Blood Harvest

17

HARRY FOLLOWED THE MEN AHEAD OF HIM THROUGH A high stone archway and down a narrow cobbled alley that ran along the lower end of the churchyard. To his left were the medieval buildings of the old abbot’s residence and the monks’ quarters, on his right the high iron railings that topped this part of the church wall. It was the first time he’d approached the Renshaw residence; his previous meetings with his churchwarden had been in St Barnabas’s vestry or the White Lion.
Unlike much of the rest of the town, the stone of the Abbot’s House had been kept clean and was the pale colour of powdered ginger. Giant urns filled with wheat, barley and wild flowers stood to either side of the front door. The door had been carved with leaves and roses and looked as old as the rest of the house. It wasn’t open and the men ahead walked past. They carried on, past candle-lanterns that would guide them home after dark.
High on the wall a black cat sat watching them go by and Harry had a moment to wonder if it was the same cat he and Evi had seen a week ago. The Abbot’s House was huge, stretching nearly a hundred feet along the alley. Just ahead, another door lay open and the men were turning into it. Harry followed them into a large hall with high narrow windows. Trestle tables, piled high with food, had been placed down the centre, and at the far end a pulpit-like structure of almost black wood stood against the wall.
‘I’ll need to see the soles of your feet, Vicar,’ said a well-spoken, elderly voice at his side. Harry turned to see Sinclair’s father, Tobias, the oldest man in the town and, if rumour were true, the cleverest.
‘Mr Renshaw,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Harry Laycock. Good to meet you.’
‘Likewise.’ They shook hands. The men who had entered the hall first were hanging their scythes around the wall. Everywhere Harry looked, hooks were fixed into the stonework. More men squeezed in behind him. Women and girls carrying loose ears of wheat were beginning to arrive.
‘And what was that about my feet?’ asked Harry.
‘A tradition.’ Tobias smiled.
‘Another one?’ There wasn’t really room for a conversation in the doorway. Harry had to stand very close to Tobias. He would have been as tall as his son when younger. Even now, he was almost Harry’s height.
‘Oh, we have plenty of traditions,’ replied the older man. ‘This is one of our least disturbing. I advise you to go along, save your resistance for when you really need it. You, being a newcomer to the town, give me your foot – this charming young lady will help you balance, I’m sure – and I scrape the sole of your shoe with the welcome stone. It’s a religious tradition, started by the monks in the twelfth century. Far be it from you to turn your back on history.’
‘Far be it indeed,’ said Harry. ‘And what were you saying about a charming young – oh, hello again, Gillian. Actually I think I’m OK so, how do I do this, facing you like a can-can girl or with my back turned like a horse being shod?’
‘What kinky jinxes are these?’ asked Alice, appearing in the doorway with Millie on her hip. The two boys followed behind. ‘Move along, Vicar,’ she said. ‘There’s a queue.’
‘The queue will have to wait, Alice,’ said Tobias. ‘You’re next. And then your beautiful daughter. Good evening, my dear.’ He reached out and ran long, brown fingers over Millie’s hair.
‘Just go with it, Vicar,’ said another female voice, as Harry turned to see Jenny Pickup squeezing past them into the hall. ‘The first time you come to the harvest feast you have your shoe scraped with a bit of old rock. My grandfather’s been doing this for sixty years, he’s not going to stop now.’
‘Fine by me,’ said Alice. With Millie still hanging on one hip, she lifted her right leg until it made a perfect right angle with her left. Her foot was directly in front of Tobias. He caught hold of her ankle in one hand and with the other rubbed a smooth stone the size of a mango across the sole of her foot.
‘Impressive,’ said Harry, as Alice put her foot down without so much as a wobble.
‘Fifteen years of ballet classes,’ said Alice. ‘Your turn.’
Harry shrugged at Tom and Joe, grasped Tom’s shoulder for balance and offered his foot to Tobias. A few seconds later, Tom, Joe, Millie and Gareth Fletcher had all been foot-scraped and the Fletchers and Harry moved into the hall.
‘It’s like an armoury,’ said Gareth, looking round as the weapons count on the walls increased with every new arrival. High above the scythes hung shotguns and rifles. Some of them looked antique, collectors’ items. Others didn’t.
‘Cool,’ said Joe. ‘Daddy, can I—’
‘No,’ said Alice.
‘This was the refectory where the monks used to eat in the old days,’ said Jenny, who’d stayed with them. She was wearing a longsleeved, tight-fitting black dress. Somehow, it didn’t suit her as much as the casual clothes she’d worn the day she and Harry had met. ‘When my dad was young it was the grammar school.’ She pointed to the carved pulpit. ‘That’s the old schoolmaster’s chair,’ she said, before turning to Harry. ‘These days we just use this room for parties. Good to see you with your clothes on, Vicar.’
