The Western Wind Read online

  Before that, though. Before he knelt, when he came into the church at the south entrance and walked across the nave, did he look up and see the wall painting of St Christopher? Or did he stride in with his head down? I stood again at the door and imagined I was him, wet and tired, with his rangy, guarded bearing, carrying his primer. The wet and tired don’t stride, they’re too beaten; he must have ambled, and when we amble we tend to look up and around more, wasn’t that true? If he’d looked up and around, he must have seen St Christopher, because it was impossible not to. St Christopher would have been in front of him on the wall, unmissable to any eye that wasn’t intent on the floor. His wasn’t intent on the floor. He’d seen me at the altar preparing for Mass and said, ‘The porch roof’s leaking, John.’ So he must have seen St Christopher, even if only a glimpse.

  But was a glimpse enough? He who looks upon the image of St Christopher within a day of his death will be carried to heaven. Looks upon, not sees. Just happening to see wasn’t enough. Do these words matter? Is there latitude? Looking, seeing – is it all the same to you, Lord? The rule of St Christopher only said he who looks, but it was meant for women and girls too. So if he included she, look included see. I repeated this to myself; for some time it did console.

  Yet if he came straight to me at the altar, his attention would have been there, not on the wall opposite – he wouldn’t even have seen the wall opposite, not even glimpsed it. ‘The porch roof’s leaking, John,’ he said, and I said, ‘I know it, Herry Carter said he’d come and fix it tomorrow.’ ‘Herry Carter does too much, he’ll drop dead before he’s thirty,’ was something like his reply, and he seemed wearier for the claim. In that give and take, he’d have gone to his altar blind to any wall painting, and lit candles and knelt, and opened his primer at the Little Office. He’d have read from Luke and sung the Hymn of Adoration as he did each Friday.

  As for his exit, it was hurried. I copied it, with my skirts gathered in a fist. I strode – because this time it was a stride – from Newman’s side altar to the door where Sarah had been standing, shivering and clutching at her skin as if it were cloth she could pull off. She’d come in while Newman had been singing and I’d seen her and gone to her, and she’d made a grotesque cry of pain, muffled, but otherwise like the sound of a woman in childbirth. ‘Father!’ she’d said, ‘I’m cold as hell’, and I’d gone straight to the vestry to get her blankets. Newman had run over, put his coat around her, wrapped her in the blankets and carried her home, probably lit her a fire and warmed her some water. He neither looked at nor saw nor glimpsed St Christopher then. After that, he hadn’t come back to the church. The next morning he was drowned.

  If he didn’t see St Christopher then – that night before his death – if he didn’t, and since he went to his death abrupt and unshriven, with no help from a priest, his soul would be in torment now. It would be trapped between this world and the next, rapping its knuckles at the gates of heaven, which wouldn’t open. Those river spirits and airborne spirits that somersaulted so invisible and free through our midst would be having their sport with him. Hell would beckon, and what else could this tormented soul do but go back to the world it knew and creep about at dawn playing the lute, or sit in the church waiting for somebody to pray for it and do good works in its name, until heaven’s gates cracked open enough, just enough, and hell’s fires glowed more distant.

  ‘Newman?’ I said. ‘Tom Newman?’ St Christopher shifted on the opposite wall, a short lurch, as if about to trip and spill the babe from his hands.

  I went home, wanting to run, but from what, to where? So I walked as if calm, and at home I saw that the goose I’d wrapped in muslin for Carter was gone. Carter had taken it after all, despite his protest, and he’d wasted no time in it. I took a bottle of wine – my only, and it wasn’t full – from the shelf. A knife. A taper, too; it’d be dark in Newman’s house down there in the woods.

