‘What happened to their original owners?’ Anthony asked.
‘They were all among those hanged, and good riddance,’ said Heron. ‘The Bible says thou shalt not suffer a witch to live, does it not? My chaplain, Mr Parkes, preached on that text only last Sunday.’
I flinched inwardly, though not on account of the house with the black-draped altar. That sounded horrible, blasphemous if nothing worse, but to me, the story of the orchard-raiding boys was far more alarming. Lads who go apple scrumping are liable to fall out of fruit trees now and again. They hardly need curses to help them. But Heron was clearly ready to pounce on any indignant orchard owner who had shouted a few profane threats. I was sure he had hanged the innocent. We would indeed be wise to keep our Gladys away from him.
Anthony drew Heron away to be introduced to someone else, and Jane, clearly concerned that we shouldn’t be left without anyone to talk to except each other, led a couple of middle-aged ladies towards us. One was tall and dark-haired, more handsome than beautiful, with an aquiline nose and shapely eyebrows and a firm mouth. Her skin was tanned, as though she spent a lot of time out of doors. The other, by contrast, was fairish, dumpy and small, with plump, smiling features. They were too dissimilar to be sisters, but they were dressed like sisters in identical dark-blue gowns. Jane introduced them as Mrs Jennet Ward and Mrs Margery Seldon.
‘Like Sir Edward, they prefer the title Mrs in the modern fashion,’ Jane explained. ‘They share a house with their little maidservant Bessie, and they are both good musicians. They have been tutoring Christina in music. She is quite talented, they say.’
‘We are both widows,’ said Jennet Ward. She was the tall one. ‘We offered to provide the music for this occasion,’ she said, ‘but Jane and Anthony had already hired a trio. The lute and the spinet are our instruments. We live in Woking, and we got to know the Cobbolds when we undertook to instruct their younger daughter.’
‘Unlike Alice, Christina is very musical,’ Jane said. ‘She had lessons as a child, but she wanted to improve. We were pleased. The practising keeps her occupied. We have had some difficulties with Christina lately. She is unlike Alice in more ways than one! Now, Alice has never been a worry to us. We found Robert for her, told her that she should consider him as a husband, and she thanked us and said she was agreeable, before she had even met him. Of course we made sure that the two of them were acquainted before the betrothal was announced, and luckily, they took to each other without any trouble. But it has all unsettled Christina, and there she is, thinking she’s in love, though she knows nothing about it. Girls of seventeen are so easily led into foolishness by unwise examples.’
I knew that, without actually saying so, she was warning me that I might be an unwise example and should not talk to Christina about my first marriage. I didn’t comment.
Jane swept on. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that we should get her married soon. I dare say you’ll soon be thinking of a husband for Meg, will you not, Mistress Stannard?’
Confound Jane. She had obliquely warned me not to say the wrong thing and then done just that herself. Meg had a suitor, and they had been pressing to be allowed to marry soon, but . . . ‘Meg is still a little too young,’ I said. ‘She’s only fifteen.’
‘Girls don’t always grow up at the same rate,’ said small dumpy Margery. Her mild voice was agreeable to the ear, and I didn’t find her irritating even though she was talking on the same theme as Jane. ‘Some are still children at fifteen, others are young women. We’ve brought our maid, Bessie, with us today – have you found a seat for her at the lower table, Jane? She loves celebrations, of any sort, and we indulge her. Now, she is sixteen but she’s been grown up for years. There she is, over there, the little lass with the dark curls escaping from her headdress . . . She never seems able to keep her hair under control, or does she let it out on purpose, I wonder?’
‘At the moment,’ said Jennet dryly, ‘she’s found a young man to talk to so I dare say that on purpose is the right answer. We had better go and rescue him. Bessie works hard and cooks nearly as well as my dear Margery here does, but she is a shocking flirt and I fear may have gone further than flirting, on occasion . . .’
‘Such a delightful pair,’ said Jane, watching them go. ‘And now, do come and meet the Emorys. They have a farm – Greenlease – three miles or so from here. My husband bought some very good sheep from Paul Emory last year. Paul . . . Cathy! Is your daughter Margaret not with you?’
