Why I say this is that my thoughts then were running on marriage, and how it is only for child-bearing in the eyes of God, but in my mind it is working out a love that is caught like a ram in brambles and must be cut free only by the hand of Death. Or it will tear something from you.
And while I lay rustling around in my wakefulness staring at the thatch or my dreams (to close my eyes is always to see the same as when they are open on the downland) I thought how Gabby was paying for his tearing away into soldiering, despite the fact of its love for God, and fighting for the kingdom of God on earth.
But I was lonely as Gabby. I cried that night, too. Ruth breathed through her nose in her sleep and I thought she didn’t care for me save to bring the master’s coins and have a roof over our heads. I thought of all the times we tried to make children together and I could remember each time, and how it was good.
She was afeared of bearing. I delivered our girl when old Win Oadam called out to me and it came out legs first like a lamb but not with the head between the legs so I was worrited but the babby was a good one. Ruth on all fours like a ewe and my hand warm inside her. Our girl lived three years.
I was not like some men and agreed to touch her no more and turned my thoughts stronger to God and to the flock and lambing and so on. The fashion began about then to breed new types and my master made me observe the fashion. His sheep, I might say, are some of the strongest in the county.
I remembered how warm she was in the nakedness of Eve. Would Gabby be thinking now of Anne in the same way and her under the same roof with Thomas Walters next to her flesh? Would she be praying for forgiveness? Would Gabby claim the farm for his own? Would Thomas Walters leave as he ought in the eyes of God, that always watch from the clouds or the stars?
No wonder I never slept that night!
Now it happened that a shepherd belonging to the Hall had an accident and was laid up all that week and a boy ran up to ask if I could go over and see to a ewe who had slinked and was in trouble, the first lamb of that year and dead. I left my page to watch the flock with one of the dogs and took the upper road to the fold that was a little past Gabby’s farm (as I thought of it). The road across Frum took me in sight of the place I had spied into two days back. No one had seen Gabby, though everyone in the village knew he had returned. Gabby’s farm was far enough out that no one dared have a look lest bad things were afoot and they would be party to it. Some said Anne had taken both men into her bed because after the third bearing she would not be churched until the magistrates fined her into it, and then she entered in her farm boots that stank the place out. Others said that all this proved she was sickly in her mind after the babby died.
I pulled the lamb out but the ewe was torn and I used a knife on her windpipe and they gave me a side of pork for my trouble. On the way back I stopped on the crest where the upper road runs between the sarsens and gives a good view of the farm. It was bitter up there, and the ewe’s blood was still under my nails. The smoke from the farm swung across the coomb over the five elms that seemed to be hiding the thatch like a secret. Then I thought, why not go in and call on Gabby.
Why I thought this was because I would not be out that way for a long time and I could say in honesty I was passing. I could even share a slice of pork as I knew for a fact that two mouths to feed were two too many on that farm and three were famine, as Thomas Walters had lost his ploughing at Stiff’s.
My heart beat bad as I walked down and the tussocks were hard with frost. The snowdrops were half-closed, I remember, so it was well after noon, but not yet dark.
The dogs fretted at their chains. They were thin as empty sacks and slavered terrible. The yard was hard as rock. Anne was at the door looking out with a face in a storm. I tapped my hat with my crook at some distance and said how I was passing on the way back from lambing for the Hall. She said nothing but tightened her shawl and nodded me inside.
It was hardly warmer in there as I remember. The wood was damp I suppose and it was all smoke. At first I saw nothing but the window with the sacking over it but then I made out the trestle and behind the trestle Thomas Walters, chewing bread.
He was always a lazy man.
I swung the pork onto a stool and stood in front of the fire, such as it was. I could see then the parlour window and wondered if I had moved the wheel and prayed for forgiveness in my thoughts.
‘Pork?’ said Thomas Walters.
Anne was patting butter so the cows feed well, I thought. She patted and put her hair back as it swung down from under her shawl. She was a handsome woman, even then.
‘Been up at the Hall. Ewe were slinking. I thought as you would like some.’
No sign of Gabby.
‘Spirit of the Commonwealth, shepherd?’ said Thomas Walters, chewing his bread like a cud. You could hear his top teeth hitting the back of his bottom teeth, like fire-irons.
‘Don’t know as it’s that,’ I said, smiling all the way.
Thomas Walters grunted, and mopped his bowl.
Anne spoke.
‘We have enough,’ she said. ‘Thank’ee.’
As more of the room lightened with accustoming it felt as if Gabby had never been there. No red tunic, no laugh, no smell of powder. No bag.
‘I thought as you had more now to feed, perhaps,’ I said, as best I could.
Anne looked up smartly. Thomas Walters stopped his bread at his mouth and it stayed there.
The fire went on coughing like a sick child.
‘How do you mean?’ Anne said.
‘He met me coming down. When was it … two days, first light. Hadn’t seen a fighting man since they cleared our church of idolatry last spring. Don’t seem a year ago do it? You can smoke that pork like they did the Virgin. Didn’t see no wrong in her.’
The teeth began clacking again, but slowly.
‘Seems you be talking about deserters,’ said Thomas Walters.
Pat, pat went the butter, but faster.
‘Wars are over,’ I said. ‘The kingdom of God on earth is at hand. Though it can’t save an early lamb or its mother. Bitter, bitter.’
‘William,’ she said, ‘you are taking the heat.’
I shifted myself to the side and sat on a log, which was indeed damp, with all the cold of the woods still in it.
Thomas Walters looked at the log as if it were the very throne of Charles.
‘Look sharpish, Thomas, and get the man a cup,’ Anne said.
Thomas Walters was not happy.
‘He’s here on prying business,’ he said.
I sniffed hard, and rubbed my hands with the blood still under the nails, and the gloves frayed at the big knuckles, that now hang from a nail by my hearth as a remembrance of those times and my work. I can see them now, about the cup in that cold mean place, after Thomas Walters had tipped the pot of ale and handed one to me.
It was well nigh water, in fact. But warm.
‘He’s gone,’ she said.
Thomas Walters’s hand shook so as the pot rattled on the hook as he put it back over the smoke.
I wiped my mouth and thought a bit.
‘That’s as I thought,’ I said. Though it wasn’t.
‘Indeed?’ said Thomas Walters.
He stood in front of the fire picking his teeth.
‘Poor lad,’ I said, and drank.
‘Well, he’s gone, and that’s an end on it,’ said Anne. I thought the butter might be patted to nothing, she went at it so quick.
‘We were friends once,’ I said.
‘Indeed?’ said Thomas Walters. ‘Then you might have knocked the sense out of him p’raps. You shepherds.’
‘I knew your father,’ said I.