Knight's Acre

by Norah Lofts

  ‘Sir Godfrey ordered pargeting,’ the young man said, seeing that no word of appreciation was forthcoming

  Sir James thought, he would! The young fool!

  ‘You tell Hobson I cancelled that order. Find yourself something useful to do.’

  The pressure of the stirrup increased the pain in his gout-swollen foot; the delay in the thatching increased the risk that Sybilla and her horrible children would be at Moyidan for Christmas—they been at Beauclaire for a full six months—and he simply could not wait to tell Emma about this latest proof of Godfrey’s wicked extravagance: So, contrary to custom, he did not ride round the back of the house to see how the stables were going up or the well going down. He turned his horse and rode home.

  He was no sooner out of sight around the little flint church which his great-grandmother had built and endowed; a pious woman and fearful that a five-mile walk from Intake to Moyidan was too much for the young, the old or men who had laboured for six days, than William Weaver, more often known as William Pargeter, resumed work.

  He was, as his father-in-law knew, a sour-tempered, scornful young rebel, far less appreciative then he should’ve been of his profound good fortune in marrying Barbara Hobson, with her generous dowry which had enabled him to go into business on his own, and her chestful of household linen which many a lady might envy. All he cared for was his work—good work. Even his grudging father-in-law admitted that and found any job when he could. He was not really the right husband for Barbara, too much engrossed in his work—‘Chippings all over the place,’ too little grateful for good meals—‘He does not care whether his supper is hot or cold.’

  In Sir James’s presence he controlled himself, having no wish to offend or to do or say anything which would be detrimental to his father-in-law—the only outlet, so far, for his beautiful work.

  So he had restrained himself, spoken civilly, but at some cost. Find yourself something useful to do. I cancelled that order. Tremulous, despising himself for allowing somebody so wooden-headed as Sir James to upset him so, William Weaver, the pargeter, set about moving his ladder into the next space between the windows. But, upset by anger and the need to control it, forgot that before the ladder was shifted the bucket of plaster should be removed.

  The ladder moved, lurched and the bucket of plaster tilted.

  Master Hobson, coming back from Marshmere where he had dealt with the cheating reed supplier more harshly than anybody had ever dealt with him, was sorry but not altogether sorry… He had never much like his son-in-law while admitting his skill.

  And William Weaver’s death, though not in the old ritual way a sacrifice to ensure luck on the house, was opportune. Master Hobson had been planning to bring a stray cat or dog and damn what his son-in-law might have to say about superstition. The house had been given its sacrifice. It would stand firm and prosper.

  THREE

  The Lady Emma, though she had not had a convent upbringing, had mastered the art of reading and writing and had twice written to Sybilla reporting upon the progress of the building. ‘It will be done by Christmas.’ Neither letter contained an invitation for the family to spend the festive season at Moyidan and Sybilla could read, between what was said and what was unsaid, that she and the children were expected to remain at Beauclaire over Christmas and then move.

  Emma’s third letter arrived on the 20th of December; the house was ready and furnished with most essentials. Emma also had kept her word and listed the articles which Sybilla did not need to bring or buy.

  Sybilla had no intention of moving before Christmas. The festival was always observed in great style at Beauclaire and this year Henry, almost seven, and Richard, hard on six, would be able to participate—something to remember—and in the roisterings, with the Lord of Misrule in charge, rowdy behaviour would give no offence.

  It was with a certain innocent pride that she imparted to her sister-in-law the news that the house was ready. Lady Astallon’s reaction was astounding, the more so because she was a woman who never seemed to be aware of anything. She seemed to go through life like a beautiful somnambulist. She had been the beauty of the family, made a grand marriage, was adored by her husband—and by a number of other men who seem to be content to worship at the shrine of her icy loveliness with no more reward than an attentive attention and a remote smile now and then. Sybilla expected her to say, ‘Indeed. I am happy for you, my dear.’

