Abel’s eyes narrowed, then he took the package from the seat beside him and began unpicking the ribbon. A strand of Juliet’s strawberry-blonde hair was caught in the knot and as it
loosened the strand was caught by the wind and snatched away. The paper fell open to reveal a folded pile of white linen.
Abel lifted it out and unfurled it into a long strip.
‘What is it?’
Barnaby was about to take it from him when Griff put on a burst of speed and caught up with the coach.
‘Do you like it?’ Griff panted.
‘What is it?’ Abel said again.
Griff started laughing.
Abel frowned down at the linen.
‘Give it here,’ Barnaby said and made a snatch for it with his free hand, but Griff caught hold of it and held him back.
‘You want to know what it is?’ Griff cried. ‘It’s one of Juliet’s breast bindings!’
Abel blinked rapidly as he tried to understand. Then disgust contorted his features. He dropped the linen as if it were a burning rag about to set the whole coach alight. It landed in his lap
and he gave a shrill scream, batting and plucking at the thing until finally he managed to send it flying out of the window.
The garment snagged on a splinter of wood and caught there, streaming out as the coach picked up speed, like the ribbons of a wedding.
The boys skidded to a halt.
‘It’s a breast binding, you fool!’ Griff howled in delight. ‘The last chance you will ever get to touch one!’
He screamed with laughter as the coach wheels rumbled out of the village.
Barnaby forced himself to laugh as loudly as Griff: the harsh sounds bouncing off the walls of the houses and rebounding on them until there were legions triumphing in Abel’s humiliation.
And then he really was laughing, tears of relief that streamed down his face. Abel was gone, hopefully for good, barring a few visits home at Christmas and Easter. Barnaby never had to encounter
that grim spectre in the hallway, face it over supper or block out the hissed prayers and curses. His father’s guilt would fade and his mother might even begin to soften towards him.
There was a movement to his left.
Someone said his name.
He turned.
The furrier’s widow struck him hard on the side of his head, knocking him onto his back in the mud.
For a moment there was absolute silence. Even the market traders stopped what they were doing to stare.
The widow stood before him, her chest heaving. Barnaby was so shocked he could only blink at her as she raised a shaking finger and pointed it into his face.
‘SHAME ON YOU!’
Then she turned, picked up her basket and hurried back through the crowd of shocked onlookers.
It rained for the rest of the summer. Barnaby fidgeted in the house, hunted coneys and played dice with Griff when he wasn’t busy on the farm. Juliet befriended a crow. It came every
morning for bread soaked in milk, tapping on the kitchen window and scaring Barnaby half to death. Once, when she was too busy to make the milk straight away, the bird hopped across the kitchen
table and began tapping the milk jug with its beak. This astounded Barnaby. He started trying to train the bird; spending hours attempting to get it to bring him things in return for hazelnuts. The
bird seemed to catch on very quickly, preferring shiny objects like cutlery and buttons and coins. Once, when the Widow Moone had turned up selling her crazy charms, he had got it to fly over, drop
a coin into her basket and return with a clove-studded apple. The widow had cackled and said it was a clever little devil that she could use herself.
On one of the few fine mornings he was sitting on the back step, shuffling three cups around on the slate beside him while the crow looked on, its beady eyes fixed on the cup under which he had
hidden a hazelnut. He shuffled them faster, swishing them in and out of one another, bluffing and double bluffing, while the bird’s head darted this way and that.
A disturbance in the sunlight of the path made him look up. His hand stopped moving.
Her hair was loose again. It had grown longer since the last time he had seen it free from the prison of the bonnet, and rippled as she walked, flashing bronze and copper and honey and
chestnut.
A stabbing pain in his hand reminded him that the bird was waiting for its reward. It stopped pecking him as soon as he looked down and jabbed its beak on one of the cups. Barnaby raised it to
reveal the hazelnut, and the bird hopped away, satisfied.
‘Good morning, Master Nightingale,’ Naomi said, stopping a few feet away.
‘Good morning, Miss Waters,’ he said, squinting up into the sunlight.
‘Is Juliet at home?’
‘No, but I am.’ He stood up and leaned on the doorframe. ‘I don’t suppose you feel like making me some warm milk?’
She smiled. ‘Of course. Right away.’
