North Side of the Tree. Maggie Prince

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СКАЧАТЬ up in his saddle, then ducks, as a stone flies off the battlements at him. I can hear my father shouting above, “Give that bow to me, lad, if you’re too lily-livered to use it! What, you’ve never shot a parson? What have you been doing all your life? Call yourself a henchman?” An arrow hisses past my window, and another, and I recoil in horror, then realise as they land quivering in the grass that they are not intended to hit John – my father’s aim is better than that – but merely to cause him to go away. He does not go away, however. He sits there for a long time, arms folded, whilst arrows fly past him, then he turns his horse and moves away to the edge of the woods, a one-man siege.

      By Monday I have had enough. I have looked at all ways of escaping. It might well be possible to break my window with the warmingstone from my bed. My bedsheets tied together could possibly reach near enough the ground for me to jump. The problem is that the tower is too well guarded for me to get away. There is always a watchman on the battlements, and they fear my father too much to turn a blind eye. I have considered bribery, and ponder what it would take to bribe somebody to leave the door unlocked. What can you offer someone, to risk their life? Do I indeed ever want anyone to risk their life for me again? In the end, when it happens, it is in an unplanned way. Kate brings my supper on Monday evening, and tells me that my father and his men are to attack Low Back Farm again tonight, under cover of darkness. They believe that today’s rough weather, which is rapidly turning into a wild night, will enable them to creep right up to the farmhouse undetected.

      “If everyone’s going down to Low Back Farm, who’ll

      be on watch?” I ask her.

      “Leo, that slitgut, him as should be off tending t’cows.” Before she has finished speaking, I have made up my mind.

      

      As night falls, I can hear them preparing for the attack. Swords scrape and tinderboxes click. The smell of hot tar rises up the tower walls as arrows are wrapped and dipped. I offer up a prayer for Verity and James, then rip the sheets off my bed, drag the clothes press against the door, retrieve the warmingstone and wait for it to become silent outside.

      It takes a long time. My stomach churns with nervousness as I wait, straining my ears. Raindrops beat against my window, driven by the wind. I can see nothing beyond the wet glass but a great darkness full of moving shadows.

      The gale battering the tower becomes too loud for me to know whether or not all the men have gone. I can only hope it is also loud enough to cover the sounds of my escape. Kate will be asleep in her room behind the kitchen hearth. Germaine, I do not know. I just hope she is off on one of her unexplained absences.

      For a moment I cannot do it. I hold the green granite warmingstone, and can think of nothing but how expensive this fragile glass was, and how cold my room used to be before the window was glazed. I listen. Will Leo really be on the battlements in this weather, with no Scots likely and no one to check his vigilance? What will he do if he sees me? It is, after all, for his sake that I am imprisoned here. I swing the stone high above my head, and bring it crashing against the window.

      In a second it is gone, precious glass smashing and tinkling away into the night. I am almost knocked back against the bedpost by the wind roaring in. Now I must hurry. I stuff the knotted bedsheet out of the window, but it blows back over and over again. When it is finally out, it will not hang down. I think of Robert climbing the wall on his swaying rope ladder, his face at the window, my hands pushing him and the terrible injuries he sustained when he fell. The height and the precariousness of these walls seem suddenly fearsome and impossible.

      There is a lull in the gale. Is this the moment to go? No one appears to have heard me so far. The bedsheet whips round and catches on some shards of glass. I free it, prise the fragments out, check that the other end of the sheet is still firmly knotted round the leg of the bed. There is a sound from above. I must just go, never mind the sheer drop and the frightening fragility of the knotted sheets. I drag my cloak round me and climb backwards on to the deep windowsill. The wind rips at my skirts and I feel as if I am being sucked through the narrow aperture before I am ready. I kneel there, holding on to the sheet and the window-ledge, staring back into the room, and as I do so, the clothes press which was jammed against the door starts to move. It judders along the floor towards me. I stare at it, paralysed. Someone is coming in, and I hadn’t even heard the key.

      With the opening door, the gale rushes right through the room. Hangings rattle and ash swirls. “What’s the matter with this door?” enquires a voice. “I knocked, mistress; is everything all right?” With a final push, Leo enters. “Sweet Jesu!” He rushes across the room and grabs my arms as I frantically try to lower myself out.

      “No!” I hit out at him. “No! Let me go, Leo! Let me go at once!”

      Almost effortlessly he drags me back in and sets me on my feet in the chamber.

      “Leo, how dare…”

      “Shh.” He goes to the window, pushes the knotted bedsheet out again and watches it spiral around the window space as the wind catches it. Then he crosses to the door, holds it open for me and bows. “An easier way, mistress. I heard nothing, with this terrible wind blowing.”

      We look at one another. All manner of things are in that look, acknowledgements of deeds done and faith kept. Leo looks away first, as he unhooks a piece of hessian twine from his belt. “Come on, lady, out with you.” I step on to the tiny landing that leads to the spiral staircase, and watch as Leo loops the twine round a leg of the clothes press, then hooks it under the door. “Anything more you wish to take?” he asks. I look back, and shake my head. I have all I intend to take bundled into a large pocket attached at my waist. I watch as Leo closes the door and locks it, then pulls both ends of the twine so that the clothes press scrapes back into position, barricading the door on the inside.

      “Thank you.” My voice is hoarse. I have to clear my throat. “Thank you, Leo.”

      “Come lady, we’d best get you moving. I’ll saddle a horse. You’ll be going to the parsonage?” I nod. Down in the blowy barmkin, whilst Leo puts my sidesaddle on Germaine’s little mare, Mattie, I stand and watch my bedsheet high on the tower wall, flailing about in the rising gale.

       Chapter 6

      If I had not gone to stay at John’s, everything would have been different.

      For my first few days at the parsonage, I am filled with melancholy. I miss my home, my room, the rhythms of life on the farm. I have to remind myself that I was a prisoner there, and that the past week was intolerable. On the many occasions in those first few days when my father comes beating at the parsonage door, only to be turned away, I feel almost glad to hear him, simply for the familiarity of his rage. From a small, high window I watch him walk back to where his horse is tethered at the trough on the green, and I see that he has a severe limp, presumably from his latest encounter with James and the men of Low Back Farm.

      My mother does not visit me, but instead sends such of my clothes as I might need for a short stay, and a note berating me for supposedly risking breaking my neck by climbing out of the window, and commanding me to mind my tongue and under no circumstances to speak about the deaths of the two strangers.

      The day after my arrival John and I sit in the kitchen where Mother Bain is baking bread. Smoke rolls through the late afternoon sunlight as she lifts out trays of flat, black loaves from the bread oven, and tips them on to the wooden rack. The bitter scents of smoke and rye fill the kitchen.

      “I’ll СКАЧАТЬ