And happy he was. He sang at his work and watched for Caroline with eyes shining with content and certainty.
‘Ah, Mouse – do you know I truly thought it couldn’t happen to me!’ he laughed one day, a brotherly arm about Jessica’s shoulders as they sat on the riverbank and watched the slow movement of the drought-low water. ‘I’ve seen others struck down by love, and laughed at them for fools! Now I know – oh yes! – now I know who was the fool! Caroline loves me—’ He threw back his head and spoke to the bright sky. ‘Caroline loves me! And I have never known happiness before—’
Jessica wriggled from beneath his arm, and knelt beside him, her small face ferociously anxious. His words – the first open declaration of anything beyond friendship – had jolted her practical nature. This, surely, was going too far? Secret meetings and shared laughter were one thing – but love? Caroline Hawthorne and a penniless artist? She shook her head. ‘Danny!’
‘Mm?’
‘Danny – Caroline’s engaged to be married! It’s all arranged—’
He laughed. ‘And can be as easily unarranged, my Mouse.’
She stared at him in doubtful silence. ‘Have you spoken to Caroline about that?’
Not in the least perturbed he pulled her to him again, pushing her small nose with his finger. ‘Don’t worry, little one. All will be well, you’ll see. How could it not be? After your brother’s wedding – you’ll see – all will be arranged He stopped, lifting his head, face alight as Caroline appeared above them on the path. Swiftly he rose and ran to her. She, smiling, waited then lifted her arms to him. He swung her from her feet, then set her down and bent a dark head to kiss her.
Jessica, unnoticed, got to her feet and plodded off along the bank, leaving them to each other.
John it was who found her half an hour later, perched upon a fallen log, shoulders hunched, in the shadow of the bridge that carried the path that led to the Melford Road.
‘Why, Jessica, whatever’s the matter? You look as if you’ve lost sixpence and found a ha’penny.’ He was leading Old Jenny, who hobbled painfully beside him.
Jessica ducked her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s the matter.’
He tied the lame mare to the branch then pulled himself up beside her, one knee bent, his arm across it as he regarded his small sister, his pleasant sun-browned face concerned. ‘You’ve been crying.’
She shook her head.
‘Oh, come now – you can tell me. What’s upset you?’
‘Nothing.’ In the past half hour, on the heels of Danny’s happy confidence, she had for the first time truly thought about the consequences that might well – that would – follow any attempt by Danny and Caroline to carry their association any further than it had already gone. And had, strangely for the first time, forseen disaster. She nibbled her thumb.
He watched her in pensive silence, waiting. Solid, dependable, caring; should she tell him? At least share the worry—? The urge to confide in him suddenly was so great that it frightened her. She mustn’t! He was part of that world from which Danny must be protected at all costs. Danny himself did not realize his danger, she was sure, and Caroline was certainly too besotted herself to warn him. If John took her tale to Father, God alone knew what might happen. Sniffing she lifted her head defiantly. She had learned young that attack was a very fair means of defence. ‘You’ve done it again,’ she said.
He looked understandably confused. ‘I’m sorry?’
‘You’ve done it again. Gone off in the direction of Lavenham and then come back from Melford. I heard Caroline say you’d gone to visit those friends of the Helys again – and they’re supposed to live in Lavenham. Now you’ve come back this way – the wrong way – like you did the day of the storm. What are you up to? It isn’t like you to lie.’
The effect of her words shocked her. Her brother stared at her in silence for what seemed a very long time, and beneath the summer tan bright colour rose in his fair skin and then as suddenly died. Then abruptly he stood up and turned from her, staring across the river, eyes brooding, saying nothing.
‘John?’ She was hesitantly contrite. ‘I’m sorry – I didn’t mean to pry – I’m sure you have good reason to—’
He shook his head sharply, as if to clear it, ran a hand through his already tousled hair. ‘No. Don’t apologize. It’s I who should do that.’ He turned back to her, leaning against the log. For the first time she noticed tired lines of strain about his eyes. He drew a long, rueful breath. ‘I make a really terrible conspirator, don’t I? I can’t even deceive you. It really isn’t my line, I suppose—’
She watched him, puzzled, truly surprised that her selfdefensive stab in the dark had produced such reaction. ‘You mean – you really have been going to Long Melford when you’ve pretended to go to Lavenham?’
