by C F Dunn
The day felt damp after morning rain, but the sun now shone thin and clear in the unfurnished sky. I parked the car in an indent of the narrow track and waited until Matthew found his bearings. Winter wheat stubbled the field around which we edged until we met the contorted line of the river where decades of tractor wheels had cemented the ground into an incidental path.
At first we kept a measured pace, the only sound our breathing, but then his stride lengthened until I almost ran to keep up. He waited for me. “I’m sorry,” he said, as I caught up with him, but all the while his restless eyes searched. “It’s not far now.”
“It’s all right,” I said, drawing air and waving him on. “You go ahead, don’t wait for me.”
We came to a moderate slope rising from the river towards uneven ground. I heard his sharp intake of breath, sensed his sudden hunger. “Matthew, go!” I insisted, and long-limbed and fleet as a deer, he covered the field to the crest of the slope and in seconds, was gone.
When at last I made the rise, he stood as still as the withered bushes on the banks below. Loss bled from him like treacle. He turned when he heard my approach, hollow-eyed, adrift. “There’s nothing left, Emma; it’s all gone.”
“I know, darling.” I enclosed him in my arms, holding him, his face concealed in the folds of my hair, until his dejection melted into mere sorrow and from sorrow to resignation.
“I didn’t know what to expect – ruins, rubble even – but not this.” He kicked at a lump of masonry. It dislodged from the mud and rolled sullenly to a halt in the young wheat, fringed in green. He bent to retrieve it, brushing soil from the soft grey-gold of the stone. Smooth on one side, the mason’s saw marks were still evident on the cut face of the stone. “Even in winter the walls were made of sunshine,” he remarked, laying the stone to rest among the broken remains of his home. He swept his arm along an imaginary line. “This marks the outer walls, and over here…” – he strode to a section of uneven ground – “… must have been where the gatehouse stood. Yes, look…” He jumped from a deep ripple in the ground long years of ploughing had failed to erase and along the dent it made. “This was the moat; it leads all the way around and joins up with the river and fish ponds. Come, I’ll show you.” His face brightening, he began to rebuild his memories. “The road approached the house from over there. It meant that anyone nearing could be seen from the gatehouse from a quarter of a mile away. We kept the ground free of trees and undergrowth so we had full view of all the land between here and our cousins, the Seatons – over there.” He pointed in the direction of Old Manor Farm across the fields. I could see the tips of the trees that surrounded the building, but nothing more. “Well, we could from the top of our walls anyway. When my forebear originally built the house, the course of the river ran further to the east. A body of men would be forced by the moat and the river to make the approach no more than four abreast. It made them easier to pick off that way.” He smiled grimly. “As long as you knew they were coming, that is.”
Shading my eyes, I circled slowly, taking in the lie of the land and the subtle swellings over which the young crop grew, bearing testament to what lay beneath. “And you didn’t have enough time the night you were attacked?”
“No, the gatekeeper was an old man, a loyal retainer my father kept on. He had fallen asleep, and by the time he raised the alarm it was too late. Enough of my uncle’s men had crossed the squeeze-point and gathered along the moat over here.” He stood with his back to the sweep of land and opened his arms to encompass the moat and bridge, with the gatehouse rising in his memory beyond. “There wasn’t much room for them to manoeuvre, but there was enough.” He held out both hands to me and I leapt the little distance across the collapsed moat to be caught securely by him. “We had gates, but no portcullis, and the bridge was designed to be raised in the event of an attack but, as it was, by the time we had manned the walls the weight of men on the bridge meant we couldn’t lift it.”
I took in the distance between the bumps of the fallen walls and the far side of the moat.
“But they were within range, surely, and they had burning torches. Didn’t that make them easier to pick out?”
“Torches? Yes, they had a few, I suppose, but not enough to make them easy to identify.”
“But Nathaniel said the sky was alight with them.”
“Did he? It’s not how I remember it, but I was too preoccupied at the time to take much notice. They were easily within range, but we were loath to open fire. William was my uncle after all, and this had been his home. If we could have come to some peaceable arrangement, we would. We didn’t know he would attack – it wasn’t clear at that point. I had the household maintain defensive positions here…” he pointed to his left, “… and here,” to his right, “and we placed the falconet – the small cannon – at this point, here.” He stepped into a clear area of ground. “We had a small arsenal and I had the staff trained to a fair degree. I’d seen what happened to undefended manors and I wasn’t prepared to let that happen to ours. But… but then we always thought we would know our enemy. We never suspected… we never thought… damn it, Emma, my own uncle – my father’s brother!” His agitation spread in the keening wind that lifted my hair like a pennant around my face. I tamed it brusquely.
“The enemy within, Matthew.”
He smiled bitterly. “Quite.”
A harsh cry like a klaxon rose above our heads as a ring-neck pheasant took flight. We followed it until it dropped from view beyond the river. It had given him time to compose himself and he resumed the conversation.
“When I was wounded, they brought me through here” – together we passed under the imaginary arch of the gatehouse – “and then into the courtyard and across to the main house.” We walked the short distance together, “… through the great door, past the buttery and pantry to our left, towards the stairs, and up into the wing of the house where my quarters were. Of course,” he added, “I was unconscious at the time and… well, you know what happens next.”
