A Traveller in Time

by Alison Uttley

  “Was it Arabella?” she whispered, poking her head inside.

  I nodded. “Don’t tell, Aunt Cicely,” I murmured.

  “It will be safe with me,” she whispered back. “Now go to sleep, little wench, and God be wi’ ye as He has been ever.”

  She drew the curtains close across and left me.

  “I’m sleeping in the queen’s bed,” I told myself. “She will feel like I do when she gets here, all tired and cold but very happy to be in safety, escaped from prison.”

  Then I sank into a deep sleep and only awoke once to ask: “Is it a nightmare? Where am I, Aunt Tissie?”

  “At Thackers, sweetheart. Safe in your very own bed. Now go to sleep and not another word.”

  I felt I could sleep for ever, and when I awoke again I saw the bright fire flickering behind a screen and heard the creak of the rocking-chair.

  “You’ve been very ill, my dear child,” said Aunt Tissie, leaning over me. “You fainted in the church porch, and you didn’t come round as you ought. But I carried you up here and made a good fire and gave you brandy and sips of hot milk.”

  “I remember,” I murmured. “I got shut underground.”

  “Nay my dear. That’s what you said when your mind was rambling, something about underground and calling for help, and saying ‘Francis’. But you were not shut anywhere, we found you lying in a dead faint in the church porch, all in the rain, with your head on a stone, cut where you had fallen. I would have sent for the doctor but Uncle Barnabas said no, you had been all right in the barn and no doctor ever comes here. So lie very still my dear and don’t talk.”

  “Please will you feel in my pocket, Aunt Tissie,” I asked. “See if there is anything in it.”

  She brought out the little broken bobbin-boy and gave him to me.

  “The little bobbin-boy!” she cried, “as I gave you once, my dear.”

  “It’s Jude’s carved little man,” I smiled feebly, and I put it under my pillow.

  “Now that’s enough talking, Penelope darling. Go to sleep, and I shall be near you if you want me,” said Aunt Tissie, and she went back to the rocking-chair with her knitting, murmuring: “She’s delirious, poor lamb.”

  I didn’t speak. I lay very still, trying to think things out. I had been over there once more and this time I nearly didn’t come back. If Jude had not found me I should have died in that faint at the church door, and nobody would ever have known the reason.

  13. The Marchpane Thackers

  Winter came with snow and hurricane, the wind screaming up the valleys, the snow drifting down from the grey skies, piling in the narrow lanes and hiding the landmarks, so that I could scarcely see the two farms on the opposite hill-side. Uncle Barnabas and Jess walked with heads bent like bulls tossing against the driving storms, but Aunt Tissie was blown like a ship when her wide skirts caught the winds in their folds. There was some shelter round the farmhouse, with the trees and the church walls, for the house was built on a lower slope of the hill which shielded it. When I leaned against the haystacks I could feel a real tide of warmth in them, and often I found rabbits and pheasants sheltering there and flocks of birds waiting for the food which Aunt Tissie spread on a low wall for her pensioners.

  Thackers was like a hamlet in itself, with its buildings and church wrapped in the white snowdrifts. I enjoyed going round the house to look at the stores, for I amused myself by thinking we were besieged, and the enemy camped around with arrows of frost, which they shot harmlessly at the old house.

  The brew-house, where the Babington family brewed their ale, was a storehouse for firewood; great logs from fallen trees blown down in the gales were piled high towards the roof. There was plenty of food for the siege, salted butter in the dairy, potatoes in the pit. On the kitchen walls hung sides of bacon, frosty with glittering saltpetre, and from the hooks in the ceilings dangled enormous hams curing in the wood-smoke. So that Elizabethan household must have prepared for the winter months, I told myself.

  I went to the larder to fetch and carry for Aunt Tissie, who found the stone passages trying for her rheumatism. A sack of flour stood upright on the bench, and from it I filled the baking bowl. On the shelves were rows of jams and jellies, pickles and chutneys, which we had made in the summer from the fruit of the orchard and the wild fruit of the hedgerows and fields, blackberries and crabs, sloes and bilberries. The pots stood like an army of dark men, each with its cap of white paper. On the shelf above were the Christmas puddings, for Aunt Tissie kept her plum puddings three years before they were eaten. A giant jar, which Aunt Tissie said was one of the oldest things in the house, was filled with snow-white lard, just as it had always been, I was told. Once I thought I saw the other Aunt Cicely come to the larder, and dig her knife into it and then go out, her pattens moving silently over the stones, her folded linen cap bobbing on her hair.

