The Summer Fields

  ‘I have longed all day to do that,’ he says, releasing the clasp of her cloak, peeling it back from her shoulders and letting it fall to the floor. He lifts her bonnet from her head, tossing it away.

  ‘You have the most beautiful hair,’ he says, his hand searching for pins until the thick braid at the back springs free and tumbles down. ‘Let me unwind this for you.’

  She tries weakly to stop him but feels soothed by his touch, his fingers raking the braid apart, fanning her hair out across her shoulders. He stands for a moment and admires her, then takes a few paces to the back of the room, sitting down on the platform of straw and patting the place at his side as an invitation for her to join him.

  For some inexplicable reason, she is seized with awkwardness. Last night she melted into his embrace, but there is something too contrived, too planned about this. It has robbed her of impulse. She is overwhelmed with coyness. She stands on the spot where he left her, twisting her fingers together. Ned tips his head to one side with a perplexed expression, then jumps to his feet and goes to the table.

  ‘Port,’ he says, raising the decanter to her. She thinks his glance flashes towards the window as if he is not completely confident they will remain undiscovered. ‘Port is what you need. You’ve had a cold walk and it has quite shut you down.’

  He pours them both a glass and hands one to her. ‘You enjoyed it so much last night, I managed to acquire another bottle.’ He takes a mouthful then bends and places a single kiss on her lips. She tastes the wine on his mouth and as his hand cups her chin, she is relieved to feel the excitement from yesterday returning. She raises her lips to meet his, but instead of kissing her, he lifts the rim of his glass to her mouth.

  ‘Drink, my darling,’ he says, ‘and let the wine relax you.’

  She drinks, but he tips the glass too much, making her gulp. Some of the sweet liquid runs from the corner of her mouth. She feels a flash of anger, but he releases her and runs his finger across her chin, gathering up the rivulet of wine and licking it from his finger. ‘I want to drink you up. Not all at once but sip by sip,’ he says, taking her by her waist and pressing himself against her.

  She lets him kiss her again, before gently freeing herself so that she can take another draught of port from her glass. She has promised herself so much for this evening. She wants to relax, wants to show Ned that she is happy and excited to be here, and that she appreciates all the effort he has gone to. She dashes the rest of the glassful back and puts it on the table.

  ‘Goodness. I cannot keep up with you,’ Ned says, refilling her glass. He picks up a sweetmeat and holds it towards her. She smiles at him and opens her mouth. He lets the bonbon hover over her lips before resting it gently on her tongue. As she closes her mouth to eat, he traces her cupid’s bow with the tip of his finger, his breath coming in shallow pants of concentration.

  When she swallows, he takes hold of her, placing his glass on the table and gently relieving her of her own. She reaches up towards him and puts the flat of her hand on his chest to give herself a little breathing space.

  The strength of his embrace and the rush of strong wine have made her giddy. She can hear the revellers in the distance. ‘Are we quite safe here?’ she says. ‘Are you sure we will not be caught?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ he says, his voice muffled as he kisses her throat and neck, his tongue sampling the sugar that has spilled from the sweetmeat onto her skin. And yet… something isn’t right. Instead of that sweep of helpless delight, she feels the oddest urge to flee.

  Chapter 27

  Elen no longer feels safe. In the steward’s pantry Ned seemed to be in complete concord with her, so much so that she wanted him to take command and release her from the responsibility of censoring her own lust, but now, in this hot, low room by the lake, they seem strangers.

  His fingers are tracing the top of her bodice, dipping beneath the neckerchief in an attempt to loosen it. She does not understand herself, but she knows with sudden lucidity that tonight is not the night she wants to be taken any further.

  ‘Ned, wait,’ she gasps between kisses. ‘Please wait. I feel uncomfortable. I shouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Of course you should.’ Again, she is certain he looks towards the window. He seems on edge, as if he is not wholly present. Could he be feeling as nervous as her?

  ‘This is the wrong time – for both of us,’ she says.