“You live long and prosper,” I said softly.
He half-smiled at the quote. “If you can call a life spent largely alone and forever on your guard prospering, then I suppose I did.”
He spent a moment studying the humps like mole tunnels that marked where the walls once stood. His hand traced a shape in the air next to him. “When I was a boy, I used to imagine that the lion carved on the stair newel supporting the family shield – about here – would come alive at night and pace the grounds on guard like our dogs.” He looked thoughtful. “I think my father might have had a hand in fostering that idea. Anyway, it was a comforting thought. I used to pat the lion every time I went past. I don’t think I was the only one – he had a wonderfully glossy mane.”
“Like yours.” I reached up and touched his hair lightly. He captured my hand and pulled me towards him and over the crumpled ground. “Let me show you the Great Hall, Mistress D’Eresby, if you will.”
Standing in an open field, a carpet of green beneath our feet, he conjured the walls and windows around us, the arras behind the dais, the table at which he sat with his father and grandmother, and it felt as alive and real as he did, and as vivid. For the moment, his uncle’s betrayal lay forgotten and lost in happier memories. Finally, he took one last look around over the rolling land and the outlines of his home buried beneath it. “I wish you could have seen it. New Hall was modest, but fine in its way, and my home. And I wish you could have met my father – you would have liked him and he would have loved you as his daughter.” And he bent and kissed my brow, bestowing his father’s blessing in that one, simple, archaic gesture.
“That wasn’t as bad as it might have been,” he said philosophically as we reversed down the track until I found a gate in which to turn. I wasn’t so sure. If finding his obliterated home had shaken him, how would he react when it came to seeing what waited for him in the church?
“Matthew, are you sure you want to go to the church? It’s not
as you remember it; some things have changed – things you might not like.”
“I have to do this,” he said quietly.
We followed the deeply rutted road as it curved, displaced water spraying the tattered vegetation on either side. The gates to the old house came into view as we rounded the bend.
“Emma, look out!”
As I slammed on the brakes, the steering wheel span out of my hands. He grabbed it and the car skidded to a halt, my heart racing with the engine. Mere feet away the deer looked at us calmly, shook her russet flanks, and nimbly leapt through a gap in the hedge.
“Shoot!” I squeaked.
He raised an eyebrow. “Possibly, but I think you’ll find you need a gun rather than your father’s car. If you wanted venison, you only had to ask.”
“Oh ha, ha,” I grumped, angry with myself for my lapse in concentration.
“The unexpected happens, Emma. It wasn’t your fault.”
I shoved the gearstick into first and nosed the car around until it was more or less straight, letting the wheels find a purchase before easing us forward again. “That was stupid of me. I should have been more careful.”
“Well, as I said, the unexpected happens.” Somehow I didn’t think he was referring to our near-accident.
We passed through the stone gateposts with the iron gates lying haphazardly aside, and down the long drive now graced with daffodils bobbing and curtseying as we passed. We drew up in front of the remains of the gatehouse, giving him time to remember. After a minute I asked, “Ready?” and he answered by opening his door and climbing out. He might think he is, I thought, but am I?
On the doorstep next to last summer’s bedraggled pelargonium, of which now only a brown stump remained, I placed the bowl of shining narcissi I had bought that morning, and knocked on the gnarled oak door. Matthew examined the exterior. “This is close to what I remember, though that part of the wing looks different and this oriel window is new.” By “new” he meant it was four hundred years old, rather than six. “The range of barns we saw has been expanded as well. It looks like they extended the original barn by quite a bit. The manor must have gone through a prosperous phase after the war.”
I knocked again and stood back. “Did you visit often?”
“Quite a bit. We were on good terms with the Seatons and we came to church here regularly as well, although it stood apart from the house then, of course, and the village was bigger.” He disappeared around the side of the new wing to investigate just as the door began to open.
Her silvered hair a little awry, Joan Seaton’s wren face popped around the edge of the door, her cautious smile becoming bright as she saw me. “Emma, my dear, how lovely to see you again.” She opened the door wide and stepped over the threshold, her long necklace of jade beads swaying as she moved. “You look much better than when I saw you last; you have some colour in your cheeks. Oh,” she said, disappointed, “but you’re all alone. I thought you were bringing someone to see me. No matter, come along in anyway.”
“Hello, yes I have, but he’s exploring. I’m sure he won’t be a moment. Thanks for letting us come over at such short notice.”
“My dear, you know how few visitors I have. In the last few months since you came, I’ve only seen the postman, that lovely young man who delivers my groceries – he always stops for a chat on a Thursday – and that other one.” I waited for her to expand on “the other one” but she didn’t. “And my son, of course, when he remembers he wants something.” Whereas when I had last seen her she had been nimble and quick, today she leaned on a silver-topped cane for support, and her movements were hesitant. She saw me looking. “I had a little fall in the snow. It has quite put me out of sorts, but I’m on my feet again.” She laughed. “Oh, gracious no, only one of them. Our roles are reversed since last time, it seems, and now I’m the fragile one. Do you think this young man of yours will be very long? Only I’m not quite the woman I once was, you see, and… oh, my dear!” She gasped and I pivoted to see what had made her eyes shock open, to find Matthew materialized behind me.
