The Town House

by Norah Lofts

  I have never known a day go so fast.

  I gave Jason the gobbet of red meat which Richard had sent him and listened absentmindedly while Father explained that these last three weeks, during which Richard had not ridden out to Minsham at all would make an excellent excuse for the fact that the young hawk would never accept him as his master.

  ‘I’ve feared it all along,’ he said in his slow, fumbling way. ‘Twice a week … and let him be the only one ever to take the rufter off. I thought that might just do it. I was wrong and I was afraid the poor fellow would be disappointed; we can lay the blame now on these three weeks.’

  With some vague thought of handicapping Denys on the return journey I said,

  ‘I can’t think why you didn’t let Richard have his hawk at the Old Vine in the first place. Shall we take it back with us this afternoon? I think that would please him.’

  ‘But who at the Old Vine understands falconry? That’s just it. A tiercel isn’t a lapdog, Anne. Maybe I was foolish … buthehadshown some slight interest in hawking … I told you, that first time. And your mother thought …’

  ‘Mother thought what?’

  ‘That to get out, out of that office, into the air …. Oh, I know twice a week isn’t much, isn’t enough, but it did make an excuse. And as usual, your mother was right, wasn’t she. So the hawk wasn’t wasted, though I daresay Richard will be a bit jealous that I can now handle his bird. Still, nobody can help being ill.’

  ‘May I carry Jason back with me this afternoon?’

  ‘No. You can’t handle him.… Isabel now, if it was Isabel, but you never cared for the sport. And you’d have no place – not so much as a perch. An unhandled hawk, especially one half trained like Jason’d go mad, or pine to death. No. When Richard is better, which God send will be soon, he must come out, and I’ll fool them both. I’ll stand close to him and whistle my whistle through his. We’ll manage.’

  Alone with Mother again I put on the drooping, dwindling look which I would have been wise to have put on in the yard hours before.

  ‘You warned me about riding, but you had it all wrong. It is now that the jolting hurts me.’

  She looked concerned. ‘I thought you looked very wan when you came in. You had a hard time, you know, and it’s not so long. Richard ill too, I daresay you’ve been up and downstairs and having broken nights.’

  ‘If my bed were aired, ’I said, ‘I would lie here tonight. Denys could tell them that I was just tired.’

  ‘The bed hasn’t been slept in since Isabel went. But I could air it in an hour.’

  ‘Then I’ll stay, and gladly.’

  Mother threw fresh wood on the fire and began to climb the stairs.

  ‘I’ll help you,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll do nothing of the sort. I can handle that bed. It isn’t like those great fat feather bundles you lie on at Baildon.’ She laughed. In a few seconds she came out of my old room with the bed – a poor thin thing indeed, folded over into a roll and held in her arms. She came down three stairs, then the inside edge of the roll loosened itself and fell lower than the rest; she stepped into it, as it were, missed her footing, almost righted herself, and could have, had that staircase had a handrail to clutch at, but it hadn’t; she clutched at air and fell sideways on to the floor of the hall.

  She was up in an instant, before I could get to her.

  ‘Clumsy!’ she said, and laughed.

  ‘Are you hurt?’

  ‘Not a bit.’ She went to the foot of the stairs where the mattress, now fully unfolded, lay, and picked it up and gave it a shake.

  ‘Trip me, would you?’ she said, ‘I’ll roast you for that!’

  We propped it up before the fire and the amount of steam which rose from it proved its need for airing. Minsham Old Hall was very damp always, on the hottest day of summer you could write your name on the dewy moisture of the walls.

  For supper we ate the remains of the birthday dinner and drank some more of the wine, and now we were truly merry. Denys had gone, with a black look for me over Mother’s shoulder when she gave him his instructions at the door. Tomorrow Father was to ride in with me, and once in the house I should be safe. I’d never ride anywhere again until Richard was fit to ride with me.

  Getting up from the supper-table Mother clapped her hand to her side and gave a little cry.

  ‘I must have caught myself a clout without knowing it. A bruise, no more.’ But even her lips had gone white.

