Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall

by Height of Folly

  “Their normal hour is two,” John whispered to Deborah as they climbed the marble staircase. “They copy the King at Versailles. You’d better wear something fine but keep your best for a ball. They are sure to give several balls while we are here.”

  “I have my sixteen-year-old sea-green gown but it will be mighty crushed. If my trunk is in my room now I can shake it out but I thought this fine grey silk I have worn under my travelling cloak would do well enough.”

  John pursed his lips. “ Theyare all so splendidly colourful. Still I suppose it doesn’t much matter what you wear.”

  “No, you are quite right, John.” That, she thought, will be the story of this visit for me. But I am here in France, the fulfilment of a dream. She followed the footman into the bedchamber she had been given. He bowed several times at the door and finally backed out with an ill grace. He expected a tip, she realised. Well, I will receive scant service from the domestiques while I am here but that suits me admirably. She went to the window. And there is, as Jeanetta said, a fine view over the gardens with an abundance of blossom when our northern countryside is still half asleep. She turned back to study the room. The bed is very high but there is a flight of three steps by which I can climb in and the curtains are handsome. I trust there are no bugs here as there are in all the inns.

  She lifted the damask coverlet and fingered sheets of the best linen. A fragrance of flowers rose from them. She shook her head in disbelief. No bug could live here. Why, I am to be a princess this summer!

  A tap came at her door. She flung the cover over and called “ Entrez!”

  Sophia put her head round the door. Her plain, wholesome face was scarcely painted at all, Deborah noticed, and her smile was genuine if a little nervous. “I believe you have no maid of your own, Deborah? May I call you Deborah?”

  “Of course. Are we not second cousins? No, I have shared Jeanetta’s Maria till now.”

  “Then you shall have Suzette. She is the orphan of a tenant so I adopted her. She has few words of English but you speak French perfectly. Here, Suzette. Lady Horden is your new mistress.” Then she hissed in English behind her hand. “If you cannot stomach her, Deborah, pray say so at once.”

  A thin girl, her face marked with smallpox, edged round the door. Deborah had seen plenty of worse cases. Newcastle had had its share of outbreaks over the years. She went to her at once and took her hand and spoke to her in French. “Well, Suzette, we shall be friends, shall we not?” She looked at Sophia and said in English, “I am not LadyHorden you know. That title belongs only to my mother. John will not be Sir John until he inherits Horden from our father.”

  “Oh pray let Suzette call you my lady. It would make her so happy. She had no aspirations to be a lady’s maid but my own maid has been showing her how things are done for I knew I must find her a place one day. Thank you for accepting her.”

  Sophia slipped out as unobtrusively as she had come in.

  The girl was looking up at Deborah with round brown eyes like a devoted dog. She seemed in awe of her new mistress’s height. It came home to Deborah what she was taking on.

  I’ll be obliged to keep her with me, she reflected, when we return home. If I make a friend of her I could never cast her off, but Mother does not approve of ladies’ maids. The poor girl will see a sad contrast to this place with its swarms of servants.

  Beaming at Suzette she began to tell her what her English home was like. “We Horden ladies roll up our sleeves, bake bread, polish silver, tend the gardens. And my favourite outdoor task is clearing undergrowth in the woods and chopping logs for the fires. When my Grandmother Bel lived in the parsonage she had only one servant. She picked her own apples and blackberries to make into pies, grew vegetables and kept hens. Since my Grandfather’s death her hens have come to join ours at the Hall and Grandmother runs out in her apron to feed them.” She had nearly added “while Jeanetta is still a-bed,” when she remembered Jeanetta was a great lady here, daughter of the master himself.

  The girl’s eyes grew wider than ever. No wonder Jeanetta finds us a puzzle, Deborah reflected, and cannot feel truly comfortable in John’s home. What does sheever doat Horden? Plays tolerably on the virginals and puts a few stitches in the altar cloth she has been two years embroidering. I can never forget the look on her face when mother told her of her poverty-stricken Puritan background. I’m afraid Father cringed to hear her speak of it to a child of French aristocracy, and a Catholic to boot.

