by Deryn Lake
Despite the importance of the occasion there were some notable absences. The most senior of these was John’s mother, who was now confined to bed with what she termed a frail heart. Regardless of this disability she tackled three full meals a day and several snacks in between, her latest pug dog lying at her side, snaffling what crumbs and morsels it could.
Sir William Goring — Elizabeth’s guardian — was not present as he no longer wished to associate himself with the Sutton Place ‘sinners’, as he termed them. From his mouth there increasingly poured forth talk of the Lord’s will, but from his eye peered out a leering goat. He lived on a desert island of his own cruelty.
Neither of the brothers Gage were there. The Viscount — the elder — had been ostracized as a result of renouncing the Catholic faith for the paltry reason of saving his Flemish coach-horses, officially seized during the ill-fated Jacobite uprising of 1715. And Joseph, as always, was about the world of his mysterious business. He had sent Melior Mary an emerald the size of a tiger’s eye for her birthday.
Naturally Alexander Pope was not invited, though he was whispered of by half of those present. If he had been well-known when Elizabeth had run away, now he was famous. His burning talent had swept all before him as his translation of the Iliad became available in bookshops everywhere. And he also had a new preoccupation in place of Mrs Weston. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, a woman with literary aspirations, now held sway in his brilliant heart. Jenny Nelson, who had betrayed both him and Elizabeth to John, had been dropped from the visiting list of the Westons of Sutton Place.
But, despite these absences — or perhaps because of them — Melior Mary’s fourteenth birthday assembly was spoken of by all, that summer. The brilliant setting, the wealth of the host, but above all the looks of his daughter. It was generally agreed that Melior Mary was Titania incarnate.
‘She shall break a few hearts,’ they said. ‘Think of all that beauty and all that fortune.’
They had reckoned without something; in fact did not know it. She was the heir to the Manor of Sutton and the curse she inherited with that position respected neither beauty nor ugliness, riches nor poverty. She was already in danger.
*
The summer continued, bright and unusually hot. And on the last day of August the sun blazed, as fierce as a fireball, from the moment it rose. It was the type of day when two girls, uncurbed by their governess, might well go to the river and swim — if they knew how. But at least they could remove their stockings and shoes and cool their feet in the clear water. Seized simultaneously by the same thought, Melior Mary and Sibella slipped quietly out of the mansion and headed off through the park.
Many years before, during the reign of Charles I, the third Sir Richard Weston — grandson of Sir Henry, the Hero of Calais, and great-grandson of young Sir Francis, who had lost his head — had had the notion of canalizing the River Wey to water his meadows at Sutton Place, and had made a cut three miles long, greatly improving his property.
‘He was devious,’ Melior Mary had told Sibella. ‘For though he appeared to be a harmless and eccentric agriculturalist he was, in truth, a fierce Royalist and a great trouble-maker for the Protectorate. He was forced abroad and was labelled delinquent, so they say.’
‘And he was great-grandfather to your father?’
‘Yes.’
Now, on this fine morning, with the Stuarts banished from England but sympathies for their Royal House still running high in Sutton Place, Sir Richard the third’s young descendant tucked her skirt up beneath her sleeves and began to wade into the canal that he had created. Sibella hung back for a second or two, her eyes — cool as the water that flowed before her — sweeping the landscape. Since first light she had had the unsettling feeling of someone unknown coming into their lives and there, by the river, the premonition was unusually strong.
Yet nobody appeared to be in sight, and she was just preparing to join Melior Mary when she heard a piercing shriek and saw her friend, tipped up like an outlandish swan, threshing wildly with her billowing dress.
Standing helplessly on the bank, skirts in her hands but unable to swim, Sibella was about to wade out, when she suddenly found herself pushed roughly aside and a man dived into the water almost over her shoulder. She knew at once that the momentous meeting had taken place — that nothing at Sutton Place could ever be the same again, that fate had caught them all up.
