Queen's Bounty

by FIONA BUCKLEY

  Although, even then, in some corner of my mind, I kept thinking that it would be very odd, when the time came, to find myself alone with Thomas in a bedchamber, and expected to . . .

  I know him well. We’ve visited the Ferrises and been visited by them, ever since I can remember. Religion’s been a bond. My parents have often taken me to White Towers to share one of the private Masses they hold in their tiny private chapel. Peter Maine, the Ferrises’ steward, is a Catholic priest.

  In addition, when I was younger I used to go there three times a week to share Thomas’s tutor. Thomas is two years older than me, but I could vie with him at lessons, and I learnt to speak as he does, without a country accent. He and I played ball games together when we were let out of the schoolroom, and we were sometimes partners in the little wickednesses of childhood: climbing trees to the peril of our clothing, taking apples from the orchard without permission. Later we danced together and rode side by side on hawking expeditions. Thomas always has well-bred horses while I use one of Father’s hairy-heeled all-purpose horses, but as Thomas cheerfully says, if his mounts can gallop faster, mine are tireless. It was Thomas who taught me about hawking, and for my seventeenth birthday, Mistress Bridget Ferris sent me a merlin of my own.

  All of which means that Thomas and I grew up together and see each other very much as brother and sister. I kept thinking that, for us, behaving as man and wife was going to feel extremely strange and not quite natural. And what was the meaning behind that odd remark about fixing Thomas’s interest? Did he, too, feel that we were more like siblings than prospective marriage partners?

  Besides, how does one fix a man’s interest? I hadn’t the faintest idea how to go about it. For the first time, it occurred to me to wonder whether, perhaps, he had his eye on somebody else. Some other young girl. Not me.

  Both Mother and I cried at parting, though Father was annoyed about it, pointing out that I was only going a couple of miles away, to a place I already knew, and we’d see each other often enough in the future.

  I made the journey on his pillion, with my belongings on a pack pony. He said the Ferrises had undertaken to provide me with a horse of my own. We were greeted by the steward-cum-priest, Peter Maine, who delivered us into the hands of Mistress Bridget Ferris. She was elegantly dressed, as she always is, and greeted us in her usual fashion, holding a little lapdog in her arms and seeing no reason to put it down while welcoming us. Mistress Ferris always keeps lapdogs – yappy little things, quite unlike our big sheepdogs at Greenlease – and she croons baby talk to them. Yet in other ways she’s so cool and remote. Well, I suppose you must know her. She’s tall, slender, with pale blonde hair that I’ve long envied, and she dresses beautifully and is always dignified.

  So there I was at White Towers. Father exchanged a few civil words with Mistress Ferris, and then it was time for him to leave. He said goodbye, told me to be a good girl, promised to visit me soon, and then he was gone. Mistress Ferris put her little dog down, though it yelped in protest, and led me upstairs to my chamber with the dog scuttling at our heels.

  I felt nervous. Mistress Ferris wasn’t a stranger, and yet, now that I’d been placed in her care, she felt like one. The room she took me to was small but nicely furnished, with a tester bed, clothes press, washstand and a prie-dieu. My clothes had been unpacked and laid out on the bed. I looked at them doubtfully. It struck me that my plain shifts and my gowns and kirtles of wool and dyed linen weren’t too impressive – not for someone who was going to live at White Towers.

  My future mother-in-law stood me in the light and said: ‘I know you’re healthy. You had a bad rheum in the summer, I believe, but I understand that you recovered completely. That’s a blessing. And there should be no trouble about children, with those wide hips of yours. Ginger hair is fashionable nowadays, of course, because the queen has the same colouring, but I’ll have to show you how to darken your eyelashes. And we really must do something about your clothes.’

  The little dog barked, another high-pitched yap, as if in agreement.

  Tact isn’t Mistress Ferris’s foremost characteristic. I’d noticed that before. I found myself flushing under her scrutiny. Her eyes are grey, the dark kind of grey, beautifully set, but as she studied me, they held no warmth. In fact, she was surveying me from head to foot in a way that I resented. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen me before! I began to stop being nervous and to start being indignant. In a moment, I thought, she’ll feel my legs and want to look at my teeth, as though I’m a horse she’s thinking of buying.

