‘I’ll have to go back to Riverside to make sure it’s in good order for when I bring my bride home,’ George Hillman said. ‘But before I go, Master Stannard, Mistress Stannard, I must talk to you about the relatives and friends I’d like to ask to my wedding, and you must tell me how big an affair you wish it to be. I shall be sorry to leave you, Meg, but I shall be back before long and then we won’t be parted again.’
Meg gazed at him admiringly. Yes, I thought as they stood before us on the terrace, hand in hand, glowing with joy because we had said yes, they were a heart-warming sight. George Hillman was a fine young man; Cecil was right there. His crisp red-brown hair had the patina of health proper to a man in his twenties; his eyes, which matched them, were straightforward and smiling; his open, suntanned face was full of good humour. Meg would be safe with him.
As for my dark-haired, dark-eyed daughter (who was also suntanned; in summer Meg could never preserve a fashionable pallor), Sybil was right about her. Meg was a young woman and no mere child. I could do nothing but say: ‘The time will pass quickly while he’s away, Meg. We have a guest list to prepare, your bride clothes to make ready, a feast to create. We shall be busy. And I wish happiness to you both, with all my heart.’
Late in the evening, when Hugh and I had withdrawn to our chamber, which was above the terrace and therefore overlooked the rose garden, I glanced from the window, and there the two of them still were, enjoying the cool at the end of the long summer day, walking side by side among the flowers.
I turned to Hugh, and he said: ‘There are tears in your eyes, my Little Bear. Why?’
‘They’re so happy. So young. They don’t know!’
‘Know what? Come here.’ The bed curtains were open in the warm air, and Hugh, wrapped in a loose gown, had sat down on the edge of the bed. I went to him, and he slid an arm round me. ‘What is the matter, Ursula?’
‘They’re looking forward to being happy. But one day, one of them . . . will have to watch the other die. As I watched Meg’s father die. I sat and listened to him while his breathing grew fainter and slower. He was unconscious. I didn’t want him to be conscious; not covered in smallpox sores like that. But while he was breathing, he was still with me. And then it stopped, and although all around me everything looked just the same, I knew it wasn’t. All in a moment, my world had fallen apart. I was a widow, not a wife. I couldn’t see where I was going any more. And one day—’
I broke off. Then I said: ‘I shouldn’t be talking to you like this. It’s not fair. Gerald has been gone ten years. You’re my husband now and—’
‘I am fifty-seven, soon to be fifty-eight. You are still only thirty-six. One day, very likely, you will have to go through something similar with me. I realize that. I am not always in good health, and I know you worry about me sometimes . . .’
I nodded, looking at him gravely. Hugh had blue eyes, and when I first met him, some years ago, their colour had been very bright. I had noticed that lately it had faded somewhat. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Perhaps that is in my mind as well as Meg and George.’
‘One could say,’ said Hugh comfortably, tightening his arm, ‘that precious things are apt to be expensive. Loss, bereavement – I was widowed twice before I met you. I know all about them. But would you rather have gone all your life unmarried, with no love to warm you at night, and no Meg, either? And would you want that for her?’
‘No, of course not! Of course I don’t want her to miss . . . the lovely things of life.’
‘Well, then. Take heart. Pray that when the bad time comes for them, whichever one is left behind, he or she will say, well, it was worth it and I’d do it all again. And by the way, I am not jealous of Gerald’s memory. He was Meg’s father, and it’s right that you should remember him. I’m not jealous of Matthew, either, and he isn’t even dead.’
Matthew de la Roche had been my second husband. I had lived with him in France for a while, and with him I had scaled the very heights of passion. But I had never known peace. He was an enemy to England and to Elizabeth, and she had stepped in. I had left Meg in England and been drawn back to my homeland because she needed me. Elizabeth kept me there. I was too useful for her to let me slip away. She had arranged that Matthew and I should each be told that the other had died, and unknown to me at the time, she had annulled our marriage as well. By the time I discovered that Matthew was still alive, he was married again and a father, and I was married to Hugh.
