Read The Town House for Free Online Page B

nowt.’
    ‘I should be grateful to you all my life,’ I said. ‘Is Baildon where you go to sell your herrings?’
    ‘One of the places. It’s a fine large town with the best market in these parts. And it’s a long way from Norfolk,’ she added slyly.
    ‘How do you know that I am from Norfolk?’
    ‘By your tongue. Hereabouts we talk different. We sing our words. Silly Suffolk, some call us, but in the old days it was Singing Suffolk. Still, don’t worry about that, we’ll fash up a tale to explain. There, you’ve done a good job on that basket; good as new.’
    We were on the move early in the grey and rosy dawn, for the old woman was anxious to get on. She and I breakfasted on herrings, from which Kate still turned sickened away, but she ate heartily of the bread.
    ‘The little mawther can ride the ass for a bit, you and I’ll hump the baskets. We’ll go faster that way.’
    Old and shrunken as she was she set a fast pace, one which I, carrying one basket, could only just manage, and to which the donkey held unwillingly, urged on by a light blow now and again. The foal frisked along, light as a leaf, unaware that his unburdened days were numbered.
    Three miles along the road we came to a wide open space, which had also been cleared in some past time and was now all grass and self-sown bushes. Above the tangle some white columns rose, one complete, twice my height and beautifully carved at the top. Others were broken.
    ‘There’s a good well here,’ the old woman said briskly. ‘This is where I aim to spend the night when I’m this way.’
    There was a well in Rede manor yard, but nothing like this one, all buried in bushes and weeds. This was a basin of that same white stone as made the pillars and shaped something like a church font, but one side was higher than the others and had a horse’s head carved upon it, the water ran in a clear steady trickle out of the horse’s mouth, into the basin. We all drank from it.
    ‘Now we’ll load the donkey and go in proper fashion,’ our guide said. That done she took the animal’s bridle and dragged it forward, through some bushes and a belt of trees and in a few minutes we stood on a piece of common ground, beyond which was a sight which to me was new and most marvellous. When I say new, I mean to my eyes . Inside my head a picture something like it had formed when I had heard anything about Jerusalem. But my imagination had been small and mean compared withthis reality. This town was walled, though in places the wall had been neglected and allowed to crumble; inside the walls were the crowded roofs of a multitude of houses, and rising above them were some great towers, taller than the highest tree I had ever seen. One in particular seemed to soar into the sky, with buttresses and pinnacles of extreme grace and beauty.
    ‘That is Baildon Abbey,’ said the old woman, seeing me staring. ‘Don’t stand goggling now. If Armstrong takes you you’ll have plenty of chance to look at it.’ She urged on the donkey and we left the common for the high road which was crowded with market goers. There were men driving cattle and sheep and pigs, women carrying fowls and eggs and baskets of fruit and vegetables, other laden donkeys, people on horse-back, even a litter or two.
    ‘I didn’t know’, said Kate in an awed voice, ‘that there were so many people in the world.’
    ‘Any others with herrings; thass what I want to know,’ said the old woman. She looked sharply about her. ‘Not that I worry much,’ she went on, contradictorily, ‘bringing fish this far is more of a trudge than most folks’d face. We go this way.’
    Directly ahead of us was one of the town’s gateways; some people entered it, others swerved aside and followed a track worn close to the wall.
    ‘A new order last year. Market dues used to be collected on the market place, but the poor fellows wore themselves out, walking round. So now us with stuff to sell walk round to the North gate