  Lady Astallon, suddenly sharp and practical, said, ‘My dear, I think you should go at once. Snow always falls immediately after Christmas. I will see the wagon is ordered for you. And tell Dame Margery to give you anything in the way of stores that you may require. What about beds?’

  The Abbess herself could not have spoken more briskly or sensibly. It was the first time that the slightest resemblance between the two sisters had evidenced itself.

  Dame Margery who, from the still-room, actually ruled much of Beauclaire, had a soft spot for Sybilla who, before the children came—and later, when the boys were small and manageable—had often lent a hand with the making of pot-pourris and such delicate work as candying violets and rose petals.

  ‘You see to the packing of your own gear, my lady,’ she said. ‘I’ll see to it that you have stores for a month. I’ll make sure you have a good horse and wagon, too.’

  Fond as she was of Lady Tallboys, Dame Margery would be glad to see the back of those two terrible little boys who had once stolen into the still-room and drunk an incredible amount of raspberry cordial in the making. They had been first drunk and then sick; in the first state they had been destructive and in the second disgusting.

  The wagon and the horse selected by Dame Margery’s distant but powerful finger were both good and the wagon was loaded before sunset that day. Lady Astallon, without stirring, had been active, too. Emma at Moyidan had provided two beds; she added another and some good blankets.

  The hitch came over the question of who was to drive the wagon to Suffolk and bring it back.

  Nobody actually said he would not go, setting out on a journey that would take at least three days-and three back, which would mean missing all the merry preliminaries, the bringing in of the Yule Log, the cutting of holly, ivy and mistletoe, the election of some humble person, servant or clown, to be Lord of Misrule whose most fantastic orders must be obeyed. Nobody refused to go to Suffolk but everybody was ready with a reason why he should not be the one. Beauclaire, like all overgrown establishments, was riddled with favouritism, with corruption. In the end Lady Tallboys was to be driven to her new home by a boy, a near idiot who owed his place in the household to the fact that he was related to one of the under-cooks and could pluck a fowl.

  He could also be trusted to return without the horse and wagon. All the servants of Beauclaire wished to protect their master from any depredation but their own, so from some hidden place a rickety wagon was pulled and the load transferred.

  When, at first light, Sybilla emerged into the courtyard, the half-wit was hitching the wagon to a decrepit old horse. Walter, who had preceded her by a few minutes, carrying down her clothes chest and her lute, was raging. The boy was an idiot, there was some mistake; if the lady would just go back inside for a minute, he’d see it right.

  ‘There was no mistake, Walter. If it takes us a mile I shall be content.’

  A glance at her face enlightened him. He placed the chest and the lute in the wagon and helped Sybilla in. The well-stuffed feather mattress made a comfortable seat and the framework of the bed—one of the low, truckle kind—covered with a blanket, something to lean against. Walter tucked the other blankets around Sybilla, the baby and the little girl who, strictly speaking, was no longer a baby but who acted like one.

  ‘Up you get, Master Richard, I’ll just get my own box…’ He had it somewhere handy, for he was back in a minute with the old arrow box which contained all he owned. ‘And we’re not taking that numbskull. So much dead weight. If they want this contraption back they can send for it. Now, Master
Henry, you can sit alongside me. To start with,’ he added, knowing the boys well. ‘You’ll take turns.’

  He looked at the horse and thought—hit it and it’d fall over! So he clucked to it, it leaned against the collar, the wheels creaked and they were off.

  It was still very early in the morning, the sky in the east rose-flushed.

  The insult of this shameful equipage stung for a little in Sybilla’s heart but was soon assuaged. Perhaps not deliberate, simply a matter of muddle and servants’ cunning. The Abbess had taught her that in certain situations, a dignified acceptance was preferable to futile protest. Besides, she was going home. To the first place which, after more than twenty-three years of living and almost eight of married life, she would be able to call her own, her very own.

  Presently, Henry said, ‘I want to drive.’