  So what will Suzette’s role be at home? She must learn English as none of our people speak French. Maria has picked up English but has always found the cheerful informality of Horden under my parents’ influence quite distressing. I will have to shape this girl into another mould if she is to fit in and be happy.

  Suzette was now hovering beside the trunk which had been carried up. Deborah sighed. She knows that her first task is to unpack for me but do I want anyone handling my things? She may look like a devoted dog but she has a human tongue in her head and can amuse them all below with tales of the eccentric lady’s belongings. Reluctantly she fumbled for the key in her hanging pocket and handed it to the girl. I don’t know her, she was thinking, but I am sorry for her situation in life and as darling Grandmother Bel would say, “Just love everyone around you and you will always be happy.”

  That must be my secret for this sojourn in strange places but I must also be wary because there are characters about like Edouard le Vent. If one’s trust is thrown back in one’s face one must walk away, not fuming, but a little wiser.

  She sank into an upholstered chair, put her feet on a footstool and watched Suzette take out her clothes and hang them in the closet or fold them on shelves as appropriate, handling them as if they were the most expensive silks. Every few minutes the girl cast anxious glances at her.

  Deborah smiled. “ Trèsbien, très bien, Suzette!” All the time she wondered, how can I get rid of her so I can be alone?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Horden Hall, May 1705

  Sir Daniel Wilson Horden knocked at his mother’s bedroom door at eight in the morning. “A letter with an earl’s crest for you.” There was no reply.

  His daughter Ruth came running up the stairs. “Grandmother Bel is feeding the hens. Let me see the letter. What does an earl’s crest look like? How does Grandmother know an earl? Is he her secret lover?”

  Daniel ruffled her fair curls. “No, silly girl. It is the crest of Lord Branford whose son Henry was my friend at Cambridge and afterwards in the King’s navy.”

  “Ooh, was he the one whose head was shot off right next to you?”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Grandmother Bel. She says I have to thank God always that the canon ball missed you or I wouldn’t be here at all. So when I have naughty thoughts I try to remember that.”

  “Well, we will go and find her. The old earl wrote and commiserated with her over the loss of your grandfather for they were at Cambridge together. They keep up an intermittent correspondence.”

  As they went down the stairs and through the rear door to the stable-yard Daniel was seeing the bulge under the fallen sail, ripping it apart and finding the head of his friend, the eyes wide open and astonished at his sudden end, the ears protruding as they always did but no longer a comic feature. He drew a deep breath and took Ruth’s hand as she skipped beside him.

  “Good morning, Mother,” he called to the fenced area of the hen run, “Lord Branford has written again to you.”

  “Oh the dear old man!” Bel cast the last scraps from her basket and came trotting out latching the gate carefully behind her. Daniel watched her with loving eyes. She had a man’s hat pulled over her thick grey curls and a maid’s apron over her old worn dress. Seventy-seven now she had shrunk in height with no spare flesh on her from her endless activity.

  She took the letter, chuckling. “I know not why I call him old. He and I must be much of an age for he was younger than your father when they were at Cambridge. He always s
ays it was your father who helped him through to his bachelor’s degree. Come into the parlour and hear what he has to say. Yes, you too, Ruth, if you like.”

  Eunice was in the parlour turning a torn linen sheet into aprons for the kitchen maid. Daniel was a little wary of his wife’s attitude to their acquaintance with an earl. Mother Bel made nothing of it herself but Jane, their longest-serving maid, always presented such a letter on the best silver salver. Eunice had given up telling her that ‘an earl is just a man like the rest of us.’ But his mother sat down on the settle next to her, broke the seal and abstracted her spectacles from her apron pocket.

  “We’ll all share it. My, it’s a mighty long letter. What can he find to write about?” Her eyes were glancing rapidly down it. “I see he’s interested in the news in my last letter to him that Deborah was to go to France with John and Jeanetta. So he writes that by coincidence his grandson Frederick, Henry’s son, has also set off for –”

  Daniel started up. “ Henry’s son. You must be mistaken. Henry had no son.”