I said: ‘I couldn’t go back to him. I came to see that, eventually. He was always plotting, plotting, to do harm to England, to the queen.’
‘But you did love him,’ Hugh said soberly. ‘And I’ll never forget how touched I was when you told me that you preferred to stay with me. And now, Little Bear, come to bed and leave those two out there to their romantic transports. I think we can still manage some transports of our own.’
‘They’re behaving very soberly,’ I said. ‘Sybil’s on the terrace, watching them, but I don’t think they need watching.’
‘Probably not. George is most unlikely to overstep the line, and certainly not in my garden. Come.’
We slid under the sheets. Hugh’s arms wrapped me round, and heat began to glow between us. I abandoned myself gladly, without fear. He’d had two marriages before ours but he’d never sired children and to me this was a relief. I’d had a bad time with Meg and had nearly died in France, trying to give Matthew a son. The baby did die, poor thing. In Hugh’s embraces, I felt safe.
We decided that Meg should be married from Hawkswood and not from our Sussex house, Withysham. I was fond of Withysham, which was mine, since Hugh had never laid claim to it, though as my husband he could have done so, but Hawkswood was by far the finer property.
Withysham had once been an abbey and still had a slightly ecclesiastical air about it. It was built of grey stone, with pointed windows, many of them narrow, so some of its rooms were forever dim. Hawkswood was a grey stone house as well, but it was full of light, with generously proportioned rooms including a fine great hall with a minstrels’ gallery and big, modern mullioned windows that Hugh had had installed.
The house also had two parlours, one big and one small, and a little downstairs room with linenfold panelling that Hugh used as a study. There he had a desk, a writing set, a supply of paper and a small abacus, and there we worked together while preparing plans for the wedding. There was much to do. After George had left for Riverside, we found ourselves deep in consultation for a couple of hours on most days.
On the last day of July, the matter under discussion was the final guest list. ‘George only wants to bring ten guests,’ I said, picking up the sheet of names he had left with us. ‘He hasn’t much family – just two cousins, one with a family, and some friends.’
‘And on our side . . .’ Hugh had been making notes. ‘You’ll want the Hendersons – they used to look after Meg for you whenever you had to leave her, didn’t they? Meg’s Uncle Ambrose, I suppose, with his wife Anne. They are her kinfolk, after all, on her father’s side. Do they have children?’
‘Two girls in their teens,’ I said. ‘We’d better invite the girls to be bridesmaids. It would be polite, though neither Meg nor I have ever seen them. I hope they’re pretty!’
‘Bridesmaids,’ said Hugh thoughtfully. ‘But doesn’t Meg want Christina Cobbold to carry her train?’
Meg and Christina had not met often, but they had become friends, just the same. Meg had been disappointed over not being invited to Alice’s wedding, because it meant missing a chance of seeing Christina. Jane Cobbold, I thought crossly, was a muddlehead. It was just like her not to make it clear that we were free to bring Meg – or Sybil, for that matter – if we wished.
‘So that means,’ said Hugh with a chuckle, ‘that we have to have the Cobbolds, and therefore we’ll have to leave the Ferrises off the list.’
‘Oh, the Ferrises!’ I said with exasperation.
It was an absurd situation which caused quite a lot of amusement i
n the Woking area and beyond, but it also had a serious side. Other people might laugh at it, but the Cobbolds and the Ferrises did not.
The Ferrises lived in a handsome house called White Towers, not all that far from Cobbold Hall. Hugh in his youth had known the grandfather of Walter, the present Master Ferris, slightly and Walter’s father quite well, but the friendship between Hawkswood and White Towers had faded after the older men were dead. For a good thirty years now, Hugh of Hawkswood and Walter of White Towers had just been acquaintances. For one thing, the Ferrises were Catholic and Walter took religious differences more seriously than his forebears had.
I had only met him twice. The first time had been five years earlier, when Hugh and I were first married. We had received a civil invitation to dine at White Towers. We had tried to return the compliment, but the Ferrises were just about to leave for a visit to kinsfolk in the north, and somehow it had never happened. Then, the following Christmas, we came across Walter and his family at a big gathering in Guildford, the county town. But that was all.
