The Town House

by Norah Lofts

  ‘Why so shrewd about hitting over the head?’

  ‘Once, long ago, when I was young, I had some lessons. And to be hit on the head made me more stupid.’

  ‘What would you pay me?’

  ‘Twice your present wage. And you would live in the house, in comfort. I planned to build two rooms above the solar.’ He remembered the way in which Peter had asked about the figuring and added, solemnly, ‘Meanwhile you would have time to renew your learning and get the dirt out of your hands. Also you should have some garment more suited to your new position.’

  Peter Priest gave him a look of unadulterated hatred and said,

  ‘That could be seen to.’

  From that day onwards Peter Priest did no manual work at all; he would not even help with the building of the new rooms above the solar or the stairway that led up to them. He told Martin, arrogantly, that he would need books, and to buy books cost money. Martin asked how much he required and Peter named a sum which made Martin gasp.

  ‘By that reckoning a book costs as much as a pack pony.’

  ‘Why not? Ponies breed their young. A new book may mean a year’s hard work for a scribe.’

  ‘The priest who once taught me carried his learning in his head,’ Martin protested, less from meanness than from his dislike of Peter Priest’s tone.

  ‘And he taught you so well that when it comes to passing on what you learned you hire another man to do it for you.’

  ‘Buy what you need,’ Martin said.

  On the day when lessons were to start he was careful to be absent; he would be away four days, he said. Nancy had her instructions and at the given time called Richard in from the yard, smoothed his hair with her hand, gave him a handful of currants and told him to go up the new stairs to Peter Priest’s room.

  ‘What for?’

  ‘You’ll see when you get there, my poor lamb.’

  Munching the currants and licking his fingers Richard marched up the stairs. The door of Peter’s room stood open and just by the window was a table spread with unfamiliar objects. Peter had sent for him to show him something, just as the men about the yard would call and say, ‘Master Richard, look, I’ve found a young owl’, or ‘Master Richard, Peg’s dropped her foal, like to see it?’

  Richard walked over to the table without noticing that behind him Peter closed the door and shot the top bolt.

  ‘What’s this?’ he demanded.

  ‘Don’t touch anything. Come here and wash your hands. And in future always come to me with clean hands,’

  Richard looked at the bowl of water.

  ‘Nancy washed me this morning.’

  ‘Nancy washed me this morning,’ repeated Peter in a cruel mockery of the childish treble voice. ‘A great boy almost seven years old. Wash your hands and dry them thoroughly.’

  ‘I shan’t. I didn’t come here to wash!’ He swung round and made for the door.

  ‘You come here to take lessons. And the very first lesson is unquestioning obedience.’

  ‘Open this door,’ yelled Richard, having found the door bolted and the bolt just out of reach. ‘Peter’ do you hear me? Open this door!’

  Peter Priest walked up behind him, encircled him with his left arm, hoisted him from his feet and brought his right hand down on the little backside thus exposed, once, twice, thrice, with a will.

  ‘That’, he said calmly, ‘is for saying “shan’t” to me.’

  Richard roared from pain and insult.

  ‘Stop that. Stop it at once,’ said Peter Priest and shook him until from sheer breathlessness, he hushed the noise.

  ‘Now come here and sit down.’ He pushed the boy towards the table and down into a chair. Richard jumped up at once.

  ‘I don’t want to. I’m going to Nancy. She’s making me some gingerbread men and I …’

  ‘You will have no gingerbread men, nor any other goody until you know your letters, so you’d better listen carefully.’

  When he could repeat all the letters of the alphabet without prompting and recognize ten of them without hesitation, Peter Priest said,

  ‘That will do for today,’ and opened the door and let him go.

  For today! There would never be another day like this! Never again would he enter old Peter Priest’s horrible room.

  Next morning, well before lesson time, he went towards the stables, intending to take his pony and be miles away before Nancy could even wonder where he was.

  Peter was waiting for him in the dim stable.

