“You have made them as if you created things of beauty, instead of confections to be eaten,” she said, and I was glad, for I had taken great pains with these sweets.
Then I saw others, the girl who had scorned me at the Fair, and a priest who watched me with keenly searching eyes, so that I felt uncomfortable. Anthony laughingly called to them, and the priest walked across to me. He muttered something in Latin and pointed to the dogs, which had retreated from me with their hair on end, growling and shaking.
“Nay, Penelope is a friend,” explained Anthony. “She’s Dame Cicely Taberner’s niece from Chelsey. She is of the family which has lived here as long as the Babingtons, which will live here till we go, and maybe will survive us in that future when all shall be changed. They are bound to us by generations of service; they are true as steel. Though not of our faith they understand and are always loyal.”
The girl came forward, her dazzling white skin and her flaming hair enhanced by the rich brown velvet dress she wore. Lace-edged lawn hung from her wrists, and a ruff of lace tied with silver beads stood up round her slim, young throat.
She moved with a superb arrogance, her long body swaying in the stiff skirts like a sunflower.
“So here’s the wench who rides with Cousin Francis as an equal,” she cried scornfully, and she stared at me with hard eyes and her thin scarlet lips curled in a cruel way.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I retorted. “Francis asked me to ride, and this is a free country.”
“A free country! Harkye! Not for a Babington with Queen Eliza on the throne,” snapped the girl bitterly.
“You forget yourself, Coz,” said Mistress Babington quietly. “We are all free in this year of grace, 1584. What we shall be in a hundred years time I know not, but now we are free.”
“All except one, and she the greatest of all,” said Anthony. “But Cousin Arabella, seat yourself, and eat a sugared comfit. These are such as we seldom have, they are so delicately made.”
He held out the sweetmeats to her, but she pushed them away.
“Cousin Anthony, Cousin Mary, will you let me be insulted?” Arabella stormed, stamping her small foot. “Send her away, back to the kitchen where she belongs, a scullion and a dish-clout.”
“Silence, Arabella! Hold your tongue, girl! This is not your house, and you must restrain yourself here. Penelope is my guest.”
“Where is your jewel? She told you she had found it. She’s the one who prophesied evil, worse than my father’s prophecy,” cried Arabella. “Didn’t you, wench? You can’t deny it. Didn’t you say Her Grace would be executed? Nay, you said stranger things than that. Have you dealings with the unholy ones? Who is a spy sent here by Walsingham’s underlings?” She pushed her flaming face close to mine and suddenly boxed my ears so that I reeled. “Answer me, slut,” she cried.
“Arabella! Silence!” shouted Anthony, white with anger. “How dare you! Leave the room!”
Arabella swept out with her long dress trailing in a royal way, her eyes blazing, her hands twitching as if she wished to strike me again. I rubbed my smarting cheek, bewildered by the sudden onslaught. The priest hurried after Arabella and the door was shut.
“Penelope, help me to eat these sweetmeats,” said Mistress Babington in a calm voice as if nothing had happened. “Sit down by me and forget Arabella. She is jealous of our honour, and her love for Her Grace of Scotland inflames her. You must excuse her.”
She pointed to a low velvet seat and, shaken and unhappy, I sat down. Mistress Babington went to a cupboard and brought a pierced, silver box. She removed the lid and held out golden butter drops.
“I made these myself, Penelope,” she said. “These are made from a new substance called sugar which is too expensive a luxury for the kitchen.”
“I should think so,” said Anthony, dipping his fingers in the box. “Twenty shillings a pound! Sugar is scarce and comes in our ships across the seas from the Spice Islands.”
“I have been talking about you to Dame Cicely,” Mistress Babington continued, “and I want you to belong to my household. Would you like that?” Her sad eyes were fixed upon me, as she waited for my reply.
“I should like it very much,” I replied, “thank you, Mistress Babington, but I have to go home. I couldn’t stay here always, I have to go home.”