‘She has a cold,’ said Paul Emory, who was dressed in a doublet and hose of fine dark-brown wool but had no ruff, only a voile collar, and had farmer plainly written on his weathered face. When I exchanged a handclasp with him I felt the calluses on his hands. He had brownish teeth, with several gaps, and I saw no laughter lines beside his pale-blue eyes. He struck me as having a dour air. ‘Her trouble’s not serious, but until now this has been a shocking bad summer . . .’
‘We’ve wondered if we’d ever get the hay in,’ agreed his wife. ‘If only today’s sunshine lasts!’ She was as weather-beaten as he was and looked ill at ease in her tawny silk. She had a ruff but it was unfashionably small.
Hugh expressed agreement and said that he was glad that the hayfield on his home farm faced south. ‘It’s on a slight incline and gets a good share of the sunshine. What about yours?’
The conversation turned comfortably to farming.
‘An enjoyable occasion,’ said Hugh as the coach rolled homeward. It was seven miles back to Hawkswood. ‘And we’ve made some new acquaintances. They did fit us all into the dining room, at least, but only by squeezing us shoulder to shoulder. I could hardly move my arms enough to cut my meat, and breathing was quite difficult! What did you think of Heron?’
‘I didn’t take to him,’ I said. ‘I didn’t know what to make of some of the things he told us. Small boys do fall out of trees. Almost any rude old woman who shouted a few ill-natured things while chasing of them out of her orchard could be accused of willing him to have an accident. That was a nasty story, though, about the black-draped altar and all the rest of it.’
‘There are people who believe they can raise demons by performing unsavoury rituals,’ said Hugh. ‘I’ve served on juries, too, the same as Cobbold and Heron. I’ve heard a thing or two. Black-draped altars and inverted crucifixes included. Nasty, as you say, but in my opinion not quite as bad as Heron thinks. From my jury experiences, I’d say that the people concerned are usually folk of no importance or influence. I suspect that their unpleasant gatherings are mostly a way of convincing themselves that they can wield power, of a sort. Others probably indulge in their goings-on to break up the monotony of very dull lives! I don’t myself believe that anyone can whistle up the powers of hell, by that or any other method.’
‘We’ve never really talked about this before, have we?’ I said. ‘We’ve always just been concerned with keeping Gladys out of trouble.’
‘If I were a poor, unimportant man but found I could summon the powers of hell to do my bidding, well, I wouldn’t stay poor and unimportant for long,’ Hugh said. He turned his head and grinned at me. ‘In return for my soul, I’d want my tame demon to give me money and position and beautiful women. Or I would have done, when I was young. All I’d want nowadays is a quiet life.’
‘I agree with you there,’ I said. ‘I have had enough of exciting times.’
‘I wonder.’
‘Hugh?’
‘You have been a secret agent for the queen and for Cecil. You’ve undertaken some dangerous missions and come through. You might well have developed a taste for excitement.’
‘No, Hugh, that isn’t so. Being with you, seeing the seasons change and guiding Meg’s future, those are excitement enough for me now. I’m thirty-six. I’ve had two husbands before you; I’ve travelled; I’ve known danger and bereavement . . . Now I just want peace.’
I once heard someone say that there was a proverb to the effect that it was wise to be careful about the things you wanted, in case you actuall
y got them. My own experience has been different. Again and again, what I want has not been what fate delivered. Quite the contrary.
I said: ‘What do you think we should do about Meg? I suppose that lady – what was her name? Margery Seldon, that’s it – I suppose she had a point. About girls growing up at different speeds. Meg is very grown up for fifteen. I have been saying that she should be at least sixteen before she was married. Now I’m not so sure.’
‘Sir William Cecil is a family man. When he pays us his promised visit,’ said Hugh, ‘let’s talk to him.’
TWO
Six Against One
‘If I were you, I would say yes.’ Sir William Cecil, Secretary of State, leant back in his chair. He and Hugh and myself were on the terrace at Hawkswood, seated round a small table and watching the young couple who were strolling in the rose garden just below. ‘The young man has done his courting as he should and she’s fallen for him, and in my view, she’s chosen well. Let them marry. George Hillman is an estimable fellow. I doubt if you could do better for Meg. Why make them wait?’