  Next to the pantry was a narrow darkish room where the best elderberry and cowslip wine were stored, together with bottles of ginger and peppermint cordial. There was a tin of black liquorice sticks for sore throats, and pots of goose-grease and bunches of tansy, feverfew, camomile and wormwood. The air was strong with the extraordinary mixture of pungent odours, which took away my breath when I lifted the latch of the fast-shut door. This was the closet where Mistress Babington kept her dried herbs and unguents, but she called it the “still-room”.

  The postman came with letters, struggling up to his knees in the drifts, and Uncle Barnabas invited him indoors to tell the news, for he was a traveller. He shook the snow from his cape and told us of fallen trees and broken telegraph wires. Then he had a cup of tea and a slice of toast and dripping and went on his way. One day a letter came from Mother, saying that she and Father were coming to spend Christmas at Thackers; Alison and Ian had persuaded them to brave the weather.

  “We shall have to get ready the best bedchamber,” said Aunt Tissie, nodding her head with pleasure.

  “The grand bed! Hers! Mistress Babington’s!” I cried. It was indeed an honour for my parents.

  “Yes. I’ll light the fire at once. I will have a regular set-to and make it nice, for your father has never stayed here before,” said Aunt Tissie. “I must ask Mrs. Appleyard to scrub.”

  “Let me. I’m as strong as a village woman,” I exclaimed.

  “Not quite! We mustn’t have you fainting again.” Aunt Tissie looked at me and laughed. “You gave me a fright that time; I thought we had lost you! But you’re different now and quite a colour in your cheeks.”

  Uncle Barnabas and Jess carried five mighty feather-beds downstairs and piled them in downy heaps before the parlour and kitchen fires. Three of them were from the best bedchamber, for there were only boards and straw palliasses on the four-poster bedstead. They lay roasting before the fire for nearly a week, pommelled and turned as if bread were baking.

  Aunt Tissie lighted bedroom fires and Mrs. Appleyard scrubbed the floors. I beeswaxed the furniture, and I opened little drawers and hunted for secret panels. Only one discovery did I make, but that gave me intense satisfaction, for it linked our life with the past. In a square oak table, with rough scrolls carved over the front and many scratches and scores upon the surface, there was an empty drawer, but between it and the table-top was a narrow ledge where in velvety dust lay a scrap of tightly folded paper. The dust was so thick that I sprang back, thinking I had touched the furry body of a mouse. I opened it out. There was a sketch of the Babington shield with “Foy est Tout” printed carefully upon it, and underneath, the signature, beautifully written in ink black as coal:

  “Anthonie Babingtone. June 15. 1585.”

  “Fancy that lying all those years and never been found! That comes of peeping and prying! I never knew such a one for hunting about as you, Penelope. Mister Anthony’s own writing, I’ll be bound.”

  “I shall keep it,” I said. “I am proud to have it.”

  “Then I will give you a box for it, one that belonged to my mother, your great-grandmother. You remind
me of her. You have the same way of screwing your lips, and smiling sideways when you are pleased. I’ve no chick nor child of my own, so it is fitting you should have it.”

  She fetched a polished mahogany box with brass corners and ivory keyhole. She turned a tiny key and showed me the treasures of her youth, which lay in the rose-quilted silk interior: a silver bracelet, a jet locket, a bead purse, and an ivory needlecase.

  “There. Lay your paper inside and put your gilt locket there too. You can have them all for your own,” said she, kissing me, and looking deep into my eyes. “This box will hold your love-letters some day I hope, Penelope.”

  I shook my head. “I shall never marry, Aunt Tissie. I shall never fall in love with anybody in the whole world.”

  Aunt Tissie laughed. “They all say that,” said she; but to myself I murmured, “O Francis. Francis.”

