‘But when will the next opportunity come? We’d better ask that Nick White. If it’s Halloween, will Sir Henry want us here that long?’

  ‘It’s more likely to be Lammas, and that’s only a month and a bit away,’ I said. ‘I will ride over this afternoon and talk to Master White. Anyway, Sir Henry will have to keep us here if Walsingham orders it.’

  ‘You sound very amenable, madam.’ Brockley knew me far too well. ‘I know that I’m not fit, but I hope you’re not planning to go instead of me. You must not. There is something about this business that I don’t like. I didn’t like those stains on the paving in front of that dais. And now,’ he added suspiciously, ‘you are smiling.’

  ‘I am always amused when you address me as madam even when you’re bullying me.’

  ‘I bully you, as you call it, for your own good and safety. There’s no lack of respect, madam, just the opposite.’

  Our eyes met. To look at him, I had turned so that Dale couldn’t see my face. I hoped that she wouldn’t be aware of the secret messages we were exchanging. It was one of those occasional moments that we had shared through the years. One of those Might Have Been moments. I adopted a brisk tone of voice and said: ‘I did think of Eddie, but it wouldn’t do. I didn’t employ him for such purposes and it wouldn’t be fair.’

  ‘I agree there,’ said Brockley.

  Eddie – his full name was Edward Hale – had been just a boy when he first came to Hawkswood as an under-groom. He was a young man now, full of vitality, good-humoured and often resourceful, as he had demonstrated several times during our journeys to and from Devon.

  It had been Eddie, early in his time at Hawkswood, who had recommended that when travelling, if we were taking any kind of wheeled vehicle, we should carry ropes with us. Then, if the wheels were to stick in deep mud and even unloading baggage and passengers didn’t work and nor did sacks under the wheels, we could harness our riding horses to the shafts. He was also better than Brockley at successful knots. He had an uncle who was a seaman, he had told me once, and the uncle had taught him about knots.

  But in my service, he was a groom. He wasn’t paid to take risks, which Brockley was. He and Brockley were quite different anyway. Brockley too had originally been taken on as a groom but from the very beginning, though he was always respectful, he had never hesitated to disapprove aloud of some of the things I did. Until, that was, his latent sense of adventure was awakened and then no one could have been a better comrade.

  Behind Brockley’s steady blue grey eyes and his high, calm forehead with its spattering of gold freckles, lurked an astonishing lust for adventure and a remarkable gift for surviving it. Eddie, on the other hand, would never dream of criticizing me, and I had not detected lust for adventure in his nature. He was capable and bright but no, I couldn’t send him to spy on the Midsummer feast as Brockley’s replacement.

  Brockley was watching me. ‘Promise me, madam, that you will not attempt to go to the Midsummer meeting instead of me. You must not run such risks.’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, sounding serious. ‘I shall ride to Chenston today, and see what Nick White can tell me about the next meeting, whether it’s Lammas or not.’

  Our eyes met once more. I smiled into his. ‘I promise!’ I said.

  I was lying. However, I would see Nick White first. There was good sense in that. If the next meeting was indeed to be Lammas, I might have to talk to Sir Henry because we might need to stay on for it. But if I learned anything to the point at Midsummer, perhaps there would be no need to bother about the Lammas feast at all.

  I took a snack in lieu of dinner and then, leaving Dale and Hannah to look after Brockley, and reminding them to call Watt if necessary, I rode off to Chenston with Mildred for company. The rain was a memory now. This was the world of June, full of foliage and wildflowers and birdsong and the shadows under the ancient trees were not so dark today; they were a deep underwater green, promising not unknown danger, but shade and coolness.

  We were concerned, though, as we drew near the village and came in sight of the nearer smallholdings, to see that the rainstorm had done damage. There were broken fences and beaten-down crops and one barley field, which lay at the foot of a slope, was flooded.

  ‘That’s dreadful,’ said Mildred earnestly.

  ‘More than dreadful,’ I said, ‘there will be families with no barley to make bread, no vegetables to take to market. They’ll go hungry unless their vicar steps in to help.’

  ‘Would he?’ Mildred asked innocently.