“You can read Latin with Father Hurd,” went on Mistress Babington, unheeding, “and I will study French with you. You shall be my personal maid and companion. You will work in the kitchen with your aunt, for that is good for you. I, too, often help with baking the small breads and making the dishes for feast days. But I will train you in other ways, for you have talent. Your fingers are clever. You can draw and model, and you may become a good embroidress. I saw you admiring my tapestry of Joseph’s Dream. Yes, it will be well for all of us if you are here.”
Anthony’s blue eyes turned from his wife and watched me keenly as if he wished to read my thoughts.
“My wife will be very much alone, and you will be a companion for her,” said he, and his grave words had a double meaning for me which I could not miss.
Alone! How terribly alone she would be, I knew, and I realized for a moment the agony in which Mistress Babington lived, the dreams from which she awoke terrified, with thoughts of martyrdom for her husband, of hanging and all the barbarities by which traitors to Queen Elizabeth met their ends.
Then a flash of memory came to me, tearing my breast with pain. My mother and father, my sister and brother, and Uncle Barnabas and Aunt Tissie. Suppose I could never get back and those who loved me, those I loved, never saw me again. Those others —who were they? I was suddenly frightened.
“I must go,” I said breathlessly. “They are waiting.”
“Who? Your aunt knows you are here? Who will be waiting, Penelope? You came freely from London to live here. Who waits?”
I couldn’t remember, and I stood gazing round helplessly at the half-panelled walls with the candle sconces the wide, empty fireplace, the carved stool with its fringed, velvet seat, the table with a basket of coloured wools and silks by Mistress Babington’s high-backed chair, and the tapestry on her knee. I had no fear of the room, nor of the occupants, who eyed me calmly. I didn’t know what it was, this sudden panic of alarm.
I stood there, looking from one to another, hesitating, when the door was flung open and Francis came in.
“Here you are, Penelope! Have they asked you to stay? You will, won’t you? I’ll teach you to shoot with the bow, and we will ride, and you shall learn never to fear.”
I was suddenly happy. Nothing could go wrong. I was safe.
“Yes, of course I’ll stay. Why,” I laughed, “I’ve nowhere else to go. This is my home! Thackers is my home.” Indeed I had forgotten all in the brightness which came in the room when the boy entered.
Mistress Babington went across the floor to a little virginal in front of the window. She lifted the painted lid, and dusted the ivory and ebony keys with a silk rag. On the lid’s surface I saw a picture of blue sky and white cloud and a green flashing river flowing between dark trees, foaming over rocks.
“Do you recognize this?” she asked me, smiling.
“Isn’t it the valley, where we rode to the Fair?” I asked, but doubtfully, for the artist had used his freedom of imagination to make the rocks greater, the river wilder than the one I knew.
“Yes, it is the Darrand, our beloved river. It was painted by a famous artist from Italy who once visited me. I look at this scene as I play the virginal and I feel I am walking in the valley by the river, for I love the sound of water above all things.”
“You have the brook at your door, Mary,” said Anthony, “and I would bring the river if I could.”
He went to her and leaned over the virginal as she played a sweet tinkling air like bells in a wood, or water dropping from a spring among meadow grasses. Then Francis and Anthony sang a madrigal with her, and I listened with delight.
“And you? It’s your turn, Pen
elope. Everybody sings in these days, music is the possession of the poorest in the land, for we are all born with an instrument of our own.”
I was shy, but I wished to please them, and I remembered that Dame Cicely and Tabitha and Margery all sang unconcernedly, with no false modesty. But I could remember nothing, except: “It was a lover and his lass, with a hey nonny no,” which I had sung a hundred times. So I sang this falteringly, and when I finished they all applauded. Nobody knew it, and when I said it was by Shakespeare, Anthony had not heard of him.
Mistress Babington took a manuscript book of music from a desk and showed it me with great pride. I couldn’t read the notes, for they were square, and the clefs were different, curled and decorated with flourishes. Delicate pictures were drawn in the margins and the words were written in a good clear hand.
“The Caroll of Huntynge,” I read, and I saw a sketch of deer under a tree. “The carol of Christmasse,” was another, and “Lulla, Lulla, thou little tiny Child.”