Downstream, the man had grasped Melior Mary beneath the arms and was swimming on his back towards the side. Sibella hurried towards them, picking up his jacket and his leather hat. And as she did so she noticed, almost dreamily, that he had pinned a bunch of wild hyacinths to the brim in the place where there would normally have been a feather.
Kneeling down, she extended her arm over the water but the young man ignored it, stepping out of the bankless canal and dropping Melior Mary on the grass, for all the world as if she had been a drowning kitten. He next shook himself so that droplets of water showered everywhere. Then he bowed before Sibella so low that his hair brushed against her naked feet.
His features were delicate — like those of the archangel Gabriel — and his look of the heavenly host was further enhanced by the same hair that had swept against her toes. For it curled about his face, thick as an aureole, the colour of wild damsons and with the same texture. By rights these things should have made him girlish, a mince-walker. But he was saved from that by a certain broadness of feature and strength of mouth and jaw, at odds with the sweep of his curling lashes and unusual eyes — the blue of the flowers he had pinned to his hat. His body was slight, elegant, but for all that strong and tough, as contradictory as his face.
Yet he could have had any looks, been as ugly as a toad, and defied it. For from him pulsated, tangibly, a zest for life. That he had overcome sadness Sibella felt sure, but nothing of it showed on him. He was eager as a young hound set for the chase. Love for him welled in her heart. She recognized him instantly as the part of herself that sang and shouted, just as she had recognized in Joseph all that was beautiful and splendid and rare.
‘Who are you?’ she said.
‘Matthew Banister. I have come to Sutton Place looking for Mrs Weston.’ He peered to where Melior Mary lay coughing upon the bank. ‘Surely that cannot be she?’
Sibella stared at him in surprise.
‘That is Melior Mary, her daughter!’
She saw him screw up his eyes and peer more closely.
‘Why yes — it’s a young girl,’ he said. ‘The silver hair deceived me.’ He smiled a little apologetically. ‘I am very poorly sighted. Only vanity prevents me from wearing spectacles all the time.’
‘You are right,’ she said. ‘You have beautiful eyes. It would be a pity to hide them.’
‘Nonetheless,’ he said — and taking a pair of steel-rimmed magnifiers from his pocket put them on the end of his nose. His eyes suddenly loomed large, a haze of dazzling blue.
‘Do I know you?’ he said, suddenly regarding her intently.
‘We have never met,’ she answered.
But she was not telling all the truth. She knew that she had stood like this, in much the same surroundings, seeing the thick curled head fling itself back as he watched her. They had been together before — but not in a time or place that either of them could at present remember.
‘How strange,’ he answered. ‘You seem familiar to me.’
She would not answer, merely saying, ‘So you know Mrs Weston?’
Matthew shook his head.
‘No, I have never met her. It was the Banisters of Calais — my cousins — who told me that I would find employment at Sutton Place. They wrote to her on my behalf, I believe.’
They were so interested in one another that the gasping Melior Mary had gone completely out of their minds. Now they both jumped as she groaned and sat up. The Beauty was looking her absolute worst. A fact which, for no reason that she could explain, gave the usually kind Sibella a thrill of pleasure. Rivalry was in the air
so strongly one could almost sniff it.
Aware of nothing, Melior Mary was struggling to her feet. Her dress, which had started life that morning as pink and pretty, was a torn dishrag; her hair a witch’s straggle; her eyes purplish and staring; her skin the colour of parchment.
‘God’s wounds and zoonters, I’m sick fit to die,’ she said.
For answer Matthew laughed and Sibella saw Melior Mary’s eyes — the colour of which was already becoming something of a legend — narrow. The Beauty was mentally stamping her foot. Sibella was aware of the crossing of a bridge, of the leaving behind of total harmony, of the end of childhood. She made one final effort to restore the old ways.
‘Come, you’re shivering,’ she said. ‘We must go back to Sutton Place. This is Matthew Banister who is looking for your mother. Shall he walk with us?’