  ‘Then want will be your master.’

  Henry grabbed the reins and Walter said, ‘Do that again and you’ll go in the back.’

  ‘I’m not going to ride with children!’

  Richard wriggled forward and from behind took his brother’s arm in a known, painful grip. ‘Don’t you call me children.’ Henry twisted round and retaliated with another hold, a bending down of the fourth finger.

  Walter said, ‘Whoa,’ and glad of a respite, the old horse stopped. ‘You want to fight, get down and do it in the road.’

  They tumbled out willingly enough. Walter clucked to the horse and said, ‘A bit of a run’ll do them no harm, my lady. I’ll keep them in sight.’

  He had more to think about than two naughty, squabbling boys. The horse must be guided, for the mud in the road had frozen into high sharp ridges and there were water-filled pot-holes, crusted with ice. He was also on the look-out for some place where the horse, perhaps the wagon, too, might be exchanged.

  He had travelled this road before on his way to Moyidan or Bywater but he had not realised how lonely this stretch of it was; only one inn so far, at a crossroads near a gibbet, and that as miserable a place as any peasant’s hovel. It had some tumbledown stables but no horses.

  Behind the wagon, their breath like smoke on the frosty air, the boys would stop to pummel each other or roll each other over; then they would run to overtake the slow, creaking wagon. Their faces were like poppies, Sybilla thought. She had no anxiety about them; they never inflicted real damage on each other. Just a fight could break out for the flimsiest reason—or no reason at all—so it always seemed to stop short of actual malice. And here there was nobody to exclaim or feign alarm, to say, ‘Those boys are at it again,’ or urge her to rule them more strictly.

  At last, Walter found what he thought to be a suitable halting place. There was water in a little stream by the road, a clump of beech trees.

  ‘I reckon it’s nearly dinnertime, my lady. Do us all good to stretch our legs a bit.’ Walter had an inborn tact and courtesy. When she came back from among the beach trees he had covered the sweating, steaming horse with a rug and was offering it water from his hat—an archers hat made of stiff felt and leather lined.

  The boys came charging up, truce declared, for exercise had worked off their surplus energy and they were hungry.

  Dame Marjorie—God bless her—had thought of everything. At the top of one hamper was a bowl of delicious brawn, pork pieces in firm jelly, a long loaf of bread; a stoppered jar of mild ale and two horn cups. As Sybilla prepared to cut the brawn, to the top of which white fat had risen, Walter said, ‘I could do with some of that grease. For the wheels.’ With his own knife he scooped up a handful and went around pushing the grease, half-melted from the heat of his hand, into the dry axles.

  Nobody had ever talked to Walter in abstract terms about resignation to unalterable circumstances but life had taught him that in order to survive a man must make do with what he had. And he had been thinking about the horse.

  Why at Beauclaire, where everything was in abundance and waste the rule, should there have been in the stables such a thing of hide and bones available at just the right moment? Just as somebody had provided to human needs, so somebody else had provided for the horse; a bag of oats. Holding his slab of bread and brawn in one hand, offering the horse oats from his hat with the other—December days were short and was no time to waste—Walter hit on the truth. This horse was so old that its teeth were worn down; it could not munch. In the midst of plenty, with nobody noticing, it had been slowly starving.

  He went round to the back of the wagon where the mood engendered by freedom, by eating in the open air, had taken over.

  ‘Can I have the rest of that loaf, my lady?’

  Crumbled and soaked, it was the nearest thing to the bran mash which kept failing or over-exhausted horses on their feet.

  By sundown they reached the village and an inn which Walter remembered as a stopping place for dinner on former, swifter journeys. He threw himself into the business of compensating for the shabby wagon by being as demanding as he could. Lady Tallboys must have a fire in her chamber and a roast fowl for her supper; did the Three Pigeons stock no wine? Then Lady Tallboys’ supper ale must be mulled; the shoes of the young masters must be dried and cleaned. Henry and Richard had amused themselves by jumping on ice covered puddles.