‘Yes.’
She laughed uncertainly. ‘But – why?’
He shook his head tiredly. ‘A smoke screen. Some small defence. In case Father had happened to enquire in Melford for the Helys’ acquaintances and discovered—’ He stopped.
‘What?’ Jessica’s interest was aroused now, her misery almost forgotten. As she spoke the obvious answer occurred to her, and her eyes widened. Not – surely! – another unsuitable alliance in the family? ‘John! Are you – are you meeting a young lady?’
He laughed at that, honestly, shaking his head. ‘Lord, Jessie, you’ve been spending too much time with Caroline!’
She flushed deeply at that and half turned from him, but he did not notice. ‘What then?’ she asked, stiffly.
He hesitated for a moment. ‘Jessica – I hate to ask it, but if I tell you – will you keep a secret for me until I’ve had a chance to talk to Father?’
‘Of course.’ She was worried by the soberness of his voice. Did everybody in the world, she found herself wondering a little irritably, have a secret? ‘There isn’t anything wrong, is there?’
He shook his head quickly. ‘No, no. Not wrong. Just – difficult. You see – these friends I’ve been visiting – they’re Roman Catholics.’
She could not have been more shocked had he told her he had been meeting the devil himself. ‘Papists?’
He laughed again, but the sound had little in it of humour. ‘Yes, Jessica. Papists.’
‘But – why?’ In common with most of the rest of the population Jessica had only the vaguest notions of the beliefs and dogmas of the Roman Church. Equally in common with the rest of Protestant England she was ready to believe without question in their perfidious involvement in any evil from high treason to the punitive price of bread. Were they not by law barred from any post of authority or responsibility on account of the subversive division of their loyalties? Here was one lesson well taught by MacKenzie; if Jessica did not actually believe that the Pope sported horns and a tail beneath his priestly garb she certainly did not doubt his rapacious corruption nor his deadly and active hostility to her country. She stared at her brother, her horror clear upon her face.
John bit his lip, fighting down exasperation. ‘Jessica – listen to me. You must surely realize what nonsense is talked of the Catholic religion?’
She waited, unspeaking, her worried eyes searching his face.
‘Catholic Englishmen are as true as you or I. The laws against them are outrageous and outdated. They are no more traitors than is a man who takes a different political stand from his neighbours—’
‘They’re foreigners.’
‘Of course they aren’t! The Bartletts are as old a local family as are the FitzBoltons! They simply follow the old religion – the faith of their fathers—’
‘They go to Mass!’ she spoke in hushed tones, generations of distrust and unspeakable rumours in the word.
‘Oh, don’t be silly!’ For the first time impatience showed. ‘What do you think Mass is? Do you think we sacrifice little babies and drink their blood? Truly, Jessica, I had credited you with a little more—’ he stopped.
‘We?’ she repeated.
&
nbsp; He let out a long breath. ‘Yes. We,’ he said, quietly. ‘That is why I ask you, just for a little while, to keep my secret. I have to tell Father myself that I intend to become a Roman Catholic.’
‘But – you’re to be a priest!’
‘Yes. I am. A Roman Catholic priest, if God wills. And I pray He does.’
There was a long, speaking silence. ‘Father will kill you,’ she said, flatly, at last.
He chewed on his lip, shook his head. Even to Jessica his uncertainty and fear – not emotions she would have believed until now could be experienced by her almost grown-up brother – were obvious, and her heart lurched in sympathetic anguish. ‘He will!’ she said with urgent certainty. ‘John, please! Why must you do this? You know what awful trouble there’ll be—’
‘Yes. I do know.’ He pushed himself away from the log, moving heavily, stood for a moment, hands in pockets, looking down at her with abstracted eyes. ‘I can’t help it, Jessie,’ he said after a moment. ‘I have to. To me the Roman Church is the true Christian Church. It isn’t something I wanted to believe – it just happened. But I can’t deny it. My mind, my heart – my soul – tell me the truth. I have to follow them.’
‘But—’
He shook his head, silencing her.