I wasn’t sorry. I didn’t like the Ferrises much more than I liked Jane Cobbold. Walter’s wife Bridget was a good-looking woman, but she had a stiff, cold manner that I found off-putting, and on both occasions she was accompanied by a very vocal lapdog, which interrupted conversation with its yapping. Walter was simply commonplace, dull to talk to, and humourless. Both times, we had met their son and daughter, who were then in their teens. In their parents’ presence, they were so respectfully silent that they had left no impression on me at all, but I remembered wondering what life in the Ferris household could be like, if the young people were so colourless.
What had left an impression on me, as it did on the whole locality, was the socially inconvenient state of affairs between the Cobbolds and the Ferrises. The two families could not appear on the same guest list, ever, and those whose duty it was to convene juries knew better than to summon Walter Ferris and Anthony Cobbold to the same one.
‘I wonder how many generations it will last,’ I said. ‘And it’s all because the paternal grandfathers of Walter Ferris and Anthony Cobbold fell in love with the same girl and quarrelled over her. One really would think it would be forgotten by now!’
‘Oh, there was more to it than that,’ Hugh said. ‘I suppose you’ve never heard the full story. I rarely bother to talk about it. It irritates me too much. And the rest of the locality have taken it for granted so long that other people don’t talk about it either. The two grandfathers were apparently ardent gamblers. They decided to have a race on horseback, and the loser would withdraw his suit to the young lady. Anthony’s grandfather lost but accused Walter’s grandfather of cheating by nobbling the Cobbold horse.’
‘How?’
‘By bribing one of the Cobbold grooms to give the poor animal a bucket of water just before the race. I believe it! I can remember Walter’s grandad quite clearly, and even in old age he had mischief in his eyes and an iron determination to have his own way at all times. The story came out because the little daughter of the bribed groom saw her father take the bucket into the stall and, later on, prattled about it. The result of that was a furore and a duel – no one was killed, but both men were wounded, though not seriously.’
‘Did one of them marry the girl who caused it all?’
‘No, the young lady very sensibly refused to have any more to do with either of them. Her parents found her someone else, and the two rival swains found other brides. But they hated each other from then on. Since then, ricks have been mysteriously burned and gates have been opened at dead of night so that cattle have got out of their fields and eaten crops . . . and thirty years ago, Walter Ferris’s father was murdered though no one was ever arrested for it.’
‘Murdered! And the Cobbolds were suspected?’ I said.
Hugh sighed. ‘Anthony’s father was suspected, to be precise. Nothing was proved. Walter’s father went out one day to ride round his home farm. His horse came back without him, and he was found lying at the edge of a wheat field, stabbed. Because he didn’t die in bed of some well-attested illness, the Ferrises were quite likely to accuse a Cobbold, with or without any evidence. Maybe things would never have come to such a pass if the two families didn’t live only two miles apart. It’s so easy for them to get at each other. Mind you, it probably was Anthony’s father who did it. The Ferrises were very likely right.’
‘What a dreadful story.’
‘It’s an uncomfortable situation,’ Hugh said. ‘Not that it matters too much to me. I’m happy to be on friendly terms with the Cobbolds and keep the Ferrises at arm’s length. Walter Ferris will get into trouble one of these days. He and his family turn up now and then at the Anglican church to conform with the law, but everyone knows that their steward is also a Catholic priest and says Mass for them in private. Not that that’s the reason why Anthony Cobbold hates them or vice versa. The hatred comes from the old feud. They traditionally loathe each other, and that’s that.’
‘Oh well,’ I said. ‘We’ll just have the Cobbolds, and never mind about the Ferrises. Who else? Oh, shall we ask those two ladies – Mrs Seldon and Mrs Ward? We met them at the Cobbold wedding, if you remember. The ones who are skilled at music. I took to them. I’d like to know them better.’
‘By all means,’ said Hugh, with a grin. ‘And their flirtatious little maidservant Bessie, too, the one who loves celebrations. We’ll have all three.’