  ‘No, it is not. It cannot be more right,’ he says, sweeping her up into his arms and carrying her towards the back of the room. Kneeling with one leg on the straw, he lays her gently on the damask. She struggles lightly to sit up, but he presses her back with the weight of his body, pushing her head against the shoulder of his encompassing arm as he kisses her.

  From their elevated position, she catches a glimpse of the lake through the window. As Ned continues to caress her, she is distracted by something glittering out in the darkness. She squirms to get a clearer view. Lanterns are moving between the trees along the margins of the lake.

  ‘Ned… wait. Stop. People are coming.’

  He turns a fraction, shakes his head and begins to kiss her again. She insists, pushing him away and sitting up. Sliding off the straw she goes over to the window.

  The lights are closer now and she can just make out the shape of figures. In the stillness of the night she can hear chanting. The words make no sense. ‘Temptation into not…’ the voices chant, before the sound dips out of earshot, only to rise again, enabling her to catch: ‘Everyone forgive ourselves…’

  She’s heard that phrase before: ‘Everyone forgive ourselves.’

  A noise behind her makes her turn. Ned is at the door. ‘I’ve heard those words before,’ she says, ‘the words they are chanting.’

  ‘I should think you have.’

  There is something odd about his expression, a mixture of excitement and regret.

  ‘I heard Mordiford say them when he was mad with fever.’

  ‘Ah… did you now?’ Ned seems momentarily distracted, but then he gives a sly laugh and says, ‘You’ve probably heard the pastor saying them more often – “For we ourselves forgive everyone who is indebted to us. And lead us not into temptation.”’

  As she stares at him, trying to understand, his hand reaches up and slides the bolt of the door across. She does not know if he is locking someone out or locking her in. ‘It is the Lord’s Prayer,’ he says. ‘Only backwards.’

  ‘Whatever can you mean?’

  Behind his expression of bravado, a struggle rages. ‘I am sorry, Elen,’ he says, a crack of regret thick in his throat. ‘But what could I do? I thought you safe from him. Willowy is not to his taste. I had you all to myself until you goaded him. You shouldn’t have provoked him. I never wanted to acquire you. Not for him.’

  ‘Acquire me?’

  ‘You heard their plans last night. Why didn’t you flee? I wouldn’t have stopped you. Not then.’

  ‘I heard…’ she tries to quell the rising waves of fear, to clear her head and remember exactly what she did overhear last night. ‘No, all I heard was that they had found a leader.’

  ‘Yes. That Leda is you. They’re coming for you.’

  She frowns so hard, her head aches. She cannot understand. Her eyes dart around the room looking for a way to escape. She stares at the platform of straw. With a mounting sense of panic she realises it no longer looks like a bed. It looks like a giant swan’s nest amongst the reeds.

  * * *

  ‘If I’ve been condemned to be Leda in some malign entertainment,’ Elen says, her voice wavering as she backs away from Ned, ‘who intends to take the role of the swan?’

  ‘Thank God you know the legend. That saves me a job,’ Ned says before grinning at her in an apologetic way. ‘Truth be told, there is a whole flock of ’em on their way.’

  ‘Ned, for the love of everything decent in this world, let me go.’

  Ned shrugs his regret. ‘I cannot. The earl would punish me most grievously.’
<
br />   ‘How could you lead me on and make me think you cared for me?’

  ‘Oh, I do care for you – just not quite as much as I care for myself.’

  She goes to the window, checking over her shoulder to see if Ned will stop her, but he merely watches her struggle with the casement for a few moments before picking up his wine.

  ‘It will not do you any good,’ he says. ‘It is a nasty drop.’ The casement flies open. She gasps as the icy rush of air flows in. The candles jump and sputter, sending jagged shadows dancing across the ceilings and walls. ‘Besides,’ he adds, taking a gulp of wine, ‘they’re almost here.’

  The words are barely out of his mouth before a chorus of honking starts up from the woods below. Three or four men come into view, staring up at her, their companions hooting as they rush to join them. She can tell by the way they jeer and jostle that they are all very drunk. They tumble into one another, fighting for position at the vanguard as they stumble towards the ice house.

  They are hunting in a pack, she thinks, and I am the quarry.