He waited for her on the step, throwing nuts for the crow and feeling mightily pleased with himself. Though she’d pretended it was Juliet she was here to see, Naomi’s cheeks were
definitely red when they spoke and her eyes had sparkled. He’d always prided himself on his ability to see when a girl liked him: they usually did.
But when Naomi returned with the milk – cold and unspiced – she said, ‘When will Juliet be back?’
He frowned. ‘No idea. You’ll have to wait.’
‘I haven’t got time.’
Her cheeks were still red, but now he saw that her shoulders were too, and her forearms. She was sunburned, not blushing.
‘I needed to tell her something.’
‘You’ll have to come back tomorrow then.’ He concentrated on throwing the nuts, without looking up.
‘It’s important.’
He didn’t answer. His good mood had evaporated and he aimed the next nut at the crow’s flank. It flapped off, squawking in outrage.
‘Do you think you could pass the message on to her?’
He shrugged. He knew he was being a pig but couldn’t seem to help it.
For goodness’ sake,
he told himself,
she’s only a servant: what does it matter what she thinks of you?
‘There’s something wrong with the wheat,’ Naomi went on. ‘Black rot in the grain. It happens when there’s been too much rain. People say it doesn’t matter,
that it tastes the same, but it makes you sick. Badly. If you eat too much of it it can kill you. Barnaby? Are you listening?’
‘Poison in the wheat,’ he intoned. ‘I’ll tell her. You can run on home now.’
Though he didn’t look up, he felt her stiffen beside him. Then she turned and walked quickly down the path. The crow was nowhere to be seen so he went back inside to oil his bow.
On her return, after Barnaby had passed on the message, Juliet discovered a few specks of black in the latest batch of flour and decided there was to be no more bread until it was back to its
normal appearance. Barnaby’s father was annoyed but Frances conceded that it was up to Juliet, so long as she provided an alternative. They managed on potatoes and rye after this, but the
crow was unimpressed with this change of diet and, to Barnaby’s disappointment, stopped visiting.
The only thing to look forward to was apple harvest time, when he usually helped gather in Griff’s father’s crop.
But the bad weather ruined the harvests. The wheat rotted in the fields and the tree fruits were wizened and blighted.
Barnaby went round to Griff’s anyway and they managed to find a way of amusing themselves by pelting one another with the rotten fruit. Once Griff managed to strike him full in the chest
with a slimy plum, leaving a huge crimson stain on his shirt.
On the way home he ran into Naomi. He was shocked at how exhausted she looked. Her hands were covered with blisters, puffed and milky like the eyes in a roasted lamb’s head.
Her head was bent, so he stood in front of her to block her path. She looked up and gasped. Her hand flew to his chest. ‘What have you done?’
Surprised, he glanced down. It was only the plum stain. ‘Griff and I were having a battle with his father’s fruit.’
Her face darkened and she drew away from him. He realised that he had made her feel a fool. To change the subject he gestured at her blistered hands.
‘But those are genuine injuries.’
‘From the sickle,’ she said coldly. ‘It’s harvest time. As you might know if you actually did any work.’
He opened his mouth to speak but she had already marched past him and away down the lane to her house.
As the sun rose the next morning he was waiting by the Waters’ strips of land, armed with a sickle he had borrowed from Griff. To his great good fortune the day had dawned dry and clear
and his heart leaped as two figures approached, silhouetted against the low red sun. But the slighter figure was not Naomi, after all, but some spotty youth he didn’t recognise.
Farmer Waters stopped dead when he saw Barnaby.
‘Eh-up, Master Nightingale. Is there a problem? I haven’t touched any of your father’s strips if that’s what you’re—’
‘Not at all, Mister Waters,’ Barnaby interrupted. ‘I only thought I might be able to help you with the last of the harvesting.’
Waters stared. Then he scratched his head and shifted uneasily from foot to foot. ‘Ah, well, that’s very kind of you but, as you can see, I have help and I’m afraid it’s
all I can do to pay my nephew a decent wage.’
‘I wouldn’t require payment.’
‘No?’
The sun was rising quickly now and a shaft suddenly shot over the farmer’s head and straight into Barnaby’s eyes, making him wince and stammer.