  ‘Well, they’re his flock,’ I said, as we trotted into the village street. ‘Being charitable is part of his profession, after all. Chenston’s been unlucky by the look of things. We’ve exercised our horses round Minstead and we didn’t notice anything amiss there, but the land there may be better cared for and better drained by nature. What’s that noise?’

  The noise was coming from the far end of the street, and as once before, we could see a cluster of people there. ‘Not again!’ said Mildred as we broke into a canter.

  The gathering this time was right in front of Etheldreda’s house and it was frightening. At least half the village seemed to be there. They were bawling abusive things at the house. I immediately recognized the Orchard boys and the lanky Matt Graver and, inevitably, the small but belligerent Jacky Dunning.

  But this time the crowd didn’t just consist of boys. The Orchard youths and a large shirt-sleeved man with over-long and very untidy yellow hair and biceps bulging through the unbleached linen of his sleeves, very likely their father, were working as a team. They were holding a stout bench between them and obviously intended to use it as a battering ram to open Etheldreda’s front door, except that Nick White was on the doorstep, looking terrified but gallantly brandishing a scythe.

  As before, there was an audience of women staring from their cottage doors, some with children peering round their skirts. But two women were part of the mob as well. One was young and the other was fifty at least but both their faces were distorted by an identical rage and the pair of them were throwing stones at the house. Looking up, I saw that their target was Etheldreda’s frightened face, peering from an upper window. Felix Armer was there, not part of the mob but trying to argue with it, pulling Master Orchard’s elbow, shouting at him to step back, to make his sons put that damn silly bench back where it came from, which was inside his inn, and listen to sense. Master Orchard senior was shouting back at him to get off, let us be, we’re out to get the witch and you won’t stop us. Master Orchard had a carrying voice with a gravelly edge to it; I could hear it above all the shouting of the crowd.

  The innkeeper was on the side of the angels, it seemed, but if so he had few supporters apart from Nick. If Felix was the leader of the forest revels, whatever form they might take, he wasn’t any sort of leader here. The crowd preferred to follow Master Orchard. Nick was being jeered at and even as we arrived and tried to drive our horses into the crowd to break it up, we saw another group of youths running out of the inn with another bench which they had evidently grabbed from inside it. A moment later I realized that they meant to take it round Etheldreda’s house and attack from the rear.

  I was shouting Stop This! at the top of my voice and someone must have heard me, because the jeers were promptly turned on us, and somebody grabbed at Jaunty’s reins to halt him. Felix saw us and bellowed: ‘Get the vicar! Get Atbrigge! Damned man’s never where he’s wanted! Get Atbrigge!’

  Without a word, Mildred wheeled Grey Cob and went back along the street at a gallop. I used my whip and the man clutching at Jaunty’s bridle yelped and fell away. I went on, pushing Jaunty here and there, trying to reach the Orchards, applying the whip wherever it might do some good and wishing there were two of me (three or four would be even better) because of what the boys with the bench might be doing to Etheldreda’s back door. I shouted: ‘What are you doing? What’s all this?’ at any faces that were turned to me.

  Master Orchard bellowed: ‘Get away and mind thy business!’ and one of the women who were throwing stones, screeched: ‘Her’s a witch! Her and her familiar, that there unnatural foal! Brought on the rain, flattened our crops, what’ll we eat next season? Witch! Witch!’

  Others repeated the cry, screaming it, hurling more stones and a couple of men bawled: ‘We’m going to hang she! Got no pond to swim a witch but we know she’m guilty any how!’

  With a sickening lurch in my stomach, I saw that one of these men had a coil of rope flung round his shoulder. He caught my eye and grinned. Half his teeth were missing and the grin was vicious, a row of fangs slashing across his round Chenston face. ‘Plenty of trees hereabouts!’ he shouted at me and somebody else shouted: ‘You’m in the right of it, Pickford!’

  Then another man, armed with a long pole, suddenly appeared and thrust his way through the crowd. Before we could try to intervene, he had knocked Nick White off the doorstep. The Orchards, in a chorus, bawled: ‘One, two, three!’ and charged forward, crashing their bench into the door. I swung Jaunty towards them and swore at them and used my whip again but they paid no heed at all. There were tears of fright and hopelessness in my eyes. Once more, I shouted: ‘Stop this! Stop this!’ but no one heeded me. I could hear alarming crashes and bangs from the rear of the house, where the second battering ram had presumably been brought into action.

