Montacute House

by Lucy Jago

  A thrumming started in Cess’s hands and arms and rapidly spread through her body until she was buzzing like a hive. Inside her chest she felt her heart open, like a daylily in sunlight, to receive the gifts Alathea was bestowing upon her. The women dropped hands and placed theirs on Cess’s head. Alathea covered Cess’s ears and Edith her eyes.

  .

  Your ears are stopped but now you truly hear.

  Your eyes are blind but now you truly see.

  .

  The vibrating intensified to such a pitch that Cess felt the contours of her body explode and suddenly she no longer existed as before. There was no division between herself and the universe around her. She could hear great beasts calling in the oceans and stars exploding above, the thump of three beating hearts and all of the people on earth, the scrambling of ants through the grass, the worms beneath, the breaths of sleeping creatures, the creak of sap rising. There was a myriad of faces, people she had never met; some lingered and smiled at her, some slept, some were born. She felt as if she was soaring miles above the earth, able to look down yet still be a part of it. The fears she had about becoming a novice evaporated in the bliss and power of the moment.

  Edith and Alathea removed their hands, but Cess did not open her eyes. She did not want to break the spell. The women were content to stand sentinel beside their young charge until she was ready to come back.

  .

  The moon was almost gone. Cess walked carefully behind Edith, who knew her way well enough to walk the track blindfold. Cess’s heart still beat rapidly with the excitement of what she had felt in the clearing.

  Edith stopped for a moment to study a silver birch by the side of the rutted path. A flat patch of moss lay in the crook of a branch and Edith pushed her nose right into it and sniffed. ‘This is good,’ she mumbled. From the purse at her waist she pulled a little black dagger, similar to the one Alathea had given Cess. As if asking permission of the tree, she stroked it gently, then carefully removed the moss with the blade and slipped it into the small hessian bag that always hung at her side.

  They walked around the hill in companionable silence until they were near the bottom, where the track was almost flat as it crossed the base of the mount behind the village.

  ‘Shh. Keep still,’ Alathea whispered suddenly. ‘There is someone nearby.’ Cess snapped out of her dreaminess.

  Suddenly Alathea pushed Edith and Cess sideways, throwing her cloak over all three of them. A few seconds later, Cess heard footsteps, heavy and a little unsteady. Whoever was walking was panting hard. She heard the crunch of dried mud under the pliancy of May-time leaves as hard-soled boots tramped along. The footsteps were coming straight towards them. Something sharp pressed against Cess’s side. It was her dagger. She pulled it from the purse and clenched it in her fist. The footsteps passed so close that the bush they were hiding behind was all that separated them. Once the person had moved off a few measures, Cess lifted the corner of the cloak. A tall, well-built man was shouldering a heavy sack with some difficulty. His hair was so pale it glowed even in the scant moonlight. He was not from the village.

  ‘A poacher,’ whispered Cess. ‘That must be a deer he has in there.’

  ‘We must go. I sense evil,’ said Alathea urgently.

  ‘We can go the other way, through Lossell’s fields,’ said Cess.

  ‘We will accompany you as far as we can,’ said Edith.

  They soon reached the edge of the forest. The women could go no further for fear Cess would be seen with them.

  ‘Take this pentacle,’ said Alathea, pressing a small metal object into her hand. Peering closely, Cess could make out a five-pointed star in a circle. ‘It wards off evil so keep it close. Show no one.’ The women kissed Cess and melted back into the darkness.

  .

  .

  8

  ‘Wake up! Wake up! Anne Perryn! Cess Perryn!’ Still asleep, Cess jumped up and fell off the straw platform of her bed. She groped in the darkness and pulled back the bolt of the door.

  ‘Where is William? Is he with you?’ shouted Peter Barlow, his anxious face harshly lit by his flaming torch. The sockets of his eyes were black while his jaw and cheekbones were bright, like a skull.

  ‘No,’ replied Cess, wide awake now. It was pitch black outside and she guessed she had been asleep only a short while.

  ‘He did not return from the great house. Has he been with you?’ Peter questioned.

