She peeps from the window unseen as a dancing child skips across the courtyard like a puffed-up sunflower with tansy hose, jumping into a puddle. Oh, Mother, take heed! Hepzibah senses movement in the spinney that borders Wintergill Farm.
If only Cousin Blanche would but listen to reason and not come a-calling, but a child will draw her hither like a lode-stone. There will be no peace. Blanche is so careless with other people’s children. This season is ripe for mischief when darkness overcomes the light. Rise up, Wintergill, and keep watch. Danger is coming. Our prayer has been granted with the coming of a child but this time we must finish the business or be damned.
Why alone doth this season bring only sorrow to my heart? How can such a season of goodwill bring forth hatred and despair? It all begins again.
Her Soul Cakes8 oz of honey
2 oz of butter
12 oz of ground oatmeal with a little milk to soften ginger, allspice and ground peppercorn
Melt the butter with the honey until soft and add all the rest of the ingredients. Shape to form a thick ring.
Soften the griddlestone or pan with butter, bake on one side very slowly for about an hour. The honey must not burn.
Butter the griddle or pan again. Cut into smaller pieces, turn and cook for 15 minutes until dry.
Better left for a few days to ripen.
‘Hurry up or we’ll be late and the parson will give us one of his stares.’ Hepzibah chivvied her servant girls to cover their heads and find their cloaks. It was always a rush on the Lord’s Day to get them down the fell to St Oswald’s in Wintergill. Nathaniel was struggling with his boots, not wanting to waste time when there were a hundred jobs to be doing, even on the Sabbath. The new incumbent was a stickler for attendance and would send his spies to see if the Snowdens were still abed or neglecting their spiritual health. Parson Bentley was not a man for compromise. He was a staunch supporter of Cromwell’s army and the Puritan ways.
Hepzibah clucked over her charges like a mother hen with a brood. No one went without clean linen collars and cuffs, warm boots and thick cloaks in her household, master or servants. The spinning wheel clacked by the hearth and the knitting sticks were never idle. In keeping with the times there was no fancy lacework round their necks, and sadly no baby cloths to sew, much to her despair. She must learn to wait on the Lord’s will but it was not for the want of trying to bring a bairn into the world, she blushed as she scurried down the hill.
It was freezing in the stone church, and the household sat huddled together. Hepzibah could see this parson wanted to stamp his authority on this motley congregation of papist miscreants and former Royalists as he strode up into the three-tiered pulpit, his face purple with zeal. The Snowdens were sitting in their appointed pew, their feet numb with the chill. The bareness of the stone walls, stripped of any offending artefacts, could offer no distractions from the coming storm. Nathaniel, her husband, was already half dosing and she could hear his stomach rumbling for its next meal.
‘The word of the Lord came to me like fire in my bosom. Now we approach the Advent season of fasting and penance, it has come to my knowledge that there be those in our midst who still practise heathen festivals with fire burnings, feasts and are already making preparations for yuletide.
‘Let it be known that for some years now the practice of Christmas-keeping has been outlawed by the government of this realm. It is an abomination of Scriptural truth. The birth of Our Lord is a solemn occasion of prayer and fasting but I hear that there are those among you who make it an occasion of sinful profanity, licentious liberty as make it more Satan’s mass than a service of penitence.’
There was a shuffle and stir among the pews and heads bent to spare blushes, recalling past gambling parties, mummery shows and drunken revels. Hepzibah listened intently. Bentley was going hammer and tongs this morning.
‘You might well hide your shame, you wantons, who dance and sing on a holy Sabbath; who play cards and spend this holy day in drunkenness and debauchery. The eye of the Lord seeth all, brethren! He is not mocked! It is written in the Book of Judgement that Mistress Palmer did consort with others in lewd and wanton apparel, flaunting her body in such cavortings as to fetch the constable. Did not Scholar Knowles be found in the bed of one Bess Fordall, having handfasted together like man and wife, making mockery of holy wedlock as Lord of Misrule? Some of you dishonour Our Lord more in the twelve days of Christmas than the whole twelve months besides.’ He paused to deliver his cannon balls of spit.
