We arrived in Edinburgh in the evening and just as I had felt when we first reached Dover, I considered it too late to inflict ourselves and our difficult mission on the Ferguson household. We needed a hostelry of some kind. Through an overcast dusk, we rode along a main street which I recognized from my one previous visit to the city. It was lined on either side by well-remembered tall houses, punctuated by archways leading into dark alleys.
We looked hopefully to right and left and then, to our relief, saw a sign proclaiming that at this address, bed, board and stabling were to be had. A painted arrow on the wall directed us into one of the dark lanes, and at the rear, we found a gate with a gatekeeper, and once we had made ourselves understood, we were admitted to a rear courtyard with the promised stabling, and a landlord who came out to meet us and was pleased to give us rooms.
We were made quite comfortable, though the beds appalled both Kate and Sybil, for they were in compartments like cupboards, and had doors which one was supposed to close. Spelton and I had been expecting this but Sybil had never been to Scotland before and Kate had forgotten this Scottish peculiarity. ‘Warm against winter,’ the landlord told us and the evening before had been cold enough to make the point. Nevertheless, I think all of us slept with our doors open.
In the morning, we rifled our hampers for fresh clothes, suitable for what we all feared would be a nerve-racking visit, and having fortified ourselves with another breakfast of salted porridge we left the building on foot.
It was cold again, but the air was fresh, smelling of salt from the nearby firth, and there was sunshine. Edinburgh in the morning was livelier than it had been the previous evening. Stalls were being set up, shoppers were already abroad, pony carts clip-clopped by, bringing supplies of goods to the stalls. ‘Can you really remember where your relatives live?’ I asked Kate. ‘It’s some time since you were here, is it not?’
‘Yes, it is, but I think I can,’ Kate was frowning, but nevertheless seemed fairly sure of herself. ‘I think … we need to turn right just past that line of stalls and – yes – there’s a corner after that, turning right again, and we go round that, and it’s a house on the left.’ She paused, and then said: ‘Now we’re here, I feel nervous.’
‘So do I,’ I assured her. ‘But whatever reception we get, we have tried to prepare for it. Please just introduce us by name, very politely, and then I’ll take over, explaining who Sybil is, but in a slightly louder voice in the hope that Ambrosia will hear us and be able to come to us … that’s the best strategy, I think.’
‘I just want to see Ambrosia! I shall want to call her name!’ said Sybil, but Spelton said: ‘Better wait until we’ve explained ourselves and we see what kind of welcome we’re going to get.’
‘Very well, but let’s start out now!’ pleaded Sybil. ‘To think that my girl may be so near …!’
We had gone perhaps fifty yards along the street, among the early shoppers and the stallholders shouting their wares, when we came face to face with her.
I don’t know about the others but I had been imagining Ambrosia in all kinds of circumstances, most of them depressing. I had among other things visualized her being thrust unwillingly into another unwanted marriage, by beating or a bread-and-water diet, or else dressed in drab, grubby clothes and reduced to the status of an unpaid servant, running dogsbody errands or pounding dough in a steamy kitchen.
What I had not visualized – and I doubt if any of the others had either – was that we would meet her sauntering through the market, basket on arm like any other Edinburgh housewife, smiling and talking cheerfully to the middle-aged maid trotting at her side. The maid, who had a cheery round face, pink from the sea-wind, was discreetly clad in brown; Ambrosia wore a stout plaid shawl against the cold but her peach-coloured split skirt and the dove-grey kirtle beneath it were surely of the finest wool. She looked prosperous, she looked happy … and as soon as she saw us, just as astounded as we were.
‘Mother!’
‘Ambrosia! Oh, Ambrosia, my daughter, my darling …!’
‘Annie!’ said Kate to the maid.
‘Mistress Kate! And Mistress Stannard!’
‘This is a delightful reunion,’ remarked Christopher Spelton. ‘But now that we are quite sure who we all are, can we find somewhere to sit down – and then I think we’d all like some explanations.’
TWENTY-SIX
All Too Much
‘We can go to my home,’ said Ambrosia blithely. ‘It’s not far. I’ll shop later. Come.’ She turned to lead us back the way she had come and as she did so, the sunlight flashed on a ring on her left hand. It was a wedding ring and it glittered as though it were new. We all followed her obediently, glancing at each other in bemusement.
