The Candlemass Road. George Fraser MacDonald

comfortable. None in that household seeking my offices, I had fallen into neglect of all duty, and was seldom abroad before prime. But that Candlemass I was afoot early, it being the day of my lady’s coming in, and we having word that she had lain the night at Naworth, only a short way off, which, thinks I, will have done little for her temper. It had been a fair priory before the old King worked his will on such places, but fallen into neglect lately, and little apt to furnish entertainment for gentle folk. I trembled, too, for our condition at Askerton, for old Lord Ralph had lived somewhat rough, and neglected the comforts of the house, which had not bettered since his death, and was, to tell truth, sadly decayed, for the slatterns swept it but idly, and nothing was clean.

      I had remonstrated with Master Hodgson, who was the bailiff, but had no satisfaction there. He was an honest man enough, stout and hearty, but of that choleric temper which makes for tyranny in one when he is given rule over others and hath himself no very quick understanding. A good and honest steward to my lord, knowing then his duties within their limits, but now all the care and management was on him, and it was beyond him, so that he made great stir and noise among the tenants, bidding them this and that, but all to no purpose, and for the household he never ceased to complain and carp, with “Godamercy, the fire’s out!” and “Where the devil are those lackbrain men got to?”, and swearing he must do all himself – but nothing ever done. He was in a great taking for my lady’s arrival, sending the boys up the hill to spy her carriage, and hindering the wenches with his bustling and roaring in the kitchen, and fearful, I think, for his shortcomings over the estate, with rents not properly reckoned or accounts made, for he wrote but poorly, and for figuring commend me to the village dunce. I had offered my help, but he waved me away, saying affairs were not for priests, and more ink on his elbows than on the page. Yet he was an honest man, and meant well, but without my old lord to direct him he was adrift in confusion.

      Thinking it well that some things at least should be in order for my lady, I bade the wenches scour and polish in my lord’s old bedroom, and put out the best linen, with lavender between the sheets, and make all as pretty as might be, and myself set to with broom and dusters in the hall, so that there should be one chamber fit for her reception. I raised dust enough for a mill, and with the help of the kitchen loon, Wattie, a great lubber that could have stood billy to Callaban in the play, made shift to remove all the holly and bay and rosemary hung for Christmas, Candlemass being the time when it is taken down. I would have had it away and burned before, but Master Hodgson nayed me, saying it must wait for the day, as in my lord’s time.

      We made what order we could in the hall, with fresh rushes and green stuff in a pot, and took away the mouldiest of the tapestry, but we could no way hide the cracked leather of the chairs, or the scaurs on the table, or the moth in the bit carpet that covered it, or the sad neglect of the walls where the damp had come in. Wattie put wood on the great fire, but it was green and bubbled and stank with smoke like the pit, which was of a piece, for he fouled more than he cleaned. Welcome home, my lady, thinks I, to this draughty dirty barn, to the wind and the rain and the bare hillside and the company of animals and Cumbrians, and if ye tarry longer than to change your shoon and rest your cotchman, I shall be the more amazed.

      I said as much, comparing our appointments with that she had known at Court, and was rebuked for my pains by the lurden Wat (for there is no respect in these people), who doubted not she would take joy to be home again, and find all to her liking. I took leave to doubt it, and was told, with a great sniff of his scabby nose, and sidelong nods, that I did not know her.

      “And you do, to be sure,” said I, and was taken at my word.

      “I did,” says he, grown solemn, “when she was a little bit lass, afore she went doon tae London, alack the day! I was in’t stable then – aye, I put her on her first pony. Little Lady Madge, we ca’d her, and she ca’d me Wattie boy, that she did. ‘Help us up, clumsy Wat!’ Hey, hey, a grand wee lass! I mind when she fell in’t Ghyll Beck and cam’ hame blubberin’ wi’ a girt scratch on her arm, and I lapped it wi’ a clout and dried her eyes and took her to’t buttery, and old Granny Sowerby gi’d her dandelion and burdock, and the la’l soul supped it and cried for mair. Hey, hey, a grand wee lass!”

