by Norah Lofts
‘I didn’t bed them. I only said I’d think it over.’
‘These jumped-up merchants with their new money, they think they can buy anything. If you wish to please me, Blanchefleur, get on your horse and ride after him and tell him my daughter is not for sale.’
‘I should never catch him,’ Father said, truthfully. ‘Besides, perhaps Anne –’
‘You are crazed,’ Mother said. ‘Since when have wenches ordered their affairs or been asked for an opinion? Up and after him. Tell him to buy his great silly son a wife where he buys his fleeces. My daughter is not for sale.’
She had fallen in love with that phrase.
‘The man spoke modestly and not in huckstering fashion. He said he knew the difference in their estates. I don’t think he was in full favour … but the boy saw Anne once and fell in love.’
‘Fell in love,’ Mother repeated with great scorn. ‘The wool merchants now must fall in love – aping their betters. What next? They’ll be riding in tourneys, I suppose.’
‘Wool merchants have been knighted –’
‘That’s enough,’ Mother said. ‘Will you ride after him and give him his answer or must I?’
‘You never even heard his offer,’ Father said. But the words were a requiem for something dead and done with, not a renewal of live argument. In a minute he would be on his old horse, and though it might be supper time before he reached Baildon, when he got there he would give the answer that Mother sent.
I rushed out on to the gallery and cried, ‘Wait.’
They stared up at me. I went half-way down the stairs and stopped. Standing high made me feel bolder.
‘He sets some value on me, which is more than anyone else does,’ I said.
‘I should box your ears,’ Mother said. ‘Listening in corners! And what do you know about values? You have never had a chance. You’re only just sixteen –’
‘And I’ve been on offer for years. Who is her father? Good! Who was her mother? Good again! What is her dower? How many times have I been passed over for some snippet with teeth like a rabbit’s and two good manors? I’m sick of it. And another aunt saying I spoke when I should have been silent, or looked up when I should have looked down. Blaming me for what I can’t help.’
Every one of the shames and humiliations I had suffered in four years came back, as burning and hurtful as in the moment when they happened. Rage made me feel as though I were drunken.
‘It is the same with Godfrey,’ I declared. ‘Why wasn’t he knighted when he’d served his three years? For one reason only. A knight needs equipment and you couldn’t, and Uncle Fortescue wouldn’t, lay out the cost. He’ll spend his life polishing other men’s mail and waiting, just as you would have me wait for something that never comes. And I will wait no more, I will marry the woolman’s son.’
‘I will box your ears. You are out of your mind. That a daughter of mine –’
‘Yes,’ I said. I could feel the sneer curl my mouth as I thrust out one foot and held it clear of the stair. ‘Saxon royal blood in my veins! And what on my feet?’
It was a little unjust. For my last visit – to my Aunt Bowdegrave – I had been provided with shoes, but I had outgrown them and passed them on to Isabel. For my forthcoming visit to Aunt Astallon I have no doubt Mother would have procured me some shoes, somehow, from somewhere, but at the moment. I had a peasant’s footwear, a roughly shaped wooden sole with cloth nailed around it and tied in a bundle round the ankle.
‘They are only makeshift,’ Mother said.
‘Our whole lives are makeshift, and pretence, and believing what isn’t true.’
As soon as I said that I was smitten with compunction. With their faces tilted up towards me and wearing such shocked helpless expressions my parents looked like two children – who had been playing happily that they kept house, and a grownup had come along and kicked over their make-believe furniture and said that the game was silly and unreal.
Father shifted his eyes and looked at Mother, waiting for her to strike, as it were, the next note in the tune. Every time I came back home – my eye made sharp by absence – I noticed that her ascendancy had increased; his movement, speech and impulses were all slowing down, she was just as quick and positive and vehement as ever. This morning though, for once, she was at a loss, and looked as though she might cry. Upset by that Father lashed himself into a rage and shouted at me.
