Jim Crace - Harvest

As for Walter Thirsk? Well, according to the blurtings of last night, I am not the same man they have known and trusted for so long. I now spend my hours only with the Chart-Maker. I no longer see the need to work at the shoulders of my neighbors, or to stand with them outside the manor, even when my own “sweeting” is inside. Master Kent, to whom I should be grateful till I die, is neglected by me, his onetime loyal man. I am, it seems, to be suspected. That is the benefit of accusing me. In the spreading shadow of my guilt, Anne Rogers, the widow Gosse and little Lizzie Carr must be considered innocent of … well, innocent of anything this younger Jordan could accuse them of, but which should be laid more properly at other doors, including mine.

“I’ll repeat you to the master, word for word,” Mr. Baynham promised them, according to John Carr, whose word, I must believe, is trustworthy. Equally innocent, by the way, my neighbors added for good measure — and to the increasing amusement of the steward, who by then was nodding with a knowing smile but with the door half closed — are the three good young men who thought it wise to keep away from these conspiracies and have already packed their few possessions in a cloth and gone but who knows where.

“I think you would be wise to do the same, Walt,” says neighbor Carr, already standing up to flee my cottage. “Follow Brooker and the Derby boys, and save yourself. Go back …” He stops. He will not say, Go back where you belong.

I am alarmed, to tell the truth. Our snug and tiresome village has burst apart these last few days. Master Havoc and Lady Pandemonium have already set to work. We are a moonball that’s been kicked, just for the devilry, by some vexatious foot. Our spores are scattering. And it seems I ought to scatter too. Perhaps at once. It’s always better to turn your back on the gale than press your face against it. Indeed, I am already looking at my possessions and wondering which few of them I ought to bag across my shoulders and by which path I might best secure my liberty.

ACTUALLY, I AM THE ONLY ONE who may safely stay. For the first time since the day I found my mottle-throated Cecily cold and lifeless on the bed, Master Kent has come into my cottage room. He is sitting in the place so recently warmed and dented by John Carr. He seems in shock. At least his hand is trembling, and his breath is evidently being ladled from a shallow pool. But he has news that is reassuring for me, though not for anybody else.

The captured women have endured a night of punishments, Master Kent reports in a sunken whisper. I have to turn my head to catch his words, although his words are almost beyond bearing. Last evening, before my neighbors even thought of marching mildly on the manor house, Kitty Gosse had already confessed to what Master Jordan has decided will best serve his purposes.

“I have the sense my cousin is taking pleasure from sowing these anxieties, in the same way we take pleasure in the sowing of our seed,” says Master Kent. “I fear his harvesting. I think he means to shear us all, then turn us into mutton.”

My master cannot claim to be a witness to the shearing, though. He was required to go back to his room and rest himself, until called. “They had that smaller fellow”—Master Jordan’s groom, I suppose—“lean against my door, in case I counted it my duty to step out, and try to be a hindrance,” he says. “What could I do, except stay toothless in my room?” But floorboards leak and timber carries sound; he heard the crashes and the cries from the gallery above all too clearly. The one word witchery has licensed the Jordan sidemen to do precisely what they want. Evidently, Kitty Gosse took less persuading than Anne Rogers, but then, once the inquisitors had discovered on her naked body her warts and lumps and judged them perfect teats on which the devil readily might suck, she was exposed to fiercer questioning. Besides, she is in her own way, as I well know, the more attractive of the two and, therefore, will have suffered more in their efficient custody. Their master must have promised a free hand in their tormenting if they produced the witchery he wanted, and the name. They will have asked, Was Anne Rogers also an enchantress? And was the little girl some kind of flowered sacrifice, some sort of offering, perhaps, or was she also being nurtured as a country hag?

My master is reluctant to say much more about what his ears have heard. He is ashamed, I think, to have proved so powerless — and under his own roof too. But I already understand enough about these sidemen to suppose how their evening might have advanced. They were not quick-witted, that’s for sure, but they would have been fired up by one another and by the stirring circumstance of being entirely in charge for once. They were far from their own wives and mothers. And they were far from a restraining word. And there were no witnesses that counted. No matter what they did last evening, they could claim they did it only at their master’s bidding. They were provoked by him. So Kitty Gosse will have done her best but very soon would have understood that there would be no respite until she told them what they said she must — although, of course, these men might very well prefer her not to offer a confession too soon because then they’d have to finish with their torments, they’d have to put an end to taking turns before they were entirely satisfied.

From what Master Kent is saying, I can presume that Kitty Gosse will have identified herself, as they required, to save herself. She might have done no more than nod almost imperceptibly when they mentioned Anne’s and Lizzie’s names again. Certainly, she had the spirit, the master says, to give her word that neither she, nor her friend, nor the child were ringleaders in any way, but only—“Only what?” a side-man said. Well, only foolish followers. “Who, then?” Kitty, joined by Anne Rogers by now, and too bruised and exhausted to do anything but cooperate, screamed out half a dozen names. My master, his head tipped toward the ceiling planks, heard every one of them. “I think she picked on women who were not her cousins and were not Rogerses either, or who had never been especial friends to her,” he says. And then a moment later, she began to list the men.

I am surprised to hear that neighbor Carr is included in the lengthy cast, though I am not. I surely would have been an easy pick — the outsider without the faintest trace of blond. Perhaps I fool myself, but it is tempting to imagine she’s protected me. If she’s ever free again, she will not want to go without an old friend in her bed. But Master Jordan’s sidemen were not satisfied by this. These village names were not of any interest. They hadn’t even called on Mr. Baynham to bring his ink and write them down. “So were these also ‘only foolish followers’?” they asked. Both women answered yes, at once, seeing there a chance to redeem a little reputation for their men and friends. Then who did they consider most responsible? By now they had run out of names. Who was there left to take the blame? “The gentleman,” said Anne Rogers.

“Which gentleman?”

“The gentleman …” Master Kent heard her pause. One of the sidemen laughed, he says; she must have mimicked Mr. Quill’s uneasy walk, crunching up her shoulders, possibly. “This gentleman.” She didn’t need to volunteer his name.

Now it was a pleasure for the men to tidy up and step downstairs where Master Jordan and his steward were smoking their long pipes. After fierce and tiring questioning, they reported in bragging voices loud enough for Master Kent to overhear, they had laid bare a covenly intrigue. Once Lizzie Carr was brought wet-cheeked into the room after having been tied all afternoon, and promised that she might keep her green sash if she could prove herself a wise and honest little girl, it was easy to find corroboration of what the women had alleged. Not that Master Jordan needed much corroboration. However, he was a lawful, tidy man who by nature wanted to seem thorough. It was just as he had expected. This grinning Mr. Earle — was that the fellow’s genuine name? Was he the erl-king of some kind? — had always clearly been a busy devotee of the arts, to which the black arts were akin. Lizzie Carr confessed she had been frightened by the man. He was the one who had “made me Queen, and tried to put his hand on me.” Dark practices, indeed. Besides, hadn’t the man admitted only yesterday that he’d been struck by lightning or some such wizardry?