  Yet out on the road it was daylight still, with familiar rain and familiar Lazy Dog, behind which dusk gathered in fistfuls. I was anxious not to see the dean. I surely wouldn’t; he was going north, I was going south. He’d been making his way from door to door, starting south from Newman’s and working north, towards Tunley’s at the brook, which was the most northerly of all houses in our village. After a day and half at it, he’d be past New Cross now, maybe sniffing about at Robert Guy’s place, the reeve’s house – praise the Lord, he’d be thinking, at last a house worth searching. A house with more in it than a hen, a wood pile, some bed boards and an unemptied piss-pot. At last, a ewer and a chest and a pear-wood mazer and perhaps three pairs of leather shoes and a nice old coat and any number of ordinary things made newly suspicious under his crabbed scrutiny. I could see him, tiny dean, tapping eggs with his neat, clean nails as if the shells might surrender a confidence, and it made me all the more satisfied to have duped him: it was a pretence to say I wanted wine with him; of course I didn’t want wine with him, and I knew he wouldn’t want it with me – but the bit of theatre yielded a useful fact. He’d be out of Newman’s house as long as there was light, he’d said – and there was still almost an hour of light.

  The door to Newman’s place was a sleeker fit than my own. When Newman asked Philip, our carpenter, to make it, he must have asked for it to fit small, with room for rain-swelling. Fixer Philip, they say, but they say it with tongue in cheek. Bodger Philip is also his name when he’s out of earshot. (It was him who, sawing me a piece of wood for a cutting board, sawed also through my table.)

  I put the wine inside the door, and lit the taper from the fire that perpetually burnt, safe in its hearth. The luxury of a hearth! A chimney! By what divine calculation did the work of landlording pay so much better than the work of God? Immediately I went to the left side of the hearth, moved aside the straw, rushes and violets that were strewn there, found an indistinct square marking in the ground and let my knife follow it. The ground here, near the fire, was dry, and the square would lift out with enough shimmying of the knife, enough patience, gentle prising. I raised up a plate of compacted earth, a makeshift lid.

  There was the unlocked iron box, a small, weighty thing just cuppable in both hands – and inside it, rolled, folded and lastly crammed, the deeds stating that in the event of his death, all Newman’s goods and land should be left to Townshend, and his house to little Mippy, Townshend’s housemaid, whom Newman had rescued as an orphan, and his animals to Carter. It wasn’t legal to leave your goods to the church, as he’d have liked, and failing that Townshend was the better recipient of the bulk of Newman’s worldly things because, for all the antagonism between the two, there wasn’t another person who’d have the means to fairly divide, distribute and administer those goods and that land. But bequeathing your worldly goods to your worldly rival could raise brows, if the death was by some unclear cause (so many deaths are, on this mysterious earth).

  So he’d hidden the deeds and told nobody about them but me; thus, on his deathbed he could reveal their existence and whereabouts so that his wishes could be honoured, and the recipient of his wealth could have no accusation of foul play levelled against him, since he knew nothing of standing to gain by the death. And if Newman died unexpectedly, there’d be one other person who knew where the deeds were – myself, who had nothing to gain.

  All this I’d thought elaborate and overwrought when Newman told me about it. But circumstance had proven him not too careful. All very well, yes, if there was no dean prowling, and if the dean didn’t already have his arrow aimed at Townshend’s innocence. If the dean found these deeds – and he could, since the markings of their burial were there to see, if you were someone who liked to look – Townshend’s coffin might as well prepare for its first nail.

  I replaced the earthen lid, scuffed the markings with dirt and dust, muddled the straw and rushes over the top, and threw my lit taper on the fire. I put the box under my cassock, pinned between arm and hip. Must get out, I told myself. My heartbeat was so insistent it brought pain.
Thus we know we are alive.

  If what I’ve told conveys the actions of a directed man who moved with normal ease, I have to tell it otherwise – to say in truth I moved impeded through Night Air that was thick and temperamental.

  I felt suddenly that God had sent an eternal rain to render everything water, to punish us, since we couldn’t fight water – there we were, sluicing and washing with the very stuff that was most corrupted, since everything decaying ends up in the river. It wet our hair and decayed our sown seed. Our animals drank it, then we ate them. The river filled and overflowed with great pieces of our bridge on its bed. We couldn’t stay clean, our clothes were filthy and our shoes rotten. Our wood begrudged burning. We were losing our fight. Was the dean right when he called Oakham lazy and lost? Was it God’s anger to take Thomas Newman, then flaunt him before us in a painful haunting between worlds? Was Newman a hostage in purgatory, awaiting our payment in return for his release? Awaiting my payment, after all, mine.

