and people have begun murmuring about marriage.
This past six years, since I was no longer a child, I have known that I must marry my Cousin Hugh, as my sister must marry his brother, Gerald, to ensure preservation within the family of our two farmsteads. It had always, until now, seemed a safely distant prospect.
I stand up and make a last patrol round the slopes, kicking my way through the bracken, straining my ears for anything that is not part of the normal life of the Pike. There’s nothing, just rustlings in the undergrowth as small night creatures wake up, and the distant screaming of seagulls above the tide line. I collect my cloak from a bramble bush and set off downhill through the forest, leaving the sea behind.
It is darker here, but I see it almost at once, a rust-coloured rag hanging from the lower branches of a wych elm. I struggle through the brambles to reach it, sick already. It is warm and motionless, surprisingly solid under its soft fur, a snared squirrel, choked by the wire noose it ran through.
Perhaps this tiny tragedy was what I heard earlier. I loosen the wire and lift it down, sad little hunchback. Its red tail drifts like thistledown against my wrist. Barrowbeck villagers hunt the squirrels for their tails, which make pretty if distressing gown edgings. For a moment I do not feel in any way like a grown woman, old enough to marry. Instead I feel childlike and inadequate, not up to dealing with a world which can do this. I settle the squirrel amongst the roots of the tree and am about to cover it with last year’s dead leaves, when it twitches and blinks, then runs up the tree and is gone. It must just have had the breath knocked out of it by the noose. I laugh, relieved, feeling my heart pounding in my throat at the shock, then pick my way back to the steep path. Above me, the squirrel flickers away through the treetops. Below me, my own family’s pele tower stands in the valley on its raised shoulder of land, a foursquare limestone fortress. I make my way down the hill, more unnerved than ever now, avoiding tree roots and white rocks that poke like bones through the soil. Behind me, in the darkening woods, one late blackbird sings wildly.
In the valley I pass the stonewalled midden where Leo, our cowman, is shovelling manure. He calls out, “Evening, Mistress Beatrice!” and grins. I wave back. “’Tis a good evening for Scots,” he calls after me. I sigh, and lift the heavy iron latch of the gatehouse door. Somehow, I’m not in the mood for Leo’s wit tonight.
In the gatehouse I step over the horse rug. I never stand on it. It used to be Peter, my favourite pony. The heat from the candle on the wall-pricket sears my cheek. I leave the door open for a moment to allow fresh air in. This nail-studded door, half the thickness of an oak tree, is the only outer door to our home, and therefore the only entrance to defend when we are attacked, but the result on the lower floors, where there are no windows either, is that the air is often stale and heavy. The only other way out is underground, a passage below the kitchen which leads downhill to the barmkin, the high-walled enclosure where our animals are sometimes kept.
I open the inner door. Greasy smoke hangs in the gloom. I can hear the clank of iron pans beyond the low arch which leads to Kate’s kitchen. There will be bread warming on the hearth, and stew steaming in a pot suspended from the rackencrock over the fire. I’m hungry, and Kate will be angry with me for being late, but I need to breathe. This is too suffocating after the wind on the Pike. I set off up the spiral stone staircase, and meet my younger sister, Verity, coming down.
“Beatie, where were you? I’m trying to sort out next week’s watch rota. Germaine wants to exchange with you on Monday.” She sits down on a step.
Verity at fifteen is taller than me, her hair a darker brown and her eyes a darker blue. The word which older members of the family use to describe her is ‘wilful’. Verity really couldn’t care less what they say. She is one of the people I am closest to in the world. I sit down on the step below her.
“Sorry. I was on the Pike. Dickon has the ague and there was no lookout, so I took over his watch. Where’s Mother?”
“She’s out. She went off in a temper to visit Aunt Juniper.”
We exchange a look. “And Father?” There are only two places where Father might be: lying in wait next to the highway, or drinking himself into a stupor upstairs.
Verity pulls a face and gestures up the stairs. I groan. Faintly I can hear Germaine playing one of the nauseatingly sentimental tunes my father adores, on her three-stringed fiddle. “I wish I’d stayed on the Pike,” I mutter, feeling a twinge of longing for the peace there. Nature might be brutal and complicated, but at least it doesn’t play the fiddle.
We talk a little longer about how to organise the watch, then I continue on up four floors, round and round the circling steps, to the battlements. It’s turning cold. I pull my hooded cloak more closely round me. In the centre of the battlements is the crenellated beacon turret, with its tall wooden pole topped by an iron crossbar and two tar barrels, ready to be ignited should any neighbouring beacon flare up in warning. We keep a ring of fire here on the coast. There are beacons on the Pike, on Beacon Hill behind us, at my cousins’ pele tower along the cliffs and on Gewhorn Head, the promontory across the bay.
Up here on the battlements the air smells of damp earth and new leaves. William, one of my father’s henchmen, is on guard tonight. He is dozing on his feet, but when he hears me he jumps, and starts marching dizzyingly round the battlements, his gaze turning from west to north to east.
“Good evening, William.”
“Good evening, Mistress Beatrice.”
I lean with my elbows on the stone parapet, and after a moment William joins me. Stars are coming out in the east, like maker’s flaws in expensive blue pottery. In the west the last glow, as if from a kiln, shows uneasily. Bats dip and swing below us. Far down in the meadow Leo heads home, and a homesteader calls to her dog.
I love all this, but I do not love my Cousin Hugh, except as a cousin. If the queen refuses to marry, why cannot I? I am perfectly capable of running this farm unaided. Verity and I mostly do already. Why, for heaven’s sake, would I need a husband?
“Lord Allysson’s carriage is coming through tonight,” William says in an offhand manner.
I turn to look at him. “Have you told my father?”
His gaze slides away. “I had to, mistress. I didn’t want another beating like the last one. Mebbe a sprig of valerian in his wine? I reckon he’s got wise to Mistress Verity’s trick with the stone in his horse’s shoe.”
I sigh. “I could try it. Thanks William.” It isn’t easy having a father who’s a part-time highway robber.
Back downstairs in the kitchen Kate, our cook, is standing inside the hearth, stirring something, her hair wrapped in a white cloth and her overskirts tucked into her belt. She lifts her red face from the blaze.
“About time, young woman. This broth is well nigh incinerated. Get your plate.” A cauldron of steaming mutton stew is standing on a trivet at the side of the fire. Kate ladles some on to my plate, and takes half a loaf of black bread from the warming oven in the wall. I sit down at the long table, mutter a quick grace and eat in silence. Verity has vanished now, but elsewhere in the tower Germaine’s music creaks on.
Kate throws more logs on the fire and turns the wheel of the bellows, sending the flames roaring high. I realise now that she is boiling bones for glue. The disgusting smell starts to fill the kitchen. Kate sings while she works, something about a cold-hearted maiden who condemns a young man to die by not loving him enough. I find that my sympathies lie entirely with the maiden. Kate crosses to the chopping block on its tree-trunk legs, lines up the next batch of mutton bones left over from the stew and swings her cleaver high. The firelight throws her giant shadow across the smoky walls. Our kitchen is the only room which is two storeys high, to dissipate heat and allow some light in, since there are no windows on the ground floor. High up, the narrow window slits show the night sky. Owls and bats live up there. There are flutterings as Kate’s shadow flies through the darkness and crashes down. I shiver. There is a strange feeling in the air tonight.
Later, in my room three floors