They begin to labour over their slates, the elder （and stupidest, the tutor knows） breathing through his mouth, the younger laying his head down on his arm. And, really, what sense is there in giving the boys these lessons? Aren’t they destined to be farmers, like their father and older brothers? But, then, what use has it been to him? Years and years at the grammar school and look where it has got him – a smoke-hazed hall, coaxing the sons of a sheep famer to learn conjugation and word order.
He waits until the boys have half finished this exercise before he says: ‘What is the name of that serving girl? The one with the bird?’
The younger brother looks at him with a direct, frank gaze. The tutor smiles back. He is, he prides himself, adept at dissembling, at reading the thoughts of others, at guessing which way they will jump, what they will do next. Life with a quick-tempered parent will hone these skills at an early age. The tutor knows the elder will not guess the intent behind his question but that the younger one, all of nine years old, will.
‘Bird?’ the elder one says. ‘She doesn’t have a bird.’ He glances at his brother. ‘Does she?’
‘No?’ The tutor gathers their blank looks. He sees again, for a moment, the mottled tawny feathers of the hawk. ‘Perhaps I am mistaken.’
The younger brother says, in a rush, ‘There’s Hettie, who looks after the pigs and hens.’ He creases his brow. ‘Hens are birds, aren’t they?’
The tutor nods at him. ‘Indeed they are.’
He turns again to the window. Looks out. All is as before. The wind, the trees, the leaves, the filthy ewes in a huddle, the stretch of tamed, cultivated land meeting the hem of the forest. No girl to be seen. Could it have been a hen on her outstretched arm? He doubts it.
Later that day, after the lesson is finished, the tutor steps around the back of the house. He ought to be taking the path to town, beginning the long walk home, but he wants to see the girl one more time, wants to observe her, perhaps exchange some words with her. He has an urge to examine that bird up close, to hear what kind of voice will emerge from that mouth. He would like to weigh that plait in his hand, feel the silken ridged weave of it slip between his fingers. He glances up at the house’s windows as he makes his way around the walls. There is, of course, no excuse for him being here in the farmyard. The boys’ mother might divine in an instant what he is seeking and send him off. He might lose his position here, might jeopardise whatever tenuous agreement his father has brokered with the yeoman’s widow. Not even this thought gives the tutor pause.
He steps through the farmyard, avoiding puddles and clods of dung. It rained earlier, as he was trying to teach the subjunctive: he heard the tick-tick of it on the high thatch of the hall. The sky is beginning to drain of light; the sun is fading for the day; there is still the chill grip of winter in the air. A chicken scratches diligently in the earth, groaning quietly to itself.
He is thinking of the girl, her braid, her hawk. A way to lighten the load of these indentured visits now presents itself to him. This position, with these children, in this drear and awful place, might become tolerable after all. He is imagining liaisons after tutoring, a walk in the woods, a meeting behind one of these sheds or outhouses.
He does not, even for one moment, entertain the idea that the woman he saw is in fact the eldest daughter of the house.
She has a certain notoriety in these parts. It is said that she is strange, touched, peculiar, perhaps mad. He has heard that she wanders the back roads and forest at will, unaccompanied, collecting plants to make dubious potions. It is wise not to cross her for people say she learnt her crafts from an old crone who used to make medicines and spin, and could kill a baby with a single glance. It is said that the stepmother lives in terror of the girl putting hexes on her, especially now the yeoman is dead. Her father must have loved her, though, because he left her a sizeable dowry in his will. Not that anyone, of course, would want to wed her. She is said to be too wild for any man. Her mother, God rest her soul, had been a gypsy or a sorceress or a forest sprite: the tutor has heard many of these fanciful tales about her. His own mother shakes her head and tuts when this girl comes up in conversation.
The tutor has never seen her but he pictures a half-woman, half-animal: thick-browed, hobbling, hair streaked with grey, clothing clotted with mud and foliage. The daughter of a dead forest witch. She will walk with a limp, muttering to herself as she fumbles in her bag of curses and cures.
He casts a glance around him, at the shadow in the lee of the pig-pen, at the bare branches of apple trees bending over the fence at the perimeter of the farmyard. He wouldn’t want to come across this daughter unawares. He goes through a gate in the fence and out along a track. He glances over his shoulder at the windows of the house, into the doors of the barn, where cattle chew and nod in their stalls. Where might she be?