  She noticed the flush. ‘There’s no need to be embarrassed,’ she said. ‘One must be realistic. Thomas’s bride must be well dressed. Luckily, we have a professional needlewoman to hand. Our best sempstress left us not long ago, but this Mistress Jackman has just come to the district and is looking for work and seems skilled. She shall attend on you tomorrow and measure you for some new gowns. I have bought suitable materials. Peach colour, blues and greens and amethyst shades should suit you, and I have a length of strong brown cloth to make you a riding dress. We’ve found a nice little mare for you, by the way, a blue roan. We call her Blue.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  ‘Well,’ said Mistress Ferris, ‘we must go downstairs, and you can sit and talk to Thomas. He’s been helping his father with the estate accounts, but they should be finished by now. Oh, before we go down, I just want to make certain . . . I have always thought you had pretty teeth, but I have only ever seen the front ones. Can I just make sure that the back ones are also sound?’

  ‘They are,’ I said stiffly. ‘But of course you may look.’

  She didn’t ask to feel my legs, and her tiresome little dog didn’t widdle in my room. I supposed I should be grateful for these small mercies!

  I met Mistress Sybil Jackman the next morning. She was quietly dressed in dark green with a dove-coloured kirtle and a small, old-fashioned ruff, and she was quietly spoken, too, but her face is unusual. I don’t mean ugly – I thought her rather attractive. But it’s as though her head has been compressed, just a little, between crown and chin so that her features are slightly splayed. She has some worn lines in her face, too, as though her life hasn’t been easy. But her smile is sweet and her eyes friendly. She asked me to call her Sybil. I liked her at once.

  She took my measurements, and then she and Mistress Ferris held up various materials against me to see how they looked. They were lovely fabrics, I must say. At Greenlease, Mother and I had one silk dress each, for best, and nothing in velvet. Here were silk and velvet in plenty. There was a brocade too, in shades of sea-green and peach, and a roll of white holland linen for ruffs.

  It was decided that Sybil should make the clothes in the house rather than take the materials back to her lodgings. ‘I know the cottage where you’re staying. All the rooms are poky. Here you can have one with good space and light and a table big enough for the cutting out,’ Mistress Ferris said, and Sybil agreed, obviously pleased.

  Then I was sent out to make the acquaintance of Blue, the nice little mare, and told to go riding with Thomas.

  We had spent quite a long time together the previous day, and we had talked of this and that much as we always had. I didn’t mention marriage, and neither did he. It was as though we had made a silent pact to ignore the subject unless our elders raised it. For the first time, though, in his company, I felt self-conscious. I know I’m no beauty.

  This morning, Mistress Ferris’s maid spent half an hour dressing my hair in a complicated new way and putting it into a green silk caul, and then brushed my eyelashes with a darkening substance, but none of that made me feel more confident, only peculiar, as though I were not quite myself; as though the real me was being hidden behind a facade of hairstyle and paint. For the ride, Mistress Ferris lent me a smart hat, which hid my hair, but I was sure Thomas would ask me why my eyes looked funny.

  He didn’t comment, though. In fact, he didn’t seem to notice anything different about me at a
ll. We set off. It was nice weather for riding, cool and cloudy but not raining. We went out of the main gate and turned right, towards the common land where there are good places on the heath for a gallop. In the other direction, between White Towers and Hawkswood, it’s mostly woodland. Thomas’s chestnut started to pull and dance, and Thomas said: ‘Shall we let them go? You’ll want to see how fast Blue is, and Burnish is fretting to be given his head.’

  That had a familiar, brotherly ring. More at ease, I said: ‘Yes, let’s,’ and off we went.

  Burnish took hold, and Thomas let him have his way. Blue has shorter legs and fell behind so I had plenty of time to slow down when Burnish suddenly threw up his head, pranced sideways and stopped. I caught up at a sedate trot.

  Burnish had been startled by unexpectedly encountering a girl on foot as he and Thomas rounded a clump of bushes. As I came up, Thomas was apologizing in case he had alarmed her, while the girl stood staring at him, or rather, peering at him, because she had pulled her hat low over her forehead and drawn the edge of her cloak across her face. I wondered who she was. She was well dressed; no milkmaid would have a velvet cloak or such an elegant hat. But she was alone and must be some way from her home. The nearest house of any size was, I knew, Cobbold Hall, two miles away.

