Coromandel! (6 page)

Jason pulled the sling from his belt and felt in his scrip for his biggest stone. A bow and arrow would have been better for this; but the fox might come a little closer as it crossed the corner of the pasture. He could see no gap in the hedge opposite, but there must be one, and the fox would head for it.

Carelessly the fox trotted out into the moonlight, neither hurrying nor dawdling. Jason leaned back and turned his shoulders. He wouldn’t miss, not with Jane Pennel watching breathlessly beside him. He had never missed a step in the dance with her as his partner.

The fox crossed from right to left, directly in front of them and thirty feet away. Jason swung the sling twice; he had to be quick or the fox would see the movement of it. Then he threw with all his force. The stone hissed through the air and struck the fox on the point of the shoulder. It stumbled forward with a low, quick snarl, whipped round, and bit angrily at the place, and Jason ran out with the girl’s big stick in his hands. As he reached the fox it sat back on its haunches, its white teeth bared and fierce. Jason swung the jagged stick and hit it once on the head.

He picked it up by the tail and brought it back to the others. Jane ran out to meet him, clapping her hands and crying, ‘Jason! That’s the fox who’s taken ten of my hens!’ He gave her the warm body, and she held it for a moment in both hands, her eyes sparkling at him.

He smiled slowly and said, ‘We’d better take and bury him, Mistress Jane. You can’t say you caught
him
in a snare.’ He took back the fox and slung it over his shoulder.

Jane said, ‘I could never catch him. The keepers tried too. But you did it! I saw it! Well--’ She stood a moment, glancing from them in their moleskin breeches, with the smell of earth and night on them, to the black tall shadows and the shining windows of Pennel Manor. ‘I must go back.’

She hurried across the field. Voy called gently, ‘Eh, Mistress Jane!’ He gave her the stick and the bell and the two rabbits.

‘Thank you,’ she said quickly, and turned again.

When she had gone Jason said, ‘Do you think she’ll tell on us?’ She was nice, but when daylight came she would have to be Mistress Pennel again.

He remembered that this night he had promised to go to Mary.

Old Voy said, ‘Not she. You know, she thinks you’re the greatest man in the world now--except when she remembers that you’re only a farmer’s son.’

‘What do I care what she thinks?’ Jason said, but he knew he did care because of how nearly he had killed her. ‘That cut in her belly will smart soon, and then she’ll tell on us.’

Voy said, ‘I knew a poet in London once--or was it Paris? He said to me--mind, he was drunk--but he said, “If you want to make a man your friend, allow him to do you a favour.” She’s seventeen. Come on away. Did you bring the forty shillings, lad?’

It wasn’t many days before he saw her again. He was passing the Cross Keys, driving a bull calf his father had sold, when he saw her riding towards him on her horse. They came together slowly. He thought she was going to pretend she couldn’t see him, but when they came closer he saw that she was blushing furiously. As they passed he touched his forehead and said, ‘Good morning, Mistress Jane.’ The acknowledgment seemed to release her from her confusion. She stopped the horse, bent down, and muttered, ‘The rabbit pie was very good.’ She smiled down on him from the horse, then looked nervously about to see if anyone was watching, but the lane was empty. She looked beautiful and rich on the shining horse, and her white hand hung down, and he saw that it was trembling a little. The bull calf reached up its head to sniff the strange horse’s nose.

Jason remembered that time, three years back, when her breasts were just growing, and she’d hung around him at the fair, and they could have been in love, only she was just a girl and a Pennel, and he was a young man and a Savage. In the interval he had forgotten that time, but he knew now, looking up at her, that she had not forgotten. She had nursed it close in her memory, and now she was a woman, and the secret they had shared in the Windline was not the only secret.

He went forward to her on the horse, wondering, remembering the red scratch he had slit in her skin, and feeling her nervousness, and her eyes on his strong forearms. He took her hand, and kissed it. The hand pressed against his mouth and then pulled away as the horse started forward under the jerk of her thighs and heels, and the bull calf started back with a bellow of fright; but from thirty yards on she looked back at him and waved the hand that he had kissed.

It was another day, and the wind blowing from the west, wet and soft in the steady procession of days. Gently it carried to Jason in his byre the thin wailing of the pipes and the thumping of the tabors and the shouts of the whirling dancers. He looked affectionately at the red cow, pulled her ear, and said, ‘Not this afternoon, will you, please?’ The cow stood restive, with her four legs spread and her flanks bulging in tight drum-circles, and looked at him.

Jason went out and spoke quietly to the young man who was sitting on the wall and counting his thumbs. You had to speak quietly to Softy Turpin or he ran away. Jason said, ‘Softy, you’ll go into the byre now and stay there, won’t you?’

