The Town House

by Norah Lofts

  I managed to cry, ‘Hi!’ and then, at the next try, ‘I’m by the stone.’

  ‘Stand still then.’

  In no time at all he was with me, a little bent gnome of a man, carrying a lantern. He put my fear – I was shaking still – down to the fact that I had been lost.

  ‘That need never worr it you. We watch. We count ‘em in and we count ‘em out. Come on, now follow me.’

  As we walked he told me that once, long ago, when his own father was ‘just a little gaffer’, some young people had gone into the Maze during the Christmas revels, and all come out but a young lady who was not missed until the next day, and was dead when found.

  ‘I should have died too, if you hadn’t found me.’

  ‘Oh no! ‘Tisn’t freezing tonight. Yon was a hard frost.’

  ‘I should have died of fear.’

  ‘There’s naught to be feart of. There’s two of us and one is always on the watch.’

  ‘I didn’t know that.’

  ‘No. We don’t make much of ourselves. People don’t like to think they’re overlooked.’

  I don’t think I was any more pious than the next child. I performed my duties and observed the Holy Days of Obligation and the Fast days, but I seldom thought about religion. Now, however, I thought – That is like God, watching our comings and goings, Himself unseen but ready to help in time of need.

  From that thought it was only a short step to be wondering whether the face I had seen in the Rune Stone was not really a heavenly vision and that what the man had been trying to convey to me was not to be frightened. The French girl, Jehan the Maid, had put visions and voices from Heaven in the forefront of everyone’s mind. And she, I remembered, had been burned for a witch.

  Dame Margery, who had not, I think, noticed my absence because she was so busy with the three sick children, scolded me for giving her needless anxiety, and set me yards of hemming to do for a punishment. Henry and William said I had spoiled the game, they thought I had given up too soon. I said to Henry, ‘I gave you the Cry of Extremity and you did not aid me, that cancels all vows.’

  I never mentioned my vision to anyone; and perhaps for that reason thought about it the more. Walter and I were born on St. Joseph’s Day, and I thought it possible that the face I had seen had been that of the Saint. After that I had a special devotion to St. Joseph, and when, around Easter-tide a seller of statues and medallions came round I broke into one of my gold pieces and bought a medallion of St. Joseph and fastened it to one of the cords of my velvet purse.

  V

  When the next Christmas came round I did not expect to go home and felt no sorrow about it. The love which I had felt for my mother was now firmly fixed upon Melusine, who was just as pretty, and just as sweet-scented, and who never pushed me away. When Henry moved, with my Cousin Ralph, out of the Children’s Dorter at Easter he gave up his lessons, as I had known he would, but, as was the way at Beauclaire, a custom once established went on and on, and it would not surprise me if, in that house, one lady went on opening the Book Room and spending three evenings in it every week, with or without a pupil until the Wars of the Roses brought all those great houses to ruin.

  For ruined they are. I have lived to see things change, and those great rambling houses where three hundred people would sit down to supper every evening, where any traveller of noble rank was welcomed like a brother, where everyone above the rank of knight had his own cook, and bloody battles – sometimes fatal – would be waged in the kitchens over who should use this hearth, this spit, they are gone. The wars between the Red Rose of Lancaster and the White Rose of York are blamed for the change, but I sometimes think they were bound to end, those great establishments, out of their own unwieldiness and waste. And perhaps because, under all the glitter and splendour there was something rotten, something that made human beings of small account, and wealth of too much.

  Helen Beaufort was older than I, and had already left the Children’s Dorter and joined the Ladies. This had two results for me. Although Helen welcomed the change and thought herself greatly superior to me now, she was lonely at first, and would seize opportunities to talk and tell me bits of gossip which I should not otherwise have heard. And, with her going I became the eldest in the Dorter, entrusted with certain duties and responsibilities and allowed, in return, certain small privileges. The one I valued most was to be allowed now and then, to go and read in the Book Room after supper. Whenever I had that permission I would tell Melusine and sometimes she would say that if she could slip away too, she would come and join me.