‘Then there’s Aunt Tabitha and Uncle Herbert. I suppose I had better invite them. We’re on reasonably polite terms now.’
‘Invite them and hope they won’t come?’ said Hugh, still grinning.
‘More or less,’ I said with regret.
‘They can’t be ignored,’ Hugh said reasonably. ‘They may not have been so very kind to you and your mother, but they did shelter her when she came home from King Henry’s court in disgrace, and they did look after you, until you climbed out of a window in the middle of the night and ran off with the young man they wanted your cousin Mary to marry.’
‘They sheltered us,’ I agreed. ‘My mother and me. But no, they weren’t kind. I think that’s why my mother died so young. And I’m sure that Gerald was happier with me than he would ever have been with Mary. However, it’s all a long time ago and we’ve made it up since.’
‘You can’t blame them for being annoyed about your elopement!’
‘I don’t.’ Fleetingly, I remembered that night, and how I had scrambled out of a window, slid down some sloping tiles and a creeper and dropped the last few feet into Gerald’s waiting arms. My uncle and aunt had been understandably furious. However, fences had been mended since then. Our relationship would never be warm, but it was now civilized. ‘Put them on the list,’ I said. ‘Oh, and Sir William Cecil and his wife. We can ask them if they want to bring any of their children. I think that’s it. Now we have to settle what Meg should wear. I described Alice Cobbold’s gown to Meg, and she says she wants ivory damask too, but she’d like a pale-blue kirtle and sleeves, and she wants gold embroidery and a gold net for her hair. I can buy the net and the right kind of materials, all ready embroidered, in London.’
‘Is it legal? I mean, there are laws about who is entitled to wear gold,’ Hugh said, momentarily doubtful. Then he saw my expression and laughed. ‘Well, it ought to be legal for Meg. You were once a Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Elizabeth, and not only that.’
Quite. Meg was Elizabeth’s niece.
My parentage was another reason why Elizabeth had kept me in England and cut me off from Matthew. I could have been a valuable hostage, if France and England had ever gone to war.
But all that was in the past. The only significance my royal connection had now was that it conferred on me and on Meg the right to pack our hair into gold nets and wear gold embroidery, if we could afford it.
I leant back and stretched. ‘Meg must have plenty of trousseau gowns, and there will be a great deal of sewing to do. Sybil and Fran and I can do much of it, bu
t we’d welcome extra help. And I think we should have extra hands for the kitchen, too. I must send Roger Brockley to Guildford and Woking to get it cried in the streets that we need applicants. Hugh, I find I’m enjoying all this. I shall like being the mother of the bride.’
‘I thought you would,’ said Hugh, laughing.
I looked out at the grounds. The rose garden was past its best, but there were still bushes in bloom. Beyond lay the formal knot garden which was also our herb and kitchen garden, and beyond that I could glimpse the orchard, where a good crop of apples and cherries was ripening. In spring, their blossom was a marvel of which I never tired.
Over to the right, to the west, beyond a small poultry yard, was a paddock where some of our horses were grazing. I could see Roger Brockley at the gate, with one foot on its lowest rung, leaning over it to pet his cob, Brown Berry. He was very fond of the cob, and Berry always came to his call. My dappled mare, Roundel, was more skittish, and even Bay Gentle, Meg’s sweet-natured three-year-old mare, sometimes, when out at grass, teased us by being difficult to catch.
To the east, with a gate opening from the knot garden, was a beechwood, and beyond that was an ornamental lake where lilies grew in summer. Our home farm fields and cattle pastures lay beyond the lake, and I knew that our cows were there now, glossy with good grass and the sunshine on their backs. All was serenity and prosperity.
It had been in danger the previous year when, due to an unfortunate investment in a merchanting venture that failed when two ships were lost at sea, Hugh found himself in serious debt. The enquiry I had undertaken then had led me into danger but in the end had been successful and was so well paid for that the debt was cleared. Hawkswood was made safe, and I was as glad of that as Hugh was. I was content to be retired into country life, now that last year’s frightening Catholic rebellion in the north was over.
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