  ‘We met briefly but we were separated,’ replied Cess cautiously.

  ‘When did you see him last?’

  ‘He was talking to the stable boys about the firesparks.’

  ‘Fireworks? You did not see him when you walked home?’

  ‘No.’

  Peter Barlow stared at Cess as if he suspected that she was hiding something. Her heart was beating in her chest so painfully she felt it in her throat.

  ‘If you see him, tell him to come home at once.’ Peter turned, the flame of his torch roaring as it sliced the air.

  Within minutes the village was alive with rumour and fear. Doors banged, dogs were baying and men’s voices called to each other as a search party gathered to hunt for the boy. Cess heard their tramping boots as they passed by her cottage. She felt her way back to the pallet and lay beside her wakeful mother until a faint lightening of the sky between the missing slats of the shutters told her it was nearly dawn.

  Mother and daughter dressed in silence, both aware that Cess had returned home very late from the fireworks. Both knew where she had been, but neither wanted to talk about it. Anne knelt beside the fire and began to pray. Cess joined her, not knowing who to pray to, but needing to do something. It was hard to concentrate, and her thoughts kept leading her to the man in the woods.

  ‘I am here, Cess.’ It was Edith’s voice. Cess jumped and her eyes snapped open, looking about for her friend. The voice was real and close by. Her mother opened her eyes and looked at Cess.

  ‘Why do you jump? What ails you?’ she asked.

  ‘Nothing, Mother. I must have dropped asleep.’ To Cess’s amazement, it seemed that Edith had heard her prayers and was answering. Cess closed her eyes once more.

  ‘William is missing!’ Cess’s body flooded briefly with emotion, like a blush, an echo in her body of Edith’s reaction to the news.

  ‘Think of him,’ came Edith’s voice. ‘Help us to see where he is. You know him best.’ Cess was shocked by how clearly she heard Edith. Was this really happening, or was lunacy overtaking her? She kept her eyes wide open for a few moments, deeply unsettled.

  ‘Do not be afraid, Cess. We might be able to help him.’

  Gingerly Cess closed her eyes again. It took a little while for her to move her thoughts past the events of the previous day. Picturing his angry face made her shy away, but she tried again. She remembered the last time she had seen William, his delight at the fireworks and his care for her safety despite his hurt. She was just beginning to smile at the memory when her vision darkened. There was a narrow door, locked. She faltered, then walked through it. William was there, she sensed rather than saw. He was freezing cold and burning hot, shaking and gasping.

  ‘William! He is in pain!’

  ‘Child! Child!’ said Anne, alarmed. ‘What are you saying? Are you ill?’ She shook Cess until she opened her eyes and helped her to the stool. Cess rocked herself beside the fire, appalled by her vision. She knew Edith had felt it too, though she did not know how she knew.

  ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Anne.

  Cess tried thinking of all the possible reasons William might have stayed out, hoping against hope that her vision was wrong. ‘God’s death!’ she exclaimed suddenly, jumping to her feet and grabbing her cloak. ‘I have to see the steward,’ she gasped. The news of William’s disappearance had made her forget Sir Nathaniel’s order.

  She banged the thin wooden door behind her and set off quickly along the slippery track. Almost immediately drizzle drenched her face a
nd seeped into the rough cloth of her cloak. Saint Michael’s Hill was lost in mist, but to her left some bedraggled sheep huddled amongst the twisted trees in the orchards. Their cottage was a few measures beyond the village, as if disowned, although the first dwellings she reached along the track looked hardly more prosperous. Tufts of straw and mud bristled in large patches where the plaster had dropped off the walls and lay where they fell, like cracked ice, the occupants too tired to sweep outside as well as in. Rags had been stuffed into warped shutters that were so ill-fitting they would barely keep out vermin, let alone draughts. Puddles had formed around the front doors in the grooves made by passing feet.