  One evening she had managed it and we were sitting close together on the bench, both reading from the same book, which was what I liked to do because it gave an excuse to press close to her. The writing of the book was poor and difficult to read, but the story was so interesting that we read on, taking turns to read a piece.

  All at once the door flew open, and when we looked up, startled, it was to see Ella and two other young ladies with expressions of smiling mischief slowly changing to astonishment on their faces.

  One of them, Millibrand, said, ‘Holy Mother of God! It is true. She reads,’

  Melusine said, ‘What did you think I was doing?’ Her voice was cool, but her face was red-hot.

  ‘We couldn’t believe it,’ Philippa said, gazing round the small room.

  ‘There is a Welsh minstrel in the Long Gallery. To miss him, in order to brood over a book that smells of mould …’ She turned up her eyes, begging Heaven to witness the unlikelihood.

  ‘To miss him, in order to spy on me seems even poorer exchange,’ Melusine said.

  ‘Ah but–’ Ella began. Millibrand pulled her by the arm.

  ‘We are missing the music. Come along.’

  They ran away, laughing and rustling their dresses.

  I got up and closed the door which they had left open. As I sat down again Melusine put her arm around me and gave me a quick hug.

  ‘My good angel!’ she said.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Oh … well, if you had not been here they would have dragged me off with them.’

  Now that I was learning something which I enjoyed, and seeing so much of Melusine, and had lost all trace of homesickness, I was happy at Beauclaire, and my eleventh birthday, bringing with it the thought that the coming summer would be my last, saddened me. I began wondering whether it would be possible for me to stay and in the end join the ladies in the WellYard Room, instead of being uprooted again and going to Clevely. It was plain to me that I wasn’t wanted at home, and so long as I stayed away I couldn’t see that it mattered to anyone but me, where I was. Walter and I had now become competitive about our writing and sent letters to one another twice or three times a year; I would write to him, I thought, early in the summer, perhaps at Whitsun, and ask him to ask Mother if I might remain at Beauclaire. Walter was to me, now, hardly a memory; I had changed so much in these three years, I knew he must have, too; he had become somebody whose writing remained much neater and more stylish than mine, try how I would.

  With the summer life at Beauclaire always became very gay; besides the big Tournament, regularly held on St. Barnabas’ Day, there were several smaller ones, and there were many unplanned entertainments, too; wandering players would come and perform their mysteries, jugglers their tricks, sword-swallowers and fire-eaters their seeming miracles. Most of these delights we children were allowed to share, increasingly so as we grew older. There had at one time been talk of two young children coming into the Dorter, but Dame Margery had argued against it; Constance was now ‘getting off her hands’ she said, and she herself too old to start all over again. So in that summer of my eleventh year, when even Constance could stay up late without yawning or falling asleep where she sat, we had more fun than ever before.

  One day in June – I remember that the garlands and banners from our Tournament were still up – there was a bear-baiting. We children took our places, at the back of the Ladies’ Stand. I saw Helen Beaufort
sit with the grown-ups, and reminded myself that I had not yet written that letter to Walter. It again seemed unfair, and unnecessary, that next year I should go to Clevely, and should have borne all Dame Margery’s training, for nothing.

  I’d watched bear-baiting before and never been squeamish about it, but on this evening something happened to me. I stopped being Maude Reed, a spectator up in the stands, and entered into the feelings of the bear. I may be wrong, but I think learning to read had had an effect on me. When you read you must get out of your own skin and into the skin of the people you are reading about, that is the only way to enjoy it.

  They’d cut the bear’s nose, both to make him savage and to let the dogs smell blood to make them savage, and I began by having a pain in my nose; then, as the fight went on pains went all over me, particularly low down in my body, where I had never had a pain before, and between my thighs. I sighed and shifted about on the seat and Dame Margery looked at me reprovingly.

