Tale of Raw Head and Bloody Bones (9781101614631) Read Free Page A

dragged me once again to my Feet and hauled me from his Orchard. I was terrified now lest of Course he should thrash me again, but to my Surprize he called instead for his Chaise, and forced me inside.
    “I will have Words with your Father,” he said. “For there is a Wickedness bred in you, Boy, and it must be curbed, by whatever Means he chooseth, else you grow up vicious as the Devil. Too long have you been left unchecked, too long have you been left to his Devices.”
    The Whip cracked over the Pony’s Back. The Animal sprang forward, into a lively Trot, and the Chaise rumbled out of the Rectory Grounds, and along Collerton Lane towards Shirelands Hall, and my looming Disgrace.

CHAPTER TWO
    So I became, for the next four Yeares of my Life, a Scholar. The Theft of the Rector’s Apples from his Orchard was the last Straw for that choleric Cleric, and in his Determination to preserve my Soule, not to mention the peacefull Enjoyment of his own Property, he inflicted upon my Father so bitter a Sermon regarding mine evil Nature that my Father’s Reserve finally cracked, and he muttered somewhat upon the Topic of Dispatching me to School. The Rector Ravenscroft seized on this Notion, and insisted that my Father write the relevant Letters then and there. My Father, however, regaining some of his Dignity, baulked at this Demand, coming as it did from the very Divine of whom he had been Benefactor; and, complaining thathe had neither Time nor Inclination to set about the Business, politely requested that the Rector either take up mine Education himself, or find me a suitable Tutor. The Rector, for his Part, was most vexed by this new and unexpected Development, and refused at once to have me in his school Room; but to my Displeasure, he found me a Tutor; and within Dayes I had been sentenced and confined. A school Room was set up for me on the ground Floor of the House, hard by my Father’s Library so that he might, theoretically at least, have an Ear to my Progress, and I was kept busy about my Books between the Houres of seven and five upon every Daye of the Week excepting, naturally, the Sabbath. I complained most bitterly at this, but as mine only Sympathiser was my Father’s aged housekeeper, Mrs Henderson—fondly called Mrs H.—a Woman who, since the Departure of the Last of my Nurses, had fulfilled something of the maternal Part towards me, my Disquiet went unremarked.
    My school Room, which had been a sitting Room not much used before, was dark, dampe and musty with tall, curtained Windows. The only Comfort was the Fire, which was lit every Daye in Winter, to preserve the Books. Often I stared out across the rain-swept or sunne-filled Shirelands Grounds towards the High Chalk, and wished with mine whole Heart that I had yet Liberty to walk across the flower dotted Turf, to listen to the Buzzards scream, and feel the rough Winds play about mine Ears. Other Times, I thought that if I could have left the Place, alone, I would have crept soft to the River’s Edge and slipt.
    I sorely missed Nathaniel, and wept much for him at first; but we saw each other still across Church, and were permitted to write. From his, infrequent, Letters I discovered that he, too, was deeply unhappy, and longing to depart his Father’s Society. It was theRector’s Desire, to which Nathaniel was vehemently opposed, that he should take Orders, and follow him into the Church. Even I could see that this fatherly Determination was misguided: I could no more imagine Nathaniel wearing a Cassock than I could My Self playing the Syrinx. Nathaniel considered himself already a Man in Nature, if not in Law, and he saw no Reason to obey his Father.
    By the Summer of forty-four I was still in my Mind very much a Boy, but I had grown and altered much. Gone, almost forgotten, was the small, rounded Puppy I had been. Now I was a gangling, bony Youth; tall and angular with large Hands and long, narrow Fingers. It would have been difficult for the Rector