‘Be ye no more a Christmas keeper. Shame not His sufferings with your disobedience. For some years now it hath been the universal custom to omit the observation of this festal season in favour of prayer and fasting. Let it be just another working day in this district and nothing more, or else be punished. However lax hath been the overseeing of this season in times past, you have before you one that hath great zeal to uphold the law. The season is condemned and those who disobey shall be stripped and cast into outer darkness where no light perpetual shall shine on them!
‘I speak plain. Let your feast be as Lent, plain, meatless and meagre. Let no green boughs from the hedgerows be brought into your hall with no pagan berries. Let not your children hanker after sweetmeats and trinkets, singing and carolling. Dress them in soberness and humility. Our Lord is meat and drink enough to those who love Him. He will reward your abstinence. Hear and inwardly digest the word of the Lord on pain of your soul’s salvation. Amen.’
Since the parson’s arrival at Michaelmas, Hepzibah had never heard him so fired up; his spittle was shooting from his lips like a fountain. She looked across the pew to where her cousin, Blanche Norton, sat, her pale face looking ahead, white as ice set against her widow’s weeds, flaunting yet another lace collar for all to see, her ringlets dripping out of her fancy cap. Her only child, Anona, sat quietly unheeding the warnings in her own drift of thought.
Blanche’s hair turned white almost overnight on hearing news that her husband, Kit, was slain with the Royalists at Marston Moor in 1644. There were those in the congregation only too glad to reap a bitter harvest on her of fines, robbing her of stock and chattels for taking up the Royalist cause and not attending church services each Sunday. This late war had sliced the district into two camps. Nathaniel neither turned right nor left but paid his dues when asked, steering a careful course in the middle, causing none offence. He said he only awaited the judgement of the Lord, who in His wisdom came down hard on the King. Her cousin’s delinquency brought her in the path of the constables and she was made to pay dearly for her husband’s treachery with the loss of land.
We are strange relations, she thought; I being little and dark and she being tall and fair. Considered still comely of face, with lands still worthy of ploughing, the widow had many callers to woo her but she preferred to run her household as if Kit were still in residence. They were but distant cousins in truth. Since Hepzibah’s own father took the plainer path of worship and Blanche married into a once popish household, they had seldom met until her widowhood.
Nathaniel Snowden of Wintergill was considered a good enough catch for a plain daughter. Marriage suited them both well. But for the want of an heir she was well satisfied with her stone house on the hill. It was a great sadness that her babes did not thrive above a few breaths of air.
This parson’s edicts were mightily strict for a country district where folks did things in the old ways and paid little heed to the pulpit. He would have his spies in the two constables, Robert Stickley and Thomas Carr. If there was some profit to be made from spilling oats of information Stickley was your man. They were both doing well from this change in governance.
Hepzibah had no great quarrel with the idea of banning Christmas. It was a great expense and distraction to their servants who expected roast beef, mutton pies and plum porridge. She thought the season but a ploy to swell the coffers of all the costermongers in the town. Servants wanted play days, dances and fiddling. Everyone knew that dancing was devil’s mischief for more lasses got with child at Christmas than ever fell in Lent.
Let the candle-makers and grocers, spice merchants and pedlars feel the draught. All the money she saved could be spent wisely on a fine tup or breeding mare. There were still the pigs to be killed and the hog’s head to turn into brawn and pies.
Her work was never done. Christmas-keeping was an old popish practice after all, and now that Cromwell reigned in London it was time to call a halt to frivolity. She was a sober matron now, not a flibbertigibbet of seventeen, but she must admit her feet would tap when she heard a jig.
Nathaniel would have his own thoughts on such matters. If he saw fit to give alms and tokens of thanks to his cowmen, stable boys, shepherds and yard boys, strengthen their brew or let the house servants go for a day to visit with their kin folk, that was his affair. She would heed the parson’s words for her own purposes.
‘What think you of our parson’s words, this Advent morn, Blanche?’ she said as they were walking primly down the aisle, her head held high in her broad-brimmed black hat.