As Ambrosia turned towards the doorway of one of the tall houses, Kate said to me: ‘Well, my Ferguson cousins don’t live here, not unless they’ve moved,’ and then Ambrosia glanced over her shoulder and said, laughingly: ‘Indeed they don’t live here. This house belongs to James Hale. I am Mistress Hale now.’
Then the door was being opened by a manservant, and we were being ushered inside. Our cloaks were taken, and we were shown into a most attractive bow-windowed parlour, a lady’s bower in every way, with cushioned settles, little tables, mats made of colourful patchwork. An embroidery frame lay on the wide window seat, with a workbox beside it; a half-finished game of backgammon and a book of verse lay on one of the tables. Best of all on that cold morning, there was a bright wood fire, which a maid was tending. We moved towards it in a body.
‘Leave it, Mary,’ Ambrosia said. ‘It’s burning nicely now. Come, everyone, be seated. Mary, will you fetch us some wine? Thank you. Oh, Mother! I am so glad to see you!’
While the rest of us sat down, except for Annie, who remained deferentially standing, Sybil and Ambrosia then did what they couldn’t do in the street without attracting public attention, and threw themselves into each other’s arms. Then, at last, Sybil stood back, though still holding her daughter by the elbows, and said: ‘But how do you come to be here? How do you come to be Mistress Hale? I don’t understand!’
‘Nor do I!’ I said. I had been mulling it over. It was barely a month since Ambrosia had left Dover. And here she was, settled in marriage and a home of her own. It was all too much to take in.
‘I don’t suppose you do,’ said Ambrosia, amused. ‘Ah, here is Mary with the wine – and thank you, Mary, how sensible. See, she has brought some cinnamon biscuits too.’
Mary said something incomprehensible, in a powerful Scots accent, bobbed a curtsey and left us. Annie began to dispense the refreshments. Ambrosia began to speak again but was interrupted by youthful shouts and running feet, and seconds after Mary had closed the parlour door, it burst open again, to admit four young children, a fair-haired girl of about seven, two boys with dark eyes and thick dark brown hair, who were obviously twins of around four, and a second girl, fair like the other, no older than three and sucking her thumb.
The girls hung back a little, but the two boys hurled themselves at Ambrosia, which was no surprise for I had already taken in their long eyebrows and mouths, their wide nostrils, and the brightness of their eyes, and knew who they were. They, however, did not know who we were and clung to their mother, crying out for reassurance.
‘Who are they? Have they come to take us away again? We won’t go!’
‘Won’t go!’
‘No, we won’t!’
‘If they try, we’ll kill them!’
‘Kill them, yes we will …!’
‘Hush, hush, you noisy pair!’ The little girls were staring, in evident alarm, but Ambrosia was now laughing. ‘No one is going to take you anywhere! Here is your grandmother, who is delighted to see you here with me, and these others are her friends. Yes, Mistress Stannard, yes, everyone, these are my sons. Meet Paul and Tommy – this one’s Paul though I don’t suppose you can tell the difference! The girls are my step-daughters. This is Lucy, who will be eight next month, and this
little sweetheart is May. My loves, this is your step-grandmother, my mother, Mistress Sybil Jester …’
‘But …’ I said and then stopped.
‘Settle down,’ said Ambrosia to her sons, who had now stopped threatening to kill us all and instead were clamouring to know if they could have a sip of her wine. ‘Where is your … Oh, there you are, Tilly.’
A plump nursemaid had appeared, in a hurry, and out of breath. ‘Tilly, my love, I shall come upstairs later and hear Lucy’s lesson as usual, and play with the others, but my mother has come to see me, with her friends, and we have so much news to exchange. Now, let go of me, my darlings. Go with nurse and I’ll come soon, I promise and no, my dears, you may not share my wine; you’re still too young.’ The nurse shepherded the children away and Ambrosia sat laughing and shaking her head.