  I was about to add my apologies to Thomas’s, when suddenly, she uttered a sob, swung round with a swish of her cloak, which made Burnish shy once more, and dashed off along a rabbit track to our right, as though we were dangerous footpads bent on harming her.

  ‘For the love of God!’ said Thomas. He leant forward and went cantering after her. Puzzled, I followed and came up to Thomas for the second time just as he put Burnish across the girl’s path to stop her and was swinging out of the saddle. She tried to turn away from him, but he looped his reins over his arm and caught her by the shoulders.

  ‘Christina! Christina! Don’t run away from me. Why are you running away? It’s me, Thomas!’

  The girl let out another sob. She tugged her hat down further than ever and went on clutching her cloak over her lower face. I sat still. I had halted close enough to hear as well as see, and I felt I was intruding.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ Thomas was saying. ‘Christina, what is it? Let me look at you.’ He pushed her hat back and pulled at the cloak. ‘Oh, Christina!’

  I bit my lip. Oh, poor thing. In trying to evade Thomas, she had turned towards me, and as he took her hat and cloak away from her face, I recognized her as Christina Cobbold. Our parents are quite well acquainted, though I myself have only met her a few times. She’s younger than I am. I know her elder sister Alice better. I was invited to Alice’s wedding, though I was unwell and couldn’t go. Christina isn’t especially pretty, but she has nice beech-nut coloured hair and sparkling dark eyes. But now, below the cheekbones, her skin was heavily pitted with the marks of smallpox, and there was a scattering of reddened marks across her forehead.

  ‘I didn’t want you to see!’ She shouted it at Thomas. ‘I don’t want anyone to see! That’s why I come out and walk alone; so that I’m not with anyone, so that no one is looking at me. I hate anyone looking at me. I hate people feeling sorry for me. Go away, Thomas! Go away, Margaret! Go away! Even my own mother pities me . . . Let me go!’

  ‘Don’t be absurd!’ Thomas actually shook her. ‘So you’ve had the pox. So have thousands of girls, and no one thinks the worse of them. Do you think I’d abandon you for that? What do you take me for? It could have been me, except that I had it when I was very young, and then not badly. Would you have turned away from me for such a reason?’

  ‘It’s different for a man. I’m ugly now. No one will ever want me. I wouldn’t expect you to . . .’

  ‘You silly thing,’ said Thomas, pulling her against him. ‘You still have your bright eyes and your beautiful hair.’ He pushed her hat right to the back of her head, and her beech-nut hair was as pretty as ever. He buried his face in it. Then he moved again, tilted her face upwards, and pressed his mouth to hers.

  I sat very still indeed.

  I knew what I was seeing. It was the thing that the love stories describe, and the love songs, the thing I hadn’t believed could really exist. But when I looked at Thomas and Christina, I saw that it does. I recognized it. I was seeing people in love.

  Those two, entwined together, blending their lips as though they were trying to melt into a single entity, were oblivious of me, oblivious of the whole world. Just now, they were each other’s world.

  I tried the signal that tells a well-trained horse to edge backwards, and Blue responded. I backed along the rabbit path, to give the pair more privacy, to get out of hearing.

  After a time, they moved apart and stood talking quietly to each other. Then Christina turned and walked away, and Thomas, after watching her go for a little while, remounted Burnish and came back to me.

  He looked at me sadly. ‘So now you know,’ he said.

  I nodded.

  ‘Margaret, I’ve known you since we were children, and I’m as fond of you as any brother could be, but . . .’

  ‘I know,’ I said. I didn’t know whether I was hurt or not. I only knew the truth of what I had seen. ‘I understand,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t marry you,’ Thomas said. ‘But Christina is a Cobbold. How she and I are to get past that, God knows. Only, somehow, we must.’

  I began: ‘But . . .’ and then stopped because I didn’t know what I wanted to say, and because he looked angry, which frightened me. ‘Thomas?’ I said. ‘I won’t tell anyone, if that’s why you’re cross. It’s your business. I wouldn’t interfere.’

