‘And who won?’ Joseph asked, seeming genuinely keen to know.
‘I don’t remember,’ Bess said, though if pressed she’d have wagered that Tom would have retrieved the most apples but would also have got himself caught.
The nerves were beginning to announce themselves, her skin suddenly sensitive to her linen’s weave and even the coarse wool of the travelling cloak on her shoulders and back, now that she was so close to the old place. To her grandfather. If he is even alive, she thought, for no one in Shear House ever spoke of Lord Heylyn, Earl of Chester, nor had they since his and his daughter Lady Mary’s great falling-out more than twenty years ago. It had been a sharp disagreement and barely sheathed, so that everyone within sight of Parbold Hill knew that Lord Heylyn thought his daughter had married beneath herself in Sir Francis Rivers. The earl had threatened Mary with being cut off if she went ahead with the marriage, or so Sir Francis had revealed to Bess and her brothers one Christmastide around the table, when the malmsey had loosened his tongue and the festivities were in full flow.
Bess’s mind tortured her now by conjuring the memory, even gilding it with the dancing flames of the parlour hearth, and her family as it once was. Sir Francis with his pipe resting between his lips. Their mother dressed in the old fashion, a ruff at the neck and wrists, copper eyebrows raised indulgently at her husband, perhaps wishing he would not speak of it, but it being too late now to stopper the bottle.
‘But your grandfather might as well have tried blowing the wind back the way it came as tried telling your mother what to do,’ Sir Francis had said, a mischievous smile cinching the pipe’s stem. ‘Besides which, your mother was always going to marry beneath her, no matter the man.’ This had been meant as a compliment, Bess had realized years later. At the time, though, she (and her brothers, too, perhaps) had reeled in shock at their grandfather’s threat and she remembered feeling – unfairly, she knew now of course – more sorry for her father because of the insult than for her mother because of Lord Heylyn’s indifference to her heart’s desires. But Bess had been a girl and a girl will always pity her father.
The thing had of course unfolded neatly enough so that all knew their place around it. Lady Mary had made good her own ambition, marrying Sir Francis because she loved him and going north with him to Shear House. The earl had proved as stubborn and resolute as his word, having nothing to do with his daughter or her new family other than a handful of solemn requests to see his grandchildren when they were young. And even those requests had dried up, perhaps because those children, the progeny of a mere knight, whenever they came pillaged his beloved orchards.
‘Well, someone is here,’ Joe observed, nodding towards the grey-black smoke rising silent as the long dead from a shamble of chimney upon the farmhouse roof. The wind was whipping the smoke eastward, up into the bitter, heavy sky. For a long moment Bess watched it rise, reflecting that it was her grandfather’s ire itself, still smouldering after all these years, bitter idle fumes that availed an old man nothing in his loneliness.
Strange, she thought, that a man so obdurate regarding the formalities of his class should favour a near derelict farmhouse over his grand estate lying on the River Dee’s south bank at Handbridge. Then again, what did Bess know? Lord Heylyn, Earl of Chester, was a stranger to her, for all she now hoped to convince him that that was not so, for all her determination to haul on the halyard of his remorse and raise him to her cause.
They had dismounted and tethered their horses, each to an iron ring beside a mounting block by the front door, and now Bess found herself sheltering from the wind in the oak-timbered porch as Joe grasped another ring, this one forged with a dog’s-head knocker, and rapped it against her grandfather’s door. Near by, three hens scavenged in the mud, their plumage bristling in the chill.
‘He will not know me,’ Bess said, watching Joe huff into red raw hands. The poor lad’s felt broad-hat had holes in it, she noticed.
‘I think he will, Bess,’ Joe replied with a frown, knocking again, louder this time.
Bess had braided her hair and pinned the long tresses against her head, covering all with a simple linen coif and then a loose felt hood which she now removed for fear of the thing obscuring her face.
Let him be alive, God, her mind whispered, a shiver running through her flesh as the door opened and a balding servant in her grandfather’s blue livery enquired after them.
‘I am Elizabeth Rivers, daughter of Sir Francis and Lady Mary Rivers of Parbold in Lancashire. I am here to see my grandfather the earl.’
