“The fact is Netta doesn’t really want to go back to Horden. She can’t see that it’s necessary at all.”
Deborah sat bolt upright. “Not go back? She’s marriedto you and that is your home.”
As soon as she said it she realised that if she married Frederick she would have to live in Hertfordshire. Well, that wasn’t going to happen but for a few seconds she understood and sympathised with Jeanetta. Then she burst out, “They want to see the baby. She can’t deny them that.”
“Oh I daresay she’d be happy for me to take him for a visit –”
“A visit! John, you liveat Horden Hall. It’s your ancestral home. While father is alive it’s your duty to help him and when – God forbid – his time comes to depart this life, you take over.”
“I know all that but he doesn’t need me now and afterwards – well, I can appoint a steward.”
“A steward! The baronet not live at Horden Hall!”
“Well, Father leaves it to the coal company to manage those seams they found. I wouldn’t know anything about that.”
“You could learn. I have read much about mining and coal production and distribution since the beginning of seventeen hundred when we first knew we had coal at Horden.”
“Well there you are. You like that sort of thing.” He grinned at her, rocking the chair back and forth. “You can be Father’s right hand man now. You should have been a boy anyway. And you’ll be living there the rest of your life.”
Deborah crushed down the hurt these words gave her and went back to the main point. “John, are you telling me you want to bring up little Nathaniel, the heir to Horden, as a Frenchman, a mere hanger-on in his grandfather’s château? How could you think of such a thing?”
“I know. It’s been deuced awkward. Netta and I have had words about it, but the thing is she doesn’t really like life at Horden.”
Deborah didn’t want to hear of marital disputes. She remembered the inn at Dover where she had urged John to be tolerant of Jeanetta’s moods and keep her love. But she couldn’t stop herself blurting out, “Oh I know Horden’s not grand enough for her, we don’t have armies of servants and the ladies of the house delight in work which never did suit her. But she can continue as she did. Father likes her around as a pretty ornament and Mother tolerates her.”
“But that’s it. Here she has her own mother. I know her father’s away in court a great deal but they both pet and indulge her and give parties and balls and picnics and such which she loves.”
“And you would give in to all that? You would be her appendage. Are you not bored to tears here sometimes?”
He rocked more vigorously. “There are good hunting and shooting parties –”
“Oh John, you disappoint me. I never thought you would turn out so feeble, so lazy.” She got up, exasperated. It was a long time since she had spoken to him like that. Nothing was resolved. Should she speak to Jeanetta herself and risk a serious family rift? She had no status with the comte and comtesse. Her longing to be at home in Horden had intensified while they were talking.
John had stopped rocking and his jaw was set. Had she angered him at last?
“I’ll show you one day whether I’m feeble or not.” He stood up and glared at her. Then he stalked past her to the door and turned at it. “I suppose you can write to them at home that we’ll come in August when Jean is eight months old.”
“Jean?”
“Nathaniel then. He’s Jean here. You and the nurse can manage him if Netta won’t come. We had such a hellish crossing on the way she’s frightened, but the baby seems a tough little thing. He’s scarcely ailed anything since he was born which Mother Diana says is pretty miraculous.”
Deborah caught him and grabbed his arm as he was going out. “John, you can’t tell me Jeanetta would let the baby out of her sight for months? Of course she would have to come.”
Even as she said it she realised neither John nor Jeanetta spent much time with the baby. The nurse brought him to be played with when he was newly cleaned up and fed. Oh if he was mine! she wanted to cry out, but that thought was too full of pain.
John shook off her arm. “If we both went it would just be to show the old folk the baby and keep them happy for a while. I would have to come back here. I expect I’ll be travelling back and forth from France to England for some time. Anyway, you’d better write. They keep plaguing me with letters asking when we’re coming.”
“But August is nearly three months off.”
“Say July then, but you’d better say nothing about Jeanetta. Let them suppose she’s coming. I might persuade her. God knows I don’t want to be apart from her but I don’t want her miserable, that’s all.”
