The Town House

by Norah Lofts

  He greeted us by name, and very kindly, and – the first person ever to do so – seemed to notice me more than Walter.

  ‘So this is Maude.’ He looked me over, and smiled and said something about lovely curly hair. ‘A real Astallon,’ he said. ‘Ralph and his golden Eleanor have managed to breed two little fawn-coloured creatures. Isn’t it odd?’

  Our grandfather’s chair had been turned so that he sat at the head of the table. He ate as we had been forbidden to do, sucking and slobbering at his food and wiping his fingers, now on the cloth and now on the front of his soiled robe. Walter gave me a kick under the table and a meaningful look, like when we played ‘Dummy’. I kicked him back and made faces, trying to say, without words – Yes, and wouldn’t we be in disgrace if we did it?

  Over our heads the talk went to and fro between Mother and Uncle Godfrey.

  He said, ‘You hated it so much.’

  ‘I went to Beauclaire with one pair of shoes. When my feet grew I had to curl up my toes, and they are crooked to this day. You hated being at Cousin Fortescue’s; you wanted to farm here. Do you remember that? Are you sorry now that you didn’t?’

  ‘Not now. You saved me, Anne. You sent me the money so that I could buy my knight’s equipment and I ….’

  Mother interrupted him.

  ‘And that wasn’t easy; it wasn’t a cause that either of them would have understood or sympathized with, let me tell you. That was my dressmaker’s money for two years, and it meant re-furbishing old ones, turning and twisting. I say this to show that what I ask you isn’t so outrageous.’

  ‘I know. I know.’ He looked about the cold room with its damp grey walls and smoke blackened rafters. ‘Here too, you have taken responsibility, while I, with your good destrier between my knees rode in tourneys. Nothing that you asked of me in return would be too great.’

  ‘You see,’ Mother said, ‘when I made the suggestion he rejected it, flat.’ She put her hand down on the table. ‘For me to raise it again would …. You may find this hard to believe, but they have a pride of their own, more stubborn and stiffnecked than ours. When they speak of “my good money”, that is the same as “my good name”. I told you what he said. But an invitation, from you, would allow me to open up the matter again.’ She looked at Walter and me and said, ‘If you have finished, you may go back to play.’

  We played until we were called in to make our adieus. As we stood there, my Uncle Godfrey looked at the figure in the chair and said,

  ‘My God, Anne, what a way to end! I can just remember when he won the King’s Cup at Windsor. If you ever pray for me, pray that I never stop a half-fatal blow.’

  Mother turned the colour of the heaped-up ashes on the hearth. She looked towards the stairs.

  ‘He was all right,’ she said. ‘Flying his hawks, riding his old horse. Until Mother ….’ She broke off and shuddered. My uncle took her by the arm and said,

  ‘Poor Anne, you had that too! I was in Poitou. You’ve borne it all.’

  ‘More than you will ever know. But this one thing. You will do it?’

  On the way home she set such a pace that Walter and I on our ponies and the servant who attended us on his thickset sold horse had much ado to keep up with her.

  Shortly after this visit Walter was told that after Easter in the next year he was going to the Choir School at Baildon. The idea disgusted him; the schoolboys lived monkish lives, slept on hard beds, ate horrible food, washed in cold water.

  ‘I don’t want to. Why must I?’

  ‘Because you will be a merchant, with a great business to run. You must learn to read and write and reckon.’

  ‘I don’t want to be a merchant,’ Walter said. ‘I want to be a minstrel … you know, walk about from place to place, playing the lute and singing.’

  Mother said, in a way in which I have never in all my life heard anybody say anything,

  ‘You want what, Walter?’

  Confidently he repeated his statement. She snatched hold of him and kissed him.

  ‘One day you’ll know better. You wouldn’t like to be poor. And at the Choir School you will learn all about music.’

  ‘Church music,’ he said. ‘Not the same thing at all. Besides, it isn’t fair that I should go to school and Maude should stay at home.’

