Harvest

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It is only now I can address myself to Mistress Beldam, and Master Kent’s request, instruction actually, that I should hunt her down and bring her to his barn. I have seldom disappointed him before. I take great pride in that. My father was his father’s clerk. My mother was his milk nurse. We are almost of an age and so must have been ear-to-ear when we were nuzzling infants, growing plump on the same breasts. I do not want to say he is my brother; our stations are too different. But we were playmates in his father’s yards. He sometimes shared his books with me, and I was let to write and read and calculate. I managed these less clumsily than him, I dare to say. I have been his serving man since both of us were satin-chi

I will not forget those early playmate days or my family debt to Master Kent. I have always taken it as my particular duty to speak up on his behalf among my neighbors, if anyone’s disgruntled. Or even to venture a casual word to him myself about any negligence or grievance that could damage his standing here. If Master Kent has ever taken me aside, to ask me to assess his stock, perhaps, or prune his fruiting trees, or patch some damage to his roof, I have done so at a snap and without a murmur or requiring an advantage in return. I do not mean to paint myself as some enameled saint, haloed by obedience. I have been sensible — and loyal, in both our interests. To all of our advantages, let’s say. Despite the shared and joshing friendship of our youths, I’ve never said, Your roof can wait. There’re our own oxen need attending to. Or asked, What have you hanging at your sides, Charles Kent? They look like arms and hands to me. So prune your orchard trees yourself. No, I have warranted his respect by always helping him. So he relies on me and will be distressed — and disappointed, probably — if I go to him tomorrow to report I did not even try to bring the woman to his barn because my hand was painful. He’ll think, Why does it take a pain-free hand to do what I have asked? He hasn’t said that I should lift Mistress Beldam above my head and carry her.

Therefore, instead of squelching home, drying off, pulling on my quilted cap and sleeping out the storm, I only call in briefly to change my breeches and find my wide-brimmed hat and a leather jerkin. My one idea is to hurry down our lanes toward the clearing at The Bottom, where I saw this morning’s darkest plume of smoke. No, yesterday morning’s; the midnight has departed from us already. She will have sought the leaking shelter of her tumbled den. Where else? I will collect her there.

My thoughts are not entirely generous. Mistress Beldam has a hold on me, not like the enduring hold of my Cecily, but something new and different, something more uncomfortable. On first sight, my wife was at once a homely prospect, pretty, lively, comforting and warm. She left me calm and full of hope. To hold her on our marriage night — well, in truth, before our marriage night — was to arrive at a lasting destination from which I could not imagine departing for all and any of the years ahead. However, she was not the lightning strike that minstrels sing about. But that first sight of Mistress Beldam has put me out of character. Since seeing her in shaven silhouette I feel as if I have been feeding on Brooker Higgs’s fairy caps. And now that I’m expecting to discover her, now that I am getting close to where she must have taken refuge, my head begins to dance with darker and more spectral lights; my heart is rippling; I feel a sudden fearlessness and then a sinking fear. I have been widowed for too long. If there’s a moon behind these clouds, it is sensual and blue. There is wanting in the air, and sorcery.

Clearly, I am not the only one to think it so. There are men about. I hear the splash of other feet and catch a glimpse of walking figures, too tall and too broad-shouldered to be the woman we are hunting for. No doubt they’re catching sight of me as well and saying to themselves, That wide-brimmed hat belongs to Walter Thirsk. What business can an old goat such as him have on a night like this, and so late? At least my errand is not clandestine. I’m doing what our master has desired. I do not have a wife or family to hide it from, like some of these other maddened figures in the night. I have not si

The den is hard to find but gradually my eyes have grown accustomed to the dark. The cloud to some extent has thi