at the stool where Elliot used to sit. ‘Not Oberon. That one,’ he said.
They sat for a while in silence, Old Graves slowly shaking his head, upon which was clamped a new knitted hat that, beneath its soot, still suggested its original colour of dun. His old hat, as foretold, had crumbled to a handful of ashen fragments when, standing before the grave of Elliot Brown, he had tugged it from his crown.
Pullet pushed back his stool and brushed the shavings from his lap. On to the table he placed a short length of wood, which was carved with the outline of a bare oak tree. ‘He’s no headstone. This is all I can do.’
Old Graves hauled himself to his feet. ‘That’s fine,’ he said. ‘Very fine.’
On this chill dusk in November, the three charcoal burners made their way by lantern light through the drizzle to the churchyard. To reach it, they walked along the village edge where it met the heath, but none gazed across that great, stilled sea with its undulations now cast in purple shadows. Their path took them, by necessity, past the gallows that gave the green its name, and it was here that all three raised their heads and paused a moment. Canter lifted the lantern and they watched its light play upon the gown that swayed there in the breeze, and shone a dark forest green.
PART II
DISENCHANTMENT
HOW SWEET I ROAM’D
How sweet I roam’d from field to field,
And tasted all the summer’s pride,
Till I the prince of love beheld,
Who in the sunny beams did glide!
He shew’d me lilies for my hair,
And blushing roses for my brow;
He led me through his gardens fair,
Where all his golden pleasures grow.