  Mother said, ‘Maude is not staying at home. When she is twelve she is going to the nuns at Clevely, but in the meantime she has received a very pleasant invitation. She is going to stay with your Uncle Godfrey, at Beauclaire.’

  For a moment that took the sharpest edge from Walter’s dissatisfaction, but he was soon grumbling again. I, he said, should be leading a merry life with ordinary people, while he was shut up with monks. If anyone beat me I should have Uncle Godfrey to complain to, he would have no one.

  When the arrangements were first made, ‘after next Easter’ sounded a comfortably long time away; but the months sped past. When the details were fixed and Walter learned that I was to ride into Sussex on Browny, while he must leave Robin Hood at the Old Vine, he flung himself screaming on the floor, shouting that it was unfair. My grandfather came to see what the noise was about and said, in an uncertain manner,

  ‘Anne, is it worth it? Perhaps we were hasty. I heard recently of a young clerk who might serve our purpose.’

  Mother simply said, ‘Walter is jealous because Maude is to take her pony. Imagine his state if she were staying at home!’ She took Walter by the arm and jerked him to his feet, speaking more firmly than she usually did to him.

  ‘Straight into bed with you, you naughty boy!’

  He was still in bed, being given possets and mixtures to bring down his fever when I left for Beauclaire.

  My grandfather, always a man of few words, gave me a broad gold piece, and kissed me.

  ‘I hope you’ll be happy. You mustn’t mind too much if you find things different there.’

  Mother came into the yard where one of the men, named Jack, was ready, with my little clothes chest fixed behind his saddle. She kissed me, and for a moment I clung to her, hoping even at this last moment for some sign of love. She loosed herself from me in the old familiar way.

  At the end of the covered passage which led from our yard to the highway I turned and looked back. Mother was staring after us and her face was just like Walter’s when I had let him win a game. Whatever we played at I could always beat him if I tried, but now and then I would hold back and lose deliberately. Then he wore a satisfied look, a look that said, ‘Well, I managed that!’

  I puzzled over it for a long time. Much later, when I learned that Walter never did go to the Choir School, but stayed at home and had his lessons there, I did understand all too well. I saw then exactly what Mother had managed; she had kept the child she loved and got rid of the one she disliked. At the time I could only wonder why she looked like that. All the same she had done me, all unwittingly, a good turn. Had she gazed after me with the slightest affection I should have broken down, for I still loved her then. As it was she sent me on my way exercising my head and not my heart, and that, in many of life’s turning points, is an excellent thing.

  II

  Three days later we approached Beauclaire from the east at the end of a sunny afternoon, so that it stood up against the gold and rose of sunset’s first display. I thought to myself – But this is a town, not a house; and my homesickness deepened.

  A great castle of grey stone stood in the embrace of a wide moat which was spanned by two bridges, one directly in front of us, at the end of the road which we travelled, and the other to the side, at the right. The second bridge linked the castle, which was very old, with the house, much of which had been built within the last sixty or seventy years. The face which the house turned to the road was very handsome, and large, but – as I was soon to learn – it was only one small part of the whole. It was built of brick at the bottom and above of timber and plaster, the plaster moulded into patterns. There were many windows and all glassed, but I could see no doorwa
y at all.

  We clattered over the drawbridge, through a gateway at its far end and there turned sharply to the right and through a small deserted courtyard, then over the second bridge and into a larger yard full of bustle, several men mounted, and servants running about. We then passed through an archway and into a stable yard, where I thankfully dismounted.

  Almost immediately there appeared a solemn-looking man, by his dress neither gentleman nor servant, to whom the man who had been sent to fetch me said,

  ‘I’m back and all’s well, Master Sheldon.’

  Master Sheldon glanced at me as he might have done at any package or parcel that had been conveyed from one place to another, noted that I was all in one piece, and nodded his satisfaction.

  ‘You made good speed,’ he said.