‘He can do more than that,’ came the sharp retort. ‘He can carry me. I’m weak as a child.’
She was being deliberately imperious but Matthew simply smiled and took off his spectacles, putting them in the pocket of his jacket. It was beautiful — made of doeskin — and, as he put it on, its softness moulded his body. He suddenly seemed very kind, as if the sweet leather had rubbed some of its gentleness off on him. Sibella found herself full of anxiety. Melior Mary had great power, even if she was not yet totally aware of it, and Matthew Banister’s harmless mockery had thrown down the first challenge she had ever had from a man.
‘Come along then,’ he said.
He was unmoved by her. He thought her a plain child. Sibella sensed his danger and, once again, the feeling of familiarity engulfed her. She longed to protect him — as she knew she had done before. But she said nothing as the three of them set off for the mansion.
Looking through her bedroom window Elizabeth, who had woken late and was breakfasting in bed, could hardly believe her eyes as the raggle-taggle party came into view, tramping through the gardens towards the back of the house.
Throwing a dressing gown over her night attire she hurried down the stairs and so it was, with herself standing on the bottom step, that she first met the stranger who was to alter the lives of them all.
The lively hair bounced as he bowed before her.
‘Mrs Weston?’
She nodded her head.
‘I am Matthew Banister.’
‘Ah yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve been expecting you. Welcome to Sutton Place.’
7
By the light of a rather poor candle Alexander Pope was writing to Charles Rackett, his brother-in-law.
‘Dear Brother,
I hope to be with you on Monday next. If you don’t see me that night I desire you to send a Man and Horse (such a one as I may ride safely) on Tuesday...’
He jotted down a few more instructions but not being in the mood for one of his lengthier outpourings simply put:
‘...which being all the business of the letter I shall add no more than that I am my Sister’s and
Yours, most affectionately,
A. Pope’
He put the date — 7 September 1717 — blew out the candle and tried to sleep. But he could not. He was venturing into Weston territory, planning to stay with his sister who had resumed her friendship with Elizabeth. And for all his passion for the witty Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, for all his defiance of the world in the face of his dwarfish condition, something had taken place between him and Elizabeth that transcended physical love. He imagined that she was destined to be the great fixation of his life. He finally fell asleep with the lines of Elegy to the Memory of an Unfortunate Lady, the poem he had written to her after their parting — now, to his amusement, something of a literary mystery — going through his mind like a treadmill.
*
With many silver candelabra throwing an excellent light on his writing desk John Weston picked up his quill pen and wrote a brief letter to his friend Charles Rackett.
‘Sir,
Our Ladies do Design to wait on you and Mrs Rackett tomorrow at Dinner if not inconvenient to you. We all desire that you would make no strangers of us. In which you will Add much to the Obligations of
Your Real Friend,
John Weston.’
He wrote the date 9 September 1717 — then snuffing out the candles went to bed.
The reply duly having come by return that the Racketts would be at home, the next afternoon saw Elizabeth, Melior Mary and Sibella in a flurry of preparation which drove John out to ride with Matthew Banister until the house grew calmer.
Elizabeth, standing by the window in the light airiness of her bedroom, saw them go and smiled. Since Matthew’s arrival John had improved even further in temperament. It was as if he had always sought a boy’s company, looked for the son that she had never provided.
And she was still smiling when Clopper walked in, bearing the great hooped and embroidered petticoat and dress that she was to wear that evening. Elizabeth composed her features and stepped out of her dressing gown so that the maid might begin the lengthy process of adorning her mistress.
Bridget Clopper had always been something of a mystery. A pretty woman, probably about thirty years old, she had joined the staff at Sutton Place when she had been ten or eleven, and had been in residence when Elizabeth had come to the mansion house as a bride. That she had borne a child by John Weston Elizabeth had no doubt. Their intimacy had been unquestionably revealed when he had kidnapped Melior Mary from the house in Windsor.
