The Lonely Furrow

by Norah Lofts

  ‘I do not think that Master Turnbull need be involved. Or Sir Barnabas put to inconvenience. There must be some simpler solution…’

  It flashed upon him. Neat. Obvious. But he pretended to be thinking deeply.

  ‘Suppose I bought what remains of your legacy. I can afford to wait until the market improves.’

  ‘Would you? Oh, that would be wonderful.’ Every line of her vivid little face expressed gratitude and then, abruptly, dismay. ‘I have just thought, my Lord, Henry might think it his duty to put most of it away for me. He is such a stubborn man. And what he really needs is stock. A little money, perhaps, but mostly animals. He couldn’t go hurrying them off to Master Turnbull, could he?’ She gave him a dancing look of amusement.

  ‘It is difficult to tell what a really stubborn man may do. We can but try. What, in your opinion, does he need?’

  The question was only half serious. Newly clad through Mistress Captoft’s efforts and of such ethereal appearance, she looked unlikely to know much about stock animals.

  ‘Sheep,’ she said with assurance. ‘Two hundred. And the long-legged, black-faced kind. They do better on our land.’ And with a larger flock, Henry would need a shepherd. Talk about that later. ‘Store cattle…’ It was her turn to doubt. Would this kindly old man know anything about them? ‘Young bullocks. They have to be fed through the winter but we did save our hay crop. Then in the spring they can eat grass and fatten up before going to the Shambles. Oh, and pigs. A few young and an in-pig sow. And…’

  They watched one another across the polished table. Was she asking too much? She had no idea what the remaining jewels were worth or the cost of what she listed. Her experience of money was limited to meagre shopping with coins of the smallest denominations; had she gone too far? Apparently not.

  He was watching her, completely fascinated by the combination of delicate beauty—look at those hands—and downright, earthly common sense. How fortunate some unknown fellow was to be! And if circumstances had been a little different, if the Tallboys-Grey connection had not been made, he would, God forgive him, have risked just one more amorous venture.

  He did not flinch when she spoke of two cows. A bull. ‘Henry,’ she said, ‘would welcome a bull of his own. There is one in the village but nobody there likes Henry and we do not like them.’

  Still no protest, so she said, ‘And a horse. It must be young. Heavy enough to pull the waggon, light enough to ride. Then. Just a small sum of money. Because I shall not be there to help, with the flock, in the field.’

  The house, she judged rightly, could be left in Mistress Captoft’s busy-body hands.

  Then she remembered her manners. Handed on to her through Griselda who had learned from the Lady Sybilla; who had been, in fact, an unlikely pipeline, conveying courtesy from one generation to another.

  ‘It is much to ask of you my Lord but I shall be grateful for ever.’

  Tears rose and stood in her eyes. The ageing man, with experience, knew how those tears would fall. To this girl had been granted one of the rarest assets that a woman could possess, the ability to weep without disfiguring herself. The tears would spill, dewdrops on a rosebud. He waited but she blinked rapidly and banished the tears.

  Another doubt had assailed her. He had noted down Henry’s needs, but who would do the buying? Somebody ignorant, or careless.

  ‘I should like Henry to have the best beasts, my Lord.’

  ‘He shall. I have experienced men on my staff. They will understand that they are buying for me.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She was thoughtful for a moment and then appealed again. ‘I know it is a great favour to ask, but would it be possible to allow Henry to understand that this arrangement came from you, not from me? That might not be quite… straightforward but it would make it easier for him to accept.’

  Here she was not quite sure of her ground; the kind old man was a churchman and she was asking him, practically, to act a lie. It did not trouble her at all, although she knew the rules that supposedly governed Christian behaviour. She could not know that half her blood stemmed from a pagan, sun-worshipping race who had moved from Persia to North Africa long before the birth of Christ. They’d carried their own religion with them and even when overtaken by the wave of Islamic invasion, they had conformed only in minor ways. Tana, captured and enslaved, had lived in Moorish Spain for years, in Christian Spain for as long as it took to ride across it; and then, for a longer time, in Christian England but she had never been converted. To her, Christianity had been the ridiculous rule that allowed a man only one wife. She had held to her tribe’s code, very simple, the sun the giver of all, master of all, and a rough kind of ethic; one never forgave an enemy, never betrayed a friend.