  We should have made better had the servant had his way. I had disliked him from the start; he was one of those – a type then new to me – who was intensely servile when they must be, and make up for it by being insolent when they can. It was plain, at the moment of our meeting that he despised me on account of my youth, and Jack because he was a plain unliveried servant. The new man wore green with the Astallon badge, a falcon, on his breast.

  Jack helped me on to my pony, for the last time, and then dived into his pocket, brought out a little handkerchief, edged with pegged lace and tucked it into my sleeve.

  ‘It’s to be hoped you ‘on’t need it, my little dear, but if you do you’ll know where it is.’

  He then turned to the Astallon man and said,

  ‘You take good care of our little mistress; she’ve never been from home afore.’

  That remark, and the thought of parting with Jack thickened my throat again. The Astallon man merely sniffed and looked down his nose in a way that said, plainly, he was taking no orders from servants.

  I said, ‘Good-bye, Jack. I shall see you at Christmas.’

  We rode in silence for some time. The man broke it to ask,’ in a burring voice which made it hard for me to understand his words,

  ‘Is that the best pace you can make?’

  I thought I had not heard aright; Browny was, for his size, very speedy and he was trotting his best.

  ‘What did you say?’ I asked. He repeated the question.

  ‘Yes, it is. Browny is only a pony, as you can see for yourself.’

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, and he lifted his whip and brought it down hard on the pony’s rump.

  Certainly since the two matched ponies had been given to Walter and me on our fifth birthday, Browny had never been struck like that; Grandfather Reed was soft-hearted towards all his horses and had given us a little homily about treating the ponies properly; and I loved Browny who was, anyway, quite willing to run as hard as he could without being beaten. Now, frightened and hurt, he broke into his little short-stepped rocking gallop for a minute or two, and then slowed down to a trot again.

  I had a good enough reason of my own for not wanting him whacked into a gallop; I had been in the saddle a long time and was very sore. I was only accustomed to taking short rides, or – as on our visit to Minsham – a long one with a rest in between. When Browny galloped, I bumped, and it hurt.

  When the man came up to strike the pony a second time I cried,

  ‘Don’t do that!’ But he did, and we bumped forward as before. It happened twice more and Browny began to blow; so next time, just as he began to slow down I pulled him to a standstill, clapped my hand to my eye and let out a yell.

  ‘There’s a fly in my eye,’ I said.

  The servant, close behind me, said,

  ‘Damnation!’ and then, coming alongside, ‘Can’t you get it out?’

  I made a quick movement and snatched the whip, which he was holding in a slack hand just then, and I pulled the pony round a little so that my hand, with the whip in it was as far as possible from the servant on the tall horse.

  ‘Give me that whip,’ he said between his teeth. I was going to say – Not unless you promise not to hit my pony again! – but what good would a churl’s promise be? So I simply said,

  ‘I shan’t.’

  There then followed, right out in the open road a most unseemly scuffle. He pulled his horse round and made a grab for the whip, but I was ready and brought it down smartly on his wrist; he cursed and made another snatch, not this time at the whip, but at the top of my arm, which he seized and twisted. I was quite helpless then, and the only way to break his hold was to slip out of the saddle and stand in the road; even so I dangled for a moment, held by his hand, before my weight carried me to the ground.

  I was by this time thoroughly frightened; dismounting so hastily and carelessly had rubbed my sore bottom, and my arm had had a cruel twist, so I started to yell. I stood there, holding the whip behind me, my back pressed to Browny’s heaving side and I yelled as if I were being murdered.

  ‘Give me that whip and get back on that pony,’ the servant said.

  I yelled louder. He was in a rather awkward position; he could lift me back on to the pony, but to do that he must himself dismount, and when he did, I thought – some part of me quite calm for all the fright and pain and the yelling – I would strike his horse, hard, so that it galloped off, and while he chased it I would jump back on Browny and ride in the other direction.

  The road was far from being deserted. Two old women were herding along a great gaggle of geese and looked at us with interest, not untinged with amusement, but they were too busy with their charges to stop and ask questions. A man with a panniered donkey, waiting for the geese to pass the place where the horse and the pony narrowed the road, did speak.