This time he got away and bounded up the stairs no doubt to tell Jeanetta what a pest his sister was.
Deborah turned back into the library. A supply of writing paper adorned with the Rombeau crest was always on display on a desk in the window with ink filled up and pens newly trimmed. With a deep sigh and a foreboding of unpleasantness to come she sat down to write what should have been joyful letters. But I must make them soundjoyful, she told herself, however heavy my heart is. As she picked up a pen a summer shower blew against the window panes, veiling the green of the garden.
Well, Iwill not weep. I will say I am safely arrived here, to Maytime beauty, and in only eight little weeks I will be with them. Nothing shall take away that joy.
Upstairs Jeanetta rolled on the bed, inviting him in. She was in a playful mood and he would not spoil it. He bolted the door and began to unbuckle his breeches. Deb would have to eat her words when he led a troop of soldiers from the great Catholic families of Northumberland to join the banner of King James. If only the word could be given soon. The news was that Turin was under siege by Prince Eugene and the Duke of Savoy and a battle was looming between Marlborough and the Duc de Villeroi’s forces south of Brussels. It was certain that King Louis would not spare French troops for the Jacobite cause till these threats were over.
If I go to Horden, he was thinking, as he cast his breeches on the floor, I can visit these people on le Vent’s list. It is like the time when the highlands were raised under Claverhouse. There were long delays and I wanted swift action because I was a mere boy. Now I see how these things must be carefully planned to seize the moment.
He leaped onto the bed. “Have at thee, girl.” Jeanetta squealed with delight.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
On a day of continental heat the stagecoach, bearing Deborah, John, Matt and Suzette with baby Nathamiel and his nurse passed through Durham County on the last stretch of their journey home. Deborah sat still, utterly absorbed with the prospect of seeing her father again and anticipating the joy of Grandmother Bel.
John kept looking from the windows and remarking on the signs of new coal workings. Crossing the Tyne Bridge he pointed out the mass of coal-barges in the river.
“Look there, Deb, the north-east is the engine of the whole country. Whoever controls this trade will have London in their power.”
Deborah wondered if the prospect of being a landowner here was at last exciting him. She herself was not so sure that she wanted to see Newcastle as a coal town with tentacles of industry creeping into the countryside.
At the staging inn in Newcastle the Horden carriage was waiting for them. Suzette, who had chatted to Nurse Forêt all the way, a solid woman with not a word of English, fell silent, sensing her mistress’s suppressed excitement. The baby, muffled up, was bright red and cross.
As they approached Horden Hall Deborah saw beyond the trees the tops of the mine workings on Horden land. Her heart sank a little. With all these new mouths to feed would her father have to lease even more land for coal. She was glad that when she stepped down from the carriage and looked about with moist eyes at the dear old place no changes were apparent and here came everyone running from the house to greet them.
Her father’s welcome was the most emotional. He couldn’t hold back his tears. Her mo
ther’s was for John first and then the baby.
“Poor little precious and no mother!” Eunice took him from the nurse and, sitting down on the steps, undid his wrappings and pulled up his dress to reveal his moist pink legs. Everyone gathered to coo and gloat over him, and then Deborah found herself embraced by her sister.
“Ruth!” She held her at arm’s length, astonished and a little disconcerted.
Fifteen months had changed her from an undeveloped girl into a stalwart young woman. Her fair hair was browner and swept up smoothly. Deborah thought, it will always look more kempt than my flaxen mop. Her face is not so prettily petite as it was but handsome. Her breasts and hips are fuller but her waist is neat. Despite the heat she is wearing a tight corset under her dress. She is Mother’s build though taller, but still shorter than John. Oh, men will turn to look at herall right.
Ruth said, “Oh Deb, you look exhausted and much thinner!” She turned back to the baby and begged to hold him. He was gurgling now at his freedom to kick.