  Joanna only knew that the cold little church, the three-in-one God and the Virgin Mother in her niche were, for her, meaningless.

  ‘I have no doubt it could be managed,’ His Grace of Bywater said.

  And he wondered what she could possibly learn at Stordford or anywhere else. She’d been born knowing it all.

  ‘I must get back before, I hope, Mistress Captoft misses her mule.’

  ‘Borrowed? Without permission?’

  ‘It was necessary,’ she said, and gathered her cloak about her, hiding the long slim arms in the tight sleeves and the small but fully shaped breasts and, with the pulling into place of the hood, careless, charming gesture, covering her beautiful hair.

  All he could do was to say that he hoped she would be happy at Stordford. After all he had found the place for her; another swimming glance of gratitude was no more than his due.

  ‘I think I shall be very unhappy. But three years is not long.’

  No. Not to the young. When he was young what had three years been? Mere steps on the ladder, aims, ambitions, achievements. And now? In a way even less, as time counted, the days filled with business, speeding by, the nights—he slept rather badly, seemingly endless.

  ‘I chose the place with an eye to your happiness,’ he said, a slight reproach in his voice. ‘Sir Barnabas has daughters of about your age.’ Even as he said it he thought: How ridiculous! She is older than Eve!

  She was on her feet now and he rose, too, intending to pay her the courtesy of seeing her out himself.

  She said, ‘My Lord, I am most grateful for all that you have done. Most of all for this.’ Then something flashed into her eyes and she said, in a different voice, ‘I am even thankful to you for finding an unhappy place for Richard of Moyidan.’

  He thought that a strange thing to say. Certainly, he had no liking for the boy himself and Master Tallboys had not pursued the subject of the complaints.

  ‘Why do you say that? Did he ever… affront you in any way?’

  If he had, Heaven help him! His last complaining letter would go to the Provost of Eton with a little admonitory note suggesting that the writer of it needed another flogging.

  ‘Me? No! He would not have dared. But he was very cruel, in a horrible, sly way, to a gentle little boy who could not stand up for himself. For that I wished him ill—and always shall.’

  Now His Grace saw another flaw in her beauty; her eye teeth were too prominent, wolfish. And her eyes were as green as her mother’s readily saleable emeralds.

  Into the over-heated, well-furnished room something alien crept. Something cold, old, evil. The Bishop entertained a thought inconsistent both with his calling and his sophistication—I would rather she wished me well than ill.

  Absolute nonsense!

  And yet, was there not in the Bible, as well as in heathen mythology, some hint of god-like creatures consorting with the daughters of men and breeding, begetting, something out of the common rut? ‘There were giants in the earth in those days.’ Size, naturally, the masculine ideal; what of the feminine? Discount the looks, extraordinary as they were. How, isolated out there at Knight’s Acre, just a farm with a better-than-average house, had she acquired such manners?

  Such style?

  A puzzle
to anyone who knew nothing of Griselda, faithfully aping the Lady Sybilla to a point where even Henry had once been deceived. A pipe which, before it broke, had conveyed courtesy, airs and graces between two generations. A puzzle. Nonsense. Rubbish. His Grace of Bywater thought and sharply rang his silver bell; sternly began to dictate—Item: two hundred black-faced sheep of the best quality.

  ‘But you told me… I was prepared for… a child of between eleven and twelve. She is fourteen at least. She makes Maude look like a dwarf!’

  Lady Grey’s protest came from the heart and her husband made haste to soothe her.

  ‘My dear, Maude still has growth to make. This girl has probably completed hers and in a year’s time Maude will overtop her.’

  Just the kind of remark that Barnabas, with his resolute over-optimism, would make!

  ‘Had you ever seen her?