‘You’re over-ripe, my girl; that’s what ails you. You’re ready for a roll in the hay with the pig-man.’ Whether he intended to or not he had forestalled Mother’s tears. She rounded on him.
‘Pig-man indeed. What a thing to say to your own daughter. Didn’t her Aunt Bowdegrave complain of her prudery? And quite right too. A maid should be modest.’
I said, ‘I shall marry the woolman’s son, who has made me an honest offer, or I shall go to the one aunt I have not yet visited – my aunt at Ramsey, and be a nun.’
I then turned on the stair and made to go up, but I had forgotten the long gown, caught my foot in it and fell to my knees.
From the hall below Mother wailed.
‘Saints have mercy. Nothing is more unlucky than to fall upstairs.’
Where, I wonder, did that superstition have its origin? I can see that to spill salt, or to break a looking glass is in itself a misfortune, since both are valuable, and the glass at least hard to replace. But to fall upstairs ….
Anyway, I had more important matters to think about. I had held over my parents the only threat that a girl could hold; from any other decision they could beat me off, by argument or force if needs be, but once a girl had declared her intention of taking the veil they would be hardy parents indeed who tried to stop her. My great fear, when I came to think things over, was that my parents might take me at my word, steadfastly refuse to let me get married and so force me into the Convent. Little as I liked my present way of life I should like that of a religious less, especially at Ramsey, where my aunt, the Abbess, was very strict in keeping to the rules of the order. I had seen her once, at a wedding, and even on such an occasion when most nuns disregarded all the rules, she held to her habit, wore no jewels, ate sparingly. To be a nun at Ramsey was to be a nun indeed.
I began to wish I have never spoken those rash words; yet, when, some hour later Mother climbed the stairs and came and sat on my bed and asked did I really mean what I had said, I replied with a firmness that astonished myself.
‘Yes. The woolman’s son is the only one who has ever made me a serious offer of marriage; I suspect he is the only one who ever will. Unless I take it, I shall go to Ramsey.’
‘In which case,’ she said, pulling a sorry face, ‘we should see you seldom or never. Baildon is within reach, even with such poor horses as we can afford.’
I said nothing.
‘Anne, to please me, try once more. Go to your Aunt Astallon – it will be different this time; her own girls are married and gone. She could give you more mind. And you’re prettier, you grow prettier every day. You have everything, except a dower. You’ll make a good match yet.’
I stayed silent. And at last she said,
‘Oh, if only things had been different….’
Upon that I almost broke down, thinking what her life had been. My father was the youngest son of a youngest son of a great family; he had, therefore, connexions, ambitions and military obligations without anything to support or forward them. His one hope was to have married an heiress, instead he married my mother who was, if anything, even more highly connected, but one of several daughters and but modestly dowered. For years, however, the insecurity of his position had not been evident; he was a good man in the lists in time of peace, a good soldier in time of war. Trailing his family after him, as a kite drags its tail, he had moved from castle to castle, from great manor to great manor, riding in tourneys, supporting this lord and that in their petty squabbles, making war on the Scots, and on the Welsh, cheerful good company always, Sir Godfrey Blanchefleur, most admirable kn
ight errant. Mother had borne seven children and four had died before she had a bed to call her own. We had all been born in different places, grand, high-sounding places, Beauclaire, Abhurst, Rivington, even Windsor, but Godfrey was thirteen, I was nine and Isabel was three before we had a settled home and that came about by accident.
Father was unhorsed in a tournament at Winchester, and fell on his head, denting his helmet so that it could not be removed in the usual way. They say that he was unhurt, rose unaided and walked from the tourney ground to a forge where an unhandy smith, in hammering off the helm, damaged his skull. He lay like the dead for four days and when he finally rose from his bed his days as a fighting man were done. His left arm and leg, though whole and uninjured, had lost power, were weak and heavy; and he was slow, even in his speech.