Eunice yielded him up and finally turned to Deborah and hugged her.
“My dear girl, are you well?”
Deborah exclaimed, “Just a little wearied by the heat. Ruth has grown into womanhood! I hardly knew her.”
Eunice pursed up her lips with her old disparaging smile. “Seventeen in September and looking for a husband soon.”
Deborah laughed. “I know. She was born on my birthday. I’ll be thirty-five.”
Her father squeezed her hard. “Nothing wrong with thirty-five. It’s a joy to have you back.”
That was very comfortable but it would be Ruth’s marriage prospects that would concern the family from now on. And Deborah winced to see Ruth cradling the baby. He was to be hers while he was here without his mother as long as the nurse kept him clean and fed. Ruth was eyeing Suzette curiously too. She’ll be demanding a lady’s maid next, Deborah thought. Well, that I don’t mind. Suzette will have to serve all the ladies, including Grandmother Bel.
And where was Grandmother Bel? Now she appeared in the doorway holding out one hand, but clutching a stick in the other. Deborah ran to her.
“I fell asleep and no one said you were here.”
She had aged but she was still all love. “What no Jeanetta? I couldn’t believe she wouldn’t come with her baby. Ah let me see him.” Deborah helped her down the steps. She sat down as Eunice had done on the bottom one and demanded to hold him.
“I never thought I’d live to see a great-grandchild. He’s a beauty and so big and bouncy. Little Nat! How myNat would have loved to see his namesake.”
Deborah saw that Ruth was now engrossed with John who had paid her some compliment on how she had grown up. Deborah recalled that it was he who happily played childish games with her. I tried to teach her lessons as I tried with John and the children at Nether Horden’s Dame School to please Grandfather Nat but I could never get down to their level. Their pace of learning was too slow. Yes, John will be her confidant now. She never really was mine.
The baby began to cry and Nurse Forêt declared him to be thirsty. Jane who had come with the other servants to greet them took her upstairs to feed him. I hope, Deborah thought, that Nurse will attempt some English now. Our people have no French. I am sure she understands most of what is said to her.
Later as they assembled for their first meal in the dining-room, Deborah was thinking, I must get used to this but, God help me, home feels different now.
For John the strangeness lay in the absence of Jeanetta. Up to the very last day he had hoped she would change her mind and come. He made passionate love to her with the luggage standing in their room. She was languorous in the heat-wave that lay over northern France too and finally pushed him away.
She put her hands behind her head, lying back on the pillow. “You might have left me with another child. I wonder if I can bear to go through all that again.”
“Come with me,” he said.
“You’ll come back soon. You only have to show them baby Jean and they’ll be satisfied.”
“But I have to do work for the cause. You know the commission le Vent has given me. You want me to be somebody, don’t you? I am no one here.”
“And I feel no one at Horden. Your mother always looks at me as if I should be at work, earning my keep. Here everyone wants to look after me. It’s so comfortable. Well, do your commission as you call it and come back quickly.”
With these words in his ears John wanted to start straight away making contact with Catholics in Northumberland. Le Vent had asked him to recruit more of the humbler sort to the cause. Catholic nobles like the Earl of Derwentwater were already secured. He had spent much of his childhood at Saint Germain and was certain to be prominent in the uprising. But how am I to set about mytask? John wondered.
It would excite too much curiosity if he just rode off and stayed away a night or two. Horden Hall was a more intimate place than the Château Rombeau. Everyone expected to know everyone else’s whereabouts. He was hampered too by not knowing when King Louis would be prepared to commit forces to send with James. He wanted to be armed with news.