  The smell of smoke drifting through thatch grew stronger as she came into the village. Most people would be breakfasting or already at work, and the routines of the day seemed little different to normal. More women were standing around gossiping than usual, probably about William, and the men from the search party were straggling home to start the day’s toils. Even for a missing boy work could not be stopped. Without work, there was no food. The cordwainer, the rope makers, the bell founder, the flax dressers and linen weavers, the cooper, pewterer, glovers and even William’s father, the blacksmith, would continue as normal, while William, even as she walked to her own place of work, might be just a few fields away, overtaken by a sudden illness.

  As she neared the Barlows’ smithy and cottage she could hear wailing coming from within. A group of women stood outside the door, heads close together, talking fast. At the sight of Cess they fell silent. Then one slipped into the house and the wailing stopped abruptly. Cess felt her heart slow as she walked on.

  ‘Stop, Cecily Perryn!’ barked a shrill voice, hoarse with crying. Margaret Barlow, William’s mother, was marching towards Cess, her face alight with hatred.

  ‘Come here!’ she half shouted, half croaked, while the eyes of the women around her grew wide in anticipation of the scene to come. Previously Cess would have meekly obeyed, but something had changed in her. She stood her ground.

  ‘I said come here!’ screamed Margaret, ignoring the women trying to comfort her and help her back inside. ‘What have you done with my son? You have bewitched him! Where is he?’ Spittle gathered at the corners of her mouth and her hair was wild where she tore at it.

  ‘William is my only friend here, Goodwife Barlow,’ said Cess, her voice far calmer than her feelings. ‘I would give my life to save his.’

  Margaret was too angry to listen. ‘We will search you,’ she shouted, jabbing her finger towards Cess, ‘me and these goodwives here. We will strip you naked and find the Devil’s mark on you.’ Cess stumbled backwards, away from the gesticulating woman, but bumped into more goodwives, who had gathered around her. They pushed her forward and Cess pulled her cloak tighter. She looked desperately for a way out of the tightening corral.

  ‘Be quiet, woman! Your temper does not help us,’ shouted Peter Barlow, who had heard his wife’s threats as he rounded the corner of the cottage. He threw his spent torch by the door, looking worried and exhausted after his night of searching. ‘Cess has already shown us that she would save William’s life. Let us not curse a soul until we know what has happened.’ He towered over his wife, stonily indifferent to her ranting, until his presence forced her inside, then he waited by the door until the other women dispersed. Cess quietly thanked him as she walked on, receiving a curt nod in return.

  .

  ‘Come in!’ Cess felt so sick she stayed put. Her legs, trembling like willow branches, refused to carry her forwards. The manservant gave her a mighty shove, and Cess almost fell into the room. Sir Nathaniel Davies was engrossed in some papers, and she braved a quick look around his chamber. The room was square and tall, panelled in wood and lit by a large window. The steward was seated at a long wooden table behind neat stacks of rolled manuscripts in wooden racks, vellum-covered ledgers and several fine quills. A huge amber seal elaborately mounted in gold lay beside him with a bundle of red sealing-wax candles. Cess looked closely at the seal. It carried the Montacute crest, a large hawk with a dead rabbit in its claws. Cess felt like that rabbit, and her stomach churned so loudly she knew the steward must be able to hear it.

  ‘Crowther,’ said Sir Nathanial so suddenly Cess jumped.

  ‘Sir,’ replied the manservant.

  ‘Tell the apprentice to clear the room above the last stable block by tomorrow. We will need it to store the fireworks for the Queen’s visit, so make sure there are no horses below it. And send the chief groom to me.’

  The manservant bowed, leaving Cess alone with the steward. When she looked, his eyes were upon her. Tossing his quill upon the table, he indicated that she should come closer.

  ‘It was my intention to have you flogged and sent from the charity of this house.’ Cess noticed that the steward did not address her by name, as if she was as lowly as the cattle and the sheep. Her mouth was so dry that her tongue stuck to her teeth.

  ‘However, you are spared in this instance.’ He seemed to want to say more, but shook his head in annoyance and waved for her to leave. Cess could tell this had not been his decision. Someone more powerful had ordered him to treat her kindly. She was mystified as to why this should be, but overjoyed at her reprieve.

