Mist Over Pendle Read Online Free PDF Page B

or no papist, I’m not the man to harry him for the sport of it. There are houses here where a priest or two may verily be behind a chimney. But what of it? Who’s harmed?”
    Margery brooded. These were not at all the views that her brothers had held. Soon she came to it again.
    “But--six years ago sir, when the powder was placed....“
    “Oh that? Catesby and his crew? The man was mad. But our papists here are not such as he. They’re country gentlemen, concerned with their pigs and their corn and the worth of their October.”
    “October?”
    “Ale, little cousin--the gift of God.”
    He seemed to dismiss the matter, and while Margery groped for an answer, it happened. She had foreseen it and she had forgotten it; and now it happened. The grey mare slipped and recovered. Margery slipped and did not recover. She slipped wholly from the saddle, down the mare’s flanks, and into the long dry grass that fringed the track. And for the second time that day she sat looking ruefully upwards at a laughing cousin.
    Then he dismounted in one unbroken movement. Gloved hands came behind her shoulders and pulled her easily to her feet. He brushed dry grass from her back, and helped her to mount. Thereafter they went at a cautious walk.
    They came to a fork of the road and he bore to the left, remarking that this was their road for Whalley. It seemed to rouse him from his thoughts, and there was a suspicious crinkle in his forehead as he looked across at Margery.
    “Little cousin!”
    His tone warned her that the impish mood had him again, and she watched him warily. But he was stroking his horse’s neck and seemed in no hurrry.
    “In the days of my youth,” he said at length, “when I was young and lewd, a wench had two legs like the rest of us. No doubt she still has?”
    Margery gasped. She had not learned to answer men who talked like this.
    “Why yes, sir.” There seemed nothing else to say.
    “Then why,” asked Roger airily, “why the Devil can’t she put them one each side a horse like the rest of us?”
    Margery crushed surprise and sought for an answer. Something warned her that this, or at least the manner of it, was meant to test her. If so, it would be proper to show a seemly confusion. But then, as she groped for words, some deep instinct warned her against dissembling. For this man, only the truth was fitting. So she decided on truth, but truth clothed in his own short phrases.
    “As to wenches in general,” she said, “they fear to be unseemly. As to this wench in particular, she at least fears to be thought unseemly.”
    He looked sharply at her.
    “You distinguish nicely. But why?”
    His tone was not unfriendly, and Margery decided to stick to the truth.
    “It’s the girl who’s thought unseemly who’s punished.”
    “Rather than the one who truly is? You see sharply for your youth. It is even so.” He looked her in the eyes, and then he nodded thoughtfully. “It’s as I suppose, little cousin. You’ve been bred a puritan.”
    “Why--why yes sir. I think I have.”
    Again he was silent as the horses ambled on; and now, as they traversed the ups and downs of the undulating road, something new caught her eye. She began to see, from each rise of the road, a great broad-backed hill which ran across the sky before them, a sweep of green set against the blue. She looked at it idly, then with interest, and at last searchingly; she began to feel under a compulsion to look at it--almost its compulsion. There was something odd about this hill, something not to be defined, something she could almost fancy to be disturbing. Disturbing or not, this hill compelled attention.
    “Little cousin....“
    Margery’s mind left the hill at once; she was learning that this form of address usually presaged something that needed full attention. He was looking directly at her.
    “Were you bred a puritan, or bred among puritans? Which?”
    She stared back, puzzled, and he explained himself.
    “Are you in truth