Jemmy, proud in his new authority, had given the orders, made the decisions, settled the disputes, ever since his father went away. He had even held the annual meeting of the tenants to decide on the farming policy for the year, though in fact he found out there was little deciding to do. Farmers, he discovered, were the most conservative people in the world, and what was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them, especially as most of them were holding land that their forefathers had held before them time out of mind. There might be fewer tenants, each holding more land, than in the olden days, but the names were all the same, and as he looked round them, gathered in the great hall that day, he thought that if a previous Master of Morland Place had been able to cross Time and be there, he would probably have recognized most of the faces too.
At all events, Jemmy discovered that there was no use in his trying to change anything. The old rotation of winter seeds, spring seeds, and fallow had served them well in the past, they said, and they saw no reason to change it now; and the allocation of the strips was just as traditional, so that it seemed to Jemmy like religious ceremony that had to be gone through purely as a matter of form. The only point where discussion entered into it was in deciding what to do with the odd pykes and corners, and over the commutation of road-labour.
The ‘lord of the manor’ was responsible for the roads in his own area, and his tenants were obliged to give a certain number of days’ road-labour every year for that purpose. But everyone hated to do it, and like many another landlord, Matt had been accustomed to allow them to commute their service for a cash sum. The trouble was that the sum thus raised was never sufficient to pay labourers to do the work needed, and so the roads got worse and worse. Matt himself did not care very much about the roads, and the most that was ever done to them under his authority was to have the mud shovelled from the sides where it accumulated back into the middle, and a load of broken stones, or cinders, or rubbish thrown over it and carelessly tamped down. Jemmy would have liked either to refuse the commutation, or to raise the fee, but it was far beyond his present authority to do either, and the tenants began to mutter and look dangerous when he even hesitated, and so he could only yield to pressure and set the commutation at the same rate as last year. But while he did it, he silently promised himself that things would be different when his day came and he was master in truth. For the time being, it was all useful experience, and gave him the chance to observe and get to know the men whose lives he would one day rule.
It was in the middle of the spring castration – a boring, bloody and dangerous business: last year one of the grooms had lost an eye to the kick of a particularly spirited long yearling – that Matt came home to Morland Place, having travelled up from London with the Countess. A servant brought the news to Jemmy at Twelvetrees that the master was on his way, which just gave him time to dash back to Morland Place and wash himself, put on a clean shirt and a decent coat, and assemble the senior servants in the great hall. After such a long absence, it was necessary to provide a formal welcome. Sabina waited in the hall with the younger children, Tom and Charles and her own little Allen, while Jemmy went out into the courtyard with Clement and Davey. It was a pleasant, breezy day, and the warm air was filled with smells, both delicious and pungent, and the sounds of reviving life: sparrows quarrelling in the gutters, pigeons courting, jackdaws chattering amongst the chimneys, the monotonously repeated crowing of the young cockerel; and far away, a background noise like the murmur of a stream one ceases to notice, the chorus of ewes with their new families.
At last the dogs began barking, and Matt rode in through the barbican. Davey stepped forward to take the reins, and Clement, the steward, positioned himself to help the master dismount and to take his cloak and gloves. As Matt came up the steps, Jemmy’s first thought was that his father should not be so tired after a journey which, as he had travelled with the Countess, must have been performed in easy stages. Then he realized with distant shock that it was not just tiredness. His father’s face was white with more than an indoor pallor; his cheekbones seemed too prominent; harsh lines had etched themselves from his nostrils to the corners of his mouth, which was shut in a grim line, grimmer than Jemmy remembered it. Most of all he walked with the stooped, difficult gait of an old man, or an invalid.
Matt stopped in front of his son and looked at him with eyes so deeply shadowed that they seemed expressionless.
‘Welcome home, father,’ Jemmy said, and went automatically down on one knee for his blessing. It was a long time in coming, a time during which Jemmy waited anxiously, thinking perhaps his father was angry with him and would refuse to bless him, fixing his eyes on the sword hilt and the hand that rested on it. A phthisic hand, blue-veined, clenched too tightly, so that the knuckles were white. Then at last the hand moved forward and up, and Jemmy felt it rest lightly on his hair.