  She was up in the morning, however, very cheerful, holding herself a mite stiffly and saying that forty-six was a bit old to go turning somersaults.

  ‘I shall ride in myself next Wednesday to see those dear children,’ she said, as we parted. ‘Meanwhile, wish Richard good health for me and thank Master Reed for the wine.’

  I rode back to Baildon thinking that I had managed very well.

  Mother’s birthday was on Thursday. I went home on Friday. Richard was better, but still taking his meals apart in the solar. I ate my supper with him, in the golden, slanting rays of the sinking sun. Master Reed, who had supped in the hall as usual, came into the room afterwards, looked into our wine cups, saw them full and poured his own. Then he said,

  ‘Anne, Denys the Routier wants a word with you.’

  Whether I went red or white I cannot tell; I could only feel my whole face stiffen.

  ‘With me. What about?’

  ‘I don’t know. He just asked if he could have a word with you.’

  I suppose it was my guilty conscience that made me think his manner a trifle more restrained than usual, his eye just a little suspicious … no … curious.

  I turned and hurried, trying not to hurry, out of the solar.

  The dining-hall, on the eastern side of the house was already dim and full of shadows. It smelt strongly of rabbit and onion stew and even in that moment of extremity some part of my mind noted the curious fact that a dish of which one has not partaken always has a stronger odour than one which one has eaten. Richard and I, in the solar had shared a cold capon.

  Old Nancy stood in the doorway between the hall and the kitchen, watching Meg and Jane, helped by the two youngest apprentices, clear the tables. Denys leaned against the door post of the outer door, his back to the hall, looking out into the yard. The presence of four other – five other people gave me confidence. I walked towards him and said,

  ‘You wanted to speak with me.’

  He turned quickly, so that in the doorway we faced one another and he took hold of my hand. The action could not be seen by those inside in the hall because the bulk of my body was in their way. He fumbled with my hand for a second and then had me by the little finger, bending it down, pressing hard. There is no simple, quiet, secret action that can cause more sharp pain. Anyone who doubts this should try it on himself. Pressing ruthlessly on my finger he pulled me over the threshold. At the same time he hissed into my ear,

  ‘Call back and say your palfrey is lame and you are looking to it.’

  I leaned back, and only just able to speak for the pain in my finger, said,

  ‘Nancy. Tell Master Richard I have gone out to look at my palfrey. It is lame it seems.’

  ‘Now,’ he said, with a little more pressure on my finger, ‘come and look just how lame it is.’ He dragged me across the yard and to the fence of the pasture. ‘A pretty trick you played me yesterday. Now listen. Tomorrow is Saturday. In the afternoon they’ll all go to their shooting at the butts. I don’t have to go. I’ve done my soldiering. I shall wait for you in the wool loft, the far end.’

  I said, and I could hear how thin my voice sounded, ‘Unless you let go my finger … I can give you no mind … I shall faint.’

  He let go then, but he put his arm around me and said,

  ‘You bring it on yourself, you’re so tricky. It could have been yesterday, you silly little hussy,’ and he pushed his body against me. ‘Now it must wait till tomorrow, and I’ve waited so long ….’

  ‘I can’t. I can’t. Even
if I wanted to … my husband, his father …. I can’t just walk out of the house.’

  ‘Women always have two excuses – church and the dressmaker. Choose which you like, but I’m telling you, you had better come.’

  He let me go, and stooping tugged up a little tuft of grass with the soil clodded about its roots. He tossed it gently over the fence at my palfrey which was grazing amongst the other horses, a pale shadow amongst the darker ones. It started and moved away, one hoof hardly touching the ground, lame as a tinker’s donkey.

  ‘This time I made an excuse. If you fail me tomorrow I shall ask for you again, and again, and every excuse will be shakier than the one before. And I shall talk about you, in alehouses–’

  ‘You’ll find yourself in trouble if you boast of rape.’

  He laughed, it seemed with real pleasure.

  ‘I always knew a devil lurked behind that angel face of yours, my pretty! Rape indeed. Was your dress torn? Did you run screaming? Did you complain? Besides which, once I’ve set them all asking questions I shall make myself scarce, leaving you to find the answers.’

