For almost an hour, while the boy runs for help, James lies there alone, a dark and cruciform figure, his face brushed by the shadow of the clouds, the crop swaying all around him like a crowd, an incurious golden crowd. In the kitchen of the
Reverend's house, Mary, peeling apples for a pie, pauses in her work, lays down the knife and the apple on the chopping-board. Mrs Cole, looking up from her pastry, is amazed to see that her friend is smiling.
EPILOGUE
The coffin is brought to the bridge by cart, then carried on the men's shoulders. George Pace, Mr Astick — at his own particular request - Ween Tull, Killick, and Urbane Davis, all of them tricked out in their best, with black silk hatbands and black shammy gloves, two and six a pair, courtesy of the Reverend. The Reverend walks ahead of the coffin with his sister and Lady Hallam. Behind come Mary and Sam, Mrs Cole and Tabitha, Dr Thorne, Mrs Clarke, and a dozen of the small farmers and tradesmen who knew the deceased, enough at least to greet him on his road.
It is a day for a funeral: cool air, low cloud, a light drizzle. Clarke, the sexton, meets them at the gate. They carry the coffin into the church, up the path under the tolling of the bell.
'The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake . . .'
Dido mops at her eyes, as do Mrs Cole and Tabitha, and Sam, learning grief for the first time, the tears unstoppable despite his best efforts. The Reverend thinks: Shame the boy had to be there when he died. A terrible shock. And James had seemed to be getting better, stronger. Happier too. You could almost have called him a happy man, the last months.
^And I saw a new heaven and a new earth: for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away . . .'
The coffin is shouldered into the yard. Mr Clarke and his assistant, Mr Potter, are waiting respectfully by the grave's edge. The grave beside it is fresh still: Sally Caxton and her child. Dead flowers on the turf, brown-edged petals turning to mulch in this drizzle.
The mourners gather. The Reverend, the book in his hand, but not looking at it, says:
'As for man, his days are as grass; as a flower of the field, so he fiourisheth. For the windpasseth over it and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more . . .'
Mr Astick strips off his gloves and takes a clod of earth, breaks it in his fist and scatters it over the coffin lid. Lady Hallam also; then she gives some earth into Sam's hand and he leans forward and lets it drop, tentatively, as if the coffin lid were a surface that could bruise. Mary, at the head of the grave, eyes slits of brown light, is conducting a service of her own, summoning her own spirits to mix with those who inhabit the air above Cow.
When it is over they walk to the gate. The Reverend invites them to drink a glass of wine at the parsonage. Lady Hallam takes Dido and Mrs Cole in her coach. The others set off on foot for the bridge. The cart will take some of them and the others have their horses there, tethered to the trees and watched by a boy. The sl9^ is discernibly brighter. They do not talk much. From the fields comes the sound of the harvesters. A woman, carrying an infant in one arm and a stone jar in the other, stops and bows her head as the party passes. The Reverend nods to her, mutters her name.
Something in the ditch beside him catches his eye. He stops. Mr Astick looks over the Reverend's shoulder. Toor devil,' says Astick, The men move on; the others look down briefly but do
not pause. Only Sam, trailing at the rear of the group, stops and crouches. On the slope of the ditch is a kitten with its throat cut. It does not seem to have been there long. The fur on its chest is crisp with blood and there are cherry spots on the grass around it. Its eyes are tightly shut, as if against its own suffering, and in the part-open mouth he can see the creature's tongue, and its teeth, still pearly white. Sam picks up a stick and prods the kitten, almost as if, in this age of miracles, he expects it to wake and run off Then he slides the stick beneath its body and rolls it down the bank, through larkspur and harebell and buttercup, to the bottom of the ditch.
Andrew Miller was born in 1961. He has worked as a martial arts instructor, a waiter, and a tour guide in Spain. He lives in Bath, England.
Jacket art: The Orrery (detail) by Joseph Wright of Derby, courtesy of Bridgeman/Art Resource, New York
Author photo by Jerry Bauer
Jacket design by Steven Coolcy
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