Of course, I cannot find a log for the father to stand on, not in this darkness or this weather. The nearest fallen timber is a walk away, beyond our fields. I don’t intend to go foraging so late at night. I should have planned this earlier. I could have sent a pair of boys out of the barn to fetch a log. I forgot. But I know there is a pile of large, roughly prepared stones intended for the church only a score of paces from the pillory. It isn’t hard to pull one loose and lift it that short distance — at least, it isn’t hard at first. Then my weeping hand, which for the moment I have not remembered, starts to hurt again. I’ve treated it too roughly, tested it too much tonight. Any crust that has been forming over it must now have torn again. I cannot see the damage, but I certainly can feel it. I drop the stone and try to roll it forward with my one good hand. The ground is far too rough and the stone is far too square for that. I tip and topple it once or twice but it has a mind of its own and none of the progress I induce in it is quite in the direction of the pillory.

I cannot think of anything at home that could serve as the older man’s perch. I have a bench outside my cottage, but that is oak and heavy too. It takes two sets of hands to carry it. I have a chest and a smaller coffer, but not iron-bound and so too flimsy to support a man, even a short one. And both my kegs are full and too heavy to be moved about. Short of laying on the sodden ground myself and having him stand on my back, there’s nothing I can do for him before tomorrow. I have to take care of my hand, if I ever hope to work again. Anyway, this problem at the pillory is not mine alone — and probably it’s not as urgent as I thought. The older man has already endured the most part of the day on tiptoe. Surely he can tolerate the night. Then at first light I will call on John Carr and we can either share the burden of the stone or take, one-handed, an end each of the bench. Better, I can find those boys and send them log hunting. For now I have to guard my wound. I am suddenly embarrassed. I walk again into the downpour and the dark. Those men have not exchanged a word with me.

It is only now I can address myself to Mistress Beldam, and Master Kent’s request, instruction actually, that I should hunt her down and bring her to his barn. I have seldom disappointed him before. I take great pride in that. My father was his father’s clerk. My mother was his milk nurse. We are almost of an age and so must have been ear-to-ear when we were nuzzling infants, growing plump on the same breasts. I do not want to say he is my brother; our stations are too different. But we were playmates in his father’s yards. He sometimes shared his books with me, and I was let to write and read and calculate. I managed these less clumsily than him, I dare to say. I have been his serving man since both of us were satin-chinned. I was the only one he brought with him when Lucy Jordan agreed to be his wife and he took charge of these estates and this old manor farm. And he was friend enough to me to let me go from his direct employ when I discovered my own wife, my own sweet Cecily, and found such unexpected solace, for a man most used to market towns, in working with her and her neighbors in these isolated fields. I told him I was in love with Cecily, her hearty laugh, her freckled throat, her sturdiness, but also with the very crumble of this village earth. He said, “Then you should go and plow the earth.” That is my history.

I will not forget those early playmate days or my family debt to Master Kent. I have always taken it as my particular duty to speak up on his behalf among my neighbors, if anyone’s disgruntled. Or even to venture a casual word to him myself about any negligence or grievance that could damage his standing here. If Master Kent has ever taken me aside, to ask me to assess his stock, perhaps, or prune his fruiting trees, or patch some damage to his roof, I have done so at a snap and without a murmur or requiring an advantage in return. I do not mean to paint myself as some enameled saint, haloed by obedience. I have been sensible — and loyal, in both our interests. To all of our advantages, let’s say. Despite the shared and joshing friendship of our youths, I’ve never said, Your roof can wait. There’re our own oxen need attending to. Or asked, What have you hanging at your sides, Charles Kent? They look like arms and hands to me. So prune your orchard trees yourself. No, I have warranted his respect by always helping him. So he relies on me and will be distressed — and disappointed, probably — if I go to him tomorrow to report I did not even try to bring the woman to his barn because my hand was painful. He’ll think, Why does it take a pain-free hand to do what I have asked? He hasn’t said that I should lift Mistress Beldam above my head and carry her.

Therefore, instead of squelching home, drying off, pulling on my quilted cap and sleeping out the storm, I only call in briefly to change my breeches and find my wide-brimmed hat and a leather jerkin. My one idea is to hurry down our lanes toward the clearing at The Bottom, where I saw this morning’s darkest plume of smoke. No, yesterday morning’s; the midnight has departed from us already. She will have sought the leaking shelter of her tumbled den. Where else? I will collect her there.

My thoughts are not entirely generous. Mistress Beldam has a hold on me, not like the enduring hold of my Cecily, but something new and different, something more uncomfortable. On first sight, my wife was at once a homely prospect, pretty, lively, comforting and warm. She left me calm and full of hope. To hold her on our marriage night — well, in truth, before our marriage night — was to arrive at a lasting destination from which I could not imagine departing for all and any of the years ahead. However, she was not the lightning strike that minstrels sing about. But that first sight of Mistress Beldam has put me out of character. Since seeing her in shaven silhouette I feel as if I have been feeding on Brooker Higgs’s fairy caps. And now that I’m expecting to discover her, now that I am getting close to where she must have taken refuge, my head begins to dance with darker and more spectral lights; my heart is rippling; I feel a sudden fearlessness and then a sinking fear. I have been widowed for too long. If there’s a moon behind these clouds, it is sensual and blue. There is wanting in the air, and sorcery.

Clearly, I am not the only one to think it so. There are men about. I hear the splash of other feet and catch a glimpse of walking figures, too tall and too broad-shouldered to be the woman we are hunting for. No doubt they’re catching sight of me as well and saying to themselves, That wide-brimmed hat belongs to Walter Thirsk. What business can an old goat such as him have on a night like this, and so late? At least my errand is not clandestine. I’m doing what our master has desired. I do not have a wife or family to hide it from, like some of these other maddened figures in the night. I have not sinned against the woman yet, except the sin of thinking it, of thinking that she might not want to sleep alone in that great barn but would prefer a cottage bed. I will dry her with my damaged hand. My damaged hand will pay amends to her.

The den is hard to find but gradually my eyes have grown accustomed to the dark. The cloud to some extent has thinned. There is no moonlight but there is at least a muffled promise of the dawn to come, enough to make out shapes and outlines. There’s the great black wall of trees, now heavily and noisily shedding water. And there’s the pile of what was once her hurried, rough-and-ready walls. I’d call her name. It doesn’t matter if my lurking neighbors hear. Let them understand that I have come with proper cause. But we have been too remiss in our hospitality. We do not have the woman’s name. “Mistress Beldam” will not do. Just “Mistress,” then. I call it out. But no reply. And no response when I step forward like a moonstruck youth with shaking hands to pull aside the sacking and the timber. The forest is a din of rain. Beyond the cascades and the waterfalls, I hear the fidgeting of feet that might belong to anyone or anything, a cough that could be human or a fox, the crack of snapping wood. I call out “Mistress” twenty times, to no avail. She must have taken refuge in some other den. Or else she hears but will not answer me.