  ‘I anticipated some such trick,’ he said, and took Richard, not by the hand, or the arm, but by the ear. It really hurt, and pulling away, jumping about and trying to kick at Peter’s shins only made it hurt worse.

  Upstairs in the hated room, Peter Priest said,

  ‘I am now going to beat you for putting me to so much bother. You will have six stripes today. Tomorrow, if you repeat this idiotic performance, it will be eight and the next day ten.’

  He laid on the stripes dispassionately, enough to hurt, not hard enough to cause injury, and then, putting aside the little cane, asked in a conversational tone,

  ‘I wonder how much you remember of yesterday’s lesson. Let us see.’

  Richard snuffling, said,

  ‘You just wait till my father comes home!’

  ‘We will wait. Meanwhile let us see how much you remember.’

  When Martin rode into the yard Richard was waiting for him, and he was hardly out of the saddle before the tale of woe began. The child had already witnessed the collapse of one small world. Mary and Nancy, though they petted him and spoke pityingly, had put up no real defence against Peter, and Peter had managed, at every turn to out-wit him. Even when he had rushed straight out the house before breakfast and hidden himself at the very back of the woolshed, Peter had found him – and that was ten strokes with the cane. The one thing that had sustained him was the certainty that when his father came home and heard of all this mistreatment, he would take full vengeance.

  His father actually asked only one question,

  ‘Were you beaten over the head?’

  ‘Why no. He beat me here,’ said Richard, rubbing his sore seat.

  ‘Then’, said Martin, ‘he was only doing what I told him.’

  Quite slowly – because this could not be taken in all at once – the rest of the world began to quiver and crumble.

  ‘You mean you told old Peter Priest to beat me, and lock me in and not let me have any gingerbread?’

  Martin looked at the angry, handsome little face. Going on for seven years old; and if Stephen had lived to that age no doubt he’d have been picking wool alongside Kate and never have known what gingerbread tasted of.

  Stiffened by that thought, he said,

  ‘Yes. He only did those things because you were naughty and disobedient, and would not learn.’

  So, there lay the world in ruin.

  Slowly Richard said,

  ‘But I did learn. I know my alphabet, backwards and forwards and when Peter draws the letters I can name them. Tomorrow I am going to draw them, too.’

  Martin’s mind had done its familiar volte face, remember Stephen, feel guilty, pet Richard.

  ‘There’s my good boy, ’he said heartily. ‘And now come and see what I’ve brought you.’

  Never again, as long as he was in the schoolroom, did Richard give Peter Priest cause for anything but the mildest verbal rebuke. This fact Peter attributed – not without reason – to his own first firm handling. Richard became a good scholar, a little too studious indeed for Martin’s liking.

  Youthful resilience survived the shock of those four horrible days, but deep down the damage remained. The spoilt, arrogant little boy grew into a youth more than averagely handsome, talented, charming, a little too eager to please, more than a little lacking in self-confidence. The lack was not obvious and did not show itself in any physical way of slouch or stutter. Transmitting Martin’s orders his voice had the almost genuine ring of authority. He
knew the business thoroughly and before he was twenty had made several visits to the wool-buying centres of the Low Countries. Yet even Martin could never deceive himself into thinking that the boy’s heart was in the business. It was difficult to say where it did lie, with his books and his lute, perhaps.

  The solar was furnished and in use now, Richard spent his evenings there and Martin tried to, but somehow he could never settle there for long, he’d get up and make some excuse for going into the yard or into the office, bor even to bed. And as he retreated he would sometimes think that Richard’s lute-playing in the big room sounded lonely. What the boy needed, of course, was a wife.

  Not – and this thought always followed hard on the other – not a Baildon girl, Martin hoped; there were, after all, plenty of other places to choose from; and he would devise a trip for Richard, to Colchester, to Kelvedon, overseas again. And when the boy came home Martin’s ‘Well, how did things go?’ held an interest not entirely concerned with the business that had been the reason for the journey. Richard never had anything except business to report upon.

  Presently he was twenty-four, and sometime during the following spring Martin spoke the words outright.