She scrambled from the log and stood beside him. ‘Don’t tell him! I won’t tell a soul – I promise!’ The words all but fell over each other in her hurry to get them out. ‘There’s no reason to tell him yet. Wait for a while—’ She could think of nothing but the certain holocaust of her father’s rage if he discovered John’s resolve. And if, beyond that, he found out about Danny and Caroline—
John shook his head regretfully. ‘It’s no good, Jess. I’ll have to tell him, and soon. Too many people know already. If he should hear it from someone else—’
‘What do you mean – too many people?’ She was puzzled. ‘It’s only you and me – and I’ve already said that I—’
‘No. The Bartletts know. And, more importantly, so does Clara—’
‘Clara?’ She could not hide her astonishment. ‘How on earth—?’
John walked to where Old Jenny patiently stood, head down, forefoot bent. ‘The FitzBoltons have friends in Long Melford. Cousins of the Bartletts. Clara saw me visiting. And guessed, I think. She asked me outright what my business with them was—’
‘And you told her?’
He shrugged. ‘As I said – when it comes to it I’m really not good at deception. Yes. I told her.’
‘When?’
‘Oh – a week since, perhaps more.’
Jessica’s brow was furrowed. ‘And she hasn’t said anything? To Father? Or – to Giles?’
He shook his head. ‘Why should she?’
She stared at him in grim silence. Then, ‘Why shouldn’t she?’ she asked. Try as she might she could not believe that anything Clara FitzBolton did would be done in loving kindness or unselfish thought for others. ‘It isn’t like Clara.’
He smiled a little. ‘“Judge not that ye may not be judged”,’ he quoted, softly. ‘Charity, Jessica. Perhaps in expecting the worst you draw the worst from her. She has no reason to betray me.’
Then she must have a reason not to. From consideration for her brother rather than in any response to his admonition Jessica did not voice the thought.
John untied the limping Jenny. ‘I must get poor Jenny home. She’s the reason I risked the shortcut across the bridge – she fell lame as I left Melford. It would have been too cruel to force her all the way round to the Lavenham Road just to service my deceptions. So I came the shorter way.’
‘And met me. John – I’m sorry I questioned you. I wish I hadn’t now, if it makes you act in haste. Won’t you please – please – leave telling Father for a while?’ She laid a hand on the horse’s rein, preventing him from leaving. Jenny nuzzled her shoulder. ‘Just a little while?’
He hesitated.
‘If you hadn’t told me you’d have waited, wouldn’t you?’
‘I—’
‘Please! For me!’ Her small face was desperately solemn. ‘I shall feel it’s my fault if there’s terrible trouble – and there will be, you know it—’
‘Then what’s the point of putting it off?’ he asked, not unreasonably.
‘Something may happen. Something may change. Oh – I don’t know! But, please, John, don’t tell him until you have to? At least leave it until after the wedding?’
He wavered, and she sensed it.
‘Please?’
He nodded. ‘All right. If it makes you feel better. I’ll wait at least till then.’
And with that, guilt gnawing at her at the thought of the hornet’s nest her curiosity may have stirred up, she had to be content. It was a very pensive Jessica who rejoined Danny and Caroline on the riverbank later that afternoon. Though it was no great surprise to her that neither of them noticed her mood.
* * *
Her brother’s revelation caused Jessica considerable anxiety – and by no means simply because of the certain trouble that it promised. No matter how she tried she could not rid herself of the MacKenzie-inspired image of the Papists as degenerate and soulless traitors and the Pope as the devil incarnate. That John of all people should be considering allying himself with such outcasts appalled her. Her desperate plea to put off telling their father had been as much in the hope that given time he might change his mind than in any real belief that there might come an easier time to break the news, but somehow she sensed that this hope was in vain. With no one to confide in her worries nibbled away in her mind like rats gnawing at a bone. In becoming a Papist, was there not a danger that John was damning his soul for ever? Should she not try to prevent that? Should she not try to dissuade him, or to ask for others’ help in dissuading him? And in becoming – of all things! – a Roman priest, would he be cut off from them all entirely? Providing of course, she reflected bleakly, he survived that long once their father discovered what was in his mind! Suddenly she found she was missing Robert, more than ever. With him away she had no one to talk to, no one to help her. The world had changed, too quickly and a little frighteningly. She was the guardian of the secrets of others, and she wasn’t at all sure that she liked it. When, for heaven’s sake, would Robert be coming home?
A summons to her mother’s sitting room, where a note had been delivered for Jessica from Old Hall, raised her hopes. This must surely be news of his homecoming? She broke open the seal upon the note, which had been enclosed with his last letter to his parents.