‘God bless you, my son. I am glad to be home.’ Jemmy heard the weariness in the voice. He rose quickly and ushered him in, and while Matt was greeting Sabina and the children Jemmy, with a quick nod and gesture, dismissed the servants, and then sent the children away before they could become a bother to his father. Only Clement lingered, waiting for orders. Matt turned to him, and their eyes met in understanding, like old friends.
‘Is there wine in the steward’s room?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir, and a good fire,’ Clement said. He had seen to those things personally, knowing his master better than anyone.
‘That will suffice. I will need nothing more until dinner.’
Clement went away, and Matt, seeming to forget the presence of his wife and son, walked away towards the steward’s room. One of the hounds got up from the hearthside and ran towards him, and Jemmy jumped forward to catch the hound’s collar and hold it back, suddenly afraid that his father could not have borne the weight of an excited dog. He seemed so frail. He exchanged an anxious, puzzled glance with Sabina, who shrugged and gestured with her head that they should follow him.
Matt stood just inside the door of the steward’s room and looked around. When he heard the others behind him he said quietly, ‘You cannot think how often I have thought of this room while I have been in London. More than any other, it seems to me my room.’
Neither answered: it was too strange a thing for him to reveal anything about himself for either to feel comfortable with it. He turned and looked from one to the other, and addressed himself impartially to the air between them.
‘You will have heard the news, I suppose. Stanhope and Craggs are both dead. Lord Townshend and Lord Carteret are become Secretaries of State. Walpole is Chancellor of the Exchequer, and First Lord of the Treasury. England’s fate has a new arbiter.’
He seemed to expect some answer, and after a moment Sabina said, ‘He is an able man, I am sure, sir?’
‘An able man,’ Matt repeated, and Jemmy wondered if he meant it, or if it was said in irony. Sabina made a movement as if to touch him.
‘Are you well, sir?’ she asked. Matt looked sharply at Jemmy.
‘You should not suffer your mother to stand for so long, on any account. See how she pales. Help her to a chair at once. My dear, you must sit down and take a little wine.’
‘I am very well, sir, pray do not alarm yourself,’ Sabina said, though she suffered Jemmy to seat her in the fireside chair. ‘Indeed, sir, you are looking tired yourself.’
‘A little wine will do us both good,’ Matt said and it was an obvious effort at civility, when he would sooner have snapped at her to leave him alone. Jemmy longed to be away from them both, out in the fresh air, back with the horses, in a world where he did not feel so threatened. He handed his mother her cup, and when Matt began to pour wine for himself Jemmy began backing to the door, bowing himself out. But as his hand behind him took the doorknob, Matt straightened abruptly.
‘No, Jemmy, I wish you to stay,’ he said. He drank off half the wine, and put the glass down, and then absently removed his hat and his travelling wig and threw
them both down on a chair. His own hair was cropped close to the skull, and Jemmy noticed for the first time that the growing stubble no longer gleamed darkly against his skull, but was grey like frost. He looked about him vaguely. ‘Where the devil is my cap?’ he muttered.
‘I’ll go and find it, sir,’ Jemmy said eagerly, beginning to open the door.
‘Stay here,’ Matt said sharply, and Jemmy let his hand fall reluctantly from the doorknob, and took a step forward into the room, his heart sinking with apprehension at what he might be about to hear.
‘I have something to say which concerns you,’ Matt went on. ‘In fact, my absence in London this winter has largely been on your account, and it is only right, now that my negotiations are concluded, that you should know what I have determined upon for you.’