‘My boys missed me badly while we were apart. Whenever I go out, I think they fear that I won’t come back and when I do, they behave as if they haven’t seen me for years, and they are afraid of strangers, as you saw – and heard! Annie, will you go and send the kitchen boy to the printing works to tell my husband who has arrived to see me. He may want to come home at once and meet them. Now.’ Ambrosia smiled round at us. ‘You wanted explanations, I think. No wonder. Well …’
She was silent a moment and thoughtful, her eyes downcast. Then she said; ‘When Count Renard was killed, I was frantic. And furious. I wouldn’t listen when the Fergusons tried to tell me what the count had done and what he was. How he had spied for the French and tried to lead young Duncan Ferguson into spying for them as well, at peril of his neck if he were caught. I raged and swore and said I would report Duncan as a murderer …’
‘Duels are officially illegal,’ I told her, ‘but juries hardly ever convict and in a case like this, I am as sure as I can be, that they wouldn’t. If necessary, I will beg the queen for a free pardon but I probably won’t need to. The count had tried to lead a respectable young man into betraying his country. Everyone’s sympathy would be with the respectable young man!’
‘I didn’t know that,’ said Ambrosia. ‘I don’t think the Fergusons knew either. I was just … wild with rage and what I thought was grief and I threatened – oh, I don’t know what – and cried and … well, as you know, I was shipped to Scotland to get me out of the way. The wind was fair and it took only three days to get to Edinburgh but in that time, I had a chance to think. And I began to see …’
She stopped for a moment and then said: ‘It’s hard to explain, but suddenly, Count Renard began to change. I mean, the memory of him began to change. I began to see that he had done wrong, very wrong, was dangerous to England and even to the queen. He was a danger to Master Spelton here …’ as she spoke, she gave him a grave, apologetic glance ‘… and who knew what other secrets, English secrets, he was carrying back to France? It was as though I were waking from a bad dream. He ceased to be real to me. I don’t think I ever really wanted to be a countess! That would be an alien world to me. He had promised to get my sons back. That, perhaps, was why I thought I loved him …’
‘And then,’ I prompted, ‘you arrived here.’
‘Yes. I was taken to the home of Master Hamish Ferguson’s cousin, Angus Ferguson. You’ll meet him soon! He’s quite elderly, white-haired, and he has eyeglasses that fall off his nose, so he keeps them on a chain so that they just stay dangling like a pendant … he has a nice, fat wife called Marie, with a jolly laugh, and their eldest son lives with them and has a pretty wife and four children … they were all kind to me, comforted me for my loss and for the shock they were sure I had had when I found out the truth about the count. I was exhausted, bemused. I took refuge in being polite, behaving myself and trying to think. And then …’
She looked up at us and her eyes were dancing. ‘The day after I arrived, they had people to dine and one of them was another cousin, not a Ferguson. He was called Master James Hale – Mistress Marie Ferguson was born Mistress Hale. He is a printer. He has a works two streets from here and he is prosperous. He prints all sorts of things, books of poetry, books about religion and history and travel … he is so well read. That was one thing I liked about the count, you know; the amount he’d read; the poetry he could quote. But so can James! He is only a few years older than I am, and good-looking. He talked to me a good deal that day. I gathered that his wife died a year ago and that he was lonely and worried about the best way to bring up his daughters …’
‘Is he the man that the Dover Fergusons thought you might be persuaded to marry?’ Sybil asked.
‘Yes, though I didn’t find that out for several days. But the Angus Fergusons had noticed that we liked each other and eventually Mistress Marie took me aside and asked if I could consider him as a husband. I said would he help me get my sons back and Mistress Marie said he and I must talk about that. So we did, and, well, ten days after I arrived here in Edinburgh, we became man and wife. I was thankful to marry him! I felt safe with him, secure. We set off for York at once, the very day we were wed. James said the journey should be our honeymoon; that we should enjoy it and get to know each other properly on the way. He was pleased to have stepsons, he said. He is so kind!’
Ferguson had been right. He had said he might well be doing Ambrosia a favour and so he had. It was confusing.