Blanche followed grim-faced, clutching the child’s hand. ‘He talks through his arse, this sobersides!’ she whispered. ‘Does he not know that Christmastide is a season of joy, not mourning? There’s little enough to cheer us in a dark dreary winter of snow and ice, when the lanterns are lit all day and the fires give off little heat. ‘Tis the time when folk need a bit of singing and dancing to look forward to. I will not heed his words one whit.’
Blanche ignored the parson at the door and swept out like the grand lady she once was. It did not go unnoticed. ‘Nonie shall have a new gown and we shall call in our neighbours and make merry,’ Blanche said loudly. ‘I owe it to my late husband to keep a good Christmas. Why, in the old days we drank the cellar dry and ate haunches of venison and beef with fruit pies and all manner of exotics. Now I can little afford to feast but I will sell my last trinket to give my little one her wish. She shall not go without just because some preacher with a sourdough face tells me so. We live in sorrow because Kit can be no longer at our side to protect us. Have we not suffered enough for our troubles?’ Blanche stopped in her tracks to see if he was listening.
‘When I sit and look around this plain church with its bare walls, I see only treachery and self-seeking. Was it not Brother Stickley who knocked on my door and demanded four cows as a penance for our allegiance to His late Majesty? Did not our fine Constable Carr take three pounds from my coffers before my poor Kit was cold in his grave? Were we not passed from pillar to post, hurled from our home to make way for Cromwell’s army to ravage our granary and steal our horses? I am sick of all these ordinances that rob us of any joy in our brief sojourn on earth. If Parson Bentley’s bosom swells with fire then so doth mine for the opposite reasoning, and I shall tell him so.’
Hepzibah had never seen Blanche so animated and careless in her talk. ‘Have a care, Blanche. It does not augur well to anger him. There are those who wish to profit from your distress. Give them no occasion to denounce you,’ she warned.
You are my true friend, Sister, and mean well enough. I can take care of this myself but if aught untoward should happen to me, I trust that your hearth would always be open to my child. Shield her from their envy. I do not always hold with your beliefs, nor you with mine. I come here because I must. I can no longer afford to stay away and pay the fines but your heart is ever warm towards us. Nonie is all that keeps me in this vale of tears,’ said Blanche, grabbing Hepzibah’s cloak.
‘Then think on, dear coz, give no occasion of offence to this parson. Of course Anona is welcome any time to visit. You have fought bravely to keep your lands and chattels. Don’t throw them away in one act of defiance. We are kin and who harms you shall have us to answer to, is that not so, Nate?’ she answered, hoping her husband would back her up, but he was striding ahead out of earshot.
‘This parson is but a bag of wind,’ laughed Blanche, tossing her curls. ‘He likes the sound of his own voice. I care not who hears me!’
‘Shush! I fear for your stubbornness but each must behave according to his conscience and Scripture. Where does it say in the Holy Writ that we should worship on Christ’s birthday?’ she argued.
‘I care not for the printed word. It has no flesh or blood,’ Blanche was arguing. ‘I will not desert the old path just because some black crow caws that I should tread only his highway.’ Blanche lifted the child onto a waiting cart and set off away from the church at a pace.
Hepzibah found herself shivering in the cold sunlight, hearing the rooks in the churchyard screeching. Blanche was too proud for her own good. Surely she would not tempt providence by gainsaying a man of the cloth.
Stone WallingEvie ran through the farmyard splashing in the puddles and the tethered sheepdog, Fly, barked. It was black and white with pale blue eyes, jumping up excitedly as she passed. She would play hide-and-seek from her mother, who was slipping and slithering on the cobbles. There was a line of trees and wood where the leaves were fluttering down like golden snow. Then she saw a rabbit dart from the stone wall ahead of her and she chased it. She would hide from Mummy in the wood and jump out.