Jemmy had been a frequent visitor at Shawes these last months, and had often come informally as one on terms of intimacy might do. In the Countess’s absence, the household moved more easily. But his arrival that day, unannounced, uninvited, in great haste and in a state of obvious agitation, caused the servants to stare and whisper amongst themselves. He asked for the young mistress, and was told she was upstairs, in the Countess’s room. It approached the hour of dinner, he was told, and as the Countess had just arrived back from a long journey and would be disinclined for company, perhaps Master Morland might consider postponing his audience until a more favourable and convenient season. But no, Jemmy insisted, he must see the young mistress. It was important. The servant sighed his reluctance to disturb the Countess with such a message, and went away up the stairs with reproachful slowness.
Jemmy paced up and down the hall until she came, calm and beautiful as ever, drifting down the stairs as though her feet did not touch them, a smile of welcome and enquiry on her lips that held no hint of reproach. Jemmy went impulsively towards her.
‘Aliena!’
‘Why, Jemmy, what is it? No one is ill, I hope?’
‘No, no, but I must talk to you. There is a plot—’
She cut him off with a look and a shake of her head, there being servants within earshot.
In a quieter voice he said again, ‘I must talk to you. Please. It is important.’
‘Very well. We will go to the gallery, and walk up and down there. I have been sitting these two hours with my mother, and need the refreshment.’
It was all Jemmy could do to keep silence until they reached the gallery, and as soon as they were inside and the door was shut he whirled on her and cried out, ‘Cousin, my father is come! He is returned from London, and he has told me – there is a plot afoot, a monstrous plot, to marry me.’
Aliena nodded gravely. ‘Yes, my dear, I know. I have heard about it.’ She took his hand and drew it through her arm, and made him walk with her along the gallery, hoping that the movement would calm him. He came with her like a man beyond noticing what his feet were doing. ‘I have been talking about it with my mother. She has been helping with the negotiations. But why should you call it a monstrous plot? It seems a very good match to me. Lord Newcastle’s sister—’
‘Lord Newcastle is a Whig,’ Jemmy cried, staring in astonishment that she should ask such a question. ‘A Whig, a courtier. Friend of Walpole, a Hanoverian to the heart. Anti-Jacobite, anti-Catholic – do you forget, cousin, that I fought for the King in the ’15 rising? Or at least,’ he added with an abrupt descent from rhetoric to honesty that both touched and amused Aliena, ‘Or at least, I tried to.’
‘I should have thought that must be Lord Newcastle’s objection to you, not vice versa,’ Aliena said. ‘But my mother says he and your father have come to a very good understanding. There is to be an election next year, and your father is worth twenty votes certain on the County, besides his influence with landowners and clothiers here about. In return, the Duke has a great deal of patronage to bestow which will be extremely useful to your father. Consider, he has six sons to settle.’
‘But—’ Jemmy waved his hands, frustrated by her calmness, and by finding her on the wrong side. ‘My servant says my father’s man saw her, and said she is a whey-faced, cross, sickly thing, small and plain, and never said a word the whole time she was in the room.’
‘She has a large dowry, and excellent connections,’ Aliena countered. ‘Though her brother is only a new-made duke, her father was a gentleman and a baronet, and through marriage they are connected with all the best families in the country. You cannot be such a simpleton as to object to a wife because she is small and plain. And as to being cross, my mother says she has a good enough opinion of the girl, and that she is shy and modest, as becomes a young girl in company.’
‘Ah yes, your mother,’ Jemmy said bitterly. Aliena looked grave.
‘My dear, your father is quite decided, and whatever his reasons on his own behalf, I must tell you that my mother is anxious for the connection for reasons of her own, and there is no possibility that with such persuasion he will change his mind. So you must make the best of it.’ They reached the end of the gallery and turned along the short side, and Aliena smiled at him and tried to lighten his gloom. ‘Come Jemmy, accept it with a good heart. A man in your position does not marry for his own whim, but for the good of his family. The contract is signed, but it will not come about for a while yet. Lady Mary is only fourteen, and the match will not take place until she is sixteen. You will have two years more to enjoy yourself.’
Jemmy stopped abruptly as though goaded beyond endurance, and taking Aliena’s hands turned her to face him.