  It was a remarkably good bear; dog after dog it dealt with. Now and again, when a dog was clawed or crushed or bitten my feelings went that way for a moment or two, but in the main I was with the bear, I was the bear.

  Everybody became excited. The ladies, who must, in all circumstances remain well-behaved, smiled and clapped their hands and made little murmuring or squeaking sounds; the gentlemen were more noisy, wagering money on whether a dog would ‘score’ or not, a ‘score’ meaning a bite which held while one could count up to five; they shouted, and laughed, and yelled the counts aloud and groaned when a dog they had backed was shaken off too soon.

  Presently, even from where we sat we could smell the blood.

  Then somebody called,

  ‘Try two dogs at once.’ So they did and the bear dealt with them gallantly and cleverly.

  The dogs – some were strays that had been collected and kept for such an occasion, or young hounds which had something wrong with them which made them of no value to their proper sphere – were let loose from one end of the tourney ground, and presently, from that end there was a cry, ‘Only one dog left, my Lords and Ladies.’

  Then it’ll soon be over, I thought; and despite all his wounds the bear will have won.

  But somebody shouted, ‘Blind the bear!’ and somebody else called for pepper.

  After all that, to have pepper thrown in his eyes.

  I knew then that I was going to be sick. I was surprised. The pain in my body hadn’t been anything like the belly-ache which often ends in sickness. Nevertheless, I was going to be sick. I pressed my hands over my mouth and made for the stairs which led down from the stand. I was near them, and did not have to push past Dame Margery. I just blundered down and to the back of the stand and then I was sick.

  I couldn’t go back. Never willingly would I watch a bear-baiting again. I didn’t much want to go into the house, either. It would be deserted. Some other entertainment was to follow the baiting, tumblers or mummers were to perform by torchlight. I’d walk about for a little while, I thought, and then, when the poor wretched bear had been taken away, and sand spread over the blood patches, creep back into my place.

  From the tourney ground the nearest pleasant place for walking was the old Low Garden, so I went there, not minding being alone there, partly because being alone out of doors was never quite so uncomfortable to me as being alone within walls, and partly because somewhere, at the far end of the Low Garden there was the Maze and near-by, keeping his watch, would be one of the old men. I didn’t go near the Maze, though, I stayed on a path edged by ancient rose bushes, so long unclipped that they were almost wild again, but covered with a profusion of flowers, pale pink, striped with deeper colour, and very fragrant. In the mild evening air they shed their scent and I breathed it in gladly after the reek of blood and terror in the tourney ground.

  I walked up and down the path, and every time I turned I could see, at the other side of the over-grown garden, the tall blackish-green hedge which walled in the Maze; and one time, as I turned and looked that way I saw two figures standing just inside the entry of it. At first my only feeling was of surprise because I had imagined that everybody was at the bear-baiting. As I looked, wondering who they were, and wondering also why they had avoided the entertainment, whether they had at one time been sickened, too, they moved together and so stood in a long embrace.

  By this time, from my reading, from talks with Melusine, from gossiping with Helen and from merely being alive and not stone deaf, I had picked up all there was to know about the relationship between men and women. I knew exactly why this pair had been in the Maze rather than at the baiting and I wondered whether they knew about the constant guard. Then I remembered that the old man had asked me to call out so that he could know my whereabouts, and thought with some relief that that showed that he could not see clear into the Maze, he could only watch the entry.

  The man of this pair, whom I did not recognize, broke from the woman’s arms and walked briskly away in a direction which would take him to the stable yard. The woman stood still for a moment or two and then took a path which would eventually meet, in a corner, the one upon which I stood. She had hardly taken four steps before I recognized her; it was Melusine. I knew by the way she walked. Recognition had been slow because she was wearing a new dress, scarlet, a colour she never wore, and a narrow, steeple head-dress instead of a wide, horned one.

  My first impulse was to run and meet her, then I thought better of it. This had been a secret rendezvous, she might be displeased to know that it had been – at the end – overlooked. So instead of running to meet her where the paths joined, I drew back, and then, when she had passed, followed her. If she went into the house then I could go into the house too. A little time in her company would be far more delightful to me than the best entertainment in the world.

