At the House of the Magician

by Mary Hooper

  I buried my face in her blouse. She smelled of soap scented with camomile, of woodsmoke and home. ‘I’m frightened, Ma…’

  ‘Of him? Of course you are.’

  I nodded. ‘Of him – and of leaving. Where would I go?’

  She thought for a moment. ‘Best not to stay around here,’ she said. ‘Why not try London? They say jobs aplenty can be found there.’

  ‘But what would I do?’

  ‘You could do any one of a hundred different things, Lucy, for you’ve always been a canny child. You could work as a housemaid, do plain cooking or serve at table. You could take a milch-cow round at doors, cry food in the streets or make potions and simples for an apothecary. There’s always work in the city for those who want it.’

  ‘But how would you manage without me?’

  Ma stroked my hair. ‘I’d be all right, sweeting. And ’twould be enough for me to know that you were out of his way. It’s been nothing but bad discourse between you for months now.’

  She spoke the truth. Father was a man who wanted his own way – and if he had to bully, cuss or even strike people to get it, then he would. When I was younger his manner had hardly troubled me, for he’d worked long hours on the land and we’d not seen much of him. Two years ago, however, he’d lost his labouring job and was now at home a good deal of the time, where he sat, morbid and complaining, jeering at my tardiness in glove-making (when I was not in the least bit slow) and saying that he’d be lumbered with me for life, for I was too plain to find a husband. When he got a few days’ labour and came by money, things got worse, for he’d go straight from the fields to the tavern and arrive home spoiling for a fight.

  ‘Why don’t you come with me, Ma?’ I urged her now.

  She shook her head, smiling slightly. ‘I’m too old and worn to beg for my food and sleep o’nights in barns. I’m too old for traipsing to London. Besides, how would everyone manage? How would your sisters fare without me being around to care for their children?’

  I sighed, knowing that she spoke truly and that it was a rare day – like today, when most people were at the Fair – that there weren’t one or two of my little nieces or nephews hanging at her skirts while my sisters worked. I gave an anxious glance out of the window to make sure that Father wasn’t coming down the lane, trying to decide what to do. Was the time to go now? Was this the moment I’d been waiting for – could I really leave my home? Other girls from our village had gone away and done well, so we’d heard tell: one had become mistress of a tavern, another worked in a draper’s shop selling linens, several had become housemaids.

  ‘If I’d stirred myself earlier today I might have worked for Lady Ashe,’ I said to Ma. ‘She was at the hiring fair today.’

  Ma shook her head. ‘She lives too close by and your pa would discover you were there and come and seek you out. He’ll never come to London, though.’

  I shook my head. ‘’Twould be like him looking for a raven in a flock.’

  ‘Perhaps you’ll make your fortune there,’ Ma continued, still stroking my hair, ‘for it’s said that in London the streets are paved with gold.’

  ‘Truly?’

  She shrugged and smiled. ‘That’s what they say. But it may be just a story.’

  We talked more and decided between us that it was best for me to go; indeed it was the only thing, and I started to become more excited than fearful at such an adventure. London, we calculated, was no more than two or three hard days’ walk away, for our village, Hazelgrove, is near to Hampton Court, where Queen Elizabeth has a great palace, and it’s known that she frequently travels between there and her palace of Whitehall, in London. (She, mind, travels mostly by river, so does not have to bear the mud, the potholes and the highwaymen on the roads as others do.)

  Ma helped me get my few things together – my second-best bodice and skirt, two undersmocks, some old silk stockings, much darned, which had belonged to one of my sisters, and my cloak – and, to go with my lavender-wand money, she also gave me a silver shilling, which she’d been keeping hidden from Father. I folded the garments as small as possible and put them into my basket together with handkerchiefs, washcloth and comb, and Ma put in some bread, cheese and a flask of water.

  Our parting was very tearful, for Ma looked so old and careworn that I could not help but think to myself that I’d never see her again, or that if I did she’d be in her coffin. I believe she had as many concerns about me because she bade me to take great care where I laid my head, and not to trust anyone until they proved themselves, and especially not to be taken in by a handsome face or a hard-luck story.