  A day or two later, when the snow had lessened, Uncle Barnabas suggested we should drive down to the little town by the river and do our Christmas shopping before another snowfall kept us indoors. Aunt and I were wrapped up in ancient cloaks with scarlet linings and hoods on the shoulders which we could slip over our hats if a storm came on. A bitter wind was blowing, and we drew the furred edges of our cloaks about us, so that I was sure we were not unlike the Tudor women whom I had once seen riding down the hill-side to that same town. But Uncle Barnabas turned the other way when we reached the crest, and took us to Tandy Moor. He drove to a plantation of fir-trees which struggled bravely against the gales.

  “Choose which one you want,” said Uncle Barny to me. “Make your choice and Jess’ll come and dig it up. I’ve had permission.” He looked at us with a twinkle in his old blue eyes.

  I looked down at the regiment of small trees, and there was one in advance of the others, perfect in shape, holding out its evergreen skirts like a ballet girl who steps from the company to dance alone.

  “That is the one, Uncle Barny,” I pointed it out, and he climbed down and tied a string to the trunk. But I thought the tree nodded to me, as if it were glad to be chosen. Away across the moor rose the dark rocks half-hidden in snow, and beyond were the old mysterious woods. They all seemed to whisper together, and as we drove away I felt compelled to turn round to listen to their soughing branches, to peep once more at the little Christmas-tree stepping so bravely out in the snowy waste.

  Down by the river it was warmer, and we looked at the bright windows of the shops as if we had never seen such a fine display, although they were simple enough, with cotton-wool dropping from strings and candles burning to dispel the moisture. I bought toys for the tree, golden balls and glass bells and birds of spun glass, and I helped Aunt Tissie to choose presents for my parents.

  I had made my gifts during the long evenings of November, when I was convalescent after my faint. There was a needlecase with a cover of ancient blue taffeta, like the kirtle of Mistress Babington’s gown. I had found it in Aunt Tissie’s patchwork bag, where there was a storehouse of treasures, ancient silks and faded velvets, and scraps of half-made patchwork, each with its lining of stiff paper. I saw faded writing and crabbed words and odd spelling, with poems and hymns half-concealed in the squares and diamonds of the patches. Some of the paper was parchment, I was sure, but Aunt Tissie said they were only old documents she had found in an oak chest when she was a girl, and cut up for her quilt linings.

  For Father I had painted a picture of Thackers, with the whitewashed porch and the great haystacks glowing in the sunlight, and the church tower in the background like a mystical guardian. It was the best water-colour I had ever done, and although I could never catch the romantic atmosphere of the place I felt proud as I called at the framers for the finished picture and carried it back to the waiting trap. Then, laden with oranges, groceries, and a bottle of port wine we drove to Thackers, happy and rich as if we were millionaires.

  It was on the day my parents were to arrive that I revisited the old Thackers, and walked in the panelled rooms and spoke with those whom I had grown to love. Although I had had glimpses of moving, shadowy people, I had been unable to go to them, and I thought that my power of entering that time had gone. Then I saw them once more.

  I was sitting with Aunt Tissie in the kitchen by the fire, waiting for the travellers, when I heard a noise outside, a thud of hoofs and the clang of the gate. I went to the porch and waited there, looking out across the yard, but there was nobody. When I returned to the kitchen, it was the old Thackers room, the kitchen of ancient days, with its halberds and longbows on the walls, and the skillets simmering by the fire. The oak table at which I had sat with my Aunt and Uncle was scrubbed and on it stood a basket brimmed with new little loaves, flat and marked with a cross. Near lay a heap of hares and rabbits and a deer cut up for distribution among the poor of the village. Earthenware bowls of dough covered with cloths were set to rise before the fire, and Jude guarded them from the dogs.

  He saw me and made a sign, but no one else noticed me, and I might have been invisible as I stood there in the shadows. Aunt Cicely in a white cap and striped petticoat and stiff little lawn ruff sat warming her toes, her hands clasped in front of her apron. She had cherry-coloured ribbons in her cap, all spruced up very grand, and she nodded her head as somebody spoke to her.

  “Aye,” she said. “Aye. If ’tis to be, ’tis so. The will of God can’t be altered, but we don’t know what His will is. I only know what the soothsayer foretold.”

