Jessica sat beside the water, tossed a small twig into the current and watched as it turned and was slowly carried away by the muddy stream. Oddly, her back ached a little, and so did her head. She rubbed her forehead impatiently. Vaguely she wondered if she might be sickening for something, and for a strange, brief moment the thought of a childish illness, rest in her comfortable bed, Lucy fussing about her with pills and potions, her mother visiting, cool and sweet-smelling, was ridiculously seductive.
She straightened her aching back. What in the world was wrong with her? Why wasn’t she running in the fields, as she had every other year? Why this odd depression of spirit, that was so unlike her? Her eyes turned again to where Caroline sat with Danny, laughing, her head on his shoulder, and she was filled with a sudden painful yearning so strong that she felt the rise of self-pitying tears – and there was another question; why lately did the tears rise so easily – tears that such a short time ago she would have died before shedding? She swallowed fiercely. Her heart had started to thud, and a small, sickly pain stabbed in her abdomen. Was she truly ill? Trottie Smith, down in the village, had been just her age when she’d died last year—
Miserably she hunched her shoulders. Where was Robert? How dared he stay away so long—!
When the blood came that night she was terrified. At her small, choked scream Lucy came running.
‘Lucy! I’m bleeding! I’m bleeding! What’s wrong with me? Am I going to die like Trottie did—?’
‘Why, bless you, no – ’tis your monthlies started, tha’ss all. ’Tis part of growin’ up, Miss Jessie, an’ it comes to us all.’
Jessica was still choking on frightened sobs. ‘What do you mean?’
Lucy put a comforting arm about her. ‘Why, little love, like I said, it happens to us all. ’Tis sent from God.’
Jessica was horribly confused. ‘What is? What do you mean?’
‘Why the bleeding. Once a month a woman bleeds – ’cept when she’s breeding, that is—’
‘You mean – everyone? You? Mother? – Caroline?’ Jessica was totally astonished. ‘How – how long does it last? What must I do? Why doesn’t it hurt, if it’s bleeding—?’
Lucy stood up. ‘I’ll find you some rags and make you comfortable. Tomorrow I daresay the Miss will explain.’
MacKenzie did explain. Her face blotched red with embarrassment she explained that a woman’s monthly flow was a curse brought down to atone for womankind’s original sin in the Garden of Eden.
Jessica, her first panic subsided, was sceptical. ‘But what’s it for?’
‘For? I told you – it’s to remind you of the wickedness of Eve! To remind you to pray that such sin does not claim you—’
‘Lucy says a woman’s bleeding stops when she’s breeding. Why’s that?’
MacKenzie was outraged. ‘Does she indeed?’ Her thin lips pinched to a furious line.
‘Well – does it?’
‘Enough of this, Miss. You’ve heard all you need to hear—’
‘But—’
‘But nothing! Now attend me! You’re a young woman now – you note, I hope, that I don’t use the word lady?’ She added, ‘Once and for all your wild ways will have to stop now. You understand me?’
Cowed for the moment despite herself, Jessica nodded. She did not as it happened at the moment feel in the least bit wild. Her stomach ached and her insides felt sore.
‘Things have changed, Miss,’ MacKenzie folded pious hands, ‘and you must change with them, whether you will it or no.’
As she stalked from the room, there was still enough rebellion in Jessica to give rise to the happy thought that, surely, if this strange event somehow marked her passage from childhood to womanhood there was every possibility that the days of governesses must surely now be numbered—?
* * *
With the weather holding well the harvest was in quickly that year, and from the middle of September, inevitably, the business of Giles’ and Clara’s wedding took over both houses entirely. Never had Jessica seen such preparations, not even for the May Masque. Every bedroom in New Hall – and there were more than twenty of them – was opened and aired, ready for guests. The reception rooms were cleaned and polished to perfection. The kitchens were a picture of constant if controlled turmoil: every other moment, or so it seemed, Maria Hawthorne was called upon to mediate in the state of total warfare that had been declared between M. Bonnard and Mrs Benson – Mrs Benson announcing often and loudly to anyone who would listen that the French chef was undoubtedly a Napoleonic spy, and as such should certainly be shot. The argument that her rival had been resident in England for more than thirty years and regarded himself in everything but his art as an Englishman cut no ice with her at all.