  Bel put the letter closer to her eyes. She was shaking her head. “No, it is so. He writes that Henry fell in love while he was still at Cambridge and when you and he enlisted in the navy he married secretly before joining the ship.”

  “Nonsense.” Daniel held out his hand for the letter. “He would have told me. This is some hussy trying to win a fortune for her child. The earl’s old wits are addled if he accepts her tale.”

  “He is as sane as I.” Bel kept hold of the letter, her lips compressed as she scanned the closely written pages. “He tells me that his grandson Frederick who is a widower has recently departed for the Continent and he would like to know where Deborah is going in the hope they can meet. Why, he is as good as proposing his grandson for your daughter!” She faced Eunice. “Well of course you’llnot care that he is heir to a great estate in Hertfordshire as well as a fine mansion in the Strand, and nor do I of course, if he’s a good man. But if Deborah could find a husband that made her happy –”

  Eunice, as small as Bel but plump in her middle age as she had never been in her Spartan childhood, laid a restraining hand on Bel’s arm. “Slow down, dear Mother Bel, and let us hear how Henry Branford, with whom Daniel was so intimate both at Cambridge and in the navy, could possibly have produced a son without him knowing of it.”

  “Of course he couldn’t and pray never let me hear you again linking Deb’s name with some bastard.”

  Bel looked up at Daniel rearing over her from his great height. “Sit down, son. Draw a chair up close if you like but have the patience to listen.” She laid a finger on a sentence of the letter. “Before you sailed for the wars did Henry ever speak of a dream wherein he was cleft in two by a cutlass? He had no pain but immediately found himself in heaven.”

  Daniel struck the side of his head with his palm. “By the Lord, he did, he did. He said he couldn’t tell his family for they would take it as an awful presentiment. He told me, laughing it away as he did most things. How can his father speak of that?”

  Again he held out his hand for the letter.

  Bel wouldn’t yield it to him. “It was because of the dream he determined to marry the girl he loved. In the dream he was seeking her in heaven and couldn’t find her so he told her they must be made one before God so they could meet in heaven.”

  Daniel shook his head. “He never added that part of the dream. If there is any truth in this at all it must be that some girl trapped him into marriage because she was with child. He was guileless, that I do know and easily led. I had only to say I wanted to serve in the navy and he said, “I too!” He was not very clever either. But it seems this girl – why, Eunice, she must be a woman of our age now – sheis clever. She has beguiled the father as she did the son.”

  “At all events,” Bel said, “she has convinced the earl that this Frederick is legitimate. But more than that he writes affectionately of his daughter-in-law. She is a ‘noble’ character.” Bel was now reading directly from the letter. “They were married and Henry was killed before she could write to him that she was with child.”

  Daniel interrupted with a snort. “It was the other way about. She told him that she was with child and he felt obliged to do the honourable thing and marry her.”

  Bel frowned. “Just hear what the earl writes and do your snorting afterwards. He says, ‘Her family wanted to engage her to a second cousin in the next village but Henry loved her. He insisted on their marrying before he went to war. To do it quickly he had to write to me for more funds, for clothes he told me, but he spent the money on obtaining a licence. They were wed in a church where they were not known and he was recorded as Lieutenant Harry Branford. She had no notion who he really was. So they married without the knowledge of our family or hers and Henry died unaware that his wife had conceived a son.’”

  Daniel saw from Eunice’s small frown that she was considering this seriously. The piquant face tapering to a tiny chin that had fascinated him when he first saw her was fuller now with a suspicion of another chin below as she cocked her head on one side. Her smoothed back mousy hair was streaked with grey. We can’t escape it, he thought, we are past our middle years as Henry would be if he had lived. I wonder whether she’ll recommend Mother to give the earl details of Deborah’s whereabouts. Certainly she’ll care little about rank. All she’ll want to know is that a prospective son-in-law has been brought up to fear God and keep the commandments.