  ‘Guard your money well,’ she went on, ‘and always be alert for tricksters and thieves, for folk can get so desperate that they’d sell their souls – and yours, too – if they thought they’d profit from it. Remember your station in life and try to curb your curiosity, Lucy. Some things are not for the likes of us to know.’

  I promised her that I’d remember all that and also that I’d endeavour to get word to her of how I fared, and, after exchanging many hugs and kisses, left my home for ever, so that my last glimpse was of Ma, standing in the doorway, alternately waving her kerchief at me, then dabbing her eyes with it. As for me, I was weeping plentifully and didn’t care who saw me (although not being so careless that I omitted to keep a wary eye out for my father).

  * * *

  Within an hour, I’d reached the Thames, where there was a path of sorts, and Hazelgrove was a good distance behind me. I’d dried my tears and my head was already full of dreams of doing well for myself in London, of sending money home to Ma and of even, one day, being married and able to provide a safe home for her so that she could leave Father and come and live with me.

  I knew I’d have to find a job straightaway so that I could support myself in the city, for the authorities were hard on beggars who traipsed the streets without means and would throw them in gaol for a spell, then drag them back to their own parishes behind a cart. This, I vowed, would not happen to me, for I’d begin searching for a job as soon as I arrived in the city and wouldn’t flinch at any means of making my own living, no matter how lowly. Indeed, just the thought of being out of reach of my father’s temper and his hard right hand was enough to make me feel very cheerful.

  After another three hours of walking, however, I did not feel quite so merry, for my cloth shoes had nearly worn away at the bottom and, the river pathway being stony and unkept, there were now several cuts on my soles and a blister as big as a penny under my heel.

  After examining these injuries, I walked inland from the river for a while, enjoying the grass under my feet and looking for some bruisewort to crush and put on the blister. But I couldn’t find any grassy herbs at all, for the land was quite bare and scrubby, so I sat down at the side of the path and began to eat my bread and cheese, looking at the sun and trying to judge the hour. It was, I thought, about four in the afternoon, so I had perhaps three hours of walking left before it started to become dark. I certainly didn’t want to walk that long, though, for I was hot and tired and my feet were very sore.

  I suddenly realised I was sitting at a crossing of lanes where, it’s said, they bury witches, so I jumped up and retraced my steps back to the river. I had to stay close to the Thames, for it was my guide; a shining grey ribbon leading towards London and my future.

  I’d walk on, I decided, but begin looking for a barn, hollow tree or welcoming hedge where I could take shelter for the night. When I set off again, however, I’d scarce done a half-mile before I began to pass fishermen on the riverbanks and ferry boats plying their trade across the river, and knew I must be nearing a town. Sure enough, within another turn of the Thames, I passed a farm with a large flock of sheep grazing, then heard the tinkling and singing of weather vanes as a great building came into view. This, I knew at once, was the palace of Richmond, for some years back my brother and his friends had taken me on a rowing boat upstream from home, and that noble building with its chimneys stretc
hing and twisting into the sky was a view I’d never forgotten.

  The royal orchard entered my sight first, picked bare of its apples and medlars, then a chapel, set back; after that stables, a brewery and two rows of little cottages. Following these came the great palace itself, several storeys high and topped by golden cupolas, shiny turrets whereon flags fluttered and melodious, spinning weather vanes.

  Walking alongside high walls I glimpsed through gateways an ice house and an aviary, then a fine formal garden with clipped hedges in the shape of lovers’ knots, shiny balls of holly and shaped box and myrtle. I’d have liked to linger there longer in case the queen herself appeared at a window or took a stroll along the gravelled pathways, but one of the uniformed palace guards appeared and shouted at me to move on.