  ‘Don’t you think it’s time you thought about getting married?’

  Then, though neither of them saw it, the flaw in his confidence showed itself. Richard smiled his charming, rather secret smile and said,

  ‘I think I shall never marry. You see, I know the girl I want, and her parents would never allow her to marry me.’

  Everything tough and aggressive in the elder man rose to that challenge.

  ‘We’ll see about that,’ he said. ‘Who is she?’

  PART THREE

  Anne Blanchefleur’s Tale

  I

  On the morning when the whole course of my life changed, Mother and I were in our hall, busily contriving to make a new dress for me out of one of her old ones. In its day it had been a fine garment, but its day was long past. There were many threadbare places and the colours had faded. Our task was made the more difficult by the fact that, at sixteen, I already topped Mother by half a head.

  ‘But there is a hem,’ Mother said, with her eternal optimism. ‘We’ll let it down and hang it in the sun and it’ll fade all over alike, I have no doubt.’

  The hem came down, showing the stuff in its original colours, green and crimson, in a sprawling, all-over pattern. Elsewhere the green had rusted, the crimson had faded until they were almost alike.

  Mother saw me look glumly at it and said,

  ‘So long as you are tidy the shabbier you are the better. Your Aunt Astallon will take pity on you, I trust, and buy you a new gown.’

  Only by biting my lip hard could I hold back the sharp retort, words no girl should speak to her mother, especially one so kind and indulgent as mine. My Aunt Astallon was as likely to give me a new gown as she was to jump in the river, or walk out barefoot in the snow. But my mother had lived in hope – and hope alone – for so long that she could no longer distinguish between the likely and the unlikely. My father, though less resolutely cheerful, was well-nigh as feckless and the wonder was, not that we should have fallen so low, as that we should, somehow, have managed as well as we did.

  While I bit my lip and scowled we heard a horseman ride into the yard. Minsham Old Hall, as our place was called, was very old, built for defence, not for living in, and the only windows were set high in the walls and narrow. Mother had to hop on a stool to look out.

  ‘I declare’, she said, ‘it’s Martin Reed again! What can he be wanting now?’

  ‘The same as last time – his money,’ I said; and I intended no joke. Mother laughed however.

  ‘Poor silly man,’ she said; and hopped down and picked up the dress and gave it a shake.

  Master Reed was the man who owned the sheep run near us. Once all the acres had gone with the Old Hall, but they had been sold away, years before we went to live in the house. Our few acres and Master Reed’s sheep run were quite separate and to reach his part and his shepherd’s hut he had no need to come into our yard. For a long time after we moved into the house he was just a name to us, and then one day he had come, walking quickly for all that he limped, and asked Mother if she would, as a favour, heat a tar bucket for him. The shepherd he had then was ill or idle or runaway – I never bothered to hear the whole of it, and he’d come out to find several of his sheep fly-blown. He’d found the tar-bucket in the fence which was nearer our house than to the shepherd’s hut and had run to ask Mother to lend him her fire for ten minutes.

  Mother, of course, had been obliging, and while the tar warmed and he stirred it, she had stood by him talking about sheep. Mother could talk about almost everything, she’d had such a crowded life, moving about from place to place and always taking interest. She’d learned quite a lot about sheep when she was staying with her Uncle Bowdegrave at Abhurst in Kent, where the sheep were quite different from those in Suffolk, she said.

  Stirring away at his tar Master Reed shot her a look and said,

  ‘That’s right, ma’am; shorter legs and blunter heads.’

  Then, his tar melted, he picked up his bucket and hurried away with the briefest of thanks.

  But about three days later, when I was alone in the house, my father and mother having been asked to dine with the Fennels at Ockley, Master Reed came to our door and handed in a bundle of cloth, very fine, blue in colour. He said, and I remembered the exact words to tell Mother,

  ‘I don’t like to be in debt. I borrowed your fire the other day. I hope this will be accepted as payment.’

  There was someone with him, sitting astride one horse and holding the other. I gave him no heed. To Master Reed I said,

  ‘But I am sure my mother would not wish for payment for so small a thing.’