  Had I been innocent, I suppose that would hardly have been a threat at all. I remembered how my face had felt when Master Reed brought me Denys’s message, I remembered the look I thought he had given me. My best weapon, a clear conscience, was snapped in my hand; I was not equipped to fight.

  ‘I’ll come,’ I said.

  ‘And I’ll set your horse to rights.’ He rested one hand on a post of the fence and vaulted lightly into the meadow.

  I turned away and hurried towards the house. Master Reed stood at the back door looking out over the yard. I wondered how long he had been there, and whether, at that distance, he could have seen Denys lay hold of me.

  ‘Anything amiss?’ he said.

  ‘My horse is very lame. Denys thinks it picked up a stone. He is dealing with it.’

  ‘How handy is he? He might worsen matters. I’d better…’ He went, with his lurching yet rapid step towards the pasture.

  That night I hardly slept at all. It was easy enough to say – Come to the wool loft … two excuses … church and the dressmaker. I had never been one of those pious women, for ever running to church at odd hours. Because of Master Reed’s hatred of Baildon and all its folk, and because, living outside the town boundary we were free to choose, we went to Mass at the tiny church of Flaxham St. Giles, and usually went, the three of us together, to make our Confessions on Saturday, before supper in winter, after it in summer. Richard would think it very strange if I proposed going to church alone on Saturday afternoon. As for my dressmaker – who was a little hunchback – she always came to the house when I needed her; I wasn’t even certain of where she lived. She was a relative of one of the pack-whackers and when I had sewing to be done I simply asked him to ask his Aunt Margit to come.

  To people who live more grandly, or more poorly it may sound incredible that a grown woman should find it so difficult to absent herself, without rousing questions, for an hour on a Saturday afternoon. But always, when I wasn’t with the children, I was in the solar, or the kitchen or the garden, and with Richard just on the move again the whole thing was doubly difficult. If I said I would go and look in on the children he would say he hadn’t seen them lately and would come too; if I said I would see how my palfrey did, ten to one he would say that a stroll in the sun would do him good.

  All this I had to worry out in the night, and to think that it wasn’t just this Saturday … this kind of thing could go on and on.

  In the end I pleaded the routine female excuse; I had a headache, I said, due to sleeping badly. That I had slept badly Richard knew was true. I said that after dinner I would go and lie down. Master Reed went into the garden, where some plums on two trees on the south wall should be ready for plucking, and Richard said,

  ‘I shall go and do an hour’s work in the office. Father hasn’t complained, but the work must be mounting up.’

  That was better than I had hoped for; he might have offered to come and sit beside me and dabble my head with a vinegar cloth. I went into the children’s room, brooded over them for a little while and then stole out.

  The yard was empty and quiet. No work was done at the Old Vine on Saturday afternoons; the young men went to practise their archery at the Butts on the west of the town; those whose age or some infirmity excused them, sought their town amusements. From the huts which we called Squatters Row, at the back of the stables, I could hear voices and the sound of a fiddle.

  I felt extremely large and conspicuous as I made my way to the wool-shed, hugging the walls of each building I passed. I told myself that I had a perfect right to go out and see how my palfrey did. When I was level with the pasture fence I did step out of the buildings’ shadow and stand, for a moment, staring. Then I cut back, through the two wool-picking sheds, where the sun cut in in golden, dust-filled rays, and then, at the end, up the ladder and into the wool store.

  Denys was waiting for me. He took hold of me and kissed and pawed me for a minute or two like a madman. I pushed him away and said, ‘Wait. Wait. You want it to be good …. You said, after childbed women were … And it is true. I think that is what ails me and I think a little wine would help.’ I held out the little leather wine bottle that I had brought.

  ‘You don’t need that,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, I do, I do. Just give me time.’ I loosed the stopper and tilted the bottle to my lips. I said,‘You know what is wrong with me, don’t you. I was in labour two days and three nights. … A woman has to be pot valiant to risk that again.’

  ‘You’re over the worst. The next lot’ll be as easy as shelling peas.’