  ‘If you please, sir …’ she said in the humblest voice she could muster, although she knew that to speak at all was impudent once he had dismissed her. The steward ground his teeth at the malapert he saw before him. ‘I am most grateful for your mercy …’

  ‘As should you be. Now go.’

  But Cess remained where she was. ‘Sir, may I take the hens to market myself now that I am thirteen?’ The steward looked as if he was about to explode. A thick vein at his temple pulsed alarmingly. ‘I can get a better price for the birds than the kitchen boys, knowing them as I do,’ Cess said quickly. She also knew that many of the boys who had disappeared had been taken from Yeovil, where the market was held. If she could get there, she might discover something that would help find William.

  The steward narrowed his eyes and bounced the tips of his fingers together as if beating time to the stream of suspicions he had about the impudent wretch before him.

  ‘Come back with one penny less than you ought and you or your mother will furnish what we are owed. Do you understand?’

  Cess curtsied deeply and fled the room.

  .

  ‘Not the brown kirtle, Mother, I’ll look as shabby as that cousin of mine. The green one,’ ordered Amelia, brushing her hair furiously as her mother pulled clothes from the chest. It was not much past dawn, but ever since a boy had come from Montacute House with a message from Drax Mortain the two women had been running about as though their gowns were on fire.

  Amelia finally descended the stairs dressed in her new green bodice and kirtle with a separate yellow skirt panel tied into the front with matching yellow and green ribbons. She had borrowed her mother’s Spanish farthingale to make the skirt stick out, bell-like, at the bottom. Her new sleeves were tied on to the bodice with green cords and were slashed to show yellow material beneath. Her fair hair was loose around her shoulders. Her mother had wanted to frizz the front, but Amelia refused, judging that Drax Mortain would be impatient. The boy had insisted that she should reach the house as soon as possible after sunrise. She wore her best girdle and slung from it a fine silver pomander, an embroidered purse and a small steel mirror.

  ‘You are a beauty,’ her mother said proudly as she finished lacing the sleeves to Amelia’s bodice. ‘I knew he was bedazzled by you!’ she whispered in her daughter’s ear so the boy would not hear, with a girlish giggle.

  Amelia did not reply. She knew it would take more than beauty to win Drax Mortain. She strapped her wooden pattens over her best leather boots so they would remain above the mud and make her taller.

  ‘Who will chaperone you?’ called her mother as Amelia left the house, pulling up her hood against the drizzle. ‘Shall I?’

  ‘No, Mother, he has called for me only,’
said Amelia. Her mother did not know that she had provoked this meeting through her scheming and Amelia suspected she might not approve of bringing a relative into disrepute, even a shameful one like Cess. Only Amelia understood how her plan would ultimately lead to her parents being delighted with her.

  The Perryn compound, at the southern end of the village, was quite close to Montacute House. She hurried after the serving boy, who was already turning on to the servants’ drive.

  ‘This way?’ she called to him. ‘Are we not going to the front door?’

  He did not stop, but only turned his head to reply, ‘His Lordship told me to take you straight to the knot garden. This is the quickest way.’

  ‘In this damp?’ she questioned, but the boy just shrugged. Amelia supposed Drax Mortain to be one of those men who were happy only when out of doors, but she was disappointed not to see the great hall of Montacute House or the famous long gallery. She had only been in the grounds once, in the dark, for the fireworks. She comforted herself with the thought that the gardens would be a prettier backdrop for her charms.

  They passed the sties on her right with orchards beyond where the pigs could hunt for windfalls. The kitchen gardens were to the left, protected by high wattle fences and wicket gates. Beyond those, in the distance, she could see what looked like chicken coops, where she supposed her miserable cousin spent her days. Before her lay the formal lawns that led to the western front of the house. Amelia tried to think what she would say to Viscount Drax. It felt like a flock of blackbirds was inside her, beating their wings to get out. She was so nervous she could smell the strong tang of it at her armpits.

  Amelia followed the boy through an archway in the clipped yew hedges and saw Drax Mortain in the far corner of a knot garden, seemingly studying the intricate interweaving patterns made by the low box hedges. He looked up as she approached, making no move to meet her, his eyes taking in every detail of her form.