Lucy Hughes-Hallett - Peculiar Ground

Goodyear had adopted the pose I have seen storytellers assume on fairgrounds, legs braced apart for stability, hands on hips, his face upturned as though he sought words in the air. I was greatly impressed by his tale. I was curious to know its origin. The boys on the Roman pavement, I felt certain, must be the Gemini of the zodiac, for these Roman fragments often treat astrological themes. I feared, though, to offend my companion if I made a parade of my scholarship.

He passed both hands over his head and scratched it. ‘That’s the story I have heard,’ he said.

‘I am much obliged to you for it. Is it . . .’ I hesitated. ‘Is it one you heard from your parents?’

My instinct had been correct. He acted as though enquiry was improper. ‘It is from this place,’ he said, and looked at me teasingly.

We were in the far part of the park, above the ruined villa. Beneath us we could see Lord Woldingham and his wife strolling with their attendants along the valley floor. He offered her his arm and they walked together, their companions falling back, to the boggy place where their child had died. There they stood, apparently without speaking, for a considerable time.

*

When I’d finished writing in my journal last night I fell asleep as though dropping through a trap.

A commotion awoke me before it was light. I shoved aside a pillow so that it covered over my papers. Mr Rose, who is lodged near me, was already in the open doorway. ‘Come, Norris,’ he said.

I followed him along the corridor that leads into the oldest part of the house. He ushered me into a room holding a narrow bed and a wooden bucket. A bunch of dusty lavender, curiously bound with faded blue ribbon, was suspended from a hook in the window embrasure. The sheets were smoothed.

‘This is where Meg Leafield was quartered,’ he said.

Seeing me still baffled, he went on.

‘She is gone. I heard a scuffling past my door but when I looked out there was no one there. I think, Mr Norris, that we should follow her.’

A mouthful of water, boots, coat, muffler. I was ready. A resentful lad brought out our horses. Rose set off at a canter. At the entrance to the holly grove we dismounted and left the animals to graze. In the midst of the wood we left the path and trod softly to a little hummock. Lying flat on its apex, we could peer through the topmost branches of the trees before us, and see the clearing and the meeting-house spread beneath. The sun rising behind us set a blush in the sky and flooded the scene with long shadows and caressing light.

A great concourse of women. At its centre stood Meg Leafield. And so, the only male in sight, did the boy who threw a ball at me. Meg seemed to be pulling at his clothes.

‘You’ve been here,’ said Rose.

‘I have.’

‘You recognise that boy.’

‘You know that I have seen him before. He knocked me down.’

‘But do you understand who he is?’

I stared, mute.

‘He’s Cecily’s boy,’ said Rose. ‘Edward.’

The boy Edward’s shirt was off. The women were handing garments to Meg. He stood quiescent in his breeches. Meg helped him gently into new clothes far finer than those he had shed.

A lawn shirt. Stockings and high boots. An embroidered waistcoat and a sky-blue coat. I saw what was being done. My hands were shaking.

‘His cousin, then,’ I said. ‘They seem to be of an age.’

‘We must stop this,’ said Rose.

He scrambled to his feet and ran aslant down the slope, as clumsy as a charging boar, trampling small branches and sending stones clattering. I followed.

The other women looked round startled but Meg was unperturbed. Rose leapt the last few feet, and landed amongst them, impelled forward like a falling rock by the speed of his own going. He is a stocky man, broad-beamed and short-legged. I was almost as nonplussed by his urgency now as the women were. I slipped and scrambled after him with dread shadowing my mind and chilling my limbs.

My circuitous return from this spot two days previously had allowed me to calculate its position in relation to the great house, and to the course of the stream. Not far from where we stood is a pond, much obscured by bulrushes, but nevertheless tolerably deep. This pond is the embryo from which one of my lakes will grow. From the height where we had lain in hiding I had seen it glint.

Rose had Meg by the shoulders and was shaking her. I would have restrained him, but the women were quicker. They haled him off her and wrapped themselves around him, disabling him as a great sea-monster might disable a ship by embracing it with its tentacles. I hung back. Meg stepped up to me and to my astonishment took me gently by the hand.

‘Your friend misunderstands us. We intend no harm to this boy, as we have done no harm to the other.’

‘I am at a loss,’ I said. ‘I am as puzzled by your proceedings as I am ignorant of what interpretation Mr Rose would put upon them.’

‘He thinks we are witches,’ she said, the last word uttered with derision.

Rose, still under restraint, was shaking his head vigorously.

‘I sincerely doubt it,’ I said. ‘Mr Rose is a scientist. He loves lucidity, and measures the world with set-square and rule. He is not one to babble of sorcery.’

‘Perhaps not, but he thinks that we are.’

Someone stepped out of the gaggle of onlookers and took my other arm. It was Cecily. ‘I will subdue him,’ she said to Meg.

And so she did. With her hand in the crook of my elbow I quieted. A man in love is as spiritless as a lapdog. She took me to a heap of logs, and sat upon it beside me. We watched in silence as Meg finished dressing the boy.

‘Say what you will,’ I said to Cecily sotto voce , ‘this is a kind of conjuring.’

The boy, Edward, was now the living copy of his dead cousin. He gazed steadily at Cecily, who inclined her head as though in approbation.

‘Who is his father?’ I asked. It was unmannerly. All this mystification made me tart.

‘In the community in which I was raised all children were loved by all. All the men were their fathers.’ Her voice was low and even.

‘That is not an answer.’

‘I agree with you.’

‘Then who?’

‘What is your motive for enquiring?’

‘I aspire to be your husband. I would know who you are.’

Her gaze was still fixed upon the boy.

‘Lest I shame you?’

I made no reply, but waited.

‘Mr Norris, I will not be questioned.’ Cecily stood and took young Edward by the hand. They went together in the direction of the pond. Meg led the other women after, Rose captive among them. I stayed, ignored.

A gang of masons was coming along the track from the quarry. Great blocks of stone, granular like gigantic sugar lumps, rocked on makeshift carts – tree-trunks laid over the axles of solid wooden wheels. Men stood on or by them, watching the ropes, ready to holler out if one of these man-made boulders showed a tendency to shift. The six horses were as heavy-built as bulldogs and twelve times as tall and long. The strength and sweat being expended on giving Lord Woldingham his privacy would serve to construct a sizeable town.

Saplings of hazel and elder screened the one group from the other. Only from my standpoint was it possible to see men and women both. A man rocking atop a boulder, like a seaman balancing on a spar, gave a shout. The women startled and froze, only Cecily and young Edward walking on oblivious.

The men moved into action with awful slowness. The horses were halted; wooden chocks were wedged behind the wheels to stop the cart and its load rolling backwards. The men, whose legs and arms were already sheathed in leather (quarrying is dangerous work), shrugged their jerkins on, despite the warmth of the day. Deliberately, they picked up clubs or knotted ropes. Cecily and the boy had crossed the track now, and were silhouetted against the green water.