Mistress Babington took the book from me and propped it on the virginal. She sang King Henry’s song: “The holly and the ivy” and we all joined in the chorus.
The rising of the sun,
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ
Sweet singing in the quire.
They were all songs of the countryside, she told me, and everybody in the villages could sing them, and at Christmas men would come to Thackers and all would sing together.
“Here’s a new song I heard at Babington House last year when I was at Darby,” said Mistress Babington, turning the pages of the book. “I copied it out along with others in my song-book. It had come from London and it is as pretty a ballad as ever I knew.” She pointed with her slim finger and Francis began to laugh.
“That’s my song, Sister Mary. That’s a song I have taken for my own. Hearken to me sing it for you!” His eyes twinkled with mischief and he gave me a teasing sidelong look as he threw back his head and sang to Mistress Babington’s accompaniment:
Thy gown was of the grassy green,
Thy sleeves of satin hanging by,
Which made thee be our harvest queen,
And yet thou would’st not love me.
My gayest gelding I thee gave,
To ride wherever liked thee,
No lady ever was so brave,
And yet thou would’st not love me.
Greensleeves was all my joy,
Greensleeves was my delight,
Greensleeves was my heart of gold,
And who but Lady Greensleeves.
“Aunt Cicely will want me now,” I excused myself, for my heart was aching with a strange foreboding.
I gave a low curtsy and went out, leaving Francis at his song. Then I heard other music, a dancing merry jig. It was the Irishmen singing in the yard, and I wanted to go back to them before I was caught in the web of this beloved household. I went along the passage to the kitchen, and looked in at the door. Tabitha and Margery were dipping long strips of rush-pith into fats for the rushlights, and hanging them to dry. Jude sat on the hearth whittling a little figure out of wood. He looked up as I stood there, and stayed motionless watching me. The spinning-wheel clattered and all the time another music came out of the air, calling me back. The music grew louder, and the rattle of the spinning-wheel and the fierce heat of the fire were lost. Those in the room grew shadowy and pale, disappearing in the light which streamed through the open door. Jude held out a hand as if bidding me stay, but I stepped through the doorway to the yard. The Irishmen were singing and Uncle Barnabas was playing his accordion just as I had left them.
I put my hand up to my neck and there hung the jewel. It was true; I could not take it to that other world. It had been found in the future and there it must remain. I carried it upstairs thoughtfully and hung it on the wall.
The Irishmen went away that night, and we all said good-bye to them, and clasped their great hard hands.
“God be with you till we meet again, Malachi and Patrick, Michael, and Andrew,” said Aunt Tissie.
“God be with you too, Mistress Taberner,” they replied, and away they went with their bundles on their backs and sticks in their hands, down the drive and away, into the moonlit night.
I sat with Uncle Barnabas on the seat under the oak-tree, and we counted the shooting stars which whirled down the sky in streaks of fire. Every one was a soul going to heaven, Uncle Barnabas told me, and we both thought of those winged beings rushing through space. Behind us were the four new haystacks, standing like great scented houses, and from them came little rustles and murmurs as the hay settled and shifted itself, breathing and sighing to the fields. The church too seemed full of tiny sounds, rumbles and whispers as if it were uneasy. Then a screech-owl swept silently from the belfry, startling me as it swooped across the lawn. Shadows and ghosts seemed to flit around us as we sat silently there. I thought of the Babington children, Anthony and his brothers and sisters. Five little children once lived at Thackers, and played around the haystacks, and hid themselves in the great barn by the wall, five little Elizabethan children, the two girls in long full skirts which they lifted as they ran, the boys in country smocks. In and out of the shadows they ran, calling “Cuckoo, Cherry-tree” to one another. Once I heard the click of a pickaxe and the rumble of a barrow, and I glanced up at Uncle Barnabas.
“Rats,” said he. “Rats in churchyard. Digging holes. We mun have the rat-catcher soon, or they’ll get in church and frighten folk.”