He was no whit less cheerful, quite confident that somebody would arrange something for him. And somebody did. One of my mother’s Bowdegrave cousins owned Mincham Old Hall and the few poor acres that had been left when the rest were sold for a sheep run. The house had stood empty for some time and was so old-fashioned and comfortless that nobody wanted it.
The sad thing was that there was just enough land to have supported us, had it been properly handled; and my brother Godfrey, most sternly sensible always, would have tried. The life we had led, flitting from place to place, had aged him; he belonged nowhere and had found his own company, often with working people who, at thirteen, are men. He would have looked after cows and pigs and tilled the few acres. But no! He must follow the pattern, go to be a page, then a squire and finally a knight. I have no doubt that his life had been as full of humiliation as mine.
I had started my round at the age of twelve, going from cousin to aunt, from aunt to cousin-by-marriage, to learn manners, to learn dancing, to learn to play the lute, to learn to embroider. One day one of my powerful rich relatives was supposed to take a rich young man by the ear and say, ‘Marry this girl.’ But there was no man so rich that he did not look for a bride with a dowry. And also there was, at that time, a curious dying-out in the old families, so that in many of them there were no sons, only daughters, who thus became great heiresses. Once, at Beauclaire – I remember this so sharply – there was a little creature, Catherine Montsorrel, so ugly, so misshapen that I pitied her. But somewhere near Chester a man could get on a good horse and ride for three days around the boundaries of one of her properties, and out by the Welsh marches another man, on another good horse, could ride for six days. So she got married from Beauclair and I did not. My failure was, in a way, the failure of the relative with whom I had stayed and of course excuses must be made. I was sent home with the report that I had two fatal defects, a sharp tongue and a prim manner.
I will say for my mother that she never took these things seriously as most women would. Many another girl sent home with such a character would have been scolded, beaten, had the shame of her failure rubbed into her every day.
So now, looking back, all in a moment over Mother’s life, and mine, so far, I felt kindly and weak towards her.
‘If things had been different they would have been different,’ I said. ‘But they are as they are. This man Reed is well-to-do and we owe him money. He would cancel the debt. That in itself is a thing to consider.’
Mother clenched her little fist – she had beautiful, delicate hands which no amount of work could spoil – and beat upon the bed.
‘You are not’, she said fiercely, ‘to think of that. I said to your father… but for the debt he would never have dared… You don’t know the world, Anne. Poor we have been but you have never been brought face to face – I mean to talk to, to be with – any man who hadn’t… who wasn’t…’ She broke off, threw her hands about. ‘Chivalry,’ she said, snatching at the word like a drowning man at the straw in the proverb. ‘To know what good manners are – even if he doesn’t always exercise them, that is the mark of a gentleman.’
‘Uncle Fortescue once dragged my aunt upstairs by the hair of her head, in the sight of all, and broke the jaw of the young squire who protested,’ I said, quietly, as though speaking to myself. Mother blushed her quick bright blush.
‘There was reason for that.’
‘Unmannerly just the same.’
‘That may be. But’, said Mother wagging a finger at me. ‘I’ll warrant that none in that hall knew why, his real reason I mean. And there is just the difference. He might pull her hair, but he did not besmirch her name as a common man in a rage would have done.’
‘I shall be careful’, I said, getting back to the point, ‘to behave in such a manner as to give my common man, as you call him, no occasion either to pull my hair or besmirch my name.’
‘Marriage lasts a long time,’ said Mother drily. ‘Suppose you never grow to like him, or tire of him, and he of you. Then where would you turn? To some blabbermouth apprentice who would boast when he was pot-valiant? Oh,’ she said, jumping from the bed and beginning to wave her arms. ‘These are not things to say to a young maid, yet they must be said. In a proper household such things are understood, arranged, there is constant change, comings and goings, blind eyes turned, allowances made.’
‘And ladies dragged upstairs by their hair.’
Mother, like a skilled fencer, ceased her pressure at that point, and attacked from another angle.