  As the gardens of the palace gradually gave way to pigsties and stables, then rows of vegetables and fruit bushes, I began to look for somewhere to shelter overnight. I was passing dwellings aplenty along the bank but they were large and imposing, perhaps belonging to the queen’s ministers, and I felt far too humble to knock and ask if I might sleep in one of their outhouses. Occasionally I investigated a likely looking bush, but these turned out to be either too low, too scratchy – or one smelled so foul that I felt a tramp must have already used it as his privy.

  Leaving Richmond, the river curved and straightened by turn as it reflected the sinking sun, and in another mile or so a church appeared in the distance with a range of low dwellings beside it. A few children were playing on the foreshore here and as I got closer I saw that they were a boy and two girls, all exceeding muddy and with faces as black as a moor’s, taking it in turns to slide down the riverbank. The tide was out and the water was low, but from the eddies and whirls at its centre I could see that it was coming in quickly.

  As I passed above the little group I heard a strange, excited chattering which was not a child, and I looked down and saw that the taller girl had a monkey sitting on her shoulders. I paused, fascinated by the tiny features and pretty head of the creature. I’d seen a monkey before, for Lady Ashe had one which she paraded around the village and which had its own nursemaid. She’d had hers, it was said, since her time at Court, and it had been given to her by the queen as a wedding present.

  I knew that these children, then, must be from a wealthy family to afford such a pet. But if so, why – when it was almost dark – were they playing on the riverside, unaccompanied by nursemaids, and rolling in the mud like tinkers’ children?

  Shrugging to myself, I moved on, heading for some barns I could see ahead of me on the riverside. If these proved no good as a place to lay my head, I decided, then perhaps I’d have to turn back and use some of my precious money to take a room in the nearest tavern. But only if I really had to.

  I’d not gone more than twenty yards further, however, before I heard a scream behind me and, turning, saw that the smallest girl, perhaps five years old, had skidded a little too far out and was now waist-deep in muddy water.

  ‘I can’t move!’ she wailed to her two companions. ‘Get me out!’

  The other girl burst into tears and called that she dared not. The boy – who was only about seven – tried to move towards the younger girl, but his legs quickly became fixed in the thick mud.

  ‘Help! Oh, help us!’ the older girl shouted to me, and I dropped my basket and ran back towards them, picking up a sturdy branch on the way and then slipping and sliding down the riverbank, swearing to myself as my best skirt got covered in thick gobbets of mud.

  Finding a secure place on the bank close to the child, I crouched down and pushed the branch towards her. ‘Take the end!’ I urged her. ‘Take the end and I’ll pull you out.’

  She was weeping too hard to do so at first, and seemed not to understand what I was saying.

  ‘Do as I say,’ I shouted sternly, ‘or you will surely drown!’

  She reached for the branch and, as she clutched it, I moved backwards – but moved too fast, for she lost hold of it and fell back again, causing both her and the older girl to begin screaming anew. I persevered, instructing her to grasp the branch as tightly as she could and, as I began to pull her, to try and fling herself forward. ‘You must try harder!’ I shouted, as behind and all around us I could hear the water swirling and eddying, drawing up bubbles and gobbets from the oozing mud as the tide came in.

  I pulled hard, she held on tightly, and there was a hollow sucking sound as her body came out of the hole and the mud closed up around it. I dragged her towards me, to the safer place where I was standing, and stood her upright.

  ‘Does your mother always let you play in the river?’ I asked both children rather sternly. ‘Have you played this game before?’

  The elder girl shook her head woefully and the monkey on her shoulder shook its head in imitation of her. ‘They don’t know we’re here,’ she said between sniffs.

  ‘They’ll know soon enough, then,’ I said, looking first at the state they were in, and then at my own ruined clothes, ‘for we look like mud-stricken boar-hogs.’

  I lifted the younger one, who was still weeping, into my arms. The two girls were very alike, with small pointed noses, bright blue eyes and long, fair, curly hair which didn’t look as if it had seen a comb for some time. ‘I’d best take you home,’ I said more kindly. ‘What are your names?’

  ‘I’m Elizabeth and always called Beth,’ said the elder girl, ‘and my sister is Merryl.’