  ‘Whassa matter? Hurt yersel’?’

  ‘Mind your own business,’ said the Astallon man so fiercely that the man with the donkey quailed, smacked his beast with the flat of his hand and passed on.

  ‘My Lady will hear about this,’ the servant said to me.

  ‘Aye, from me!’ I said, and was straightway frightened again at the thought of some great lady listening to both our tales and believing him. So I yelled some more. But I kept my eye on the man and saw that he was going to dismount. I got ready, but just then along came some horsemen, riding fast. The first one cried,

  ‘Make way, make way!’ and the Astallon man, instead of dismounting, pulled in a little to the side of the road. The gentleman rode past, his companion followed, but he looked at us, the third gentleman passed. Then the second rider wheeled round and rode back. He was about the age of, and not unlike my Uncle Godfrey.

  ‘What is all this to do?’

  I said, ‘Oh sir, please, please help me.’

  The Astallon man slipped from the saddle and put his hand to his forelock and began to speak rapidly … a sore task … sent to conduct the little lady … no will for the journey ….

  I ran forward and took hold of the gentleman’s foot in the stirrup.

  ‘It isn’t true. It’s all lies. I was going willingly till he hit Browny.’

  The gentleman said, ‘If you would speak one at a time I might make some sense of it.’ He leaned forward a little and studied the badge. ‘Astallon of Beauclaire?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. And sent to conduct ….’

  ‘Ladies first,’ said the gentleman. ‘Now, why do you stand here and make a noise like a hound in full cry?’

  I told him in as few words as possible. ‘You can see I speak the truth,’ I said and I pointed to the welts that had already r isen on Browny’s smooth rump.

  ‘All right. Now you be quiet for a moment. You, tell me, was there any particular urgency about this journey?’

  ‘I was told to make it with all possible speed, sir.’

  ‘All possible speed. Well, your master would know that so small a child would not be mounted on a saddle horse. All possible speed, for that pony would be … let me see … three days. I shall pass close by Beauclaire, I’ll turn aside and say that if you arrive earlier you have over-driven both pony and rider and should be beaten.’

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p; He turned to me with a smile and said,

  ‘A pleasant journey and a safe arrival, demoiselle. Would you like me to take that whip?’

  I said, ‘Oh, I do thank you. Thank you. What is your name?’

  ‘My name? Why, what is my name to you?’

  ‘I shall mention it in my prayers every night as long as I live.’

  He laughed. ‘Then I shall be greatly in your debt. But I hope you will outlive all memory of me by fifty years. My name is John Fitz Arle. And what is yours?’

  ‘Maude Reed.’

  ‘I wish you well. As for you, fellow, mind what I said.’

  (I put his name into my prayers that night, and I kept it there, for years and years, by rote and habit, long after I had forgotten what he looked like and everything about him, except that he had stood by me in a moment of great need.)

  So I had won, but victory has its price. At inns one’s accommodation and food depends very largely upon one’s servant and his care for one’s comfort. Jack had seen that I slept and ate well in Colchester, Chelmsford and Brentwood. Now anything would do.

  What I didn’t know was that in all great establishments all the servants are for ever trying to make their duties profitable. My escort had been given money for the journey, if he could have shortened it by a night – even if Browny had ended broken-winded – the price of a night’s lodging for us and our mounts would have gone into his own pocket. This form of cheating was rife at Beauclaire, as it must be, I suppose, in any establishment too large to be sharply looked to by one person. Even over the candles my Lord Astallon was swindled by his house steward whose duty it was to see that new candles were placed in every sconce and stand every evening. The short ends were one of his perquisites, and since hundreds of candles were used every day, they would have amounted to something. But he was not content. The new candles were put in place and they were lighted; then some minion of the Steward’s would run around, replacing them by the stubs of another evening. So the cry, ‘Bring fresh candles’ was constantly to be heard, together with complaints that candles these days lasted only half the time that they were wont to do.