At Old Hall both the excitement and the preparations were of a different nature. It was no secret that Sarah FitzBolton had been a little hurt by her daughter’s break with tradition in holding the wedding breakfast at her new home rather than her old. Inconvenience and cost notwithstanding the event might have been expected to be held at Old Hall. When William Hawthorne had suggested, however, that the ballroom at New Hall might be a more suitable venue Clara, with no consultation with her parents, had accepted the offer with what seemed to Jessica quite heartless pleasure. And so, at Old Hall, there was not the bustle of expectation that there was at the newer house, though certainly some far-flung relatives would be attending and would be afforded rooms and entertainment in the FitzBolton house. Jessica herself, as the bride’s chief maid, would spend the night before the wedding at Old Hall, to be on hand for her duties the next morning. The wedding was to be at nine o’clock, and the bride, her attendants and her family, weather permitting, were to walk the river path to the church, as many a FitzBolton bride had done before. A splendid carriage, a wedding present from William Hawthorne, would be waiting to carry the newly-weds the distance to New Hall after the ceremony. Clara’s dress – sumptuous white silk brocade trimmed with silver and pearls – was a lovely thing, that emphasized her slenderness and the austere grace of her carriage and contrasted strikingly with her raven hair. Yet for all its beauty, the first time Jessica saw Clara dressed in it she felt that same vague and jarring sense of wrongness that had plagued her feelings about Giles and Clara ever since she had seen them together in the woods. Standing, tall and composed, in the gleaming silver-trimmed silk, Clara lacked only her icicle crown to recreate the ice queen of the May Masque. Jessica could not help but wonder if that were an appropriate impression to be conveyed by a young bride. She showed no great excitement, no impulsive warmth or worry about the coming ceremony. Cool, collected and apparently utterly nerveless she organized her always disorganized parents, consulted with Maria about guest lists and menus, sorted and stacked presents as if a wedding were a perfectly everyday affair.
Two days before the great day Robert, at last, came home. Jessica was at Old Hall with his family to greet him, her eagerness to see him overcoming at the last moment her desire to demonstrate her absolute indifference to his long absence. The hired carriage which had met him from the stage was late.
Jessica, who had left Caroline and Danny at the church together – Caroline having with devious and graceless design assumed charge of the floral decorations for the ceremony could, for these few days at least, visit the place openly – wandered the rabbit-warren of Old Hall fighting impatience. In the lovely, ancient Old Drawing Room, hardly ever used by the family, who preferred the more modern suite of rooms on the south side of the house, she knelt for a while in the great oriel window that overlooked the courtyard, watching the activity below through the old glass that yellowed and diffused the images as if she were looking through water. Then restlessly she wandered to the piano that she had so often heard Robert play, lifting the lid and striking the notes at random with one finger, listening as the sound echoed to the high, ornamented ceiling. Then, in the distance, she heard the sound of a carriage. Slamming the lid she flew from the door and down the wide, dark sta
ircase with its ranked portraits to the courtyard. And there he was, neat, pale, collected, smiling at her exuberance.
All her carefully contrived airy speeches deserted her. ‘Oh, Robert – I’m so very glad you’re back—’
They had no chance to talk privately that day. With his family she heard his account of his time in Devon, the visit to Bath, the general delightfulness of the Aloway family – though try as she might as she listened to the general conversation a relieved Jessica could discover no indication of any special attachment to a particular member. It was however after supper on the eve of the wedding before she spoke to him alone.
It was the sound of the piano that drew her to the Old Drawing Room, where she had watched for him the day before. In the dark hall at the foot of the grand staircase she listened. The music cascaded, passionate and lyrical; it could, she knew, be no one but Robert playing. She climbed the stairs, shadowed and as yet unlit, then stopped on the landing outside the door, oddly hesitant about interrupting. Then the music stopped, very suddenly, halfway through a phrase, and in the silence she heard the snap of the lid and sharp footsteps clipping upon the wooden floor, coming towards the door.
‘Robert?’
He stood framed in the open doorway, small, slight, neat as a girl, his face in shadows. ‘Oh, hello Jessica.’
Determinedly she ignored the lack of enthusiasm. ‘We haven’t had a chance to talk since you came home.’
‘No.’ The word was abstracted.
She ploughed on. ‘It’s been ages. I’ve tons to tell you.’ The evening sun that glimmered through the huge stained glass window, into each pane of which had been inserted the ancient arms of FitzBolton and the families allied to them over the years, filled the stairwell with a strange, lucently colourful light. On impulse Jessica sat down on the top stair. ‘Let’s stay here for a minute. The house is so full of people there’s nowhere else to go.’
Slowly he crossed the landing and in silence sat beside her, his arms loosely linked about his bent knees. She waited. After a moment he turned his head and smiled at her, the odd restraint dropping from him. ‘Right. Here I am. Fire away. What’s been happening while I’ve been gone?’