In the next few weeks he studied the newssheets more than he had ever done. Marlborough was taking town after town in the Low Countries following his great victory at Ramillies. Would this kill off French help? Could disaffected Jacobites raise enough forces in England and Scotland on their own? John struggled to understand politics but he heard Deborah discussing with their father the Treaty of Union agreed between the English and Scottish parliaments on the twenty-second of July. It had still to be passed as an Act of Union but for the Jacobites it might offer a chance to exploit Scottish discontent with the idea of one nation. Besides, with government troops busy across the channel there would be fewer forces here to control an uprising. The Jacobites could proclaim James as King of Scotland first and hope that England would accept him. If the two countries were to become Great Britain, he was unsure whether the task would be harder or easier.
As a Catholic it was his duty to go to Mass but now that he had no wife to take he had no excuse for disappearing to Newcastle and he had to commit the sin of attending the Parish Church or risk upsetting the whole family. Their shock and amazement that Jeanetta had not accompanied him was bad enough. He feared that they thought him inadequate as a husband because he could not command his wife.
His sisters also monopolised his baby as soon as the nurse had dealt with his physical needs. Deborah even carried him in his basket to the woods and set him down to gaze at the waving leaves while she pruned dead wood or cleared undergrowth. Deb had no sense of the fitness of things. He too could work at that sort of task to fill his time but after his long sojourn at Château Rombeau he couldn’t see that as right for the future master of the Hall. And, as he had told Deb, his father was managing the estate competently. What help could he be?
His mother liked him near her. “Come and tell me more of your travels,” she would say as she went into the kitchen to make tarts with the raspberries and blackcurrants from the kitchen garden. He perched on a stool and tried to describe Paris, Versailles, the Loire and Marseilles.
“I have to live them all through you,” she said, “for I cannot go there myself.”
“You and Father should go abroad. I would look after things here.”
She patted his knee with a floury hand. “I have no desire to go where men are fighting. There is no sense in this war even in the world’s notions of sense.”
“I know. I can’t see where it’s leading at all but there aretimes when you have to fight for what is clearly right.”
“Our Lord didn’t fight.”
She always ended up preaching and he would wander off, not too obviously, to spare her feelings.
One day she said to him, “You are fretting at being away from Jeanetta.”
“Of course I am,” he snapped. “We’re neither of us great hands at letter-writing and I don’t know what she’s doing this minute which makes me mad.”
“John, has she eyes for someone else? Is that why she wouldn’t come?”
“No! That never crossed my mind. Of course the men who come to parties and balls flirt with her. She’s so pretty. She likes that. It’s flattering, but she always laughs at them afterwards with me. Still, I can’t stand this. I’ll have to go back soon.”
“And take our little Nat? We will miss him so much. It is she who should come here to you. You know what the Bible says of a dutiful wife.”
A few days after this conversation she was taking some mending out to the bench under the parlour window. “Come with me, John. I have an idea to put to you.”
When they had sat down, warmed by the August sun, she said, “Your father says Nether Horden Grange is empty now old Mistress Carr has died. Would Jeanetta come if that were yours? It is a pleasant Elizabethan house with plenty of room for the nurse and Maria, her lady’s maid, and another servant or two.”
John shifted on the bench and stroked his chin. A house of his own, free from parental eyes! But Jeanetta would need a cook, grooms and their own carriage horses.
He picked up a spool of silk that had rolled onto the grass and looked into his mother’s face. “Would you call it a mansion? There’s stabling there, isn’t there?”
She took the spool and put it in her workbox. “A mansion? Hardly, though a new wing was added when there was a tenant with a big family. And yes, it has stables. Mistress Carr was left a goodly portion and kept her own carriage. Your father’s allowance would not extend to a carriage but you could stable your own mounts and use our carriage when it was available. I suppose your father would excuse you rent, but of course, John, you couldfind some profession. You need to be occupied.”
“Profession! I only ever fancied the army or the navy and you wouldn’t hear of either.” He got up and prowled about before stopping suddenly in front of her. “I tell you what, Mother, if Father would spare me a few days I’d like to go about the county a little and find out the latest methods of husbandry and such so I’m more prepared to take over Horden when the time comes.”
Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall Page 16
