About The Hollow Ground – Episode 08
About The Hollow Ground by Pamela Kavanagh
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Nan was pensive as she left the house to give Piers Merriman a tour of inspection of Cross Lanes’s acres.
Yesterday, it was to the man’s credit that he had not baulked at the condition of the cottage she had offered with the occupation, but merely eyed the leaking roof and rotting timbers with the same steadily assessing look he had awarded the ramshackle yard and unyielding home fields, before pronouncing it well enough.
Today it was a raw wind that swept across the fields, threatening rain. Hoping her confidence in the new man would not go unrewarded, Nan drew her shawl over her head and quickened her step.
Piers was waiting by the tithe barn as arranged. Freshly shaven and spruce, he had clearly taken trouble with his appearance.
Piers nodded in greeting, his cheekbones and the tips of his ears reddening in the blustery air.
“Morning, mistress. An uncivil one, I fear.”
“Good morning, Merriman. Yes, it is. We had best make haste before the rain starts in earnest.”
It was hard going tramping across the soggy fields, and both were mud-stained and gasping when they reached the sparsely cropping higher region.
Here they paused to catch their breath, contemplating the farm spread out below.
Piers kicked at a clump of hillside gorse.
“These slopes should never have been put down to crops. The ground’s too stony and shallow to sustain proper growth. It needs to be restored to grass, as it likely once was. A flock of sheep would keep it tidy.”
“Sheep are costly,” Nan replied. “And the Cross Lanes coffers cannot rise to it.”
“What of that machinery lying in the yard? Does it ever get an airing?”
“Not often. Why so?”
“Maybe it’s time to cut your losses, get rid of it and put the proceeds into something profitable, like a dozen hardy Swaledales,” Piers suggested.
“Yes, I take your point. What about the lower fields? We’ve always grown our own grains, but never in the quantity you see here.”
“Likely this was a mixed farm, given the type of land it lies on. Forgive me, mistress, but I take it your late sire was responsible for the change in farming practice?”
Nan nodded.
“Quite so,” she confessed. “Dear Papa. He would indulge objectives that carried a degree of risk. We had a bailiff who kept things in check. When he left I fear Papa had the upper hand.”
“It’s all redeemable. Do you have horses on the place?”
“Working beasts? Yes, we have two.” Nan didn’t add that the rest had been sold to pay the feed merchant and other debts. “And there’s Dandy, the trap pony, and Minstrel, Papa’s hunter.”
She paused, swallowing, and continued in a low voice.
“It was Minstrel that Papa came to grief on.
“Papa went for his usual morning ride and Minstrel returned without him.”
“Your sire was fatally injured in a fall?” Piers asked.
“So it would appear, yes.”
There was no mistaking the trace of doubt in Nan’s voice, and Piers looked at her narrowly.
“A bad business. Could he have been a victim of attack? You never know who’s about nowadays. Thinking on, you don’t always know who’s to be trusted.”
Piers spoke harshly, as if from bitter experience, and Nan gave him a hard look before replying.
“A deliberate attack? I had been thinking along the lines of Minstrel losing his footing and Papa being thrown, perhaps. That could happen to the most accomplished rider. But anything else . . .”
She did not care to dwell on it. The possibility of her papa having been set upon, maybe by ruffians was more than she could bear.
“Was anything missing from his person?”
“No, nothing . . . wait. There was something. I once gave him a gold charm, a four-leaf clover. Papa always carried it with him. He had the jeweller in town solder it on to the chain of his pocket watch.”
“And?”
“Well, when I was going through Papa’s effects, the watch and chain were there, but the charm had gone. Of course, it could have come off in the fall.”
“Presumably you searched the area where he was found.”
Nan shook her head.
“There seemed little point,” she replied. “The ground was saturated and thick with dead leaves. It would have been like searching for a needle in a haystack.”
There was a poignant silence into which the wind gusted, flinging a sudden stinging shower of rain into their faces.
“Seems we’re in for a soaking,” Piers said with a glance at the troubled skies.
They retraced their steps across the lower fields, where Piers stopped briefly to examine a ditch that was clogged with weed and overflowing.
He was still stressing the necessity of dealing first and foremost with the drainage when they arrived back at the farmyard, where the two farm workers had arrived.
Nan briefly made the introductions.
“Brassey and Shepherd Skelland, this is Piers Merriman. Anything you need to know, Merriman, the men will oblige.”