And to add proof to Elizabeth’s suspicion there was Sam, a large pleasant odd job boy with an identical build to John’s and a strong look of Clopper about his face. He had, in the traditional manner, been found on the kitchen doorstep of Sutton Place in a neat, clean basket and wearing neat, clean clothes. There had been nudges and winks then as a directive had come from the master that the baby was to be kept and reared. And speculation had run high when fourteen-year-old Bridget — recently returned from a suspiciously long visit to her aunt — had been appointed his keeper. But despite all this Clopper’s allegiance had been with Elizabeth, and she had risen from kitchen girl to personal maid, apparently quite unconcerned by the fact that she had once rolled around the hayloft with her mistress’s husband.
The thought now being uppermost in her mind, Elizabeth said, ‘How is Sam?’ and the odd look that always crossed Clopper’s face when the boy’s name was mentioned appeared momentarily before she said, ‘He’s learning to read and write.’
‘Oh?’
‘That Matthew boy is teaching him. He’s making a lot of changes at Sutton Place.’
Personal servants were as intimate as friends, so Elizabeth laughed and said, ‘Is he?’
‘Yes, with the young ladies too.’
The pull on Elizabeth’s corset was painful and she grimaced a little as she said, ‘What do you mean?’
‘What I say, Mrs Elizabeth. They’re changing too. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘Don’t pull quite so tightly. No I haven’t, really.’
She felt a little guilty. She had been too absorbed in her husband of late, had spent too many hours thinking of the particular magic they had found together, to pay much attention to her daughter and Sibella.
‘How have they changed?’
‘Melior Mary is quite the Beauty these days. She spends a deal of time smiling at herself in the looking glass.’
Elizabeth paused as the difficult job of stepping into her hoops was negotiated before she said, ‘Does she? Well perhaps there’s no harm in that. I’ve always thought her far too much of a tomboy.’
And it was true. Melior Mary had, in the past, developed her own highly original style of life, in tune with the wildness that flowed in her blood from generations of adventurers; to say nothing of the gypsies who had sired her grandfather. She had an almost obsessive love of investigation, of seeing for herself if horses were fast, if trees were hard to climb, if stable boys could be teased and not fight hack. Yet the girl was charming. There was nothing in her of unkindness or cruelty and sh
e would have given the clothes off her back to a beggar child that might come crying to the kitchens. Furthermore she was bright and amusing with a quick wit and smile that encouraged others to join in. All in all Melior Mary had the making of a high-stirruped young Beauty, destined to make a great and brilliant match, and Elizabeth was relieved to hear that her daughter was showing signs of change at last.
Clopper had begun the difficult task of lacing up the enormous petticoat, heavy with brilliants, and was clucking under her breath with the effort.
‘I think you’re plumper, Mrs Elizabeth.’
‘Oh don’t say that for the love of Heaven.’
‘It is supposed to be the sign of a contented life.’
‘More like middle age. Pull in as tight as you can. And what of Sibella?’
‘She’s always in a dream these days. If you ask me it’s time a husband was thought of.’
Elizabeth made no answer. The petticoat was in place and the full-trained gown was now going over her head. She made this the excuse for her silence hut really she was thinking that Sibella would be sixteen next spring and after that an eligible husband could, in truth, be sought.
But in her bedroom — the intervening door that led to Melior Mary’s room for once being closed — Sibella, unaware of such schemes, sat quietly gazing at a small locket which she had taken from around her neck. When open it showed a miniature of her mother, Amelia, but at the moment she held it closed, simply looking at its bright gold surface. As sometimes happened when she did this, pictures would form in the reflection, and now one was coming of Elizabeth. For a second or two she stared at it uncomprehendingly, and then she laughed out loud with pleasure. Her adopted mother was with child! She concentrated hard on seeing more but the picture faded. The flash of clear sight was at an end. She was putting the locket back about her neck when her maid knocked and walked in, her hands full of ribbons and feathers.