THE DOG WAS barking on Mutlow.
“Gyp!”
It stood at the trees on the top of the hillock.
“Gyp!”
The dog heard William, but did not come to him. It barked and turned in excitement.
“Dall thy eyes, Gyp, if you’re twitting me,” said William, and began to climb the slope. The dog leapt up to lick his face when he reached the clump of sycamores.
“What is it, Gyp? Where’ve you been? What is it, then?” William fondled the ears, and the dog sat with its tongue hanging out, looking at him. Then it lay on the ground. William joined him, squatting on one heel, an arm on his bent knee, the other hand stroking the dog.
“What made you so nowty with Yedart? He didn’t mean no harm. But the old youth was right. It wouldn’t have done. It puts a quietness on you, does churching. You’re frit. But, at after, it puts a quietness.”
The dog closed its eyes. William looked out from Mutlow.
It was not a high place, but it fell away in rolling land on every side across the parish and the plain. Hills stood all around. The chain of Shining Tor and Shutlingslow and Sutton and Cloud and Congleton Edge ended at the Old Man of Mow, and, far behind Astbury, there were hills, but he did not know their names. Mountains that his grandfather said were at Wales heaved into the distance. Then Beeston cliff, High Billinge, Delamere, and, beyond Blackden, there was a flash that he had been told was the sea; but, nearer, Mount Ship, Castle Rock and the Beacon marked the furthest he had been: never ten miles from Mutlow was all his world.
“What’s up?”
The dog had lifted its head and was listening. William heard nothing. The dog dropped its head again, but its brow wrinkled as the eyes watched William.
“You daft ha’porth.” William chuckled.
A light breeze ruffled the sycamores. The dog watched. William’s smile changed to a puzzlement. He turned to look as he caught the faint near wailing of women that had been on the before-dawn wind.
“Now then,” he said.
The dog sat up and looked at the tree in front of it.
“No! Bloody no!”
The trunk shimmered with the patterns: the split lights of the barn.
“I said bloody no! You leave me bloody be!”
And he ran down the bank of Mutlow, wild, arms out of control and legs stretched to the brink of falling.
The dog stayed on the hill.
The ground became level, and yet he stumbled, head too far forward, off balance. He blundered through a hedge, and strode a ditch and splashed through Chapel Brook before his limbs were his own again. He made himself walk, yet had to run; but, by the time he reached Tiddy Turnock’s farm, he could stop and hold on to the oak for sanctuary. No glimmering shapes would mark that rutted skin. He held the doorway of its clefts until his breath was calm, and then he entered.
He sat on the leaves and hugged his shins. Slowly time came back to him, and he drew his hands across his eyes and down his cheeks.
He looked up through the crown of the tree.
“Cush, cush. Cush-a-cush.” A kestrel hovered low.
“Cush, cush, cush. Cush-a-cush.”
The kestrel did not move. William stood, trying not to frighten the bird.
“Cush, cush.”
The kestrel remained. William climbed up the slope of the inside of the tree. Where the trunk had split, the bark had grown over the lip of the gash, making a banister rail on either side.
“Cush, cush.”
He was inside the crown, his head framed by leaves and branches, the kestrel just above him. He reached up his wrist.
“Cush, cush, me beauty.”
He kept still, his hand held waiting and the kestrel only inches away. It lowered its claws: and a woman laughed nearby. The kestrel veered. The moment had passed.
William turned around, so that he was sitting in the crown, looking into the trunk. Footsteps approached, and Edward and Esther came into the oak. They stood, each leaning against a separate portion of trunk.
“Well, Esther.”
“Well, Yedart.”
“Well, Esther?”
“Well, Yedart?”
“You said that you had need to see me.”
“Ay.”
“On what account?”
“Oh: nowt.”
“Nothing?”
“Well, summat and nowt.”
“What is it you mean? What do you want of me?”
Esther sat down.
“Here, Yedart, and then.”
Edward joined her in the tree.
“So?”
“Have you asked your father if he’ll set me on yet?” said Esther.
“I have not had the opportunity.”
“Oh, Yedart!”
“He has been in Town; and is only lately back.”
“But you said you’d speak for me!”
“I did. And I shall.”
“You promised.”
“I shall speak for you. But are you not content, so close to William?”
“I want to better meself.”
“In what manner?” said Edward.
“I’m fretted with farms, and me old Buckley’s whowball; moiling every hour God sends, with him blahting and blasting for me pains. I want to live in a grand house, and look after every kind of beautiful thing you can think of: old things: brass.”
Edward laughed affectionately.
“Yay. I do.”
“There is but one thing that I have ever wanted,” said Edward. “Yet my father will not have it.”
“And what’s that?”
“The sea. To have a ship under me, and sail the oceans, and to find new worlds. To see strange stars under strange skies. To meet the Anthropophagi, Uroboros, the Laistrygones and all that’s wonderful in God’s Creation. But my father will not. I am to take Holy Orders, and he has the Living for me. My world is here.”
Esther pulled his head over down to her breast. “Then you can set me on, if your father won’t! There’s grand stuff in a vicarage.”
Edward nuzzled up to her, half laughing, half crying. “Oh, Esther! Oh, Het!”
She stroked the back of his neck. “Come, Yedart, come. There. There. Would you still it were a ship under you?”
Esther looked up into the roof of the oak, and her eyes met William’s. The set of her face froze and she held his gaze and went on stroking Edward’s neck. William did not move as the oak saved him and he entered its eternity, with the wood and the leaves and the bark, and the roots thicker than trees, until eternity was past.
“Up with you, Yedart,” said Esther. “Enough now.”
Edward tried to kiss her, and pushed himself away, dusted his clothes and left, undignified, without speaking.
William slid down the inside of the trunk and stood over her.
“Why did you?” he whispered. “Why?”
“He’s a lad as is not happy,” said Esther. “And he means well: mostly.”
“Het. Stanleys is fause as foxes.”
“Yes, Will.”
William lifted Esther to her feet, and they embraced.
“As ring-tailed monkeys. Het.”