“Mrs Seaton, I apologize for keeping you waiting.” The sun struck his hair as he bowed low over her hand. “Matthew Lynes, ma’am.”
Eyes fixed on his face, her pulse visibly beating under the thin skin of her neck, she pulled herself together enough to answer, “Yes, but of course you are.” She continued to stare, then straightened her back. “I’ll lead the way. Don’t trip over the cat.”
We entered the dim outer hall, Matthew taking in the details and steadying me as I nearly tripped over the bundle of fur lying by the door. I took the opportunity to say, “You old charmer.”
He looked surprised. “I believe it used to be referred to as courtesy.”
The inner hall felt hollow somehow, and not just old, but shabby. Even the spring sun appeared drab as it struggled through the stained glass of the stair window. Dust delineated where the inlaid marble table once stood in the centre of the worn stone flags. It looked abandoned and unloved, and the Gurney radiator sat stolid and cold to one side.
Her hand flitted towards the void. “I’m finding myself a little short now and again, so my son, Roger, sells some family things for me – just a few to tide me over until such time as I no longer need it.” She smiled with regret. “They never seem to fetch as much as I would hope, but there – times have changed and you young people don’t always like old things, do you?”
I suppressed a welter of dismay at the pillaging of her world. “We certainly do,” I countered, noticing that the fine Georgian long-case clock no longer stood where it once did.
We entered the great hall and behind me I heard Matthew’s subdued exclamation as he recalled it at once, although cobwebs formed curtains over the windows and only a small fire burned in the grate.
“Mrs Seato…” I began.
“Joan, my dear, please.”
“Joan, do you have anyone to help you?”
“Roger says I can’t afford it, so I have to make do and I haven’t been able to do as much as I would like since my fall. I know it is such a mess, but I don’t look at it, you see, and then it isn’t there.”
Behind me, Matthew muttered, “I know what I would like to do to her son.”
“Shh, she’ll hear you.”
“Then at least she’ll know someone cares,” he growled, but quieter this time.
Joan still rambled as she shuffled over to one of the pair of sofas and sat carefully down by the fire. “Roger says the paintings will fetch quite a bit, but they are family, and I can’t find it in me to let them go – not yet, anyway. Once the furniture’s gone, he wants to start on the silver. Some of it is quite old, you know. My husband was very proud of it – it’s been in his family for generations.” She looked into the flames with an expression of longing. “For generations,” she said again. “Now, come and sit down and tell me what it is you wanted to see.”
We sat opposite her, avoiding the broken springs in the sagging sofa, and described how we wanted to research Matthew’s family.
“I can certainly see the family resemblance, my dear; it’s quite remarkably strong. And all this time my husband thought the Lynes family had died out. From whom do you say you are descended?” she asked Matthew directly.
He reverted to the cover-story we agreed before we came, more comfortable steering as close to the truth as we dared. “I believe the family’s been traced back to Matthew Lynes of New Hall.”
“But that’s just a few miles from here, although I’m afraid little remains of it now. It was a fine house in its day, I believe. My husband had a picture of it from the 1680s, I think… or was it? It was after the Restoration anyway. Would you like to see it?”
“Very much,” he replied.
“So for all these years the Lynes have been alive and well in – where did you say you come from?”
“I live in Maine.”
“Do you? It’s strange but you don’t sound like an American to me; perhaps that is
Emma’s influence. You know what happened to Matthew Lynes in 1643 and how his uncle betrayed him?”
“Yes, Emma’s told me.”
“And how he survived, but rumours circulated about him – rumours that spread until it was no longer safe for him to remain, and he left?”
“Yes.”
“But no one knows where he went and it was supposed that the family died out. Well,” she tapped the arm of the sofa in triumph, “now we know better! So, you say that he went to America? What my husband would have done to have met you! Oh, and your dear grandfather, Emma. Those two spent endless hours secreted with papers and such things, researching, researching until goodness knows what time of night – and sometimes into the morning as well. Your grandfather, Douglas, even brought a research assistant with him one time – one of his students – I don’t remember the name, but then I don’t remember as much as I used to.” She shivered, and pulled the knitted jacket around her shoulders. “I feel the cold more than I did. Getting old isn’t much fun, my dears, as your Nanna used to say. I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for her funeral yesterday. How is your mother getting on?”
“She’s coping,” I said. “I think it’s more difficult for her because it’s her second parent. She feels lost, but she has Beth and the children and that helps. They’ve been marvellous, and she really appreciated your letter, thank you.”
“Did she? I’m glad. I expect she’s looking forward to the wedding?” Her eyes twinkled. Although we hadn’t said anything, my ring had probably been a bit of a giveaway.
I felt myself colour. “Oh, yes.”
Matthew built up the fire with the meagre supply of logs he found next to it. He put the fire irons back in a place where she could reach them easily, and she watched the lithe grace with which he moved, and it seemed to jog her memory. “Thank you, my dear. I expect you would like to see the church now – what remains of it?”