  At the end of the path she turned towards the house, not towards the tourney ground, and I followed her, keeping my distance all the time. I reached the Well Yard and was inside the deep porch when my Uncle Godfrey’s voice hailed me.

  ‘The baiting – is it over?’

  I told him no, I had come in because I felt slightly unwell. He laid one of his hard hands against my neck, just under the ear, held it there a moment and said,

  ‘No fever.’ He smiled and said he hoped I should feel better soon. That emboldened me to ask why he was not at the tourney ground and he said that he had been watching poultices applied to the leg of his destrier, Tristram, which had suffered a slight injury in the Tournament.

  ‘Will he be better in time for the Dover Meeting?’

  ‘It’s to be hoped so,’ he said, and we parted. I was inside the Well Yard room before my mind took notice of the fact that the man who had stood with Melusine just inside the Maze had worn a yellow doublet, and that my uncle was wearing that colour.

  I knew by this time that my uncle was a knight without any land or other source of income and that this was an unenviable thing to be. He had, more than once, tried to marry an heiress whose parents or guardians, in their turn, were looking out for a husband with money, and his efforts in this direction were now so bruited abroad that parents or guardians of heiresses looked at him a bit askance. That is what I mean when I say that the whole society of which Beauclaire was a sample was too much concerned with money. My Uncle Godfrey was handsome, kind, good-humoured, and acknowledged to be one of the best knights – some said the very best – in all the South of England. He was a man whom any girl could have been pleased and proud to marry, but he had no money, he could not be seriously considered. On the other hand he was extremely popular with the ladies. In a strange, entirely false, stilted way it was the fashion, just then, for any married woman who was not positively repulsive in appearance, to have a string of adorers who pretended to be in love with her. Perhaps pretended is a harsh word, some of them did, perhaps cherish a hopeless passion; now and again perhaps a lady would slip from virtue, but it was rare; as a general rule the ladies wore their lovers and flaunted them
as they wore and flaunted their jewels. Before a Tournament, for example, there was a competition amongst the ladies to count how many knights begged the honour of wearing their favours, just as fierce as the competition presently to be waged in the lists. There was a secret and very subtle game to be played with colours. A knight might ask a lady for a favour, a glove, a scarf, a sleeve to wear in the next event; he might be refused because her favour was already given; he would find out from her body servant what colour of gown she intended to wear, and then he would ride out on the day wearing somewhere about him, that same colour. In this custom lay the origin of the ladies’ hatred for having a gown the same colour as another’s. There was another variation of the game, too. The ladies would go to great lengths and show much ingenuity in showing their preferences; my uncle’s name being Blanchefleur their task was easy, and at many a Meeting I have seen a dozen women wearing a white flower as a sign that they wished him well and had faith in his prowess. Officially my Uncle Godfrey ‘belonged’ to my Lady Astallon, he was her kin by marriage, he was part of her husband’s household, and she was very beautiful in the manner most admired just then, unreal, inhuman, with her shaved eyebrows and her hair plucked out all about her forehead to make her brow look high and the hair line as even as though it had been painted.

  I thought of all this as I went into the Well Yard Room, and found it empty. I went on to the Stool Room, Melusine was not there, but she had been, just before me, I could smell her gilly-flower water fragrance through the faint, stored-up, stink of the place. As I rang the bell I wondered had she gone into the Book Room. But when I reached the door it was locked. I turned back and at the place where two passages joined saw two old women; one had the bucket and jug of her occupation, the other carried a mug wrapped in a piece of flannel.

  ‘Traipse, traipse, traipse,’ said the stool-emptier, bitterly, ‘all day long. And my feet as tender as the bird of your eye.’

  ‘But on the level,’ said the other. ‘Them stairs are my undoing. And I’ll swear there’s such a call for ginger, some of ‘em must come round twice a month.’