CHAPTER FIVE
Mayering Eve
‘By the noise of dead men’s bones
In charnel-houses rattling.’
Michael Drayton – The Court of Fairy
At the foot of the lounge staircase she found Mrs Shurrock. It seemed clear that the landlord’s wife had been lying in wait for her.
‘You’ve never been into the lounge when you were specially asked not to?’ the red-haired woman demanded. ‘I didn’t think it of you, poking and prying into something as doesn’t concern you.’
‘I object to your tone,’ said Fenella, ‘and even more to your choice of words. Far from poking and prying, as you call it, I merely went into the lounge to get a book I had been reading. I had no idea that the room had been let to a secret society. I thought it was only acting as an overspill to the bar.’
‘Took you long enough to get your book and come out again, didn’t it?’
Fenella, feeling that she was being put in the wrong, carried the war into the enemy’s camp.
‘I consider it quite ridiculous,’ she said, ‘to let out a room which happens to be the only lounge for the guests whom you have staying in the house. Who are these people, anyway?’
‘The village elders, that’s who they be.’
‘Elders? When one of them is a gormless boy who, with his mates, put the only public telephone out of order? And that’s another thing: if he and his friends tampered with my car while it was in your car-park,’ Fenella went on, ‘I shall hold your husband responsible.’
‘That’s not the law, as an educated young lady like yourself should know,’ retorted Mrs Shurrock. Her belligerent tone changed. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘I know you never meant no harm, and I believe you when you say you only went to fetch a book, but this is Mayering Eve, when strange deeds that date back the Dear knows how long ago do be carried on in this village. Best you see and hear nothing. That way, no bones get broken. Now you do me a favour and get back to your room afore Jem knows you’ve been out of it. And keep that bar across the door. We don’t want no trouble tonight.’
‘Well, I think all these restrictions are quite ridiculous,’ said Fenella, feeling suddenly inadequate and lonely.
That seem to be your only word on the subject. Nothing ridiculous about it,’ retorted Mrs Shurrock. ‘I’m warning you for your own good. In another couple of hours village’ll be getting red-hot, and us wouldn’t want to see you in any kind of trouble. Not as I wanted you here in the first place, because I never, and so I tell you. You be off to your room now, afore Jem catches you out of it. Bar that there door, and be not afraid with any amazement, as the Good Book says.’
‘Well, really!’ exclaimed Fenella, helplessly.
‘Yes, really,’ said Mrs Shurrock. ‘Jem and me have only been in this village three years, but that’s long enough to know as no maiden be safe, except under lock and key, at the Mayering of Seven Wells, and so I’m warning you. Different for such as believes in it, but you’re not one of ’em, a young lady brought up careful, like you.’
‘Surely this is a respectable inn?’
‘The rest of the year it is, but the Mayering is something special. What do you reckon the Mayering mean, then? Have you any idea? Maybe your book-learning tell you.’
‘It derives from the goddess Maia, who gave her name to the month of May,’ said Fenella, desperate to keep her end up in this strange argument and suddenly realising that Mrs Shurrock’s apparent anger was really a mask for fear.
‘Not in olden times in England it never. Mayering mean the feast of the maidens – in other words, the day when, with good luck (or, as some thinks, with bad luck) they don’t fare to be maidens no longer. High jinks,’ concluded Mrs Shurrock with relish, ‘is what this village get up to in the early hours of Mayering Day, but Mayering Eve, that’s different.’
Irritated, but, in an angry sort of way, intrigued by all the warnings she had received, including that from the unknown man, Fenella returned to her room. A childish feeling of defiance made her reluctant, at first, to bar the door as she had been instructed to do, but she recognised this attitude for what it was, and slotted the stout wooden barrier into place before she settled down to her book.
As she read the absurd story her habitual good-humour returned and at about half-past ten the sounds of turning-out time in the pub – voices, laughter, and swearing – which came up from the street below her window, made her think it was about time to go to bed. She wanted to be up in very good time in the morning.
‘And to hell with Mayering Eve,’ she said aloud. ‘Talk about Cold Comfort Farm! Anyway, I don’t believe that ridiculous business in the lounge had anything to do with folk-lore.’ These words were scarcely uttered when there came a tap at the door. ‘Yes? Who is it?’ she asked, her heart beating a little faster as she thought of Mrs Shurrock’s warnings.
‘It’s Clytie, miss. I’ve brought you a drop of hot water. Bathroom’s out of bounds tonight, the missus says. If you wants a bath it’ll ’ave to wait till mornin.’
Fenella opened the door. Clytie had disappeared but had left behind an old-fashioned receptacle shaped rather like a gardener’s watering-can but with a much shorter, broader spout and a half-lid which opened on a hinge. There was a small towel thrust underneath the handle, and Fenella recognised it as the one she had already used in the bathroom. She had her sponge-bag with her,
