Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [587]
But the most important feature of the place lay on her left: the bourne.
It was empty. Dry as a bone. Strands of straw, twigs, husks from nut-filled hedgerows, stinging nettles and dockleaves were all the small trench contained. From the roadway, over this ditch, three little wooden bridges led to the path that passed along the front of the cottages on the left.
It had been dry all summer, for such is the nature of the winter bourne. But when the November rains began to fall upon the high ground, when snow and ice covered the rolling ridges and then the great thaws of spring set in, then the waters would descend, sometimes a steady stream, sometimes a deluge, cascading off the uplands, down slopes, down grassy ravine and chalky gulch: the waters would descend off the great bare spaces and flow joyously, carrying all before them, into the channels of the winter bourne. For six months of the year the quiet, deserted hamlet would quiver into renewed life beside its briskly running stream.
This was the ancient magic of the winter bournes round the edge of Salisbury Plain.
A child directed her to Jethro Wilson’s farm, which lay up a small track, two hundred yards from the main street. The track was overgrown and rutted; her horse picked her way up it gingerly.
“I have come to see Mr Wilson.” Why did she suddenly feel awkward?
“He’ll be back presently.” There was no invitation to enter. Obviously this was the old woman who kept the place, a thin, hard-faced, sharp-eyed creature in a red and purple shawl. She gave Jane a strange, measuring look before closing the side door.
It was – it had once been – a typical farmhouse with a low fence of wooden railings, once painted white, across the front. A narrow path led thirty feet from the little gate to the front door, hardly ever used except for a wedding or a funeral. There was a room with a window each side of the door, and three smaller windows above. On the left hand side, a wing went back another thirty feet, in which a door and a motley collection of small windows seemed to have been set at random. The walls were brick and stone. Behind the wing was a once splendid addition enclosing the vegetable garden: a long chalk wall. They were one of her favourite features of the region, these chalk walls. Quarried from the sides of ridges, solid white chalk, cut into huge blocks and stacked, two feet thick, seven or eight feet high, soft to the touch, and surmounted by a coping of thatch that jutted out with an overhang of up to a foot, to protect the soft sides from the weathering of continuous rainwater.
It could have been a fine place. But it was not.
Jethro Wilson’s farm was utterly desolate.
The paint was peeling from the window frames and the paths around were overgrown; the thatch, turned grey with age, was falling slowly apart; the two thatch pheasants that had once stood proudly on the roof of the house and on the top of the chalk were now nothing more than broken frames. She sighed. Nothing was sadder than a run-down farm.
Yet when he appeared a few minutes later, Jethro seemed in good spirits. His shirt was open at the neck and he had a day’s growth of beard; but as he came to her side, the place seemed to take on a more hopeful aspect.
He motioned towards the farmhouse, a little ruefully.
“A lot to do, miss.”
“Yes.”
“Do you Want to see round?”
She did.
He took her into the walled garden first. There were two damson trees and an old mulberry, whose soft fruit had been gathered in a basket. There was also a pear tree but it seemed to be dying. There were potatoes and carrots.
“If you don’t repair the thatch on that wall, the chalk will wear away. Worse, the water will seep inside and then crack the wall when it freezes.”
He nodded. “Have to mend the house too.”
“Can you do it?”
He shrugged.
“I dunno, miss.”
“Show me the rest,