‘It’s because she’s only just fifteen,’ I said. ‘We have always felt that sixteen was soon enough. Haven’t we, Hugh?’
The sunshine, having arrived at last, had held. It was a beautiful July day. Bees hummed busily among the blooms in Hugh’s beloved rose garden, and the woodland to the east echoed with the call of doves and blackbirds. Meg, the child of my first husband Gerald, was at that moment bending her glossy dark head to enjoy the scent of a crimson rose, and the young man who so much wanted to marry her was flicking away a bee that had come too close. Hugh, though he was only Meg’s stepfather, nevertheless looked on her as his own, and now he was studying her with a frown of affectionate anxiety between his brows.
‘Originally,’ he said, ‘we thought she should have a year or two at court before she married. We’ve decided against that now, and it does make a difference. You are still definite about not sending her to court, aren’t you, Ursula?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ I said with feeling. I knew too much about life at court. I had been a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth. While there, I had also, as Hugh had reminded me on the way home from the Cobbold wedding, become embroiled in the world of diplomatic intrigue. I had been well rewarded for my secret work on the queen’s behalf, but more than once my life had been endangered, and so had the lives of some much loved servants. I did not want Meg to go anywhere near the court.
‘But that doesn’t mean,’ I said, ‘that I want her to take the risks that go with early marriage. A girl can be harmed by having children when she is too young.’
‘Meg is well grown,’ said Cecil. ‘And even if she had a child very quickly, she would surely be sixteen or nearly before it could be born. I don’t think there is any special danger for her. She isn’t immature in her thinking, either.’
‘She’s my daughter,’ I said, and I know there was a touch of bitterness in my voice. ‘I have done my best to keep her safe, but she knows a great deal of the world and its perils, simply because she knows of the work I have at times carried out. No, I agree, she is not immature.’
The glance Cecil gave me told me that he knew very well what I meant. He had thrust me into many of those perils, because for him his duty to the queen came before all else.
‘So,’ said Hugh, ‘what, really, is your objection, Ursula?’
He spoke reasonably, as he usually did. Hugh, my steady, sensible third husband, who had shown me how happy a simple domestic life away from the glamour and pitfalls of the court could be, rarely attempted to impose his ideas on me. But he had a way of thinking things through and arriving at conclusions I couldn’t argue with.
‘I think,’ I said, groping for words and not finding very good ones, ‘that I would just like her . . . to be free for a little longer.’
‘But she doesn’t want to be free. She wants to marry George Hillman,’ Cecil pointed out. ‘Half an hour ago, they were standing here in front of us, hand in hand, asking your consent to wed next month. I am a father too,’ he added. ‘I have a daughter a little younger than Meg, and she also wants to marry. Mildred and I have been looking round for a suitable bridegroom.’
Once more, he gazed out into the rose garden. He sighed a little and eased the position of his left foot. It was bandaged and resting on a footstool. Sir William Cecil suffered from gout, and the jolting carriage journey he had made in order to visit Hugh’s and my home at Hawkswood House in Surrey had brought on an attack. I thought that he was probably remembering what it was like to be young and healthy, and envying the youthful pair now before his eyes.
I had been alarmed when, just before the Cobbold marriage, he had sent word that he wished to visit us, because I feared that he meant to persuade me into yet another secret undertaking. However, he had taken his time over actually making the journey, and it seemed that he really had come for social reasons and to bring me a few items of news connected with my last perilous assignment. ‘In case,’ he said, ‘you’re so immersed in country life that the news doesn’t reach you.’
He had much of interest to tell us, but when all that had been talked over, I’d remembered Hugh’s idea that we should ask his advice on the matter of Meg and young Hillman. We had done so. It chanced that Hillman was making a short stay with us, and I fancied that the young pair somehow heard that we had discussed them because the very next day they had come to ask us for permission to marry at once, and when I say us, I mean Cecil as well as Hugh and myself. They had presented themselves when we were all together.
‘I don’t know what to say.’ I think I sounded harassed. ‘It’s true that Master Hillman has a comfortable home to offer her,’ I admitted. ‘We visited it at his invitation early in May.’
