by Norah Lofts
But though John had repudiated it, he kept looking at the lute. Poor thing; derelict, like me! It had once been beautiful, not unlike the one he had been obliged to sell. It had been inlaid, either with silver or mother-of-pearl; ill-used, exposed to the damp, it had lost most of its decoration; but it still had its strings. Finally he put out a hand, reluctantly, tentatively, and retrieved the poor thing.
Wrecks, both of us, he thought, but still…
The time between supper and bedtime he spent in cleaning and retuning it. Under the dirt even some bits of the decorative inlay came up shining. A good lute, full bodied. He thought of all those songs that Nick had made; the words conveyed by word of mouth, the tunes translated from the rather thin, though pleasing sound that a hazel wood pipe could produce into lute music.
Nick would never make another song; but those he had made were all there, stored away in John’s memory.
And while John remembered, played and sang them, passed them on, so that even grooms whistled them as they tended to horses and young gallants, who could sing or strum a little, used them for serenading—then something of Nick would remain. All suddenly his shattered life began to mend, acquired aim and purpose.
For a similar restoration, Mistress Captoft had to wait a little, suffering meanwhile another blow. Master Tallboys had been mistaken in saying that there was no hurry, that it took some time to install a new priest. Father Thomas could see very plainly that while this living remained vacant he would be expected to be at least partly responsible for it; and since Moyidan was his parish and hardly a day passed without some servant of the Bishop coming to see that all was in order there, he was in a good position to expedite matters. A word in the right ear…
Henry was in his sheep-fold, gloomily unloading the hay which would soon be needed to keep this wretched flock alive through the winter. His father’s decision, taken years ago, to rear sheep at all had been a mistake—Walter, never yet proved wrong, had said Intake was no place for sheep; and his own decision to be his own shepherd had been an even worse mistake.
And there, at the door of the priest’s house, was Mistress Captoft, lying in wait for him. Oh, God give me patience! I’ve only just got John on the mend. And she is none of mine. But in the time that it took for him to make the hay enclosure safe against greedy sheep who would have gobbled it down in a day and all swollen up as though they were pregnant, and to lead the horse and waggon on to the trail and close the gate of the fold, he had been given, if not patience, an inspiration. John had stopped mourning as soon as he had something to do—something acceptable; and plainly what this poor grieving woman needed was employment.
‘I was coming to see you, Mistress Captoft. To ask a favour. Very shortly I must kill a pig and I am ignorant of how to preserve and cure pig meat. I wondered whether you would be so kind as to come and give advice. There would be no heaving and hauling. I could do all that, Joanna and I simply need guidance.’
Something within Mistress Captoft sprang to life. She knew all that there was to know about casking and curing and smoking, though she had never actually seen a pig killed. In her father’s house, and in her husband’s when it was pig-killing time, she’d always shut herself away or taken a walk. Pigs did squeal so, with an almost human sound. Once it was dead it was meat and, though she had never been obliged to dabble her hands in brine or expose herself to the smoke in the chimney where hams and sides of bacon were cured, she knew all about the processes.
‘Have you salt, Master Tallboys? Saltpetre? Honey?’
‘Salt, yes. For the other things I cannot answer.’
Helpless man, with nobody in charge of his kitchen but a mere child.
‘I think,’ Mistress Captoft said, ‘that I had better come straightaway and take stock.’
She was needed again; active again.
Joanna watched, with hatred, the gradual encroachment. She was not jealous, female to female; Mistress Captoft was far too old, well over thirty and fat. And Henry’s manner towards her was never more than polite. But inch by inch she was edging Joanna out of the position which she had hoped would have been strong enough to save her from any more talk about going to Stordford. For a few days they worked together, Mistress Captoft cheerful, Joanna sullen. A newly-killed pig meant some meat, at least, fresh roasted on the spit; naturally Miss Captoft must be asked to share it. And baking day came round. Joanna did not take kindly to the idea that every loaf should be marked with a Cross. ‘They rise better,’ Mistress Captoft said. And she’d brought from her home a little packet of spice and dried fruit and gently suggested that one loaf, given this stuff and some melted butter, would make a cake loaf. Much enjoyed.
The sharpest blow fell when Joanna said, in her joking way, ‘Henry, unless we take care, she will move in.’
‘I have already suggested it. The new priest will be here any day now and she has as yet made no arrangements.’
Rage almost choked the girl. But she must not, would not behave like Griselda. Lest her face should betray her she turned quickly to the hearth and prodded the sausages in the pan. She did so with exaggerated gentleness, again not to resemble Griselda who, when angered, banged things about.
Unaware of the feeling he had roused, Henry said, ‘The rooms on the other side will hardly accommodate all her furniture but it is only a stop-gap arrangement. Some of her things can stand in our hall.’
But those rooms are mine! I only lent them to John and young Shep because Griselda said she’d burn this house down sooner than take in two vagabonds with the lung-rot. You had no right!
It was a slight shock to discover that it was possible to be so angry with the person you loved. And that simply because he was doing a kindness. Instantly penitent, she said, ‘Or, if Mistress Captoft preferred, we could move some of those divans into the hall.’
‘No! I wouldn’t want… I mean they would be quite unsuitable there.’
Planning for Amsterdam, Mistress Captoft had been ready to abandon her furniture since the cost of transport and shipping would be so vast. She’d thought, quite happily, how comfortable and well-furnished the in-coming priest would find the little house. But she had had Benny then and material things had mattered less. Now they mattered a great deal, so when Henry’s waggon made its last creaking journey between the two houses all that remained in the empty one was what Mistress Captoft had found there, old Father Ambrose’s poor stuff which she had banished to a shed. However, taking a last look round, she made a kindly resolution. If the new priest—Father Matthew—proved to be a pleasant person, she would bring back, as gifts, certain things to make the place more habitable. Then he would be grateful. And he would be grateful, too, when she requested a Mass every day for a year for the benefit of Benny’s soul. She knew how totally inadequate the stipend was. She would be generous in other ways later on.