He lifted himself slowly and stiffly from his seat and together we walked indoors. There was the table spread with harvest dainties; junkets with nutmeg sprinkled on the top, raspberries and cream, and enormous curd pasties, quite three feet long, all golden-brown and flecked with spice.
“They won’t last long,” said Aunt Tissie, when we exclaimed at their size. “There’s some wanted for the mole-catcher, and a piece for the hedger and some for the gamekeeper.”
I didn’t sleep well that night. Perhaps it was the fault of the full moon looking in at the window, or the mare cropping noisily in the field. The heavy scent of sweetbriar filled the bedroom, and I could remember Francis saying: “This hedge is eglantine. Why do you call it sweetbriar, Penelope?”
I lay thinking of Francis’s gay companionship, of Anthony’s bravery, of Mistress Babington’s sorrow, and as I tossed I could hear the thud of picks and shovels and the sound of feet moving softly over the grass. I got out of bed and looked through the curtains. The haystacks were silver under the moon, and the land seemed to be alert, listening. I thought I saw figures move across the yard; people walked from the dark door of the barn to the churchyard, where a lantern gleamed. Was it lantern-light or only the moonrays? Were the people only shadows? I lost sight of them as they dropped to earth, and I crept back to bed, my teeth chattering; and after a while I fell asleep.
10. Mary Queen of Scots
I sat at the end of the kitchen-garden one day, shelling peas for dinner. The great market-basket heaped with new peas stood on the ground near me. It was very hot and the sun drew out the strong odours of rue and wormwood from the bushes at my feet. The heavy pungent smell made me think of the other household, and even as I thought of them I saw Francis standing near, sharpening a dagger on the grindstone. The whir of the stone and the hiss of the blade were familiar sounds to me, for often in the same place I had watched Uncle Barnabas grind the axe and put an edge to his tools on the same old stone. Francis did not see me at first and I sat watching him as he stooped in his green riding suit, with leather belt round his waist, and long boots.
“Francis,” I whispered, and he spun round and came to me, sticking the dagger in his belt.
“Penelope! I wanted you but I never thought you would come.” He sat down by my side, and I saw that the mossy, oak seat with ferns growing in its crevices was fresh and new. “I wanted to warn you, Penelope,” said Francis. “Do you know Arabella made a waxen image of you to do you harm?”
I laughed. “How can it do me any hurt?” I asked, and I felt gay and light-hearted sitting there with Francis in the herb-garden at Thackers, with the pigeons flying overhead and the little fountain playing on the lawn.
“She has it at Bramble Hall and I believe she is up to some devilry, sticking pins into it, or some tricks of sorcery. Have you any pains, Penelope? Have you had headaches or vomiting, or anguish in your belly?” he asked anxiously.
“Nothing at all. I am perfectly well,” I assured him.
“Then she will be sure you are no human girl and she will make other plans for your destruction. You must be on your guard. But there is great news. Do you know what is happening to-day?”
I shook my head and looked round vaguely trying to remember why I was there.
“The Queen of Scots is coming to Wingfield Manor to-day; we are going to see her arrive, for although her removal has been kept secret, the Galway harpist brought the news from Sheffield. She will ride with her retinue, the ladies who attend her, and her servants. We shall see her ride through the gateway. Will you come with me?”
“Oh yes! Thank you, Francis! The Queen of Scotland to come riding along our lanes!”
Then it wasn’t true, that strange foreboding. I wanted to run indoors and tell them all. I sprang to my feet, and Francis arose too, and picked up his hat. There was a click of the wicket-gate and Tabitha came down the path bearing a large, lidded basket, similar to the one I had been using.
“There you are, Penelope Taberner! And we all in a ferment, with friends of Master Anthony’s a-coming, and the Queen of Scots moving to Wingfield, and many a person walking the roads who may call and eat with us. Gather sweet bay and rosemary for the guests’ chambers, to strew the floors, and feverfew for the grooms, for the stench of their feet in hot weather is more nor I can abide. Then cover the floors evenly.”
A Traveller in Time Page 16
