S Bolton: Blood Harvest

‘Sorry.’

Silence. The cat raised one leg and began licking its genitals. The bench they were sitting on began to shake. It was hopeless. She’d be giggling like a teenager in seconds. She turned to him, because at least then she wouldn’t have to watch the cat.

‘Do you live here?’ she asked.

He shook his head. ‘No, I just work here. I live a few miles down the hill.’

He had light-brown eyes and dark eyelashes, which were really quite striking with that fair hair. Was it ginger? Given time to think about it, ginger seemed too harsh a word for a colour that in this soft September light seemed more like… like… honey?

Glancing down, Evi caught sight of her watch. The ten minutes were up. She twisted her arm around so the watch faced downwards and she couldn’t see it any more. ‘What’s with the two churches?’ she asked.

‘They’re great, aren’t they? Like before and after. OK, brace yourself for the history lesson. Back in the days when the great abbeys ruled England, Heptonclough had one of its own. Building work started in 1193. The church behind us was built first and then the living quarters and farm buildings later.’

He spun round on the bench, so that he was facing the ruined building behind them. Evi did the same, although her left leg had started to hurt quite badly. ‘The abbot’s residence is still standing,’ he went on. ‘It’s a beautiful old medieval building. You can’t quite see it from here, it’s on the other side of the new church. A family called Renshaw live in it now.’

Evi was thinking back to school history lessons. ‘So was Henry VIII responsible for the abbey falling into ruins?’ she asked.

The man nodded. ‘Well, he certainly didn’t help,’ he agreed. ‘The last abbot of Heptonclough, Richard Paston, was involved in the rebellion against Henry’s ecclesiastical policies and was tried on a charge of treason.’

‘Executed?’ asked Evi.

‘Not far from this spot. And most of his monks. But the town continued to thrive. In the sixteenth century it was the centre of the South Pennine woollen trade. It had a Cloth Hall, a couple of banks, inns, shops, a grammar school and eventually a new church, built to one side of the old one, because the townsfolk had decided the ruins were rather picturesque.’

‘They still are,’ admitted Evi.

‘Then, some time in the late eighteenth century, Halifax emerged as the new superpower in the wool trade and Heptonclough lost its place at the top of the tree. All the old buildings are still here, but they’re mainly private houses now. Most of them owned by the same family.’

‘The new church doesn’t have a tower,’ Evi pointed out. ‘In every other respect it’s like a miniature copy of the old building, but with just those four little towers instead.’

‘The town council ran out of money before the new church could be finished,’ her companion replied. ‘So they built one small tower to house a solitary bell and then, because that looked a bit daft, they built the other three to even up the balance. They’re purely decorative though, you can’t even access them. I think the plan was always to knock them down and build a big one when the money was available, but…’ He shrugged. The money to build a tower had clearly never materialized.

It was no good. Every minute she stayed increased the trouble waiting for her back at the yard. ‘I’m fine now, really,’ she said. ‘And I have to get back. Do you think you could…’

‘Of course.’ He stood up, rather quickly, as though he had, after all, only been being polite. Evi pushed herself up. Once on her feet, her eyes were on the same level as the fair hair peeking out over the neck of his vest.

‘How do you want to do this?’ he asked.

She tilted her head back to look at him properly and thought that she really wouldn’t mind being carried back down the hill again. A stab of pain ran down the back of her thigh. ‘May I take your arm?’ she said.

He held out his right elbow and, like a courting couple from the old days, they walked down the hill. Even with streams of fire running down her left leg they reached Duchess far too quickly.

‘Hi Harry,’ said a small voice. ‘Whose horse is this?’

‘This noble steed belongs to the beautiful Princess Berengaria who is riding back now to her castle on the hill,’ said the man who answered to the name of Harry, and who seemed to be looking at someone on the other side of the wall. ‘Do you want a leg up, Princess?’ he asked, turning back to Evi.

‘Could you just hold her head still?’

‘Spurned again,’ Harry muttered as he loosened the reins and passed them back over Duchess’s head. Then he held the nose band as Evi lifted her left foot and placed it in the stirrup. Three little bounces and she was up. She could see the small boy, about five or six years old, with dark-red hair. In his right hand he was holding a plastic light-sabre, in his left was something she recognized.

‘Hello,’ she said. He stared back at her, no doubt thinking that she really didn’t look much like a princess, certainly not a beautiful one. Being a small boy, he was probably opening his mouth right now to say exactly that.

‘Is this yours?’ he said instead, holding up the whip Evi had dropped and then forgotten about. ‘I found it in the road.’

Evi smiled and thanked him, as he clambered up on to the wall and held it out. Harry was still holding Duchess’s nose band. He led her down the short, steep hill until they reached Wite Lane. As they turned into the lane she saw the cat was following them, stepping lightly along an old wooden fence. Glancing back, Evi saw the small boy was watching them too.

Harry seemed to have run out of things to say as the cobbles became unkempt and the houses less uniform. They came to the gate at the end of the lane and Harry opened it for her, finally letting go of the nose band.

‘How long will it take you to get back?’ he asked. Behind his head, berries shimmered like rubies in the hedge.

‘Twenty minutes if I trot most of the way and canter the last hundred yards.’

He made a stern face, like a headmaster addressing an unruly class. ‘How long if you walk sedately?’ The heather at his feet was the colour of mulberries. She’d forgotten how beautiful September could be.

She wouldn’t let herself smile. ‘Thirty-five, forty minutes.’

He looked at his watch, then fished in his pocket and pulled out a card. ‘Phone me by four o’clock,’ he said, passing it to her. ‘If I don’t hear from you, I’ll be calling out the emergency services, the armed forces, the coastguard, every livery yard in a ten-mile radius and the National Farmers Union. It will be embarrassing, for both of us.’

‘And very expensive for you,’ said Evi, tucking the card into the pocket of her shirt.

‘So call.’

‘I’ll call.’

‘Nice meeting you, Princess.’

She squeezed with her right leg, flicked the whip and Duchess, instinctively knowing she was heading for home, set off at an active walk. Evi didn’t look back. Only when she was far enough away to be sure he wouldn’t see her did she sneak the card out of her shirt pocket.

A man she’d just met had insisted she call him. How long since that had happened? He’d held her in his arms. Called her beautiful. She’d wanted to snog him in a public street. She looked at the card. Reverend Harry Laycock, B.A. Dip.Th., it said. Vicar of the United Benefice of Goodshaw Bridge, Loveclough and Heptonclough. There were contact details at the bottom. Duchess walked on and Evi put the card back in her pocket.

He was a vicar.

There simply weren’t words.

HARRY LEANED AGAINST THE WALL FOR TEN MINUTES watching the woman ride away. Only when she and the grey horse disappeared into a copse did he turn and walk slowly back to the church. As he passed the new house he could see Alice Fletcher in her sitting-room window, talking on the telephone and watching Joe in the garden. She saw Harry and waved.