  But he pushed the blue cloth towards me and I remembered that my brother Godfrey – at that moment milking the cow – was being fitted out to go to our cousin Fortescue. So I made my curtsey and said,

  ‘I thank you kindly, and so will my mother, though there was no need.’ But, handling the good cloth I thought it would make a fine cloak for Godfrey. I had already started my round of visits to great houses and rich relatives and knew how important clothes could be.

  The blue cloth made Godfrey a cloak, but three years later when he must cease to be a page and become a squire, he needed another and more expensive outfit. And it was then that it occurred to my parents to ask Master Reed for a loan.

  In fairness to my father I must say that when he borrowed he did have expectations. (Expectations have been our downfall.) Father’s Uncle Dawnay was, at that moment, on his death-bed, and so far as we knew Father was his only kin. However, Uncle Dawnay, who had been a jovial sinner all his life, became frightened on his death-bed and willed everything he had to a Chantry, where Masses are being said for his soul to this day. (Mother, when she heard the sad news, said, ‘But I’d have prayed for him, night and day without ceasing if he’d left the money to us!’Then she’d laughed and added, ‘Of course I shouldn’t, I should have been too busy spending it!’)

  Our debt to Master Reed was never paid, and on the May morning when he rode into our yard it was over three years old.

  Our windows were not glazed – and never would be – so presently we could hear my father’s hearty booming voice greeting the woolmaster, and Master Reed’s gruff tones. We could hear the two voices, but not the words. Mother listened, for a moment, her head on one side, then she said happily,

  ‘They don’t sound cross. We’d better try this on. An empty dress hangs longer than a full one.’

  I put on the dress and she walked all round me, looking at it critically.

  ‘Oh dear, you need every inch of the hem down. We shall have to face up the inside. What with, I wonder? Something the same weight or it won’t hang right.’ Then, to cheer herself, ‘We could dag the sleeves, Anne. Dagging is very fashionable, and it would cut away some of that worn edge.’

>   You would have thought that the re-making of that old gown was the only thing in the world that mattered. With the woolman in the yard, demanding his just due.

  Presently we heard the horse trot away and after a minute Father came in. He had his favourite hawk, Jess, on his wrist and he stroked her as he went towards her perch, transferred her on to it and fastened the chain. Then he pulled off his glove and stood slapping it against his leg and looking at me as though he had never seen me before. I imagined it was the effect of the dress and hoped that perhaps it was not as ill-becoming as I had feared. Then he said,

  ‘I want a word with your mother.’ I gathered up the long dress and went to the stairs. They ran up alongside the wall and were made of stone and had no hand rail. At the top was a gallery, with the floor so rotted that you had to mind where you trod, and behind the gallery one big room had been partitioned into three. I couldn’t hurry, and before I reached the room which I shared with my sister Isabel I heard Father say,

  ‘That fellow Reed has just made me an amazing proposition.’ I was curious to know what it was, so I just stepped out of sight, leaving the door wide, and listened. ‘…wants Anne for his son, Richard. He’s prepared to make a substantial settlement and cancel the debt.’

  Mother gave a sort of yelp; there is no other word for it. She sounded just like a dog that has had its paw trodden on.

  ‘The saucy upstart! I trust you sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

  ‘Why no. I said I’d think it over. Talk it over with you.’ She must have scowled, for he asked, in a surprised way, ‘You mislike the idea?’

  ‘Mislike? Mislike? He must be mad to have thought of it. And you must be mad to have carried it to me. We’ve come low, Mary pity us! But not so low as that.’ Her words began to come out jerkily and I knew she was throwing her arms about as she did when excited. ‘Look where you will, through the length and breadth of the land and you won’t find a girl with better blood in her veins. On both sides. Blanchefleur, Bowdegrave, Astallon, Dawnay, Fortescue. And, don’t forget my grandmother of Ramsey, Royal Saxon. And you’d put my daughter to bed with the woolmaster’s son. You should be ashamed.’