  ‘They mean to kill me,’ she says.

  ‘No, no,’ Ned says. ‘Of course they do not. If you were dead, the sport would be over.’ He drains his glass and cocks his ear towards the open window. ‘They’re nearly here. We had better get you ready.’

  ‘Ned. Stop this madness. I beg you,’ she says, pushing as far away from him as the room will allow. He doesn’t come towards her. He moves to the door, watching her all the time. The moment he throws the bolt, she races at him. His outstretched hand clutches the top of her arm, the momentum of her dash swinging her round against him, momentarily winding her.

  In the confusion, she sees a flash of dirty apron. Someone slips through the gap in the door. He slams it shut and pushes the bolt home.

  He shoves Elen back into the centre of the room. As she rights herself, she looks up. Joan is standing beside him, staring at her with an expression on her face of such malice, she doubts her entreaties will help. All the same, she has to try.

  ‘Joan,’ she says, her voice tight and shaking with desperation. ‘Help me. As one woman to another, do not let this happen to me. I would never let this happen to you.’

  Ned throws his head back and roars with laughter. ‘Happen to Joan? Of course it would never happen to Joan. Look at her.’ Joan gazes lovingly at him, her mouth hanging open.

  He chucks her under the chin as you would a child, and says with an infantile murmur, ‘But you like to watch, don’t you, Joanie? You like to see what posh men and pretty girls do at night in their bedrooms.’ Joan snorts and nods her head. ‘Go on then, get her onto the straw.’

  Joan grasps Elen by the elbows. The maid may be weak in intellect, but she has a powerful grip. Elen struggles against her but Joan presses her fingers into the soft flesh of Elen’s arms, forcing her backwards. Joan’s face is so close, she can smell the mustiness of her breath, stale and sickly.

  Elen braces her feet against the floor to slow the inexorable trajectory towards the bower. Her heels slip on the wood. The back of her legs catch against the edge of the platform. With a sudden surge of power, the maid grabs her by the waist, lifts her, and flings her into the centre of the straw.

  ‘That’s my girl, Joanie,’ Ned calls across.

  Elen struggles to sit up, pushing herself away from the girl. Joan is onto the platform now, scuttling after her on all fours. Elen almost makes it off the dais but Joan grabs her by the wrists, holding Elen’s hands together in her large fist. Disregarding Elen’s struggles, she snatches at a cord hanging at the back of the platform, and lashes Elen’s wrists together.

  Elen flings herself about, twisting on the end of the tether. Joan sits back on her haunches, leering down at her captive. The maid is breathing hard, her mobcap tilted at a crazy angle, skeins of greasy hair escaping around it, her eyes filled with a sickening triumph.

  She pulls a handful of white feathers from the pocket of her apron. It is the mask that Elen had pressed to her face days ago. Joan clutches the black ribbons in her teeth, pinioning Elen’s shoulders down with her knees before pushing the mask up against her face.

  Elen tosses her head from left to right, the quills of the feathers scratching her skin. Joan grunts as she tries to get the mask on her. Ned comes forward to help. He does not meet her eyes. Instead he grabs her hair and holds her fast until Joan has the mask in place. He pulls Elen’s head up and she feels the knotting of the ribbons yank at the roots of her hair, then they both sit back, panting from their labours.

  ‘In the nick of time,’ Ned cries. ‘Here they are.’ He climbs off the bed, crosses the room and releases the bolt.

  Chapter 28

  The door flies open. More than a dozen men flood in, their faces red from alcohol, their chests heaving with excitement. They halt and stare. Has the reality of a young woman, bound by her wrists and struggling on a nest of straw, quenched the excitement of their fantasy?

  A murmur begins. Someone chuckles, a laugh is shared. The animal within them lies just below the surface. A fire of defiance burns in her chest. The men standing before her are not in the first flush of youth – these are older men, educated men. She despises them not just for the foul act they are about to commit, but for their hypocrisy and abuse of entitlement.

  There is a jostling from the back of the group. A man with a heavy, hanging face comes forward, clutching a swan’s feather. ‘You Englishmen,’ he says, his tone jocular, his accent thick, ‘you are always so reserved. It is fortunate it is a Frenchman who is first to claim the prize.’

