‘I expect that she means her love for God,’ I began but my voice faltered when his stare moved from the text and on to me.
‘I will not permit anyone to take my daughter from me,’ he said, his voice deep and slow. ‘Her place is here with me. She is lady of this house and has promised me that she will always be. If she goes to that boy again. I will burn his home to the ground with him still inside it!’
I heard a little chuckle at the back of my throat. I wanted him to laugh too. I wanted him to stop and explain that he was joking and for the smile to cover his face again.
But his eyes bored into me. ‘The same goes for anyone who helps her.’
‘I’m not sure what you mean,’ I began, my legs starting to shudder beneath me.
But my words were lost under the thunder of his voice: ‘Whatever favour you are trying to win from my daughter won’t work. She does not care for you. I have told you it is just her games!’
‘I-I’m not,’ I whispered. ‘I—’
But the words were knocked from me. Everything seemed to darken for a moment and I felt a thud on my head, the scrape of his fingers on the top of my scalp and the crack of his knuckles against my skull. Then I saw his chest large against my face, a button on his jacket scraping my cheek. My chin was forced back, a line of heat burning across my throat, pulling tighter and tighter until I felt the strings of my bonnet snap from under my chin and I fell backwards against the door, my shoulder striking the hard wood.
He towered over me – his large arm stretched out in front of him, my little lace bonnet hanging limply from his fingers.
And then I realised that my head was not covered. I pulled my knees up to my chest and buried my face in them, my fingers laced over my naked head. He could see how my hair was no longer than the fur of an animal. He could see the pitted areas where I had pulled it from my scalp and the straggled ends that my mother had tried to save. He could see what I had done, and he could see my shame.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I always suspected that your mother was covering something up, but I never expected you to be a lunatic. You must tell the boy to get away from here or I will have you put away where your kind belong!’
‘Yes,’ I sobbed. ‘I will tell him.’
There was a bang on the wall above me, the Bible landing at my feet as the sound echoed along the corridor.
‘Sir Howard?’ It was Dora’s voice, but it was faint as if muffled by a maze of walls and corridors.
He threw my bonnet back at me and I grabbed it, frantically trying to pull the thin material back over my head.
‘You cannot speak of this,’ he hissed. ‘On May Day you will meet us in the village as if nothing has happened and you will walk with Iris in the procession. After that she will no longer have any visitors. You will not see her again.’
I nodded, but I could not look at him.
‘Sir Howard?’ Dora’s voice was now closer, her footsteps echoing along the corridor. ‘I heard a bang. Is everything alright? I heard it all the way from the scullery.’
He did not answer her, just stared at me.
‘You cry when things do not go your way,’ he said bitterly, ‘just like she does.’
Then he walked slowly to the door, turned the key in the lock and opened it wide for me.
‘Goodbye, Miss Ryland,’ he called loudly.
I scrambled to my feet and stepped through the doorway.
‘Time to go home,’ he said, smiling once more. His words were not a farewell but a warning – a command that I had to obey.
I ran.
* * *
There was no sound but the whirl of the wind in my ears. Trees and hedgerows skimmed across the fields and the ground blurred beneath my feet. I do not know how long I ran for or where I thought I was going, but after a while I began to stumble over rocks in the path and my stockings became snagged in gorse and bracken. Then it all came spinning to a halt.
It was only once I had stopped to catch my breath that I looked around me. I had not run back home to Oak Cottage with my comfy chair by the window, the warmth from the fire and the familiar smells of aired washing and broth simmering on the stove – I had come to another place.
The door in front of me was closed, just as it had been the last time I had visited – the time that I had sat on the bench under the window and listened to the laughter coming through the walls and watched the spider’s web quivering on the pump handle. I did not know why I had come to the tack room and I thought of turning back, but then the door opened.
Sam’s face seemed to freeze when he saw me and I suddenly realised how I must have looked to him. I felt the dampness of my dress around my armpits and the hardness at the back of my stockings where the blood was starting to dry from the blisters that had been re-cut. My face itched with sweat, and my eyes felt raw from tears and the dry wind of the common. And then there was my head, naked without the bonnet that I could not refasten. I heard Sir Howard’s words in my head again – ‘lunatic’ – and I wondered if this was also what Sam saw in front of him now.
‘Oh, Sam!’ I said but then nothing more because I realised that I did not need to.
Sam dropped the basket he had been carrying and hurried over to me. He took my hand and led me into the tack room, where he sat me down on his bed and carefully removed my boots. He put his pillow behind my back and stoked the brazier in the corner, testing the old blackened kettle with the tip of his finger. Then he put a blanket round my shoulders and gently folded down my stockings, carefully loosening the crusted blood from my skin. He poured the warm water from the kettle into a bucket and washed my feet with his bar of carbolic soap, then he patted the wounds dry and bound my ankles with strips of linen. All this time he did not question me. In fact, he did not say a word and I thought it because he knew that I did not have the voice to answer him.
Then the sounds, sights and smells of the world around me came flooding back and I realised that my senses had been muffled – a numbness that I was only aware of now that it was gone. I felt a warm weight in my limbs and I sank back into the softness of the bed and started to become aware of the things around me once more – the smell of the soap, the warmth of Sam’s hands as he lifted my feet on to a little cushion and the glint of russet stubble on his cheek.
He took the kettle from the brazier once more and poured the rest of the water into a battered teapot, setting two tin mugs down beside it.
‘I’m sorry it’s not wine,’ he said.
I laughed. ‘I wouldn’t expect it,’ I said. ‘Not in this village, for I haven’t seen another bottle since my father’s wake.’
‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry for bringing the wine into the church with me that day. I just thought that you needed cheering up and that it would not be missed at the wake. I wasn’t thinking of what would happen to you.’
‘You came back to the church with me,’ I said. ‘That is what matters. No one else even noticed that I was gone.’
He parted his lips slightly as if trying to think of a question, the right one, but I knew that whatever words he used, I could not answer him.
‘I can’t tell you what happened to me, Sam,’ I said. ‘I can’t say any more.’
‘It’s him, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘He has driven you here.’