For a moment the servant’s inquisitive eyes scoured her face, then slipped down to take an inventory of her modest dress: the russet cloak and, beneath that, the simple neckcloth pinned around her shoulders to cover her décolletage. Likewise her bodice was deliberately unworthy of remark and her skirts, though full and of multiple layers, were of thick, dull green wool.
Then the man’s eyes jumped across to Joe but did not linger on him, the appraisal done in a heartbeat, and returned to Bess, a lift in the brows intimating that perhaps it might be possible that the girl before him was indeed his master’s relation.
‘Do you doubt me, sirrah?’ Bess challenged.
His blue eyes, which were watery from the sudden cold air, widened, and he gave a slight nod, the few strands left on his liver-spotted head floating wispily.
‘Cry your pardon, madam,’ he said, ‘but we do not receive many visitors, fewer still since the troubles. Please.’ He swept an arm back into the dark interior. ‘Come in from the cold.’
Joe thanked him but Bess held her tongue as they stepped into the house, their eyes adjusting to the dark as the servant closed the door on the day and went to announce their arrival.
They waited for what seemed to Bess an age, as her memories sought form and familiarity that would not come, and she breathed the air that was sweet with wood smoke yet cut by the tang of an old man’s urine.
‘Lord Heylyn will see you now,’ the servant said, beckoning them into the parlour beyond whose threshold came the crack and pop of a roaring fire. ‘May I advise you to speak up and with clarity, for my lord cannot abide mumbling.’
‘Drink!’ The word was drawn out and had the sound of an ancient tree falling, ripping its roots from the earth.
‘Yes, my lord,’ the servant said, nodding that Bess and Joe should enter the parlour, then hurrying off along the gloomy hall.
‘Wait here, Joe,’ Bess said, noting what looked like relief in the young man’s eyes, then she took a deep, smoky breath, exhaled, and went to meet her grandfather.
That the man was old should not have surprised her, and yet it did. Seeing his face had lit a memory of him which, until that point, had been at best shadowy. Now, though, the past came flooding in on the scent of gently rotting apples stacked on racks amongst countless books behind her, beyond the reach of the fire’s warmth.
‘You have your mother’s face,’ the old man said, holding up a candlestick to better see her. His hand trembled though he did not look weak.
‘As do you, Grandfather,’ Bess said. For it was true. The old man’s hair was still thick, hanging unkempt in waves of black and light grey to his shoulders, and his beard, which was almost all grey, was thick and voluminous as camp-fire smoke on a still day. Yet beneath all this the thin flesh on his face was tight over the bones, his cheeks prominent up to the lined skin and soft bulges beneath his eyes. As for the eyes themselves, which seemed now to drink of her, they were narrow and tired-looking, though still deep as wells beneath tufted grey brows. ‘It has been a long time, Grandfather,’ Bess said, wishing she knew what the man before her was thinking.
Lord Heylyn leant in closer to Bess, so that she smelt his old skin and hair, caught a whiff of garlic and stale tobacco on his breath.
‘You’ve got your father’s eyes, I see,’ he said, a hint of tooth revealing itself within the bloom of grey bristles. He sees well enough, Bess thought, for it was true that although she resembled h
er mother in many ways her eyes were her father’s, more blue than green.
‘May I sit?’ Bess pointed to a chair, one of two by the fire. Her grandfather nodded, still staring at her.
‘Is she dead?’ he said, meaning her mother.
‘No. But my father is,’ she said, sitting and raising her hands to the flames. Books and apples, most of the fruit withered, littered the room. Here and there a candle flickered. ‘He died protecting the King’s ensign at Kineton Fight. They never found him.’
The old man followed, easing himself into the other chair, which creaked from long use. ‘He was no coward, your father,’ he said, at which Bess felt herself nod, relieved that his first words had not insulted her father’s memory. ‘If he had been, Mary would never have turned her back on me for him.’
‘He died for the cause, Grandfather,’ Bess said, ‘as did the man I was going to marry. Emmanuel.’ She said his name for herself, not him, for the old man had never met Emmanuel and his death would mean nothing to him. ‘We were handfast and would have wed.’
‘Then along came this war,’ her grandfather said.
Bess nodded. ‘Emmanuel and Edmund rode to the King when His Majesty raised the standard at Nottingham.’