  I looked to the boy, but he’d managed to free his feet from the mud and was bolting up the bank as quick as a rabbit.

  ‘He’s just a boy from the village,’ Beth said.

  Holding the still-weeping Merryl, I made my way up the slippery riverbank. I trod with care, for the water behind us was coming up fast and I didn’t want to fall over. ‘Where is this place?’ I asked Beth.

  ‘’Tis named Mortlake,’ she said, taking a firm hold of my hand.

  ‘And where do you live in this Mortlake?’

  ‘In the dark house,’ she replied as we reached the path at the top.

  I was about to ask where that was, but I looked ahead and saw a forbidding-looking dwelling set along the riverbank which immediately answered that description. It had a thatched roof, which was heavily mossed, its walls were tarred against the weather with pitch, and it had tiny windows, which, though made of glass, were so dusty that they could hardly be seen through. I’d passed the house just moments before, but had not seen it, for dusk was falling and it had melted into the gloom to become part of the encroaching night.

  ‘Is that it?’ I pointed.

  She nodded and I was amused to see the monkey do the same.

  ‘Is anyone at home?’ I asked, for the place seemed deserted.

  ‘Mistress Midge,’ said Beth vaguely. ‘And our mother, too, although she is…’

  I didn’t catch the rest of her sentence, for I was pushing open a creaking and ramshackle gate. This led into a gloomy outside passageway, whose only light came from a flickering candle standing in a tin sconce on the wall.

  I shifted Merryl in my arms and began to walk towards a door which stood at the far end. It was then that I got the strangest feeling: a sense of foreboding, a shiver of fear and anticipation. Had I been to this place before? Had I walked up this very path some other time – or had I merely dreamed of doing so? Whatever the feeling was, I knew that this place was going to be of some special significance to me.

  Chapter Three

  The back door of the dark house was of heavy wood, curved at the top, with rusty iron hinges and a ring handle. Beth pushed this open and went into the room beyond and I followed her, not knowing and rather fearing what I might find.

  It was merely a kitchen, however, as dimly lit as the passageway, with a wood-planked floor scattered with stale and ill-smelling rushes. A large table stood in the centre of the room and this was covered with piles of unwashed trenchers, bowls and pewter in such disarray that Ma would have been horrified to see, for she believed – an
d had certainly taught me and my sisters – that to keep a clean and orderly kitchen was a woman’s most important duty in life. A huge cooking range dominated one side of the room, and above this were long wooden boards with all the articles of cooking upon them: saucepans, chafing dishes, skimmers, ladles, cauldrons and pipkins, all piled this way and that. In spite of all these utensils, however, and the vast array of copper moulds which hung on the opposite wall, there was precious little sign of any food being prepared; no enticing smells and nothing turning on the spit over the fire – which, anyway, looked to be nearly out.

  ‘Where’s your nurse?’ I asked Beth. ‘Have you a nurse?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Gone!’ said Merryl.

  I sat Merryl upon a stool and looked at both children, puzzled. This seemed to be a wealthy household, yet the children were strangely uncared for. ‘Your mother, then. Where’s your mother?’

  For a while neither of them replied, and I wondered for a moment if I’d stumbled across a deserted house which had been abandoned by all apart from these two. Beth then said, ‘I told you. She’s lying-in.’

  ‘She’s just had a child?’ ‘

  Our brother,’ said Merryl, and added very properly, ‘he is my father’s heir and his name is Arthur.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Beth said. ‘And he’s very small and red.’

  Suddenly the monkey took a leap from her shoulder and landed with a clatter on the wooden table, making several trenchers and two pewter mugs fall on to the floor and adding to the general chaos.

  ‘But who’s looking out for you?’ I asked.

  ‘Anyone,’ Merryl said vaguely.

  ‘Mistress Midge, our cook,’ said Beth.

  As she spoke I heard a-running on the stairs elsewhere in the house and a woman’s voice scolding and muttering, as if someone was being chastised for a whole legion of sins. The voice drew closer, and then its owner came into the kitchen, stopped dead and screamed at the sight of us.