The Knot. Jane Borodale

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СКАЧАТЬ to Lytes Cary alone to deal with his own estate that could not, after all, run itself, and sent up diffident, occasional letters to his new wife as though to a stranger. Now her brother has come to the aid of their mother so that Frances’s presence is no longer essential, and tomorrow at last he goes up to London to fetch her.

      Henry digs on to the end of the row, straightens up and looks south, and finds now that evening is already creeping up the hill from the west, that the large, yellowing sun is close to the horizon. A green woodpecker flies to a branch of the tallest willow at the end of the bank and squats back belligerently on its tail, the slope of its red cap bright in the grey of the tree. Henry always calls that bird the Sorcerer, it has a menacing, ethereal presence he would rather do without. From there the bird has a commanding view of its surroundings, it knows more than he does about their mutual territory.

      The sweet savour of dug earth is all about, and yet for a moment Henry Lyte thinks he can smell the sea – a weedy, salt smell of unwanted water. Then it is gone – perhaps it was a draught of air drawn over the half-completed brick wall from the heap of rotting compost in the kitchen garden, some stalks of greens maybe, or kale. But Henry Lyte pauses, and for a moment has a strong thought of the sea itself wash round his head – the great blank sea that lies in sheets of water against the low shoulder of the land at Berrow, the wide strip of coast where the mouth of the river Parrett coils its way out across the mud flats at low tide below the dunes thirty miles from here.

      It must be explained that the sea there is held back by only the thinnest strip of land at high tide, and with the highest tides in winter the sea wall is often breached. But these winter floods are to be expected; they are planned for, understood by farmers, eel fishermen, migrating birds. Unseasonal deluge has never happened in his lifetime; that would be more of a threat to human life than he would care to think of. Nevertheless, it is said that a true native from these parts, with marsh-blood going back centuries, is always born with webbed feet, because nothing can be taken for granted in this precarious world. Unusual weather stems from unusual circumstances. It certainly felt that way just after the death of Anys, the winter that followed – last winter – was the coldest and deepest he could ever remember. And there are plenty who believe that bad weather is a punishment from God.

      Downwind of the chimney, Henry can smell what might be supper and the unaccustomed exercise has made him hungry. He props his tools in the outhouse and bolts it tight, goes into the house by the back door. His blisters sting satisfyingly as he washes his hands in the ewery. The dog in the porch beats her tail without raising her head, a young mastiff bitch called Blackie who has developed a reciprocal loyalty to this half of the house rather than to her master. He puts his head in the door to his left. The kitchen at Lytes Cary is high and cavernous, the rack over the broad fireplace hung with hams and sides of salted beef and bacon, gigots of dried mutton, stockfish, ropes of onions and long bundles of herbs. On the east wall is the great oven, and ranging off to the west are the pantries and buttery and dairyroom, and all of this is Old Hannah’s dominium, filled tonight with meaty steam and the fatty goodness of something fried. Three blackened cauldrons sit at the hearth, beside a stack of gleaming earthenware and a basket of scraps for the poor as it is Tuesday tomorrow. One vast wet ladle lies across the mouth of a brown pot, and a row of pewter plates laid out indicates that serving is imminent. He won’t disturb her; if she gets talking things might go cold. Old Hannah has a rolling walk, it is always alarming to watch her crossing the kitchen carrying a large pudding basin filled brimful, or a cleaver for chopping the heads off plucked fowls. Tom Coin who works in the kitchen with her is a gangly sprout of a boy with a long, earnest face and hair of the soft brown sort that grows very slowly. Through the door in the cross passage Henry can see that Tom has set the trenchers in the hall, cut up the maslin bread, lugged in the pitchers of the small beer that is suitable for hindservants, and is just about to call supper for the household.

      Tonight though Henry thinks he will eat with the children separately in the oriel. A speech that a father must have with his girls before the arrival of their new mother – God knows but he never thought he’d ever have to say such words to them – must be done in private. As he walks through the hall the armorial glass in the windows above to his right glows with the setting sun outside, casting a ruby-coloured light of the ancestors over the swept floor and the plain trestles. There is no escaping the ancestors, and they observe – as God does, but with perhaps more vested interest – his every movement through this place.

      Chapter II.

      Of BISTORTE. They grow wel in moist and watery places, as in medowes, and darke shadowy woods. The decoction of the leaves is very good against all sores, and it fastneth loose teeth, if it be often used or holden in the mouth.

      IT IS LATE, BUT HENRY LYTE can never sleep easily on the eve of a long journey. He sits with the trimmed candle burning low and ploughs on with his translation. He is an orderly man who likes to work in a state of neatness, which should stand him in good stead for the task ahead of him. There is, after all, a place for brilliance of mind and there is a place for method, and he feels he may have enough of the latter to complete all six hundred pages. He has ink of different colours ranged in pots on his desk; red, black, purple, green and brown, for different types of fact or notes, and he likes a sharp nib. Surrounded by other men’s herbals for ease of cross-reference, he is working directly from the French version as L’Histoire des plantes, which is itself translated out of the Flemish by Charles l’Écluse, or Carolus Clusius, as the great man prefers to be known. He hasn’t decided what his own is going to be called. A title is crucial and difficult to decide upon, he’s finding. The original work, startlingly detailed and scholarly, was published in 1554 as the Cruÿdeboeck by the learned Rembert Dodeons, a master of plants and medicine, whom Henry himself had met when he was in Europe as a young man all those years ago. Sometimes Henry blushes with embarrassment to think that he has been so audacious as to consider himself man enough for this enormous undertaking. Why him? Not a physician, not an expert in anything. It is almost ridiculous, but the project is well underway now, too late to turn back.

      He has finished butterbur and begun bistort today, which is a familiar kind of herb to him. Some plants are easier to render quickly because it is very clear from their descriptions or the Latin what their equivalents might be in English. Others are not, and he will have to return to those later, get specialist opinion, exercise extreme caution and assiduousness in applying names to them. The excellent plates by Leonhard Fuchs are also of considerable help in identification, but grappling with the French is his own charge entirely. He hovers over a disputable word. What is ridée in English? He thinks. He notes down rinkeled, folden, playted or drawn together. He considers his sentence, and then writes the great bistort hath long leaves like Patience, but wrinkled or drawen into rimples, of a swart green colour.

      He can hear from the creak of boards upstairs when Lisbet leaves the children’s room and goes off to where she sleeps in the chamber over the dairy in the north range. With her departure all four children settle down in their beds and a quietness conducive to writing subsides throughout the house. For two full hours Henry works hard enough to forget most of what weighs on his conscience, though it is a temporary displacement. When the second candle is burnt about halfway down its length, he retires to bed to dream of nothing.

      Chapter III.

      Of PAULES BETONY. The male is a small herb, and créepeth by the ground. The leafe is something long, and somwhat gréene, a little hairy, and dented or snipt round the edges like a sawe.

      HIS NEW WIFE FRANCES, daughter of the late John Tiptoft, London, distant cousin to the Earls of Worcester, is standing for the first time at Lytes Cary in the hall. It is a wet blustery autumn day. The highways from London these past six days have been very bad for mud and their passage was slow, beset with driving rain and herds of animals on their way to market; broken branches and at least one diversion to avoid hazardous bridges. Henry loathes driving in a carriage as it is painfully cumbersome, and makes a man’s limbs sore and stiff, doing nothing on a lumpy, jolting road for such a distance, but Frances had refused to ride СКАЧАТЬ