‘Yes, your grace, yes, yes, yes, I’ll go away,’ Softy said, pulling his long hair.

Jason said, ‘That’s good, Softy. If she starts, you come running to me in the church field, eh?’

‘No, no, I won’t come to the church field, your grace,’ Softy said, giving his forelock another tug. Jason patted him on the shoulder and walked, frowning, towards the gate.

It was easier to make himself a trout under water than Softy in a world turned upside down. Softy called farmers and labourers ‘your grace’ and ‘squire’ and ‘sir,’ and the dirtiest tramp, ‘your majesty.’ Sir Tristram he called ‘Pennel,’ and Mistress Jane, just ‘Jane.’ You had to tell him straight what you wanted him to do, and if he understood he answered crooked. Did Softy see him, Jason, in velvet-slashed doublet with a sword and a horse? And Sir Tristram in moleskin? Was it all blurred, like what the trout must see, through water, of the land? He didn’t know. He could only be sure that Softy did not see the same as other people did; but no more did he himself. But Softy was off his head.

The music tinkled distantly in his ears. He found he had stopped at the gate of the farmyard and was staring at the wall of the byre a foot above Softy’s shoulder. Softy was looking at him, the big china-blue eyes and slack mouth smiling over-widely. Softy said, ‘I’ll go away, your grace.’

Jason shook his head and hurried over the hill.

Already they were shouting inside the Cross Keys as he passed it, and several of the village rascals were rolling in the hedge and singing and waving their jugs of ale. All the drunkards had come here from the Green Man in Admiral, too, for the harvest fair. This was where he’d kissed Jane Pennel’s hand. The church field was close now, and the noise loud. He wondered suddenly if one of the young gentlemen who rode over to the manor from Admiral and Chirton and Pewsey on their stallions was Jane’s man. If it were true, would anyone in the village know? How could anyone know what happened in that big house? He walked on, frowning.

But of course people would know. The maidservants and the cook would. They were all village people. They’d know, and they’d tell quick enough. They hadn’t said anything, so Jane Pennel didn’t have a man.

What did it matter to him? Except that he’d kissed her hand and looked into her eyes. He remembered how she had marvelled at the night when they were coming down from the Windline. She had been excited then, and now he was. He began to whistle and pushed through the gate into the church field.

Tomorrow was the Sunday of Harvest Home, and Parson should have been busy with Lady Pennel and all the old besoms, decorating the church; but Parson was there, near the gate, talking to a knot of sniggering old men.

‘Good afternoon, Jason,’ Parson said. ‘Come to look for the Golden Fleece?’

Jason touched his forehead as the men laughed. What were the fools laughing at? he thought resentfully. They’d never even heard of the Golden Fleece, let alone touched it in their dreams.

The rough, sloping field was full of people. There were even a few faces he did not recognize. From the three Shrewfords everyone was here, but people had come too from Chirton and Alton and Bishop’s Cannings, and even from Pewsey and Challbury. They’d come for the cockshies, the archery, and the horseshoe throwing, and the dancing, and the black home-brew in the Cross Keys.

He wandered idly on. He didn’t have much money to spend today, but he had a map. He was supposed to meet Mary. She’d be about somewhere. He’d find her.

He saw a knot of men grouped together against the far hedge and strolled over towards them. As he came closer he heard a familiar voice droning in a half-shout, half-whisper, ‘To Rome I’ve travelled, and France and Paris and Aleppo. To everywhere on this globe I’ve journeyed, and everywhere the surgeons and noblemen make use of this nostrum. This nostrum is used by the Pope of Rome himself to ward off the colics.’

‘To hell with the Pope!’ a voice murmured dutifully.

‘To hell with the Pope, you say, and so do I, so do I. But have you thought, how does that anti-Christ keep alive with so many thousand good men giving him the bad wish? Can you answer me that? Does he drop dead?’ Voy paused a long moment and looked round the crowd. ‘He does not. And is there not one of you here who thinks there might be someone wishing him ill at this moment, using the pins on him, like?

A wife, by chance--it may be a shrewish wife? A girl who mistook your meaning when--?’

A labourer called out hastily for a bottle of the nostrum. Other voices joined in. Jason walked away, crossing himself nervously. God knew who would want to make a wax figure of him and stick pins into it, but such witchcraft did work evil, and there was no defence against it, certainly not in nostrums. Perhaps praying and crossing yourself was the only way, as Parson said.

