Knight's Acre by Norah Lofts

Author:Norah Lofts [Lofts, Norah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781905806669
Publisher: Tree of Life Publishing
Published: 2018-05-09T04:00:00+00:00

The people of Intake, freed of feudal domination, had reverted to an earlier, more truly English institution—the Council of Elders.

Sybilla faced the deputation, four venerable men in their tidy Sunday or market-day clothes and said,

‘I cannot believe it.’

‘But the girl’s face is swollen and bruised, my lady. She got a black eye one side, a split lip the other. And what about the torn shift?’

‘Granfer Wade,’—he had been excluded from the deputation for various reasons, too closely concerned in the matter, liable to get angry, certain to feel shame—‘Granfer Wade said Bessie went to his place, near naked and bawling like a calf just taken from the cow. And all hurt about the face.’

‘I was here,’ Sybilla said. ‘Should I not have heard? Bessie said she would take a bath—after supper, in the kitchen. Where was this assault supposed to have taken place? And when?’

About that Bessie had not been explicit. But shift implied bed.

‘In her bed.’

‘But she slept above stairs.’ Bessie had indeed been privileged. In many places, even now and even in magnificent places servants, male and female slept all hugger-mugger in the hall of the kitchen; Bessie had had a room.

‘I sat here,’ Sybilla said. ‘Bessie took her bath. I went up, as I always do, to look in on the children, to see that they were covered. I thought that while I was looking at them, Bessie followed me up and went to her bed. It was not until this morning… All her outer clothes there in a heap in the kitchen… I thought… when she did not appear, that she was taking a rest, well-earned. I can assure you, this alleged attack did not take place in this house. What is more, Walter Freeman has been with me for many years. In places where sonsy girls were on display and fully available. And never in all those years have I heard one word against him—in that respect.’

‘He set about Bessie last night, my lady.’

‘Not in this house. Her clothes are there in the kitchen where she left them. Her grandfather says she went to his house almost naked. If Walter laid a finger on her last night, it must have been in his house; and she went there. In her shift. ‘

They thought it over. Bessie Wade lost some of the aspect of innocent victim.

‘If she done that,’ old Martin said, ‘she were asking for trouble.’

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