  In the morning he looked anxiously at the sky, less clear than on the previous day. Snow was his dread. He imagined that two-thirds of a loaf of bread and two bran mashes had done something for the horse but not to the extent of rendering it capable of contending with snow-clogged roads. In fact snow, though threatening for the next three days, did not begin to fall until midday of Christmas Eve when they were within a mile of their destination.

  It was through a veil of snow that Sybilla first saw Knight’s Acre.

  She knew its position, for once or twice in the early days of her marriage she had ridden with Godfrey to look at what he called his little estate, but she had no clear mental picture of what the house would look like. He had no talent for describing things and having said that it will be rather like the new part of Moyidan, though smaller of course, he had exhausted his powers; he had not mentioned the solar, the still-room or the stool-room because he wished them to come as a surprise to her; and he had not mentioned the pargeting because he was still uncertain what it meant.

  It was rather bigger than she had imagined and had more windows; two to one side of the door, one on the other and five above. It looked solid and strong against the background of leafless trees. It also looked entirely unwelcoming. This, she quickly realised, was because nobody was in and, just as this was the first time she had ever looked on the building and been able to think—Mine!, so it was the first time that she had ever approached a place, at this time of afternoon, in such weather, without seeing the glow of light from fire and candle.

  She was aware suddenly of a decline in spirit. It went further and deeper than the mere lack of welcome which the blank-eyed house presented; she thought—If Dame Marjorie did not think to put in candles, we shall have no lights; and abruptly that was typical of the light-hearted, unprepared way in which this whole thing had been undertaken. Insufficient forethought. She had said that it would be pleasant to have a house of their own, Godfrey had ordered it; and here it was.

  She had been too much surprised by Alys’s behaviour, too busy concealing her surprise and in making ready to go that she had not thought about candles.

  Nor had she thought about what owning a house involved—with the only certain income four pounds a year. Taxes!

  It would all have been different had there had been a glow from those windows. But Sir James and his lady had discussed the question of providing servants and decided against it. They did not expect Sybilla to travel before Twelfth Night; servants chosen by other people were never satisfactory; Intake, though not a manor, must have a certain feeling of obligation—and young people to spare; and Sybilla had Walter.

  ‘Here we are, my lady, and just in time. It’s thickening,’ Walter said. He helped her down, John sound asleep in her arms
and Margaret clutching at her skirt. The boys ran about painstakingly scooping up enough snow to make snowballs with which to pelt each other.

  Master Hobson might be a rogue but he was an honest rogue. What he built he built and the new house had a good solid door; oak, two inches thick and on the outside an iron ring which lifted the latch within and could also serve as knocker.

  The door had no lock but it could be bolted from within. Walter threw open the door and stood aside. Sybilla stepped in.

  Darker than out of doors and almost as cold. The smell of fresh plaster, the smell of lack of use sharply called to mind the convent parlour.

  Outside Walter shouted to the boys, ‘Gather wood and take it in.’ He edged himself through the doorway, her chest under one arm, the lute and the blankets clasped in the other.

  ‘Get the fire going it’ll be all different, my lady,’ he said and hurried out again. Next time he came in he was carrying the hampers that Dame Marjorie provided. The baby was awake now and Sybilla put him down on the floor where he began to crawl about vigorously.

  Dame Marjorie had visualised a new house lacking Christmas provender; she had visualised some makeshift dinners on the road but she had not foreseen an unlighted house. There were no candles.

  The boys ran in and out bringing wood of all kinds, the debris of building. The competition between them had now focused on who could find and carry most. Sybilla heard the snow-muffled clop of the old horse’s hooves as Walter led it around the house.

  Next time he entered he came in from the kitchen, his hands full of straw and thin wood shavings. He knelt on the hearth, worked flint and tender vigorously and abruptly the room sprang to life.