Nearby he saw Molly with Ahab Stiles, and turned away to avoid them. Molly was loaded down with knick-knacks and cheap finery. Ahab must have bought them from the chapmen’s stalls for her, but her expression showed that she didn’t want them, she hadn’t asked for them, and she wasn’t going to be softened by them. Her head was turning this way and that, and he knew she was looking for him; but he didn’t want to be reminded that Mary Bowcher was also looking for him, so he turned his back and went over to the cock-shy. He threw a dozen shies at the Aunt Sally, and paid his penny. He used the bow and arrow, and paid his penny. He wandered aimlessly round, searching.

At last he saw Jane Pennel talking to one of the fiddlers. She must have just arrived, because he had looked in that place several times already. He began to walk towards her, having no idea what he was going to say, and simultaneously heard his name called. ‘Jason! Jason Savage!’

It was Mary. He hesitated, then turned to her. She took his hand, smiled up at him, and said, ‘Oh, you look well.’ She squeezed his arm.

He watched Jane Pennel. The fiddler was tuning his fiddle. The members of the Club were almost ready to dance the Oak and Horn, the last dance before the Ring Competition. The Club was all the married men, and they were called that because only they could dance the Oak and Horn at harvest time, just as only the unmarried young men could dance the Moorish at Whitsun. Both groups used the same costumes and masks, but the Club had an extra mask, of a bull’s head, which the young men weren’t allowed to use.

Mary was saying, ‘I’d like some cider, Jason.’

Unwillingly he turned his eyes away. He walked quickly with her through the crowd to the stall where Mistress Bolling sold the rough cider by the jug or the mug. He took two mugs, shook out the old lees, had them filled, drank his own, and stood waiting impatiently for Mary to finish hers.

But Mary sighed comfortably and settled down on the grass with her legs tucked under her. ‘It’s good to be off my feet,’ she said. ‘My new shoes hurt. Aren’t they pretty, though?’

She stretched out her strong legs and showed him the new black shoes with silver buckles. He noticed that they were the same shape as Jane Pennel’s but much heavier.

‘Hurry up, Mary,’ he said. He was full of impatience now.

‘What need is there to hurry?’ she asked.

‘I want to watch the Oak and Horn.’

‘Oh, yes, it’s almost started. Do you think you’ll be in the Club to dance it next year?’ She smiled up at him a little doubtfully, finished her cider, and got to her feet. They went to the edge of the circle of spectators, and Jason forced through to the front, careless of the scowls cast at him.

Jane Pennel was sitting at a big table under the great oak that stood in the corner of Church Field. All the Pennels were there--Sir Tristram, his lady, Master Hugo, and Jane. Jason stared and stared directly at Jane, because the taste of her hand was in his mouth, because she had books all round her and could sit in a high chair reading them, because . . . Mary was afraid of him--afraid, rather, of the future with him. He felt it in her big strong hand. She was trying now to pretend that all was well between them. There must be some way out of this, he and she being so affectionate to each other, but not truly in love.

At last Jane Pennel’s restless, wandering glances met his stare. For a moment she looked at him, then she lowered her head and seemed to speak at random to her brother lounging beside her.

‘Mistress Jane is beautiful, isn’t she?’ Mary said, sighing. ‘Look at her lovely shoes. Seeing them makes me want to throw mine away. But what’s the use? I don’t have her little feet.’

‘She’s not beautiful,’ Jason said hoarsely, cut by a sharp edge of shame at hearing his Mary so downcast. Mary hugged his arm, and that was worse.

The Oak and Horn began with a ruffle and a double stamp.

He watched and became absorbed, because he saw that, as they danced, the men became like him in his dream journeys. They were no longer here in Shrewford Pennel, King Charles was not their lord, they were not farmers. They kicked their feet, and the head masks spun. The bull nodded and lifted his heavy horns. The white crossed garters on their legs snapped and spun, the feet of the watchers jigged on the grass, the men’s eyes bulged, the women’s lips drooped wet. The dancers waved their boughs of oak, and the bull a peeled oak yard. Check and spin, stamp and spin--there were Roman helmets watching, amazed, under the oak tree where the Pennels sat. Head down, head up--kick, kick, kick, they danced under the three harsh stones on the Plain, round and round inside the earthen banks agleam with spears. It was dark on the Plain, and the wind whistled. Men in the skins of animals danced, their stone axe-heads catching the firelight. (But here were the tight-drawn eyes and the smell of cider and trampled grass, and the church clock’s warning: Sin! Sin! Sin!) Parson’s reading was no armour now, fear quivered in his chops; and the Pennels stood close-knit as Romans, watching; but for the dancers the lark burst up spiralling, ascending, climbing into the sun’s eye.