  ‘I’m pot valiant,’ I said, wishing to God I were. For, when neither flesh nor spirit is desirous this is a sorry, sad business. He didn’t think so; and anxious to pleasure him, I made as good a pretence of sharing his joy as I could.

  When he was spent he lolled back against the soft, greasy fleeces and sighed and smiled. After a minute he said – forestalling me by a count of ten–

  ‘Is any left in that bottle?’

  I reached out and lifted and shook it.

  ‘Very little – but you’re welcome to what there is. It heartened me.’

  ‘Rubbish. I heartened you. I told you everything would be all right. Didn’t I? Didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes. And you were right.’

  He set the bottle to his lips and drank.

  ‘I must go now,’ I said. ‘And I must take the bottle. It might be missed.’

  ‘Next Saturday. Here.’

  ‘Next Saturday. Here,’ I repeated. He tilted the bottle and then gave it back into my hand. ‘I had to force you. You see, I knew what was best for you. You’re my beauty, my darling and I don’t know how I shall wait the week out. But I will.’ He burrowed his head into my breast and clutched at me with his hands. In one moment it would all begin again.

  ‘I must go … or there’ll be no next Saturday.’ He sighed and set me free.

  I climbed down the ladder of the wool loft with the words ‘no next Saturday’ still sounding inside my head. By the pasture fence I picked up a young apple that I had left there – how long before, half an hour, an hour? How long had the whole thing taken? I called my palfrey and it came, took the apple and slobbered over my hand and sleeve.

  I went back into the solar where Master Reed was laying plums on a dish.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep, so I went out to see how my horse fared. I gave it an apple,’ I said, ‘and look what a mess it has made of me. I must go and wash.’

  No next Saturday, I thought. There will be no next Saturday.

  VII

  The next day being Sunday Denys was not looked for and when he was found on Monday nobody could tell which day he had died, until one of the weavers said that he remembered seeing him come into the yard late on Saturday, very drunk. This – though it is unpleasant to think that in cases of felony some of the evidence given may be equally false – most admirabl
y served my purpose, since it prevented the possibility, remote indeed, but lively in my mind at least, of anyone connecting Denys’s death with my wandering around on the Saturday afternoon.

  ‘He was probably not as sound as he looked,’ Master Reed said, and passed on to the matter of replacing him. Until that was done I knew I must be prepared to face hearing Denys’s name now and again. I must keep my face smooth and secret, and show enough, but not too much interest. Actually even that was spared me, though I would rather have been tested than excused the way I was. What happened was that within half an hour of the discovery of Denys’s body, a hind, bumping and bouncing on Father’s best horse, came to tell me that Mother was in bed.

  ‘Very sick,’ he said she was, and anxious to see me.

  Richard, who now had great faith in the doctor who had relieved his cough by night if not by day, insisted upon sending for him to ride out with me, but I was too anxious to be off. So he was to follow.

  Mother was in bed and as I set foot on the gallery I could hear the gasping rattle of her breath. Her brow and nose and chin were bone white, her cheeks dark purple with fever. Her eyes, dim with pain, were open, but she did not know me, even when I took her hot dry hand and spoke her name. Father was in the room, looking almost as ill and half crazed.

  ‘What happened?’ I asked him.

  ‘Yesterday, no, the day before, no, yesterday, she complained of pain in her side. I looked and it was bruised, very black and swollen. I made a poultice, a linseed poultice, and she said it eased her. Then she sickened and cried for you, but she was sensible then. It is only this morning …’

  Suddenly the deep criss-cross wrinkles below his eyes were wet. I envied him being able to cry. My need to cry scorched me. It was my fault that she had her fall, and if she died, I’d have killed her as surely as I had killed …

  ‘The doctor is riding close behind,’ I said. ‘He’s … very clever. He’ll do something.’

  ‘I hope to God …’ Father said.

  Mother went on fighting for breath. Every now and then a gobbet of thick yellow stuff, streaked with blood, bubbled from her mouth and I wiped it away. Once, just after I had thus cleared her lips, she spoke, in a surprisingly bright, vigorous, young voice.