Bess ached whenever she thought of her love, lost for ever, and her heart with him. And yet even the aching was something to which she could cling.
‘God’s wrath is England’s fire,’ Lord Heylyn said. ‘Drink!’ he yelled again, eyes blazing as he looked towards the door for sign of his servant returning. Then he turned back to Bess, big hands gripping the ends of his chair’s arms so that the knuckles were bloodless. ‘Then your mother is well?’
‘Quite well,’ Bess said, aware she had raised her voice for the old man’s benefit. ‘For all her own efforts towards the war. We were besieged. Before Christmastide. Mother led a sortie and fought the rebels herself.’ Her grandfather’s eyes widened at that, which was hardly surprising, Bess thought. ‘I was delivered of my son whilst we were besieged. Little Francis.’ Another name to squeeze her heart, for the loss of her father and the missing of her baby. ‘Edmund returned and—’
‘Broke the siege and sent the rebels to Hell,’ her grandfather finished. ‘I am not so far removed from the world that I do not hear stories that are worth hearing.’ His left eyebrow lifted. ‘A child out of wedlock, hey? And what did Sir Francis make of that, I wonder?’
‘We had made our vows,’ Bess said, her hackles rising. ‘The ceremony was all arranged and we would have been wed before little Francis was born if not for the country turning on their king. We had my father’s blessing.’
‘Indeed.’
The servant hurried in with two wooden cups, presenting one to Bess before delivering the other into a trembling hand that had been outstretched since Bess had heard the man’s steps across the hall boards.
‘So your mother raises two boys and one is a hero, the other a traitor,’ Lord Heylyn said, putting the cup to his lips and slurping the warm wine. ‘That’s what you get if you marry without regard to breeding.’ He let that hang in the air between them and Bess got the sense he was testing her, perhaps willing her to take umbrage.
Well, she would not bite.
‘My mother married the man she loved. As I would have done had Emmanuel lived,’ she said simply. ‘My brothers are not the boys you remember but grown men. They follow their own paths. As for Tom, it is true that he has fought with the rebels, God save his soul, but he has suffered terribly. Hatred and the hunger for vengeance blinded him, Grandfather, as hatred is wont to do to men.’
This barb was well aimed, it seemed, for the old man’s eyes flickered and narrowed further still, and a faint tremor ran through his body from leg to face.
‘You are here about them, aren’t you, Elizabeth? Your boys,’ he said, bringing the cup to his lips again, inhaling before slurping more spiced wine. ‘Those devils used to thieve my apples. Damned natty lads.’ He dragged his shirt sleeve across his mouth, leaving a faint red stain on the linen.
‘I need your help,’ Bess said, looking into the flames that leapt in the hearth. And suddenly she felt like a fool on a fool’s errand, for why would this old man, whom she had not seen since she was a little girl, deign to help her? Was she even now (and a mother too) the same callow fool who had encouraged Tom to court Martha Green when she should have condemned the courtship? And look what had come of that.
‘Why would I help you?’ Lord Heylyn asked. She could feel his eyes on her like hot coals, though she yet watched the fire. ‘Your mother turned her back on me many years ago, before you were a mewling red monster at your wet-nurse’s breast. She’s not lacking in gall, your mother, but I am surprised she thought sending you here would avail your family anything. I would have said she’d too much pride for that.’
Bess felt as though one of those withered apples were lodged in her throat. She feared that by calling on the earl she might be betraying her mother.
‘My mother does not know that I am here,’ she said. ‘No one does.’
‘And the boy shivering in my hall?’
‘A friend. Joseph Lea. The son of a tenant farmer and now musketeer in the Shear House garrison.’
The thick brow above the earl’s left eye lifted. ‘What elevated circles you move in, girl. You really are like your mother.’ Bess did not deny it. ‘She will spit fury when she learns you are here,’ he said, a glint – like the scales of a fish just beneath the water – flashing across his old eyes. ‘I would like to see her face when she finds out.’
‘Will you help me?’ Bess said again.
‘Help you?’
‘See my family whole again.’ It will never be whole again, she thought, fixing her eyes on his. But there was a wound that might be healed. ‘I will bring Tom back. I will see my brothers standing together again as they should be. As they always did.’