Harry opened his mouth with no clear idea of what he was going to say.
‘What’s that lady doing?’ asked Tom.
At the far end of the hall the woman who’d been standing with Sinclair and Tobias earlier had climbed the steps to the old schoolmaster’s seat and was intent upon something on her lap. Around her, women were putting the stalks of straw they’d picked up from the field into large water-filled tubs.
‘That’s my sister, Christiana,’ replied Jenny. ‘Every year she’s the harvest queen. It’s her job to make the corn dolly.’
‘What’s a corn dolly?’ asked Joe.
‘It’s an old farming tradition,’ explained Jenny. ‘In the old days, before we all became Christians, people believed the spirit of the land lived in the crop and that, when it was harvested, the spirit became homeless. So with the last few ears of whatever crop it was, they made the corn dolly – a sort of temporary home for the spirit over the winter. In the spring, it got ploughed back into the land. I used to be jealous of Christiana when I was a kid and begged Dad to let me be queen just once. He always said if I could ever make a corn dolly like Christiana then I would be.’
‘So did you?’ asked Tom.
‘No, it’s bloody impossible – ’scuse me, Vicar. I don’t know how she does it. She’ll have finished it by the end of the evening. Now then, let’s have a drink.’
Harry found himself being steered, along with the adult Fletchers, towards the drinks table. Around them, the hall was filling up and people were starting to spill out through a pair of wooden doors into the large walled garden beyond. Harry could see the deep turquoise blue of the evening sky and fruit trees hung with lanterns. A four-piece fiddle-and-pipe band was getting ready to play.
Along one wall had been fastened museum-style glass cases and their contents had attracted the attention of the Fletcher boys and their father. Harry joined them. The cases showed archaeological artefacts that had been discovered on the moors and preserved by the Renshaw family in their own private museum. There were flint tools from the Neolithic period, Bronze Age weapons, Roman jewellery, even a human bone or two.
He wasn’t able to look for long before his attention was claimed. Over and over again, people introduced themselves to him, until he lost all hope of remembering names.
After an hour or so it seemed he’d met everyone. The hall was getting hot and he set off for the garden doors, only to pause when he saw the Fletcher boys and a few of the village children gathered around the harvest queen on her schoolmaster’s throne. Over their heads he watched the quick, skilled fingers of Sinclair’s eldest daughter.
She was a big woman, almost six feet tall and with a large frame. She’d be in her late thirties, he guessed, maybe early forties. Her hair was a thick dark brown and her skin was largely unlined. She would have been a good-looking woman, had there been some spark of intelligence behind those large brown eyes, had her mouth not hung open, as though she’d forgotten the norm was to keep it closed.
Maybe she had. Maybe every ounce of thought in her head was concentrated upon her hands. They were moving at an incredible speed. Binding, twisting, plaiting, over and over again her fingers twitched as the last of the hay, soaked and made supple now, was manipulated into shape. Her eyes were fixed straight ahead, not once did she look down at her work, but in the short time she’d been in her chair, a loop of about six inches long had been formed and she was now fastening long straws, twisting and weaving them into place.
‘It’s a Pennine spiral,’ said a voice. Harry and the boys turned at the same moment to see that Tobias Renshaw had joined them. ‘Corn dollies are traditional all over the UK,’ the older man went on, ‘but each region tends to have its own particular design. The spiral is considered one of the most difficult to craft. My granddaughter’s brains all went into her fingers.’
Harry looked quickly at Christiana; her face twisted for a second but her gaze didn’t falter. Neither did her hands.
‘She looks like she’s concentrating hard,’ said Harry. ‘Does she mind being watched?’
‘Christiana lives in her own world,’ said the old man. ‘I doubt she knows we’re here.’
Harry saw Christiana dart a quick look at her grandfather. He put his hands on the Fletcher boys’ shoulders. ‘Come on, you two,’ he said, ‘Let’s leave Miss Renshaw in peace. We can admire her work later.’
He turned, about to guide the boys out into the garden to find their parents. Tobias stopped him with a hand against his chest.
‘I think you must despise our traditions, Vicar,’ he said. The pressure of his hand felt surprisingly strong for so elderly a man and Harry fought a temptation to push it away.
‘Not at all,’ he replied. ‘Rituals are very important to people. The church is awash with them.’
‘Quite so,’ said Tobias, in his low, cultured voice, allowing his hand to fall. ‘Events like this one hold communities together. Very few of the men here tonight work on the land any more – they have jobs in the nearby towns, maybe they’re self-employed and work from home, some of them have no jobs. But the Cutting of the Neck is something they all take part in because their fathers and their grandfathers did. Through it, and other traditions like it, they feel a connection to the land. Can you understand that?’
‘I was brought up in the rough end of Newcastle,’ said Harry. ‘We didn’t see much of the land.’
