Sarum - Edward Rutherfurd [597]
She felt the blood drain from her face.
“Where?”
“He has a cousin in the north, who died this last month and left him his farm.” He laughed. “Not only the meek, but reformed drinkers inherit the earth, it seems.”
She was still staring at him. It seemed to her, suddenly, that all the houses in the close had begun to perform a strange and solemn dance.
“But his farm?”
“At Winterbourne? He has given it up: the lease was due, as you may know. He has returned your loan – with interest, as I say – collected his children from Barford and gone. I understand the farm is up on the edge of the cheese country– small but quite respectable.” He smiled. “He has the chance to do very well now.”
She hardly heard him. Jethro had gone. With not a word to her.
“Where is the farm?”
“That I do not know.”
“Thank you.” She began to stride towards the house.
“Your money, Miss Shockley.”
“Later.”
She was leaving the close in fifteen minutes, having told the new maid not to expect her until evening. Dressed in her black riding habit, she strode quickly through the gate into the High Street.
He had gone. Why should he not? Had she not avoided him? She knew the sensible answer to these and many other questions. And she knew also that it felt like being stabbed with a knife.
She plunged into the busy street. She frowned impatiently at the thick crowds, pushing her way through them. And then, at the corner of New Street, she came face to face with the giant.
She had forgotten the parade. She had forgotten, too, that the old Salisbury giant of the ancient Tailors’ Guild, with his companion Hob Nob, was to have one of his periodic outings on this occasion. The giant moved steadily forward, but at a snail’s pace. The varnish on his huge face, in line with the upper windows of the old medieval houses, was black with age; he still wore a big tricorn hat from the previous century and smoked a long clay pipe. But she was in no mood for him now.
“Let me through.”
But the crowd would not. They seemed to bunch together more tightly than ever as she now brusquely elbowed her way through. It was like a dream, she thought, where one was straining to go forward but making no progress. Then, with a scream of pleasure, the line of children in front of her suddenly parted as the hobby-horse, Hob Nob, rushed to attack them. She saw her chance and darted through the gap, only to find, a moment later, that Hob Nob was attacking her – good-naturedly, but persistently. Every step she tried to take, he rushed in front of her, ducking, weaving, and harrying her. The crowd roared its delight at this by-play.
It was then that she lost her temper.
“Out of my way you fool,” she suddenly shouted, and raising her riding crop she struck, not in play, but hard, so that she almost broke the hobby’s head with her first blow and caused the fellow inside to howl with pain and rage from her second.
There was a gasp of horror from the crowd. She did not care, and strode away through them while they parted before her with looks of rage.
“If I wasn’t a lady they’d lynch me,” she muttered, but went on her way regardless.
Twenty minutes later, an astonished groom had saddled her horse, and she was gone.
The farmhouse was deserted. It looked emptier than ever. More of the thatch had come apart and she noticed where recent frosts had cracked the lower parts of the chalk wall. Discouraged, she started back into Winterbourne.
“Well.” The voice came from behind her. “Come looking for him have you?”
It was the old woman. She was standing by a tree in the lane, eyeing her coldly.
“Yes. Where is he?”
“Gone. As well for you.”
She ignored this. “Tell me where he is.”
“Where Jethro Wilson is? You’re not the first woman to ask that.” She laughed mockingly. Jane gave the old woman a severe look. How dare she be impertinent.
“The name of his new village, please,” she demanded curtly.
“’Tis over the other side of the plain, near Edington.” Reluctantly she explained how to find the place. But as Jane wheeled her horse round she called out for the first time with a hint