‘Riverside House, in Buckinghamshire,’ said Hugh. ‘Nearly as big as Hawkswood, and with plenty of land attached. And it needs a mistress.’
‘Master Hillman is very much in love, if I’m any judge,’ said Cecil. ‘But young men are impatient by nature, and if he really needs a wife to take charge of his home . . . I said, he is an estimable young man. Don’t let him slip through your fingers.’
‘Do you mean,’ I said, ‘that he might go off and find someone else?’
‘I don’t think he’d do that quickly or easily,’ said Hugh. ‘I fancy he is in love with Meg. But it could happen. Sir William is right.’
Behind us, a door creaked, and Sybil Jester, my good friend, who acted as companion both to me and to Meg, came through with a trayload of white wine, cooled in Hugh’s underground store.
‘Dale is feeling the heat,’ she observed as she put the tray down on the little table. ‘Brockley said she ought to rest and thought you wouldn’t mind if she went to lie down.’
‘No, of course I don’t mind,’ I said. Brockley was even more of a trusted friend than Sybil or Fran Dale, his wife and my personal maid. He and Dale – I still called her that out of habit – were the valued servants I had put at risk during some of my exploits. Brockley was courageous by nature, but Dale, though loyal and honest, was not particularly strong and not very brave either. I had often felt ashamed of the way I kept dragging her into alarming situations, though I never did so intentionally. The situations just seemed to happen. If she wanted to rest on a hot afternoon, the least I could do was allow it.
Hugh said: ‘Sybil, Meg and Hillman told us today that they want to marry at once, instead of waiting until Meg is older. What do you think?’
Sybil would be on my side, I thought. I called Sybil my gentlewoman because she was educated and well spoken, even though she was actually the widow of a pie shop proprietor in Cambridge. She still owned the pie shop, which she had leased out and from which she drew a good income. She lived with me as my companion, but I did not pay her. She had refused to be paid.
She was sensible as well as educated, and middle-aged, with no high-flown romantic ideas. She had a striking face; it was as though her features had been compressed a lit
tle between her chin and the top of her head so that her eyebrows stretched unusually far towards her temples, and her nose and mouth were a fraction too wide. Yet the effect was not ugly; in fact, it was attractive in a common-sense kind of way; an excellent mixture.
‘It’s lovely to see them, isn’t it?’ she said, gazing at the couple in the garden, her dark eyes soft. ‘They look so at ease together. And Meg is no foolish child; she’s a young woman, in mind and body. I should say yes, if I were you, Mistress Stannard. Brockley was saying, only the other day, that it was a pity to hold them back. We saw them ride in from hawking, side by side and looking so right – that was how he put it. Dale and Gladys were both with us. Dale agreed with him, and as for Gladys . . . well, she cackled – you know that terrible laugh of hers – and said, ah, there were two people who didn’t need love potions.’
Hugh and Cecil both burst out laughing. I gave up. Everyone but me seemed to be ranged on the side of young love. Even Gladys.
Since encountering Sir Edward Heron, I had fretted a good deal over Gladys. She was exactly the kind of old woman who might attract his attention. The reprieve I had won for her hadn’t come until she was in the death cart, crying in terror, with a rope round her neck. I had been there. I would never forget it. I had nightmares about it sometimes.
Since then, Gladys had been careful, busying herself with dusting and plain sewing and giving a little help in the kitchen; sinking quietly into the background of the household. I hoped to goodness she would go on being careful and unobtrusive, but I did occasionally seek her opinion on this matter or that. Simply because she was old and had not had an easy life, she had a certain amount of wisdom. If such trustworthy souls as Hugh and Cecil, Sybil and the Brockleys, all thought I should consent to the young couple’s plea, and Gladys agreed with them, then I was outnumbered and outmanoeuvred. It was six against one.
I gave in. ‘Very well,’ I said, with a sigh. ‘And as our pair of turtle doves are no doubt anxious to know what we have decided for them and praying that it’s the right answer, we had better tell them. Sybil, would you go and fetch them here? I suppose we can get something organized by mid-August.’
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