‘Everything you will eat tonight was grown or bred within five miles of this spot,’ said Tobias. ‘All the game I shot myself, although my eyesight isn’t what it was. Ninety per cent of what I’ve eaten my entire life comes from this moor. Quite a number of people in town can say the same. The Renshaws have been self-sufficient for hundreds of years.’
‘You’re not fond of fish, then?’ said Harry.
Tobias’s eyebrows lifted. ‘On the contrary, we own a trout stream at the bottom of the valley.’ He gestured towards the buffet table. ‘I recommend the trout paté.’
‘I look forward to it. Hi Gillian, did you need me?’
‘I’ll keep you just a moment longer, Vicar. Excuse us, my dear, won’t you?’ said Tobias. ‘Run along, boys, I need a private word with Reverend Laycock.’ Without waiting to be told twice, Tom and Joe scurried across the hall towards the weapons cases. Gillian moved away to the other side of the hall, but Harry could feel that she was still watching them.
‘There is another town tradition you should know about, Vicar,’ said Tobias. ‘Again, you’ll find variations all around England. A few weeks after the harvest, typically in the days leading up to Old Winter’s Day in mid October, we slaughter the livestock that won’t be needed next spring. Mainly surplus sheep and pigs, some chickens, occasionally a cow. In the old days the meat would be preserved to take us through the winter. These days we just fill our freezers.’
‘Sounds sensible enough. Do you want some prayers to send the animals on their way to the abattoir?’
‘You misunderstand, Vicar,’ said Tobias. ‘Your services won’t be required and the animals are sent nowhere. We slaughter them here.’
‘Here in town?’
‘Yes. Dick Grimes and my son hold all the necessary licences between them. Dick has the facilities at the back of his shop. I only mention it because the Fletcher family live just across the road and will hear something of what’s going on. A lot of the men are involved. The street outside gets – how shall I put this? – a little messy. We call it the Blood Harvest.’
‘The what?’
‘You heard me correctly. I’m happy to talk to the Fletchers myself, of course, but I just thought, as you seem to have something of a rapport with them, it might come better from you. If they were to visit relatives for the weekend, that might not be a bad thing.’
A few feet beyond the door to the party room, Millie sat on the floor. Oblivious to the feet and legs around her, she was stroking a cat. Her fat little hand ran down its fur, from head to tail-tip. The tail twitched. Millie caught it and squeezed. The cat jumped to its feet and stepped daintily away.
Millie looked round. One of her brothers, the one she called Doe, was very close by, looking at some weapons in a glass case. He didn’t turn around as Millie pushed herself to her feet and toddled after the cat. First the cat, then Millie, stepped out of the party room and into the alley outside. No one noticed them leave.
‘There you are, Harry. You seem quiet tonight. Is everything OK?’
Alice had found him at the bottom of the walled garden, on a wicker bench surrounded by old roses, nursing an empty glass.
‘I’m fine,’ he said, moving sideways on the bench to give her room to sit down. ‘Just recharging the batteries. People rarely just chat to the vicar, you know. They always expect something more. A bit of spiritual guidance over the sherry. Maybe a discussion on where the Church of England’s going. Get’s a bit tiring after a while.’
Alice settled herself down next to him. He could smell the perfume she always wore. Something very light and sweet, rather old-fashioned. ‘I could barely see you sitting here,’ she said. ‘What happened to the robes?’
Harry had taken off his robes and collar at the first chance he’d had. ‘Too hot,’ he said. ‘And far too distinctive. I needed to blend into the background for a while.’
Alice let her head fall on to one side. It felt like a very familiar gesture, although he didn’t think he’d seen her make it before. ‘Did someone upset you?’ she asked.
He looked at her properly, tempted to tell her about his chat with Tobias, then decided against it. Why ruin her evening too? She was looking happier tonight than he’d seen her since they’d met. He’d have a quiet word with Gareth later in the week.
‘I had a date tonight,’ he said, surprising himself. ‘She blew me out.’
Alice’s small face lit up. ‘A date? How exciting.’
Harry held up both hands. ‘And yet not, as it turns out.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Alice touched his arm briefly. ‘Did she give you a reason?’
‘She just left a message on my answer machine. She said work was piling up. Hoped we could get together in a couple of weeks or so if things calmed down. Didn’t sound hopeful.’
‘Bad luck,’ said Alice after a second. ‘Want another drink?’
‘If I have another drink I’ll be spending the night in the vestry,’ said Harry. ‘But we should get back to the party. Come on.’
Harry and Alice stood up and walked back through the apple trees towards the house. When they were once again approaching the crowd of people Harry became aware of urgent movement, of someone pushing their way though the throng. A second later Gareth Fletcher appeared, holding Tom’s hand tightly.
‘We can’t find Joe and Millie,’ he said. ‘We’ve looked everywhere. They’ve vanished.’