  And then there was a drumming of hooves and there was Grey Cob with Mildred in the saddle and Daniel Atbrigge on her crupper. He added his voice to mine and his voice was much more resonant. When Atbrigge roared Stop this! he would have been heard above the worst of thunderstorms. Amazingly, the crowd did stop. The shouts and screeches subsided. Faces turned to him. The women with the stones paused, stones still in their hands. The Orchard family dropped its bench. Staying where he was, because up on Grey Cob’s back he had as good a view over his misbehaving flock as though he were in his pulpit, Daniel demanded, in stentorian tones, to know what they thought they were about. ‘And what’s that noise from the back of the house?’

  The battering-ram sounds had ceased but something else had taken its place. A woman was screaming and men’s voices were jeering. Then a little group came round to the front, slowly because they were dragging someone. Etheldreda was in their midst, struggling, crying out for mercy and for help. She saw the man with the rope round his shoulder and shrieked louder still, kicking at the shins of her grinning captors. This time Atbrigge didn’t stay where he was but sprang to the ground and ran to her. Felix Armer, encouraged by the arrival of reinforcements, did the same. The vicar’s presence seemed to abash the men holding her for he and Felix snatched Etheldreda away with little resistance. They brought her to me and heaved her up in front of me. She was shuddering as if with an ague and crying uncontrollably, turning her face into my riding cloak as if to seek shelter there.

  ‘Thank God I found Master Atbrigge quickly!’ Mildred said to me breathlessly. ‘I didn’t know where he might be; in the vicarage, the church, his back garden … I started shouting his name before I’d begun to dismount and then he came running out of the church and I said, Come quick, there’s a crowd wants to murder Mistress Hope! and he was up behind me in a trice … oh, look, he’s going to make them listen.’

  Daniel Atbrigge had taken up a stand in front of Etheldreda’s gate and was haranguing his parishioners at the top of his voice. ‘… never before have I seen such shameful behaviour. Rainstorms, damaged crops are an act of God. They happen constantly and we must endure them and do what we can to be prepared. As we are! There is a barn where every one of you has stored some of last season’s produce against such a trouble as this! Have you forgotten? I told you the story of Joseph in the Old Testament who warned the Egyptians of a forthcoming famine and had stores gathered beforehand. I urged you to do the same. I come of farming stock; I know how fickle the weather can be. Now, cease this nonsense about the mule’s foal. You were ready, this day, to kill a terrified and innocent woman because you are ignorant. Let me inform you that mules have given birth before. Not often, that’s all. Because something happens rarely, doesn’t make it diabolical! Who started this?’

  There were mutterings and mumblings and an air of reluctance to answer the question, but finally, Felix Armer said: ‘Jem Dunning, he’s the one!’ and the fellow with the long pole stepped truculently forward and declared that he was Jem Dunning and yes, he had got them all going, by going from house to house, his barley crop was flattened and his vegetable patch was under water, and they all knew that there woman was a witch, whatever reverend might say …

  ‘Get back to your home!’ roared Atbrigge. ‘You wouldn’t recognize a real witch even if you found her pushing pins into a wax model of you!’

  A youthful voice cried out: ‘Don’t you speak to my dad like that!’ and there was Jacky Dunning, rushing to his father’s defence, planting himself in front of his parent, arms folded, and glaring at Atbrigge. There was laughter. And now, at last, the crowd was dispersing. Atbrigge came over to us.

  ‘Thank you, Mistress Gresham, for fetching me. I was at prayer in the church and knew nothing of this till you called my name so urgently. Mrs Stannard, I think you should take Mrs Hope away with you. Take her to Minstead. Perhaps Sir Henry will let you shelter her for the time being. She can return home later, when all this has settled down and I have had a few more words with Jem Dunning.’

  Mildred said: ‘Where is Master White? He was trying to guard the front door but he was swept aside. He … oh, look! He’s hurt!’ She was still mounted and could see better than any of us. ‘He’s lying on the ground near the door!’