She was furious to find herself suddenly and ridiculously tongue-tied. What had been happening? The world had changed, that was all. And so had she. ‘I – well – not much, really—’ she found herself saying lamely. ‘The – the harvest was good. And Bunty had kittens. Five of them. Bran’s learned that he’s supposed to drop things when he fetches them. And one of the stable boys broke a leg when he took a fall from Bellingham Lad. Father says the horse is a menace and has to be sold. I think it was the boy’s own fault. I can ride the Lad without falling off.’
He nodded.
‘What – what about you?’
‘Me?’
‘Devon. How was it? Really, I mean.’
He looked away. ‘All right.’
‘Only all right?’
He had to laugh at her persistence. ‘Very all right. I enjoyed myself.’ He hesitated. ‘Paul is a very good friend, and his parents are charming.’
‘And the others?’
‘What others?’
‘I thought he had – oh, brothers and sisters and things?’
‘Oh, yes. Sisters. They’re very agreeable.’
For the life of her she could read nothing into that. Exasperated she subsided into silence for a while. Then, ‘Robert?’ she asked, tentatively, ‘can I ask you something?’
He cocked an enquiring brow.
‘Do you know – that is—’ she stumbled on the words, started again, ‘Do you know much about the Roman Catholic Church?’
He looked at her in surprise. ‘Good Lord! What a funny question!’
She did not look at him. ‘Well, do you? I mean – MacKenzie’s been talking. You know how awful she is. Are the Papists really as wicked as all that?’
He laughed outright. ‘Oh, of course not! It’s all a lot of nonsense!’
She stared.
‘The Church of Rome,’ he said, patiently, ‘lays claim – justifiably, whether we like it or not – to being the original Church of Christ—’
‘But—’
He held up a hand. ‘You asked me. At least let me finish. I’m no expert, of course, but I’ve often heard Papa talk of it. Over the years the Church became very rich and very powerful. Too rich. Too powerful. It meddled in politics. It made enemies. Many would say it abused its position; but that has nothing to do with the ordinary man or woman who follows its teachings because he or she believes that, right or wrong in its fallible human state, it is the Church that was founded by Christ.’
Her eyes were huge in the half-dark. ‘If that’s true, why aren’t we all Catholics?’
‘Because men fought for the right to worship in their own fashion. Because, in some cases, it was politic to break with Rome. Because there was money and land to be confiscated. Because good men were outraged at the thought that forgiveness could be bought with a handful of gold coins. Because Henry the Eighth wanted another wife and another alliance. Lord, Jessica, there are a million reasons! Father thinks – and I believe him – that it’s possible, probable even, that England would have taken up the Protestant cause sooner or later, Henry the Eighth or no. As a nation the excesses of an extreme church simply doesn’t suit us. But that’s not to say that those that worship in a different fashion are wrong.’
There was a depth of puzzlement in her eyes and her voice. ‘But – MacKenzie says—’
‘Oh, forget what MacKenzie says!’ For the first time the words were impatient. ‘Use your brain! You can’t sensibly believe that every Roman Catholic is some kind of seditious devil steeped in wickedness? It’s utter nonsense. There are good and bad in the Church of Rome as there are in any other religion or organization. To persecute them makes no sense.’
‘But the law of the land—?’
‘Is wrong. It’s outdated and stupid.’
‘That’s what—’ She pulled herself up, aware of how close she had come to mentioning her brother’s name. Hastily, and with real curiosity in her voice she asked, ‘Well, what are the differences? There must be some?’
‘Of course there are. And they’re very basic. The main theological difference is transubstantiation—’
‘Whatever’s that?’
‘Catholics believe that at every Mass the bread and the wine of Communion is turned into the actual Body and Blood of Our Lord—’
‘How can that be?’
He shrugged. ‘Exactly. That’s what people began to ask. A miracle at every Mass? Well – I couldn’t be persuaded. But I have nothing against those that are. Why should I?’
‘What else?’
‘Let me see. Their priests don’t marry, of course. And there’s the Pope. To Catholics he is the spiritual and moral leader of the world – which is fine I suppose if you have a good one and not so good if you don’t. In England, of course the king – mad as he is – is head of Church and State. That’s why, politically, Catholics are often suspect – there’s always the worry that their loyalty to a foreign Pope will overcome their alliegance to their country. It’s really nothing to do with dogma or theology. Jessica, what is all this? You’ve never shown the least bit of interest in religion before—?’
She shrugged, but did not answer.
He waited, watching her in the half-dark. ‘Well – have I answered your question? Is there anything else you wanted to know?’
She shook her head. Then, ‘Just – supposing someone – supposing I – were to become a Catholic—’
‘Convert, you mean?’
The Hawthorne Heritage Page 12