  “Why does Master Anthony give all for the Papist queen?” asked Tabitha. “He’s got so much, far more than common folk—a sweet, loving wife, as he has wed only a few years, and them only eighteen at the time, and he has a mother who dotes on him, and sisters and brothers, and good health and fine looks, and a great estate that spreads across this bit of England, with manors and woods and all. Surely it is God’s will that he looks after his possessions and doesn’t interfere between two jealous queens?”

  “Hush ye now, Tabitha. You don’t know what you’re saying. It’s none of your business, and you mustn’t call Her Grace a Papist either. She belongs to the Old Religion, and we were all of it once, but some have changed and some remained faithful. I’ve changed the religion of my forefathers because I can get nearer to God without a priest in the way, but I’m faithful to God and the Babington family.

  “If Master Anthony can save the Scottish queen he will, and if not, then God have mercy on her, poor lady, and upon him too. I dandled him when he was a babe, and I love him as if he were my own. I fear me he is tangled in this affair more than he knows, and I don’t trust that black-haired servant he brings from London. I don’t trust him an ell, but he never gets a word out of me beyond good-day.” Dame Cicely lifted her skirts and pushed the log with her toe.

  “He’ll be ruined whether he saves the queen or not, for all the money is running away like yonder brook,” said a man whom I had not seen before. He was Mistress Foljambe’s lawyer, I heard afterwards. “Mistress Babington looks like a ghost and Mistress Foljambe is troubled, for she never knows what may happen.”

  “If the Scots queen came to the throne, Master Anthony would be rewarded and then he would be very rich, surely?” asked Margery.

  “To the throne of England?” Dame Cicely shook her head. “That she can never do. Even if Queen Elizabeth died, which God forbid, before her natural time, the country would not have the Scottish queen. King James of Scotland would be heir. He has no love for his mother, from what they say. It’s a forlorn hope for Master Anthony, and the best he can do is to save Mary Stuart and get her across to France.”

  Then Dame Cicely noticed the way Jude was staring across towards the porch, and she saw me standing there. I ran across the room and flung my arms about her. Her cheeks were firm and hard as apples, and she was real and solid as a woodnut.

  “Bless me! You flit in and out and go off when you please, Penelope, but we forgives you. We’re talking of this and of that before we carry in the dinner. What do you think of the decorations? Haven’t Tab
itha and Margery done it well? Tom Snowball usually helps, but he is hard at work digging for lead to make Master Anthony’s fortune.”

  The great kitchen was decked with boughs of fir and scarlet-berried holly and many a branch of bay. From a central hook in the beam hung a round bunch of holly and mistletoe intermingled with ribbons, and garlands swung in loops across the walls. “The Kissing Bunch” Dame Cicely called the ball of berries and bade me beware of standing under it, for at Christmas every one, young lords and all, would clip and kiss those maids they caught under its shadow. I noticed that Tabitha and Margery and Phoebe loitered much under the bunch that day.

  Then Aunt Cicely pulled herself up from her chair and got to the baking, for spiced breads were wanted, and I filled the bread-oven with dry wood ready for her. Mistress Babington came to the kitchen, but she was too delicate and frail to help as was the custom of the lady of the house. She nodded to me and told Dame Cicely that somebody was ill of fever in the village, and Tabitha must take calf’s-foot jelly and an infusion of borage which she would prepare. There were chines and strings of hogs’-puddings to go to the cottages and loaves of new bread for the widows and venison haunches for the goodmen at the farms. She took some dried herbs from the bunches which hung on the walls and reached for the pestle and mortar. Then away she went to the still-room and shut the door.

  “I have work for Penelope’s fingers,” said Dame Cicely, and she gave me instructions. I went to the hen-house to collect the eggs for the marchpane and sweetmeats. I took a basket and the keys and crossed the yard, but Francis came up, calling to me, just as if he had seen me every day, without a word of our last meeting.

  “Come and see the Yule log, Penelope!” He showed me an enormous log which four men had dragged up to the barn. All the village would come to Thackers on Christmas Day, he said, to eat the roast beef and drink the mulled ale, and they would be asked to the hall to watch the Yule log burn and drink healths, the poorer sorts in barley ale, the farmers in sack and canary wine.