  A force pushed at both my front and back: at my front it urged me down towards the birch copse and the river, where, I imagined, an unearthly, infested darkness had dropped. At my back it pushed me the way I was going, church-wards, with a force that was cleaner. Prostrate yourself, worship, sacrifice, do enough right to compensate for all the wrongs, do good, better than good, be the Ghostly Father you are, and be quick about it.

  I went – I fear, scampered dean-like – up the road, through the churchyard, up the nave, to the vestry; I put on a bright, white alb, slid the iron box under a pile of blankets, took a blanket from the top, took the sacramental oil, the host in its pyx and holy water from the tabernacle on the altar, put them in a burse that I hung around my neck, and left again. The bell tolled five.

  ‘Father,’ she said, extending one bony arm past the threshold of her door. ‘Thank you for the bread and apples.’

  ‘It’s nothing.’

  ‘I ate most of it.’

  ‘I brought you a blanket.’

  I put the blanket around her shoulders and went into the house. I hid the bag with the host and oil under her chair in the corner. Rain had puddled in the over-trodden hollow at the door; I took the broom and swept it out. ‘I’ll ask one of the men to come and do this for you morning and night,’ I said.

  Already she’d coiled herself in the far corner of the room, which was near dark once the door was closed. The sight of her room, even in the dark! And the smell; the smell of disease, of rooms that see no light and get no air, of places under beds, of fungus and damp. It had once been a lovingly kept room, plain but lit and dry. The floor had always been covered with clean straw, often flower-strewn for colour and scent, and the bed made, the wood neatly piled in the corner, the plate, cup, spoon and knife washed. Now the floor was almost bare and muddy in patches, and the fire was out, the wood disarrayed and running low. Food was left on the table: some broken bread, some furred cheese, a bowl of old and thickened porray which held up the spoon; when I went to it I saw there were mice droppings. On the floor, an apple and a core. The room was grimly cold. Next to her was vomit that she’d tried to slosh away with water.

  ‘You need a fire,’ I said.

  I took the fire striker, quartz and char cloth from the basket by the wood and struck, struck. For a good while we had only the rain on the roof and the chink of rock on steel between us, until sparks finally took to the cloth and set it to glow. Then even the chinking stopped, and we had just the rain. I lit the tow with one hand, blew it to flame and put it in the fire pit.

  ‘I think I remember more about how I killed Newman,’ she said flatly; it wasn’t the flatness of common sense and reason, but of madness. I glanced up but didn’t answer. There was some sawdust, shavings and kindling at the bottom of the basket, not much but it was old and dry. I laid it in the fire pit on top of the tow. It took.

  ‘You asked me yesterday how I killed him,’ she said, ‘and I remember now. I axed him; truth be told, I cut him down like an old branch. I need to be forgiven for pride, you see, because I loved him and he didn’t love me. Superbia, Father, that’s what it was, and God has punished me with this burning, crawling body, as he should. It’s no small thing to axe a man to death. Forgive me, and then arrange quickly for my death.’

  ‘If those were really your sins, I’d forgive them,’ I said.

  ‘And arrange quickly for my death. Tell the dean what I’ve done.’

  ‘I will not.’

  ‘But see what I did!’

  ‘Even if your axe had come into contact with an old branch, you couldn’t have cut it down. Look at you.’

  Crouched, claw-fingered, bird-toed, twig-limbed, fog-eyed. Only her noble un-Oakham-ish nose gave away what she’d been – a proud young woman, strong as a boy, quick as a goat, with the laugh of a child. The grimace of her pain used the same lines laughter had once used, fanning across the top of her nose.

  I stood from the fire; no logs yet, they might suffocate the new flame. With my arms under her armpits I lifted her to the bed and covered her with all the blankets I could find – her own, the one I’d brought and two that Newman had wrapped her in the night before his vanishing. ‘Tomorrow I’ll get clean bedclothes for you,’ I said. Hers were grimed with a month of bad sleep.

  ‘Do you hear me, Father?’ She touched her hand to my neck. ‘You heard what I confessed just now? That I killed him with an axe?’

  ‘With what strength?’ I asked, taking her hand in mine. ‘With all respect, no man would tolerate being half-heartedly hacked to death by a sick woman.’

  I moved away, took the broom again and the sweeping pan, and swept the vomit into it. Then collected some straw that had gathered in the corner and laid it where the vomit had been.