‘I can’t see you as a nun at Ramsey. You may expect no favour from your aunt, if anything she will be harder on you than on the others out of her wish to be fair. You love your comforts, and are greedy, and vain. You have no vocation, which alone could make such a life bearable.’
She had put into words what I had been thinking and inwardly I wavered. But I said,
‘Add to my failings that I am proud. I cannot go to my Aunt Astallon again, and be looked over and passed by; and have them say, “Let me see, how old are you now?” and have them nod and pull their mouths down. At least at Ramsey I should have no cause for shame.’
‘There’s another thing,’ said Mother, flitting like a butterfly. ‘Think how it will sound, to send to all the family and say that you are to marry the son of a woolman. Is that not shaming?’
‘Not in the same way. Besides, why should they be told? Except when one of us is being foisted off on them they forget that we exist. We might starve to death for all they care. They’re afraid to visit us for fear their hearts should be wrung. Aunt Astallon went to Walsingham, missing us by four miles, did she turn aside? No, she rode on and lodged at Sudbury. Uncle Bowdegrave visits Rushbrooke every year, when did he ever give a sign of being within riding distance?’
These were truths, facts, which my parents had steadily refused to recognize. Now, confronted with them, Mother seemed to shrink a little.
‘Anne,’ she said, ‘you’re very hard.’
But it wasn’t true. Seeing my point pierce her last defence I was filled with pity and weakness. I really longed to cry out that I had not meant what I said, that I would go to my Aunt Astallon and try once more. But something held back the words. I was sick of pretending.
‘I shall tell your father that you are set in your mind,’ Mother said.
Father, always three-quarters in favour of the match, rode off to Baildon to tell Master Reed his offer was being considered, but that before any conclusion was reached, Mother wished to inspect the young man. Master Reed invited them both to supper. So the hem of the green and crimson gown had to be stitched back into the place and the seams let out instead of taken in. Wearing it, and a very wide wired headveil, she went off to Baildon and came back in a very curious state of mind.
I asked her the one question which troubled me most.
‘Is he surly, like his father?’
Mother lifted off the head-dress and ran her hands through her hair.
‘He’s not in the least like his father.’ To me that was pleasant news, but she said it regretfully.
My father fumbled in his pouch and brought out a little lump of pink, under-cooked meat and offered it to Jess
on her stand.
‘If you married that boy you’d have a very comfortable home,’ he said.
‘If?’ I asked.
Mother said sharply, ‘My mind is not yet decided. And when it is I shall take my time telling them so. I’m not one to fall on my face at the sight of a few silver cups, a glass window and a great tapestry that still smells of the loom.’
‘It was well meant,’ Father said. “They wanted us to see that.…’ He cast a look about our comfortless hall and grinned. ‘Four main dishes, then gooseberries in a glazed coffer and a syllabub that you could have turned upside down without spilling, it was so well whipped.’
‘I was ashamed of you,’ said Mother, ‘pocketing a piece as though you feared to be hungry on the way home!’
‘I told the boy – what’s his name, Richard – that it was for my hawk. He was knowledgeable, though he has never handled a bird. Said he had read a book.’
‘What did you think of him, Father?’
‘A modest, amiable young man. And if he was some poor knight’s son that had gone into the wine trade, your mother would think so too.’
I suspected that they had argued all the way home.
‘There’s a difference between trading in wine and handling dirty old fleeces,’ Mother said.
‘But the man was at pains to point out that the boy never soiled his hands.….’
‘That I can well believe!’ It was plain to me that something had happened to upset her and bring her to the brink of deciding against the match after all.
Presently Father went outside and I signed to Isabel to go to bed, which she did reluctantly. As soon as we were alone Mother got up and went over to the livery cupboard and began banging about in it. Our livery cupboard was never well-provided at any time, and she couldn’t be hungry having come straight from a supper of four main courses, pie and syllabub so I could only guess that she wanted to keep her back to me. But why? After a minute I could bear it no more.