  ‘I’m not cross with you,’ Thomas said. ‘Only with myself. I’ve got to tell my father, to make him understand, and I know he never will, and I’m ashamed because I’m a big, strong young man and I’m afraid of him. You don’t know him. He looks so harmless, but he isn’t.’

  I knew what he meant. Master Ferris is an ordinary, quiet-spoken sort of man, and yet there is something about him, and always has been, that makes me wary of him.

  Thomas said: ‘I’m sorry. Whatever happens, I’ll have to take the brunt. It isn’t your fault.’

  We rode slowly back to White Towers, and entered into the midst of an uproar that for a short time actually drove our private troubles out of our heads.

  The uproar was in the hall, which at White Towers is large, though not quite large enough for its furnishings. Do you know it? I have always thought, secretly, that it’s a pompous sort of place. It has dark oak panelling that absorbs light, making the room shadowy, and there’s a great big stone fireplace with an inglenook and cushioned seats, and there are two massive sideboards with a lot of elaborate carving, and a long table with carved, throne-like chairs at each end and wide oak benches on each side, and it all takes up far too much space. When people sit down to dine, those serving the meal have to squeeze between the sideboards and the benches, there’s so little room for them.

  The Ferrises don’t have rushes on the floor. That’s made of highly polished planks and strewn with fur rugs: deerskin, bearskin, fleece, and a spotted leopardskin. I’ve often wondered where they got that one from.

  When we went in, drawn by the sound of raised voices, Thomas’s parents were standing by the inglenook, where I think they’d been sitting, since the fire was lit and one of the seat cushions was on the floor as though someone had got up in a hurry. Peter Maine was standing in front of them, and he was gripping Sybil by the arm and shaking it angrily. We just stopped and stared.

  ‘—caught in the very act, Master Cobbold!’ Maine was accusing Sybil of something. ‘I couldn’t believe my eyes,’ he said. ‘Standing there in your very study, sir, with your document box open in front of her! Aha, you thought we were all out of your way, didn’t you, my fine lady? Saw the master and mistress sitting in the hall; saw me going out into the grounds! But I only went to speak to the gardeners for a few minutes, and as I came back, I saw you at your games through the master’s study windows! Readin
g his letters! Wickedness! Dishonesty! Have you stolen as well as spied? Well? Have you?’

  There was not only fury in Maine’s voice, but also a kind of satisfaction, as though to catch someone out, to accuse them in public of wrongdoing, gave him pleasure.

  Peter Maine is maybe forty, with a pale, plump face, a stomach a little too bulgy, and uncomfortable eyes, slate blue with a yellow ring in them. He is always dressed in black, including a black velvet cap which he keeps on indoors and out, and I know the reason because I once saw it blow off when he stepped outside on a windy day. He wears it to hide the fact that his greying hair is cut into a tonsure. I have never liked him much. Now I realize why. He has a cruel streak, and it was showing.

  Sybil tried to speak, but Walter Ferris wasn’t going to listen.

  ‘Stop trying to explain yourself! There’s nothing you can possibly explain! You have opened my document box – how, by the way? The keys are with me.’

  ‘picklocks!’ said Maine. ‘She had picklocks. These!’ He put his spare hand into a pocket and brought out a set of thin metal rods with hooked ends. ‘She’s a professional thief, that’s what she is. And what’s more, I know who she is! From the moment she set foot in the house, I thought I’d seen her somewhere before, and when I caught her in your study, standing there with one of your letters in her hand, then it came to me. I’ve seen her in Woking, attending on that Mistress Stannard. The Stannards consort with witches, so why not with thieves? This woman was sent by the Stannards to spy on you, sir; I wouldn’t be surprised!’

  ‘Better put her in the cellar,’ said Mistress Ferris. ‘While we send for the sheriff.’

  ‘Yes, indeed!’ Master Ferris was bristling with wrath. ‘Spying, thieving . . .’

  ‘I haven’t stolen anything!’ Sybil shouted. ‘And yes, I was sent by the Stannards, to try to find out why you’ve threatened them, Master Ferris! Didn’t you burst into their daughter’s wedding feast and fling accusations? And there have been other things, too. They want to know what you have against them!’