  ‘Last night I dreamt I was tied to a stake and you were there to light the pyre, John, and I was so grateful to you for finishing my punishment when God is lingering over it.’

  ‘I would never light that pyre,’ I said.

  Since Annie and I had come to Oakham, Annie only eleven, she and Sarah had been two hooked thumbs – if my hand would have any part in harming another soul, it wouldn’t be that of my sister’s childhood friend. I gave the fire some logs, since it was going well, and lit two candles. ‘I’ll have more bread brought to you tomorrow, some bacon. Tomorrow you’ll be feeling better, there’ll be feasts tomorrow, and dancing.’

  I crouched near to the bed and rested the back of my hand on her brow.

  ‘I don’t feel my fingers,’ she said, jaw juddering with cold. ‘My feet neither.’

  ‘You need to get warm.’

  ‘I could scratch my thighs off.’

  ‘Close your eyes.’

  ‘I’m as wicked as a cat!’

  ‘Sarah,’ I said, my voice summoning, ‘when you went away from Oakham last month – ’ and my voice recoiled from its own question. ‘Did you sin? Is there any sin that could have caused this suffering?’

  Her look was drowsy and, yes, for a moment, wicked. But the wickedness was nothing but a trick of pain.

  I goaded tenderly, ‘If there’s a sin you should confess to, it isn’t too late.’

  ‘I killed Thomas Newman.’

  ‘While you were away, last month, did you sin?’

  ‘I killed Thomas Newman.’

  I closed my eyes and saw flames, then the rotted tooth she’d knelt to and worshipped on her ill-fated pilgrimage – as if its rot had caused her own. ‘There now,’ I quietly enthused. ‘Imagine – Jesus on the cross! Imagine the sight of his boundless heart, and his head bent to kiss you.’

  Her shoulders eased and her jaw stopped. She wasn’t dying yet; when death approached her, there’d be rage in her eyes and she’d reject all touch, thinking it was the devil come for her. Her skin would be flushed with the wildness of her last fight – for she wouldn’t be one to go meekly. The room would fill with angels and demons all vying for her in the afterlife. She was too calm and patient to have reached that crossing of the roads, but I was anxious.
She mustn’t die unconfessed, like Newman.

  While she was falling into rest I brought the chair near, and the burse. Soft and hurried, I was. A makeshift altar – water, pyx, oil. I fetched the two candles. She wasn’t to know I was giving her the host and the cross of holy oil as I do for the soon-dead; if she knew, she’d think I’d given up on her life, that I wished her away. Softly and hurriedly, I questioned her. Have you confessed all your sins? Are you truly sorry? Have you forgiven those who’ve wronged you? Do you trust fully in Christ? Do you choose heaven over all the things of this life? It was enough that she nodded. I dipped the host in the water and gave it to her mouth and she idly sucked, and muttered one of the rhymes they passed around. O, Jesus, For your Holy Name, shield me today from sorrow and shame. I pressed my hand more firmly to her head and put the water aside. Her mouth found words even when the rest of her body conceded to sleep. When your lips blacken: momento. When your eyes mist: confessio. When your feet stiffen: contricio. When you want for breath: nosce te ipsum.

  When her mouth too fell still, and I’d prayed the Domine Sancte low and insistently to bring her to sleep, I dipped my finger into the holy oil, released my pressing hand and drew a cross on her head. Holy Father, physician of our souls and bodies, heal your servant, Sarah Spenser, from every physical and emotional affliction. I stood slowly and gathered my things. I took the sweeping pan outside to the pail and rinsed it clean, then propped it by the door. Night poured through the rain. I cleared the hem of my skirts from the ground and walked wetly home.

  Farewell to the flesh

  I MUST EXPLAIN, briefly:

  I was born in a house at the end of a row, in a village at the edge of the forest, and in neither fact is there anything special. But I came into the world in a summer which happened to be enduringly dry and hot, the Yellow Summer they called it, because both sky and ground were that colour – the sky one perpetual bright haze from a sun that seemed bigger and closer and had about it a threat, and the ground crisp and dead like straw, the grass leached of green, the crops leached of nourishment, and all waterways except the sea low and sulky and inadequately wet.