‘What is it, my dear?’ Her mother was watching her narrowly, ‘Is something wrong?’
Dully Jessica shook her head. Damn! Damn and damn and damn—! ‘Robert isn’t coming home after all.’ Those Dresden-figure sisters! ‘The Alloways are going to Bath to take the waters and he is to go with them.’
‘He’ll be home for the wedding, of course?’
Jessica glanced back at the note. ‘He says he hopes to be, yes.’ Hopes to be. She was to be Clara’s chief maid, in a dress of dark cream lace that even her mother had said suited her well. She had not until that moment realized how she had banked upon Robert being in the congregation, how she had anticipated his surprise at the new, grown-up Jessica as she accompanied his sister to the altar. She’d kill him if he didn’t come! Damn and damn and damn!
‘He’s having a nice time, then?’
‘Yes.’ Jessica stopped, then with characteristic honesty corrected herself. ‘That is – I’m not sure.’
‘Oh?’
Jessica once more ran her eyes over the brief note. ‘He says he’s having a very nice time. But—’
‘But what?’ There was a faint, hidden amusement in her mother’s eyes.
Forgetting herself, Jessica lifted a baffled shoulder. ‘I don’t know. It’s hard to explain. He says he’s happy. But he doesn’t sound it.’
‘Don’t shrug, Jessica.’ The admonition was automatic and carried no edge. Her mother stood. ‘It won’t be so long befor
e he’s back,’ she said. ‘I’m perfectly sure he won’t want to miss his sister’s wedding. And then you can discover for yourself, can’t you? Now – run along. I have letters to write.’
By the end of July the haymaking was done and everyone on the estate was preparing for the harvest. It was with something of a shock that Jessica realized that the hay was in and the stacks built with no help from her at all. Every other year of her childhood this had been her favourite time. Though never allowed into the fields where the scythes were being used to cut the standing grass, she and Robert would sit for hours upon a gate, or in the shade of a tree and watch the rhythmic movement of the lines of workers as they stepped and cut, stepped and cut, the hay falling with almost magic precision into neat swathes behind them. From the lifting of the dew in the morning to the falling of the dew in the evening the workers laboured, with just an hour at midday for rest and food. Ale or barley-water, bread and cheese – how many times had she and Robert shared the contents of a good-natured haymaker’s wallet? And how many times, enthusiastically, had they begged to help with the raking and stacking? But not this year. This year, with Robert away and her friendship with Danny to absorb her the haymaking had come and gone and she had hardly noticed its passing. The hot weather had sapped her energy. She no longer ran everywhere. Even poor Bran’s exuberance sometimes got on her nerves. What was wrong with her? Even the prospect of harvest barely excited her at all. She had no great desire to run to Lower Meadow and watch as the wagons carrying the itinerant workers arrived. Each year more or less the same families came to New Hall, and many of the children Jessica had seen and played with each August for all of her short life. Last year she had looked forward to renewing the acquaintance of old friends. This year, however, an odd constraint held her apart from them, a constraint exaggerated by the discovery that the boys – and indeed some of the girls – were now old enough to be out working in the fields, whilst the other girls stayed in the work camp to care for younger brothers and sisters. It was almost a new generation of barefoot youngsters who scampered and tumbled, shrieking and screaming, about the camp. The first day Jessica bumped into a boy called Charlie Best, with whom the year before she had had a royal battle that had culminated in a bloody nose and a whipping from MacKenzie, he touched his cap and grunted a grudging ‘Good morning’, his eyes averted; and she had acknowledged his greeting and passed on almost before she had realized who he was. The incident disturbed her. She wandered, aimless and alone, by the river, a strange melancholy upon her. In the distance Caroline and Danny sat, hand in hand, each totally absorbed in the other. With the whole estate seething with the activity of harvest their secret meetings had become both more frequent and less careful. Jessica was astonished at her sister; never before had she known her take any kind of risk – for Caroline, spoiled, pretty, rich, secure, had never been one to hazard change or trouble. A short month before Jessica would have staked her life that Caroline would never have courted disaster nor acted rashly for the sake of a penniless young man, however handsome. Yet here she was, undoubtedly doing both.
The Hawthorne Heritage Page 11