‘And you think I can help you in this? You are misguided, girl.’ He drained the cup and reached over to place it on a table, wincing with the movement. ‘Your mother chose Rivers over me.’ He sat back, swiping the air with a big hand, so that Bess got a glimpse of jewelled rings. ‘That was done long ago. You have come here too late. I have no need of you, girl. Wine!’ he roared, slamming a hand onto the arm of his chair. ‘Where the devil are you, Merrett, you damned saunterer? And a member mug. I need to piss!’
‘My father is dead. Does he yet cause you offence?’
‘It is nothing to me,’ he said, though his eyes said different.
‘Then I have wasted my time,’ Bess said, standing.
‘Sit down, Bess,’ her grandfather said.
‘Why? I have work to do and our business is concluded.’
‘Sit down.’
‘Why, my lord?’ she said, the title all but spat.
‘Because I have not finished looking at you, girl,’ he said, patting the air with a hand. ‘How do you suppose to lure the young wolf back into the fold? And what will you do with him if you manage it?’
Bess held his eye and, deciding she had nothing to lose, sat back down.
‘You are a wealthy man, Grandfather.’
‘Wealthier than I appear,’ he admitted. ‘But I have found in times of war no prudent man should beat the drum about his fortune. Not unless he wants to piss his money away on muskets and horses for soon-to-be-dead men.’
‘I want you to buy Tom a royal pardon,’ she said, the very idea sounding preposterous now she had given it voice. ‘Such things must be possible. For a man of your standing.’
But to her surprise the old man did not laugh or scoff. He steepled his ringed fingers as Merrett came in with a leather pitcher and a chamber pot, which he tried in vain to place surreptitiously behind his lord’s chair before refilling his cup. Then he came to Bess but she shook her head.
‘I played the part in King James’s court,’ the earl said then, almost grinning. ‘Hell’s beast but there were some young blades back then.’ He drank. ‘Most are long dead no
w of course. But his son,’ he said into his cup, ‘his son is a different man. I know him not.’
Bess made to rise again but her grandfather’s hand bid her wait.
‘For all that His Majesty has requested me at court many times. You are not the only one who wants my money, Elizabeth.’ He pinned her with those deep eyes that must once have made women’s hearts flutter but now rested upon plump cushions. ‘You still have not told me why I would help you.’
‘You hold no sway at court,’ Bess said.
‘My money does,’ he riposted. ‘Money always commands an audience.’
This was true enough, Bess thought, and so she would answer him.
‘You would help me because perhaps you are tired of being alone,’ she said. ‘Or because you are old and doing good might ease your conscience before it is too late.’
The old man stood up now and picked a log from the basket by the hearth. ‘I have been alone a long time, granddaughter,’ he said, weighting the last word, ‘and am resigned to dying here …’ he glanced around the dimly lit room, ‘in this house. I want no part in the quarrel that has got men so excited.’ He shook his shaggy head. ‘The fools do not know what war is, for if they did they would not be so eager for it.’ He bent, placing the log in the fire with a trembling hand which he did not remove until the log was just as he wanted it. ‘I have seen war and have no appetite for it,’ he said, straightening and looking at her again, firelight playing across his face, bronzing his grey hairs and beard. ‘Should the rebels beat the King, gain their great victory and turn the world on its head, what would I care? Pray tell, girl. I shall be gone soon enough. I have no family whose place in this world I am bound to preserve.’
‘We are your family,’ Bess said, unsure if the old man sought her pity or her anger. ‘You cannot undo what was done long ago, but you can help me. Together we might, God willing, give my mother back her sons. Tom and Mun are enemies and should not be. Your blood runs in their veins, Grandfather. Help me bring Tom back before he is killed in some muddy field or strung up for a traitor.’ The words sickened her but she could not hide from the fate Tom was courting. She feared her mother could not survive another such tragedy. Or perhaps Bess feared for herself. ‘If Tom knew the King would pardon him he would come over to us,’ she said, realizing that she still gripped the now empty cup in her right hand, ‘and we might be a family again.’ She did not know if this last was true, but she had to try to believe that it was, had to make her grandfather believe it, too.
Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) Page 5