‘Aliena, you know my real objection to this match. I cannot marry this girl. How could I? It is you that I love – since the first moment that I saw you. It is you, and only you, that I wish to marry.’
‘Jemmy!’ Aliena tried to stop him, but he pressed her hands to his chest and went on, his face flushed and his eyes gleaming.
‘Dear Aliena, I know of your love for the King, and I have grieved for you that he did not, or could not, return it as you wished. But you put all that behind you when you came home here. You know that he can never be yours, and you are too sensible to grieve for ever, to waste your life on a hopeless dream.’
‘You forget that I have borne a child,’ Aliena said.
‘Forget? Far from it! I love her dearly, as dearly as I could my own child. And she loves me, and respects me – this you know. You have often said that I can do more with her than anyone else. What could be more suitable than that the man who has a father’s feelings towards her should become her father? Only think how happy we could be, the three of us. Only think—’
‘Jemmy, stop it. You must stop. It is not to be spoken of. What you ask is impossible. And – unsuitable.’
Jemmy’s face reddened. ‘Unsuitable? Why? Because my father is only a gentleman? Because my mother – my mother—’ He could not finish it. Aliena pressed his hand, sorry to have grieved him.
‘No, my dear, not that. Of course not that. But I have been mistress to another man, and have borne his child. That alone should – oh Jemmy, I am thirteen years older than you!’
Jemmy’s face cleared. ‘Is that all? Oh Aliena, how could you think that the difference in our ages matters, when we love each other? You know that I love you, with all my heart and soul. How could any man not love you, who had once known you? And you – you love me too, don’t you?’
She shook her head, unable to speak. Jemmy drew her towards him.
‘You do not?’ he said gently, kissing her forehead. ‘Say it then.’ He held her closer and kissed her lips. ‘Say it, swear it.’ He had meant only to touch her lips lightly, but at the first touch such wonder and love rose up in him that he kissed her again and again, punctuating his words. ‘Say it now – and now—’
Aliena’s hands crept up, from his chest to his neck, from his neck to his face, and for a moment she abandoned herself to the feelings that swept through her. She felt the warmth of his hands and the strength of his arms, his closeness, the relief of doing, just this once, what she had lon
ged for so many months to do. But in the end she broke away with a despairing cry and ran to the window, blindly, like a butterfly trying to escape. In the silence she could hear Jemmy’s quick, light breaths and her own rapid heartbeat. She rested her hot forehead against the cold window pane, gathering her strength and resolve to do what she had to do, to turn calmly and tell him what must break his heart – and hers.
When she turned, the expression of tenderness and hope on his dear face almost undid her, but she steeled herself, keeping him away with a little shake of the head, for if he touched her again she did not know how she would endure it.
‘Listen to me, my dear – no, be still, and listen. You and I cannot marry, however much we love each other. Do you remember when I first came home, you said that you would call me cousin, to save having to work out exactly what we were to each other?’
Jemmy nodded. ‘Yes, I know, but—’ he began, puzzled, but eager, and she held up her hand to stop him.
‘Please, Jemmy, let me speak. It is not easy for me to tell you this, but I must do so, and I must bind you to secrecy. You must never divulge it, for reasons which will become obvious to you. You call me cousin, but that is not the truth. You and I are much closer kin than you think. I am your father’s sister.’
There was a silence, and Aliena watched with pity the struggle in Jemmy’s face as he tried to assimilate what she had told him.
‘My …? I don’t understand. You are—’
‘Your father’s father, James Martin Morland, was also my father,’ Aliena said sadly. Jemmy stared, aghast.
‘You mean great grandmother was – she – with her own stepson?’ He stopped abruptly, the horror of it sweeping over him. In the end, Aliena felt she had to break the silence.
‘So you see, you and I could never marry. I beg you, Jemmy, to keep this a secret, for my child’s sake, if not for mine and my mother’s. Oh Jemmy, I’m so sorry.’
Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Page 3