      It moved me to see this churl so devoted, and I asked him, would she still be the same little lass, seventeen long years after? Time, I told him, might have wrought a change.

      “Never!” cries he. “She’s a Dacre, aye, and a Cumberland lass, ever and a’!”

      I told him she had been maid in waiting on the Queen’s Grace, “and it may be that she no longer falls in streams or drinks dandelion. Your little playmate will be a great lady now, Master Wat.”

      “She was a great leddy when she was four year old and put vinegar in her grandad’s beer,” says he, with a great laugh. “Aye, and ‘Whee’s pissed in this pot?’ cries my old lord. And the wee lass supped her milk and cries: ‘And whee’s pissed in this pot, an’ a‘?’ Hey, but my lord laughed till he cried! Aye, aye, a grand la’l lass!”

      I saw there was no waking him from his dream of bygone, and bade him mend the fire with dry logs from the cellar, but at this he made three great O’s with his eyes and mouth and swore he could not go to the cellar without the bailiff’s leave, “for they have the broken man bound there”.

      I asked him, what broken man, and he said, why, the vagrant fellow Archie Waitabout, that had been taken in the hind-night pilfering from the kitchen of bread and cheese, and the grooms waking had seized and bound him and cast him in the cellar at the bailiff’s bidding.

      So now I am come at last to Archie Noble Wait-about-him, for this was the first I ever heard of him, and little enough it seemed but a petty filching matter. I asked what they would do with him, and Wattie said they would hold him for the Warden’s men, who should take him to Carlisle, there to be hung up for a broken man and thief.

      “What, for bread and cheese?” said I, and Wattie said for that and other things, for it seemed he was well-known thereabouts (though not to me) for a wandering, lifting rascal of the sort that is ever under suspicion. I would have made naught of this, but for a phrase that the loon Wattie dropped among his babbling.

      “Master Hodgson calls him a drawlatch and a gallow-clapper and I know not what,” says he. “Aye, and a great talker, seest thou, father, so Master Hodgson says let him chatter his Latin to the Warden’s men and see how it shall serve him.”

      Now at this my curiosity was on edge, that had thought little before, for you must know that a broken man is beneath all others mean in the borderland, the term “broken” signifying one that hath no loyalty or allegiance to any lord or leader, as most men do, but is an outcast, of the sort that are wont to band themselves together as outlaws, or, as seemed with this Waitabout, do wander solitary getting what they can. That such should break into our kitchen to steal was no wonder, but if, as Wattie said, he had Latin, then it was a portent, for I should as soon look for learning in a Barbary ape. Wherefore I inquired closely of Wattie what manner of man was this Archie Waitabout, and learned enough for my pains, for Wat was one that would sooner talk than drink so it kept him from his work.

      Thus, he told me, this Waitabout was ever on the edge of all mischiefs, and had been whipped the length of the Marches for little offences, and lain in Haddock’s Hole that is a verminous prison to Berwick, and was dross to honest folk. And yet, said my Wattie, warming to his tale, it was said that in his time he had been an approved man, and done good service to my lord Hunsdon in the War of the Bankrupt Earls, and fought stoutly for the Laird Johnstone in the Lockerbie battle with the Maxwells, yet had declined in fame and fortune, no man knew how, till now he was of no account and broken, scratching for a living as he could, and thieving out of our larder in the night.

      “They say he was a clerk, an’ a’, an’ reads an’ writes, but I know nowt o’ that,” says Wattie, all a-grin. “He’s a daft ’un, I reckon, but Master Hodgson says they’ll hang him for the horse.”

      I asked, what horse, and learned that they had come on a pretty mare out by the barnekin that dawn, and this the beast on which Waitabout had come to our kitchen door, “and a bonny hobby it is, father, wi’ Spanish leather an’ silver