  ‘No. How could I? This was all arranged in London. I told you at the time. My good friend, Shefton, told me that the Bishop of Bywater was anxious to place a girl of good family and moderate fortune in a respectable household, with other children of her age and with a view to a suitable marriage. I owed Shefton money at the time; he was doing himself an immediate service and me a long-term one. I volunteered immediately. It isn’t every day that three thousand marks, free of interest for five years, drops into one’s lap.’

  Lady Grey took a long look at the two men, inside the same skin, to whom she had been married for fifteen years. Perhaps she should think herself fortunate that his double personality operated only in the financial field; he’d never taken a mistress that she knew of, never caused even the merest whisper of scandal in that way. Remembering what other women suffered—she’d seen them sitting frozen-faced in the stands around a tilt yard while in the dust and clash of the mêlée their men wore favours given to them by other women: a sleeve, a glove, a flower even. It was, in a way, a kind of secret language, not words, signs; and she, thanks be to God, had never been compelled to endure that humiliation. But what she had borne was Barnabas’s attitude towards money. One Barnabas was shrewd, hard-headed, business-like; the other was a gambler of the utmost recklessness. What one Barnabas could make in a week, by diligence and attention to business and no small physical effort, riding hither and thither, the other could lose in an evening, over a card game or throwing dice. She was resigned to it now, knowing that he was capable of making a sharp good deal with the Hanseatic League at the Steelyard in the morning and then making some senseless bet upon which fly could clamber up a window pane faster than the other.

  He had a good reputation, for he had never dodged a debt; what one Barnabas lost, the other would repay. And living in style was a help. So, perhaps, was this tenuous relationship to the Queen. There had been ups and downs but Stordford had never gone short of anything, partly because Lady Grey was so excellent a manager. When money was available, the estate came first; more acres, more stock. All under her immediate, personal supervision. She went to London very seldom, preferring country life and country activities and preferring to entertain in her own home where, as hostess and lady of the manor, she could not be overlooked as had so often happened when she had ventured into wider and more glittering circles. Even as a girl she had not been pretty and then only with the bloom of healthy youth; and she had not been born with, nor bothered to acquire, the vivacious manner, the witty tongue, the avid attention to fashion and cosmetics with which many plain women compensated for their lack of looks. In addition to this, as the youngest of a large family, three boys and five girls, her dowry was small. She was twenty before any man showed any interest in her. Yet of all the Tetlow girls she had made the best marriage. Everybody was astounded when Sir Barnabas Grey, gay, handsome, popular and experienced, chose to marry plain, dull Gertrude Tetlow. What could he possibly see in her? He was twenty-seven and much sought after. What he saw and recognised almost instantly was the balance, the ballast that he lacked himself.

  It had been a successful marriage. Within a year she had presented him with a son, Roger, now serving his time as page—soon to be squire—in the household of Lord Bowdegrave at Abhurst. A second son had died in infancy. Then had come Maude and, after three years, Beatrice.

  It was a common belief that sons resembled their mothers in looks, daughters, their fathers. In this case, regrettably, the rule was reversed; Roger was handsome and the girls even plainer than their mother. Maude was squat, in or out of Joanna Serriff’s company; she had sallow skin, hair and eyes the colour of mud; Beatrice was fairer; in fact too fair, almost bleached looking.

  Lady Grey, who had borne her own lack of beauty with a kind of defiant fortitude and then made mock of the whole thing by marrying well, was truly concerned by her daughters’ lack of comeliness. Baffled, too—at least in her youth she had carried a good colour! Still had it, in fact, the one agreeable thing about a face too heavy featured, too square. And even to her loving maternal eye, other flaws were visible. Maude was lethargic, Beatrice frivolous. What would their future hold? Such sheer good fortune as she had met, with Barnabas, was unlikely ever to come their way. They would, of course, have dowries far more substantial than hers had been but, curiously, inside this solid, stolid woman, a romantic streak lurked, assuring her that marriages made entirely for money were not, on the whole, happy. That was what accounted for those signs of infidelity on the tourney ground—and for the number of children, the results of secret intrigues, whom men accepted as their own rather than wear the horns of a cuckold. (The dull, plain girl, always overlooked, had been sharply observant.) She was working and scheming so that her daughters should have good dowries but she did not wish them to make what she called money marriages.