  He releases the feather. It flutters to the ground. He starts to remove his cloak.

  His boldness animates the others. They begin to bray and jostle, crowding around the Frenchman in a sea of debauched and gloating faces. They pull him free of his jacket and he begins to unbutton his waistcoat.

  As Elen writhes and twists, her vision compromised by the mask, she sees a figure standing immobile at the back of the group, the hood of the cloak casting a shadow over his face. For a moment she thinks it is the earl, but then she hears a supercilious bark of laughter.

  The earl is right in front of her, howling with merriment as one of the Frenchman’s buttons pops off and rattles across the floor. The mob close in around her, a hand clutches her ankle, another pushes her dress up her legs.

  As she drives herself further and harder against the wall, struggling in vain against her bonds, the stranger at the back of the group lifts a hand to the rim of his hood.

  The hand is crusted with scabs. He throws the hood back. To her utter humiliation and rage, she looks directly into the eyes of Viscount Mordiford.

  * * *

  Mordiford steps forward. Elen feels her stomach give a great lurch and heave. Despite the anger and fear she feels, this is the first time since arriving at the ice house that she is truly nauseous. He too is part of this hideous game.

  How could her subconscious have brought him into her dreams as a tender lover? He is as base and corrupt as all the other men in this room. Does he intend watching her utter humiliation, only to degrade her further by using her as basely as these other men?

  Those words he chanted as he thrashed around with fever were the incantations of devilry, the same incantation chanted just now by this band of beasts. She has already been betrayed by Ned. This second betrayal is an agonising blow.

  Mordiford places his hand on the shoulder of the first man at the back of the group. The nobleman is puce with laughter at the spectacle of the Frenchman trying to free his drunken, corpulent body from the confines of his clothing. Still laughing, he turns.

  The instant his eyes alight on Mordiford, the muscles of his face seem to melt, distorting into an expression of horror. Elen is used to Mordiford’s appearance – the deep, pitted scars on his cheeks, the stubborn crusts still clinging to his forehead. The nobleman is not. He is looking his own death in the face.

  He shakes himself free of Mordiford’s grip as violently as if the gr
im reaper had laid a hand upon his shoulder. He staggers back with a strangled cry. Several of the aristocrats turn at the noise. They start at the sight of Mordiford. The debauched gaiety of their expressions snuffs out like candles.

  ‘The pox!’ someone yells. Panic breaks out in the room.

  ‘Get away from us, you bloody fool,’ the earl bellows.

  Through the feather apertures of the mask, Elen watches bodies plunging and pushing at one another, scrambling towards the door. The flames of the candles bounce and judder as the door is flung open. Ned is shoved against the wall as several of the party rush out into the night.

  One of them is the earl, his height setting him apart. He pauses momentarily at the doorway, steadying himself on the architrave. He has not seen his son since the illness struck. There is horror in his face. But is it a reflection of his shock at seeing Mordiford’s ravaged appearance or his own terror of contracting the pox?

  The aristocrats who had positioned themselves down the side of the platform to claw at her dress, and hold her fast, now have their exit route barred by Mordiford. They clutch the hems of their cloaks over their faces, terrified that his diseased miasma will rush into their bodies. The Frenchman, ludicrous in his undergarments, snatches clothing from the ground and crawls along the floor.

  Mordiford herds the stragglers together, towering over them. He tears his cloak from his shoulders like a matador, snuffing out candles as he swirls it onto the floor in front of them. He flings open his frock coat, and wrenches his waistcoat and shirt open with a roar.

  There they are, the scabs and swellings distorting his body, the open sores awful in the candlelight. The remaining men scream, childish with panic, others whimper. They duck as they pass him, as if he is raining blows down on their heads as they scramble after their companions.

  The shouts diminish, and the room falls silent. She is aware of Mordiford’s laboured breathing, the ropes at her wrist creaking as she continues to struggle. Joan is wheezing from the shadows somewhere nearby. Mordiford hears it too, strides across and hauls the maid onto her feet.