“No!” My mother has followed him up the slope from the wood cellar. “This is madness, Husband. James can’t possibly have killed anyone.”
“Silence!” my father shouts. “We have a witness.” He beckons to Michael, a new henchman who joined us last Lady Day, a tall, sly man who never looks anyone in the eye. “Michael, you witnessed this murder, did you not?”
A look of complete bafflement crosses Michael’s stupid face for a moment, then he nods vigorously. “Aye, master.”
“Say what you saw.”
“It was Master Sorrell as did it, master.”
“And you’ll bear witness to that, before the magistrate?”
“Aye master.”
“Then we shall see Master James Sorrell locked in Lancaster Castle before this week is out, to await the assizes and the hangman’s noose.”
I feel cold, as if there were no fire, no heat. I stand up and climb on to the oak settle. People look at me. I call out, “Father?”
He scowls. “What are you doing, girl? Get down.”
“Father, these injuries… look at them.” I hold out my arms, touch my fingers to my swollen mouth. “I didn’t fall in the forest, Father. Those two men are dead because they attacked me. They tried to hurt me. I lashed out at them, and I must have accidentally…”
My father gapes. Suddenly all his drunkenness is gone. He moves with startling speed and before I know what is happening, he has pulled me off the settle, pinioned my arms behind me and is half-carrying me out of the room. I scream and struggle. People rush forward. I think to myself, where is John, where is Hugh, where are they when you need them?
My father is very strong. My ankles knock painfully against the edges of the stone stairs as he hauls me up the spiral staircase. I can hear my mother pattering behind, crying out, “Be careful, Francis! You’re going to hurt her worse than ever.” Voices from the kitchen, raised and incredulous, fade away behind us.
When we reach my room Father drags me inside and slams the door, and both my parents stand with their backs against it. I try to get past them and escape, but my father pushes me away.
“Father, this is ridiculous. Let me…”
“You’ll stay there until you get this idea out of your head,” he interrupts me. His voice is surprisingly mild. “You’ve had a knock on the head and it’s turned you daft, girl.”
“Mother…” I appeal.
She comes forward and puts her arms round me. “Sweeting, for once your father is right.” She glances at him sternly to neutralise any effect this unusual state of agreement might have. “You’ve had more ale and wine than is good for you, and a knock on the head too. It’s addled your brains. You don’t want to be saying anything which people might misinterpret. Now we all know you didn’t kill those men. However, I think there are things here that you’re not telling us, Beatrice. So do as your father says and stay here for the time being. You can decide in your own time when to tell us the truth. I’ll send Kate up with some barley broth.” My parents bow to each other politely and walk out of the room.
“No!” I shout. “No, I won’t stay here!” My voice cracks humiliatingly.
My mother turns round, the big iron key in her hand. “I’ll return shortly, Beatrice. First, I want to have a word with Parson Becker.” She closes the door and the key grates in the lock. Their raised voices retreat down the stairwell, growing angrier with every step.
Occasionally in life there comes a moment when you just have to lie down and say, for now I can do nothing; for now I give up. I do so then. I lie down on my bed with my face to the wall. Then I get up, close the bed-curtains and lie down again in darkness. I feel betrayed. How could they? Worst of all, my mother has colluded in my imprisonment. How could she who defies convention herself? I thought I knew her. I have never felt more let down.
“Beatrice, it’s for your own good,” she says when she returns an hour later and whips the bed-curtains open. “People heard what you said. Stupid, stupid girl! Do you want to be hanged for murder? I don’t believe for a moment that you did it. You’re obviously just trying to protect James. Do you think that great lummox can’t look after himself? We’ve told everyone you have a brain fever, brought on by the fall, and didn’t know what you were saying. Now we have to let it die down, so please be good and stay here in your room for a week or so, while people forget about it.”
“And James, Mother?” I enquire. “Is he in the meantime to be hunted down and hanged?”
“Well, presumably not, if you tell us who really committed this murder. It wasn’t James, was it? Are you going to tell me what really happened? It may not go so badly for the murderer, if he was indeed saving you from the men. Who was it, Beatrice? You do know, don’t you?”
I turn my face away. “No. I don’t know.”
“Was it James?”
“No.”
“Then you do know. Come along, child, who was it?”
“I don’t know!” I shout.
My mother turns away. “Then I’m afraid your father is set on incriminating James.” She crosses to the door. I jump off the bed and follow her.
“Mother, you can’t allow it! It’s obvious that Father only wants him out of the way because of Verity.”
“I can’t stop him, Beatrice. I have tried.”
“Then I shall tell everyone – the magistrate, everyone – that I did it.”
My mother walks out and slams the door behind her, calling through it, “Not from here you won’t, Beatrice.” It is ridiculous – ridiculous and humiliating. I cannot quite understand how I managed to get myself into this situation, from which there appears no way out. I have heard of girls being locked away before, but never dreamt it could happen to me.
They manage my imprisonment very well. I almost feel as if they have been waiting to do this, as if there were some unspoken agreement between everyone that I have been getting above myself. By the end of the first week I am beginning to think I truly do have brain fever, the boredom and sense of being trapped are so great. By night I lie awake listening to the shrieks of owls, and by day to the screams of pigs, as autumn slaughter gets under way along the valley. It is necessary work, so that we may all eat through the winter, and make soap and black puddings and leather gloves. Usually on our farm I decide on the pig, and the day it shall be dispatched. This year my mother tells me they are managing the autumn work quite well without me – the barns are well filled and she will be asking Leo to kill one of the pigs in a fortnight. There will be no more Scots this year, so now we can settle down to preparing for winter.
One day I hear sounds of fighting from further down the valley, and I learn later from Germaine that a pitched battle has been fought at Low Back Farm. Verity has, it seems, moved there from the parsonage, and my father and his henchmen have been attempting to retrieve her, and to capture James Sorrell. However, James now has henchmen of his own, and my father’s forces were driven off.
I have a few visitors, always with the door locked behind them and a henchman on duty outside. It is mortifying. They come as if to an invalid, all keeping up the ghastly pretence that I am ill with brain fever and