This was her playground now, fields and fields of it to explore. This was her fairy wood, just like the story she was reading where people lived in the tops of trees and there were lands you could visit. It was going to be magic. There were so many things at her feet to collect: feathers, stones, pine cones and fallen nuts. She could hear birds rustling in the leaves, drawing her deeper into the peppery darkness. She found some toadstools almost in a ring, jumping into the middle to make a wish. It was the enchanted wood and she expected to see houses in the trees but she looked up into the bare branches with disappointment for there was not even one door in the trunk, just a startled squirrel which darted quickly from her gaze.
For a second Evie felt a stab of fear, suddenly aware that someone was watching her, and she spun round to catch a glimpse of a poor lady with long white hair, dressed in a ragged cloak, who stared like a princess lost in a wood. Evie made to talk to her. How strange to see a white candyfloss mist floating through the trees, and there was a smoky perfume in the air.
Evie blinked and looked again but there was no one there, just the smell of a bonfire. She walked on tiptoe, trying to see where the lady was walking through the thicket. It was getting darker and colder, and suddenly her fear returned. It was time to walk backwards until she got her bearings but even so, she came out of the copse not where she went in. It was scary and exciting at the same time.
There was nothing Nik Snowden liked more than an afternoon’s walling, plugged into Bach and a pipe full of rich tobacco. His tape was playing the Double Violin Concerto, followed by a Mendelssohn Octet, guaranteed to set him up for the day. There was something satisfying in repairing a gap in the wall; eye and hand working together in a harmony of skill, knowing which stone to place where or facing a stone with a chisel to fit a space exactly. It was like making your own jigsaw puzzle.
A good wall was built to last. There were two on his land dated to Celtic times with high stones built in top-heavy fashion. This repair would see him out if he built it up well. It was always a sign of a good farm if there were few gaps in the stonewall boundaries. In the days before the cull he could count up to forty gaps in some stretches on the moors alone, and with grants for walling there was no excuse for slackness. Many of his friends had lost heart and made do, could not afford the expense of a decent stonewaller, but he was determined to put his walls in good nick even if his fields were a mess.
He had been taught by a champion waller. His father, Tom, was one of the best. Whenever there was a row with his wife he would always come out to mend a gap. It soothed his spirits and gave him time to think. It was better than any stress management course, alone on the moors with the wind.
Then he saw the girl from Side House sitting on a piece of bulging stone wall that was far from safe.
‘Get off the wall, it’s dangerous!’ he ordered, but she sat with her arms folded.
‘Why?’ she answered him back.
‘Because I say so.’ He looked up at the sharp little face and piercing eyes staring at him, unused to such cheek from a kid like her. ‘I don’t want my wall flattened and your mother on my heels for letting you bash your head. Just get off my wall this minute.’
‘You can’t make me, Mr Grumpy,’ came her riposte.
‘Yes I can. If a wall breaks and sheep get out, I’ll send you both back south on the next train, Little Miss Rude.’ He was trying not to chuckle. Mr Grumpy just about summed him up these days, but he kept a straight face.
‘You’ve missed a bit … There’s a hole in the wall down there.’ She pointed to a small gap through the wall.
‘That hole is for the sheep to go from one field to another, clever clogs. We call it a cripple hole and you should be in school,’ he snapped, carrying on with his work, ignoring the madam in the orange tights and Puffa anorak.
‘What are you doing now?’ she said, pointing as she leaped down.
He could not help but notice she was a funny kid, typical only child, nosy and solitary, old for her years. He should know, he had been almost one himself. Why was she not in school? Kids today seemed to have no respect for their elders.
All he wanted now was a bit of peace and quiet to see his way through next month’s decisions. The fact they had to take in strangers to make ends meet was no comfort. Now he couldn’t even wall in peace with those eyes on him.
‘Where have all your sheep gone?’ the girl asked, pointing out the obvious.
‘I’m waiting for some new ones,’ he answered carefully.
‘Did all yours get killed?’ she asked nonchalantly.
It was his turn to go pink. He nodded, then he saw with relief that her mother was storming down the field, her red-gold hair flying. They were a pair, those two, like peas off a pod.
‘Where’ve you been, Evie? I’ve been looking for you everywhere!’ shouted the Partridge woman.
‘I was only exploring and I found nuts and leaves and feathers, and a white lady walking through the trees,’ the kid replied.