  She turned her head to Bel. “I am trying to put myself in the shoes of this woman when she heard Henry had been killed. How did she learn of his true identity? Why did she not go at once to the Branford seat in Hertfordshire and present the child to his grandparents?”

  Bel had read on a little way.

  “The earl is blaming Henry for that. He says Henry rushed into the marriage in a passion of love. Well, that Ican understand. I was so desperate to marry my Nat that I proposed to him in the public street. But because it was all done in haste Henry left no word with his wife about his family nor had he any papers on him about her When he failed to return she had to search the news sheets that listed casualties. Thenshe found his true identity. What could she suppose but that he was ashamed of marrying so far – in the world’s eyes – below him? She believed she must raise her boy herself. She would not approach a grand family to be rejected, but of course she carefully locked up the certificate of her marriage.”

  Eunice nodded. “It is the curse of our divided land, the gulf between the great and the humble. She feared the Branfords would take the boy and reject her

  Daniel was now caught up in the story. “Lord and Lady Branford were kindpeople. I knew them.”

  “But shedidn’t,” his mother pointed out, looking down the page. “She loved Frederick as dearly as she had loved Harry as she always called him. She was happy to keep her boy with her on her father’s farm, for her parents forgave her secret marriage to her naval officer in pity for her loss. They were glad too to have a clever grandson. Her brother had boys to take over the tenancy of the farm but young Frederick proved himself a scholar. He did so well in the local Dame School that he was given a scholarship to the Grammar School and from there he was indentured to a law firm and qualified as a lawyer. Ah now I see why the earl says Frederick is a widower. He married a local girl but sadly she died in childbirth two years ago.”

  Daniel was still impatient to read the letter for himself. He demanded, “But, Mother, when did Lord Branford learn of the young man’s existence?”

  “Why, only in the last year. Just after he got my letter he learnt that his sister Hermione’s grandson, his sole heir, had been killed in France. The other children are all girls. Frederick’s mother read the society papers to keep in touch with the Branfords’ doings and saw that there was no descendant left to inherit the earldom to the great grief of old Lord Branford. At last she saw that it was her duty to break to Frederick what his lawful inheritance was. Very tentatively and with much misgiving she wrote to
Lord Branford and enclosed a copy of the marriage document.”

  “Which he would scrutinise, I trust, as a probable forgery.”

  His mother looked sadly at him. “You are in a most sceptical frame of mind, my boy.” She looked back at the letter. “But you are right that he got his lawyers onto it and they were sent to the church where the ceremony took place to examine the records. They even spoke to the priest, old and retired from the living but still in the neighbourhood. He remembered the circumstances and could describe Henry well.”

  Daniel heaved a sigh. “I still doubt this woman’s complete veracity but I suppose if she had been a fortune hunter she wouldn’t have kept silent so long. Poor Henry with his protruding ears! I wish he had told me. He seemed so light-hearted. But now I think of it I recall a time when he asked me if I was secretly betrothed. Eunice’s grandmother had hinted so much to him.” He looked at Eunice as he said it. “I dismissed the subject. My feelings were so confused at the time.” Eunice nodded, smiling. “So he said his family too had a young lady in mind for him but he couldn’t fancy her. Maybe if I had bared my heart to him then he would have admitted his secret love for a farmer’s girl. I can see that my reticence may have held him back. Yes, I think I can believe all this now and maybe the old earl’s wits are notaddled.”

  Bel had now read to the end of the letter. “Well, it is plain from this that the good old man has taken Frederick and his mother into his own home and heartily approves of them both. In fact as soon as he saw the lad he knew it was Henry’s son. He has the ears.”

  Daniel got up. The sight of Henry’s head was there again. He paced the parlour and then turned on his mother. “Whatever the truth of all this I can’t put this unknown boy forward for our precious Deborah.” He laughed abruptly. “Why are we speaking of him as a youth? He must be thirty-five or six and has been married. This is no Mother’s boy. This is a mature man.”