  So the regime into which Joanna now stepped was rigorous. Exercise in the open air—good for the complexion; a spell in the covered tennis court—good for the figure. A dinner, meagre when Sir Barnabas was away, as he often was, but luxurious by Knight’s Acre standards. Immediately after, the day being fine, a spell at the butts. Archery was not regarded as a feminine pastime but Lady Grey believed that it straightened shoulders. After that lessons. Reading, writing and reckoning. Lady Grey knew that her learning, acquired in lonely moments when the mainstream of life had appeared to pass her by, had stood her in good stead.

  After the lessons came supper; a very different meal from that at Knight’s Acre, where people ate because they were hungry and needed sustenance and went briskly to bed in order to sleep and be ready for another day’s work. Supper-time at Stordford was a long, leisurely meal, taken in what seemed to Joanna circumstances of confusion. Almost invariably there were guests, for the house stood near the point where the road to London, the road to the east and the road to the north met; and it was known for its hospitality. Anyone with even a nodding acquaintance with Sir Barnabas was welcome to break his journey there. Minstrels, mummers, men with performing dogs or bears would appear, uninvited but welcome. Sir Barnabas thought nothing of coming back from London with a riotous company of five or six other men. Neighbours came to supper and stayed overnight; members of the Grey or Tetlow families came and stayed for a week, a month; one, indeed, an aged woman known as Aunt Agnes, had come to stay, taken a fall, and remained ever since. In the midst of all this noise and bustle and apparent disorder Lady Grey ruled, unruffled; the spider in the centre of a web of her own weaving, its strands reaching out from kitchen to attic, by way of delegated authority, rules rigid and constant watchfulness. Hospitality might appear to be prodigal but the lady of the manor knew exactly how much of the best manchet bread should be served and to whom; how much was left of the great joints, brought hissing from the spit into the hall; to whom the best wine should be offered or not.

  On the rare, quiet evenings, or when the company in the hall became too riotous, the ladies retired to the solar and even there Lady Grey continued to be indefatigable. Out with the embroidery; try a tune on the lute; practise some steps of a dance, so that next time that there was dancing in the hall, there sho
uld be no clumsiness.

  Joanna was, from the first, aware that this was exactly the life, the education and training which Henry had desired for her and that, in order to keep her part of the bargain, she must endure it for three years. But she hated it, all of it, and would continue to hate it. She missed Knight’s Acre, the brooding quiet of the woods. Here there was no quiet, no privacy at all; she shared a sleeping chamber, half a staircase above the hall, with Maude and Beatrice who prattled. She had never been idle but at Knight’s Acre even the most laborious jobs had proceeded at an even pace. Here all was hurly-burly, with Lady Grey, rather like a well-trained sheepdog, making no obvious fuss or noise, constantly rounding up a flock. Do this; do that; go here, go there.

  Joanna had never before been ordered about. Banned by Griselda from the house, she had gone into the fields, the yards, the market and worked hard—but always because she wanted to, not because she must.

  She had immediately sensed that Lady Grey disliked her, though so far as she knew she had done nothing to offend. And even disliked, she was more fortunate than Maude and Beatrice who often suffered chastisement, slaps on the hands or face, cuffs on the ear. Nothing unusual, Joanna learned. Some ladies behaved very violently to their daughters and dealt blows that broke their heads. Lady Grey never so much as laid a finger on Joanna, perhaps because she was not her daughter or because she did not entirely lack sensibility and knew that, struck, the girl would strike back. Her disfavour showed itself in other ways. Cutting little speeches: Of course, coming so late to learning… Any child who has not mastered a needle by the age of six…

  There was also the question of clothes. Mistress Captoft had very sensibly said that Lady Grey would know what was needed beyond the one good woollen gown and the velvet. Winter ebbed away and the warmer weather came. Maude and Beatrice had pretty new dresses, two or three of them; Joanna had one of indeterminate colour and hideous shape.