  Atbrigge and Felix ran to him. I pushed Jaunty forward as well. Nick was lying on his back with his knees drawn up and his hands clutched together on his chest. He didn’t seem to be injured; there was no blood to be seen but his stillness was ominous. Atbrigge knelt beside him, feeling for a pulse, feeling for a heartbeat. Then he looked up and shook his head.

  ‘No!’ said Etheldreda. ‘No!’

  I held her more firmly and said: ‘I think so. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘He sometimes said his chest hurt and he was often short of breath,’ whimpered Etheldreda. Tears were running down her face. ‘But he can’t just have died!’

  ‘I fear so,’ said Atbrigge. Mildred clutched her fingers to her mouth and through them, said: ‘Oh, how dreadful! The poor man. And he was only trying to protect you, Mistress Hope.’

  And this, I thought, was the end of my attempt to coax information out of Nick White. He could tell me nothing now.

  ‘I will have him carried into the church,’ said Atbrigge. He looked at us. ‘As I said, Mrs Stannard, I think it best to get Mrs Hope out of harm’s way, along with her mule and foal. Get them to Minstead.’

  Etheldreda was in renewed tears when we set off, towing the foal alongside the mule. She had her essential belongings in her saddlebags or on her back and since Nick White was dead, Felix Armer had offered to look after her chickens and her pig; indeed with some enthusiasm. The prospect of extra eggs seemed to please him mightily. Winfred would make good use of them, he said.

  But even through her tears, Etheldreda had agreed when Mildred said, in most fervent tones: ‘Wasn’t Master Atbrigge wonderful? Getting all that crowd of lunatics to listen to him, and go away!’

  NINE

  Deceiving Brockley

  I had begun to think that Mildred was admiring Daniel Atbrigge to a disturbing degree but I had no time to worry about it just then. I had to explain to Sir Henry why I had brought Etheldreda back with me from Chenston, along with a mule and a sorrel and white filly. And, since I could no longer learn anything from poor Nick White, I had reached the inescapable conclusion that, since Brockley was out of action, I must be present at the Midsummer feast.

  Which would mean deceiving Brockley. If he knew I meant to go, he might work himself into an outraged fever, or even try to get up and carry out the task himself. At the very least, he would lie awake all that night, worrying.

  Meanwhile, Sir Henry was angry when he heard of the near-tragedy in Chenston, and although he had no jurisdiction there, he took three men and rode there on Wednesday to investigate. Exactly what happened, I don’t of course know, but when he returned he talked a little over supper and said he hoped he had put the fear of God into the lot of them.

  ‘I told them a thing or two and told Atbrigge a thing or two as well, and Mistress Hope can go back home tomorrow. Neither she nor that foal will come to any harm, I promise you.’

  Etheldreda didn’t hear this herself. In Sir Henry’s mind, she was not of sufficient status to sit at his table. Brockley and Dale wouldn’t have been there, either, except that there are certain advantages in being half-sister to a queen. Because of that, I was able to insist on treating them as friends rather than servants. But it didn’t apply to Etheldreda who had been accommodated among the Minstead servants and had spent the day helping in the kitchen.

  She was reluctant to go home but Sir Henry insisted and she went back on the Thursday. I sent Eddie to escort her. When he came back, he said that Master Atbrigge had seen them arrive and had met them in the street to tell them that Mrs Hope would be quite safe; Sir Henry had made it plain that she had better be. Master White was to be buried that same afternoon. ‘Mistress Hope said she would attend. I think she’ll be all right, madam. Looked to me as if Sir Henry gave them and their vicar what for and no mistake.’

  ‘I hope he did!’ I said. ‘Though I don’t think what happened was Dr Atbrigge’s fault. He came fast enough to deal with them and he did deal with them, very briskly.’

  ‘I’m glad you haven’t rushed away to attend the funeral yourself,’ Brockley told me that same afternoon. He had not been in a fever long enough to be badly weakened and by now, he was up and had pulled some clothes on. Watt had accompanied him down into the ornamental garden that lay behind the house. Part of it was a rose garden, which reminded me painfully of Hugh, my late husband, who had loved roses so much. Brockley was now sitting on a bench there and I had come to sit beside them. Watt rose tactfully and wandered out of earshot, though he was still where I could beckon to him. Brockley gave me a quizzical look. ‘I wish, madam, that I could do my duty this midsummer night. I am sorry.’

 

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