‘I . . . er . . . I saw Naomi yesterday and—’
‘What’s she been telling you?’ Waters cut in. ‘That I can’t manage me own land? She’s no right to go—’
‘She said no such thing!’ Barnaby said hastily. ‘I saw her hands, that’s all, and th . . . thought I might be able to spare her any more suffering.’
Farmer Waters looked at Barnaby thoughtfully.
‘Well, in that case,’ he said eventually, ‘you’re most welcome.’
If Barnaby had regretted his offer when he saw Naomi would not be present, he regretted it even more once the work began. The ground was waterlogged and tramping across to the uncut strips they
were soon up to their knees in cold sludge. The wetness made the sickle even harder to control: like a horse, it seemed intuitively to know that there was an inexperienced hand controlling it, and
it bucked and twisted and once nearly sliced into his ankle. By contrast Waters and his nephew moved in a slow and fluid rhythm, and the corn laid itself down before them with whispering sighs. To
Barnaby’s eyes it didn’t seem as gold or as tall as it ought to have been and there were strange black excrescences, like rats’ droppings, where the grain should have been. By
mid-morning he was extremely grateful Naomi wasn’t around. His corn lay in ugly tangles and he was only halfway down his first strip when the other two had finished their fifth and paused for
breakfast. They shouted over at him to join them but he could not bear the humiliation and soldiered on, though the palms of his hands were raw.
As the sun rose higher the other two men stripped off their shirts and Barnaby was surprised to see the impressive muscles of the spotty youth: far more clearly defined than his own since there
was less flesh to cover them. He was staring at the boy’s back, rippling as he picked up another huge armful of corn, when there was a shout.
His heart sank.
The other two straightened and wiped the sweat from their brows. Waters’ nephew walked to meet Naomi as she approached, carrying a large ceramic jug and two cups. She began to say
something and then stopped abruptly. Barnaby bent his head and carried on working, trying to keep the sickle steady.
‘Ale, Barnaby!’ Waters shouted.
With a deep breath he laid down the sickle and tramped over to the others. Waters and the boy were sharing one of the cups and Naomi handed him the second without looking at him. As she poured
the ale she slopped it a little and the cool liquid soothed his burning hand.
‘Master Nightingale came to help us,’ Waters said.
Stop now
, Barnaby thought,
don’t say any more, don’t say what a useless farmer I would make.
‘That was very good of him,’ Naomi said, fussing with the beaded handkerchief that covered the jug.
To Barnaby’s horror he saw that the youth was smirking and glancing across at Barnaby’s half-finished strip, clearly itching to say something that would belittle him in front of
Naomi. The thin lips parted, but Barnaby drowned him out.
‘The ale is lovely! Did you brew it yourselves?’
‘Aye,’ Waters said and launched into a lecture about the best grain mix and the excellence of his yeast, which had been in the family for several generations.
Barnaby nodded as if he fully understood. At home it was the servants that drank ale, the family stuck to wine, or beer if it was hot. He glanced at Naomi and she rolled her eyes. The boy was
now scowling.
‘Patrick,’ she said, going up to him and touching his arm in a familiar, almost intimate gesture, ‘Mother wants to know if you will dine with us.’
‘If you’ve enough,’ Patrick said gruffly.
‘Is Mother back from Stalyridge then?’ Waters said to his daughter. ‘How’s Aunty?’
‘Not good,’ Naomi said, glancing at Barnaby. ‘The blood’s still coming, day and night. She’s got it into her head that it’s witchcraft and she won’t be
better until the old women hang. She wanted Mother to go to the aldermen and report it as maleficium but I told her not to.’
‘If they be witches,’ Patrick said, ‘’tis right to speak up against them.’
Naomi scowled at him. ‘Or perhaps Aunty Catherine just has the same sickness that took our grandmother.’
‘Don’t get involved, girl,’ Waters said to his daughter. ‘It doesn’t do to be seen to be protecting them. Now then . . .’ To Barnaby’s dismay he handed
the mug back to his daughter and picked up his sickle. ‘Let’s try and finish before nightfall.’
Barnaby’s heart dropped to his boots as he returned his mug, picked up his sickle and trudged back to his forlorn strip. He realised too late that she must now know how poorly he had
performed. Risking a glance over his shoulder he saw she was smiling. He blushed furiously, then turned back and continued with his inept labours.