‘Oh, yes, where did you see her then?’ he quipped, watching the mother’s lips smile though her eyes weren’t.
‘She waved to me but I couldn’t catch up with her and she disappeared right through the trees like magic,’ Evie replied.
‘What do you feed this kid on, magic mushrooms?’ Nik couldn’t help laughing and the mother blushed.
‘Geneva has a vivid imagination. Only children often do …’
Seeing she was rattled, he tried to explain. ‘We do get hippies wandering up the slopes on the magic mushroom trail,’ he offered, well aware that his waxed coat smelled to high heaven and he must look like a tramp himself in his mucky clothes. ‘Just get her off these walls. This is not a playground. I’ve told her if the wall breaks and my new sheep get out, she’ll be for it. The new stock won’t be familiar with these fields and will wander away.’ The woman did have the dignity to blush as she pulled her kid down in one fell swoop.
‘I did see a lady playing hide-and-seek,’ the brat argued, pointing to the far copse.
‘Never mind about that, do as Mr Snowden says,’ Evie’s mother bristled.
‘Will we see lambing time?’
Nik could see that Evie was a persistent kid so he shook his head. ‘Not this year, you won’t, and you’ll be gone before the season starts again.’ What a relief, he thought.
‘Can we stay until the next lambing then?’ asked the girl, tugging at her mother’s sweater.
‘I’m not sure … Perhaps we can come back for a weekend another time and see them then,’ came the mother’s diplomatic answer. ‘Come on, muppet, let’s not bother Mr Snowden any more than we have to.’ She grabbed Evie’s hand. ‘Don’t sneak off like that again. You must always tell me where you’re going.’
‘But I did see a lady in the wood; she was just like Cinderella gathering sticks. I did, I did!’ Evie pleaded in vain.
‘If you say so,’ came the weary reply.
Nik watched as the woman gave him a look and a sigh, not believing a word. They were an odd pair and he wondered just what was driving them so far north with only each other for company. Perhaps they were running away from someone or something. If so, they’d picked a strange hiding place. There was nothing in Wintergill that wasn’t ferreted out by gossips. Dalesmen were secretive about themselves but curious about offcomers, and his mother would be quietly gleaning information to fill in the gaps, he smiled to himself.
So the kid sees the White Lady too, he mused, lighting his pipe and turning back to his task, switching on his Walkman and losing himself in music. He could have said something to explain who she was but he’d stayed dumb, not wanting to admit to seeing something odd himself now and again. That was none of their business.
He needed no third eye nor any reminders that there would be no lambs, no new life in his fields. The thought of waiting another year to tup his ewes did not bear thinking about.
Suddenly his canned music was grating on the ear and his back ached. Enough of pretending he was busy, he decided, and made for the back door.
He paused, staring over the empty fields again. How many generations was it going to take for his new stock to be hefted to these hills; to know where to graze safely out on the moor, read the weather signs and learn the best walls to shelter underneath out of the snow? He didn’t want kids roaming around, he wanted stock and a proper income. When would life ever return to normal?
Will this journey never end? Blanche sighs, for she has travelled down the weary paths of time, over fell and fountain for so many years; a trick of the light, a shadow on the wall. She shimmers in the darkness, seen only in the glint in the eye of a barking dog, which whiffs her scent, growls in the air and sinks its teeth into nothingness.
Only the eye of the innocent may catch a glimpse of a trapped spirit lost between worlds. Cousin Hepzibah will sense her coming and her purpose, but she knows nowt of the world, confined within that cursed house.
Hepzibah is powerless against this annual visitation like some drab nag tethered to a farm’s stable, while she, Blanche, is free to roam like a wild white horse of the hill at a gallop, ever searching in winter’s light. But now her powers are waning.
I am weary of this everlasting search. Only a child’s heart sees my faerie triangles in the woods, my silver toys by the waterfall. I sense a maid is close by even now … I do not know myself any more. Lord have mercy. Give me back what is rightfully mine and I will be content.
Jesu, Maria, Libera Me.