Harvest A Novel by Jim Crace Read Free Book Online

Master Kent, that other recent widower, swaying at my side. The women skirmish with the men, stamping feet and swirling kerchiefs. The mopsies and the lads are far too close. They’re holding wrists. They’re touching waists. It’s possible, in such a ducking light and with such happy havoc in command, that kisses are exchanged, and promises. We are a heathen company, more devoted to the customs and the Holy days than to the Holiness itself. We find more pleasure in the song and dance of God than in the piety. Thank heavens that we do not have a priest to witness it.
    We should have guessed the spitting woman would arrive just atthe moment we were merriest. This is for me first sight of her. She’s standing at the gate of the barn, beyond the reach of our lights and keeping so still that she also seems beyond the reach of pipe and fiddle. But there is no doubting who she is, unless we have a ghostly visitor, one of our wives or daughters resurrected from her grave, left thin by death. She’s tinier than I expected, imposing in a smaller way than usual. But there’s the heavy velvet shawl I’ve heard about, and there’s the tufted, rudely shaven head. She looks as drenched as a pond-ducked witch or scold. “It’s Mistress Beldam,” Master Kent mutters to me, giving her a name I know will stick. Beldam, the sorceress. Belle Dame, the beautiful. The dancers have not seen her, though. It’s only when our fiddler sets aside his bow, drops his tune and rises from his stool to look across my neighbors’ heads toward our stubbled visitor that everybody stops and turns. She’s hardly visible. She’s little more than dark on dark, a body shape. We cannot see her eyes or face as yet, or make out the bloody scar across her naked head. She does not speak—perhaps we have imagined her; she is a specter summoned up by ale and dance. The mood has changed. It’s heavier. We were liquid; now we’re stones. The night is closing on a broken note.
    We know we ought to make amends for shearing her. That’s why she’s standing there, awaiting us. She’s asking us to witness what we’ve done. I have a sense that some men in the throng might any moment offer her their hand, some women too, and lead her to our circles and our squares to swirl with us. For a moment, the temper of the barn is not that she has shamed our evening but that we’ve found our Gleaning Queen. We only need to bring her to the light and crown her there and then, and all is well. Another dream. In this, her hair is long and black again; her men are walking free, uncollared and uncuffed; our wooden cross is restored to holiness and draped in rosaries; and, no, we weren’t surprised by twists of smoke at dawn today; and there are doves. Yes, there are doves. They’re circling, white consciences onwing. At first the sight of them is heart-lifting. But still they’re circling. They cannot find a place to feed. This is their hereafter. They’re searching for the gleaning fields, but there are none.
    At the movement of the dancers, their lifting hands, the woman backs away, still facing us, not trusting us perhaps. She must know that if she hesitates the men will swarm round her like a cloud of gnats. It is only when she draws level with the gate that she turns toward it and the dark and goes forward, steps outside, and we are left to exchange, well, sheepish glances. We know the pipe and fiddle cannot play again. We cannot dance. We bid one another uncomfortable good nights, and hurry home to sleep the evening off, or lay awake, or worse.
    I hope—like everyone—to find the woman when I leave. But I have better cause than them. Master Kent has asked me to. He says that I should bring her back, bring Mistress Beldam to the barn and let her pass the night with his straw bales as her mattress and a velvet shawl as coverlet. He does not count it proper that a woman, any woman, no matter what her felonies might be, should spend a night alone and unprotected from