‘We took one of the carts we keep, for deliveries to publishers and so on – and our best horse,’ said Ambrosia, beaming. ‘James insisted on using the fastest one. She’s a trotting mare and the speeds she can do and the distances she can cover, you would hardly believe it …’
Hugh had definitely been wrong about trotters, I thought. They were clearly much more useful than he had given them credit for.
Ambrosia was still talking. ‘It only took us two and a half days to reach York!’ She laughed. ‘I know where my sister-in-law lives and we went straight there and found the house in an uproar because my boys were having a tantrum, both of them. Being twins they do most things together and Eliza was slapping them and shouting at them to be quiet.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Sybil, distressed.
‘I’ve never liked Eliza,’ said Ambrosia. ‘She has no idea how to care for children properly and she certainly doesn’t understand my sons. They respond to people who are reasonable. They take after their father, that way. John was always reasonable. Dear John … but there, all that’s in the past. Eliza was relieved to see me. My offspring were disrupting her household! Her husband sometimes comes home for dinner from the school where he teaches and he did so that day, and he was relieved too! Now that I was married, no one could push me into another alliance, and neither Eliza nor her husband really wanted the boys anyway. Well, they gave us dinner and handed the boys to us and were glad to do it. We started for home the same afternoon. We were back here about ten days ago. It amazes me, too! Barely three weeks after I was loaded on to a ship at Dover, crying and angry and threatening revenge, I was bringing my sons into my new married home and introducing them to Tilly, the nurse who was already in charge of my step-daughters. How life can change!’
‘How, indeed! The boy wasted no time in fetching me, my dear. Here I am! And here, I take it, is your mother – and perhaps you will introduce me to our other guests? Good day to you all, anyway.’
Engrossed in Ambrosia’s tale, we hadn’t noticed the new arrival. But Ambrosia broke off as he spoke, and her face lit up with a wide, happy smile. ‘Mother, my friends, this is my husband James!’
I turned. Here was the explanation of the mystery. James Hale was the kind of man who is immediately likeable. Middling tall, well-knit, black hair with a healthy gloss on it; a pleasant face, browned a little by the sea wind from the firth, hazel eyes, a little darker than my own. Eyes that smiled, a personality that came forth to meet you, that shook hands with you while you were still several feet apart.
It had seemed unbelievable that Ambrosia, who had left Dover raging and weeping over the death of the count, should in such a short space of time have met and marr
ied this amiable-looking man, and retrieved her boys. Now I saw how it could have happened. It still made my head go round.
Spelton had taken on the task of introducing everyone. ‘This is Ambrosia’s mother, Mistress Sybil Jester, this is Kate Ferguson, daughter of the Dover Fergusons, this is Mistress Ursula Stannard and I am Master Christopher Spelton, in her majesty’s employ …’
My head really was spinning. Had it been the wine? Surely it wasn’t that strong! Ambrosia was saying something else now, something about the lodge-keeper’s son who had escorted her on the voyage, but was now on his way back home and had really been kind to her; he was a nice lad … yes, I dimly remembered Ferguson mentioning him, when was it now …? I was very dizzy indeed. An inky blizzard of black dots danced before my eyes. Someone was asking me something but I couldn’t understand what they were saying. I really must pull myself together and …
I came round to find myself lying on one of the settles. Sybil was sponging my forehead with cold water and Kate was pushing a cushion under my feet. Ambrosia was outside in the passageway, calling for Mary. Annie was making up the fire. I tried to sit up but Sybil gently pushed me back. Ambrosia was now ordering Mary and Annie to go upstairs and make up a bed in the north-east gable room. Christopher Spelton and James Hale were standing beside the settle, looking down at me.
‘You have exhausted yourself,’ Spelton said to me. ‘You have been through more than you can bear. Mistress Sybil has been borne up by the need to trace her daughter and Kate Ferguson is young enough to be resilient but you have only had responsibility. Master Hale, can we carry her upstairs?’ To me, he added: ‘Take your ease, Ursula. It’s all over now.’
It had been over, of course, before we ever left Hawkswood, had we only known it. The only one who had guessed was old Gladys, who had said that our journey would be for nothing. Just a feeling, she had said. Gladys did sometimes have a trick of knowing things that on the face of it she couldn’t know – and then being right.
A Perilous Alliance Page 24