Her court cupboard, though not so beautifully carved as the one Walter had managed to find for Sybilla, looked well in the Knight’s Acre hall and her well-padded settee made the one already there look small and shabby. She unpacked her silver and distributed it between both cupboards. For the first time in its life the hall lost its half-empty, ill-furnished look.
Joanna had half hoped that since the rooms across the yard had their own kitchen, inconveniently as it was placed, Mistress Captoft would busy herself there and cease to meddle. It was a vain hope. Mistress Captoft was a born meddler and had a convivial nature, long denied outlet. She was in and out all day, every day, generally with an excuse to which no reasonable person could take objection. Her own furniture must be dusted regularly and polished occasionally; her silver must be kept bright. She included Henry’s furniture in her ministrations. She came bearing gifts; she’d made some of the honey cakes of which she knew Godfrey was so fond; she’d just opened a barrel of pickled herrings which, though small, was more than she could possibly eat by herself; she had some wine, better than average, which she thought she must share.
As the weather grew co
lder the question of fires arose. The only hearth across the yard was in the kitchen; and a brazier, though it gave a good steady heat, wasn’t the same as a fire, was it? And for the sake of the furniture and the fabric of the hall itself, it was advisable to have a fire there at least once a week.
If Henry ever thought her intrusive or meddlesome, he gave no sign; he was always courteous. Poor woman, she was lonely. Godfrey was always pleased to see her and John was almost effusively welcoming. He said how pleasant it was to try a tune with a listener who could tell a lyric from a dirge. Actually he was employing his winning ways with women with a sharp eye of self-interest. He intended to make his second assault on the wider world the moment the weather improved with the coming of spring and he needed money to start off with. If Henry couldn’t or wouldn’t help, Mistress Captoft might. She was obviously well-to-do and open-handed.
Only Joanna remained unfriendly, sullen—though she was glad enough, Mistress Captoft noticed, to hand over the making and mending. And Mistress Captoft was glad to do it, for she had received another little shock from which her mind must be diverted.
Father Matthew had arrived and she had disliked him at first sight. She had not, of course, ever imagined that Benny’s successor should be even half worthy; but this man was an oaf. Ill-spoken, mannerless.
Mistress Captoft had suddenly remembered that a mild day in early November was the ideal time for moving plants Accompanied by Godfrey who claimed that he could push the flat, two-wheeled, long-handled barrow and that he could also dig, she’d gone up to the empty house to fetch away the best of the things which she had cherished over the years. She had four rose-trees which, because they had been pruned and fed on the grey mule’s dung, were in far better condition than the six at Knight’s Acre, lately sadly neglected. She had the usual garden bushes, rosemary, lavender, southernwood, barberry; and also, because she had lived in Dunwich, a port in close contact with the Continent, a number of imported, rather bare bulbous plants.
They must all be lifted and transplanted, because though Henry regarded the present arrangement as a stop-gap measure, Mistress Captoft did not. She had been so eager to get away from Intake but now it was different; the place where Benny had spent his last, happy days and, though he was not an outdoor man, had often lifted his eyes from his books to comment on the beauty of Layer Wood as the changing seasons touched it; and the place where he lay buried. Lifting the rosemary bush she thought of breaking off a piece and placing it on his grave. Because rosemary remained not only green but fragrant even in winter it, had come to be regarded as the symbol of remembrance.
A coarse voice said, ‘Who’re you? And what d’you think you’re doing?’
Mistress Captoft straightened up. She was a woman who had always been, and would always be, acutely conscious of her appearance; at the same time sensible enough to match clothes to the occasion. This, being a workaday occasion, she wore, not a head-dress but a plain linen hood and her skirts were hitched up a good six inches above the stout shoes needed for digging.
‘I am Mistress Captoft. I am removing a few plants. My own. And you are Father Matthew.’ She managed to poise these words between question and statement while her glance reminded him that he had not shaved for two days.
He had no tact at all. ‘If they’re yours,’ he indicated the plants and somehow managed to sound as though he doubted her word, ‘then you lived here. Was it always the way it is now?’
‘In what way?’
‘So bare.’ And that he managed to make sound as an accusation; as though she had stripped it.
‘I had my own furniture,’ she said crisply. ‘And indeed you find the place in far better fettle than I did on my arrival. There was not even an oven, then.’
She was angry with him because his unmannerliness had made her unmannerly. Naturally she had a high standard of what behaviour to priests should be. But then such an oaf had no right to be a priest at all.
This hasty decision was justified by the way he said Mass, mispronouncing several words. The thought of him in Benny’s place was so hurtful that she decided to attend Nettleton church in future and it was to the priest there that she entrusted the duty of saying a Mass each day for a year.
With her plants transferred, she was ready to throw herself into preparations for Christmas. It could not be merry this year with bereavements so recent but Joanna learned, with some surprise, that Christmas must not go unmarked; there must be a bag-pudding and something called mincemeat, things she had never seen and knew nothing about. No matter, Mistress Captoft would see to it all. And just as she had suggested the lighting of the fire in the hall now and then, so she now suggested that Henry should coop and fatten a goose. She knew—and possessed—just the wine that went best with goose. The modest feast, it was tacitly assumed, would be communal.
It was difficult for Joanna to have a word with Henry alone these days. But the chance came. Godfrey in bed, Mistress Captoft gone to her own place escorted by John, who had taken his lute which meant that he would be away for a while.
Joanna went straight to the point.
‘Henry this is something I have been wanting to say. That day in the wood…’ Never before referred to and now hastily skirted around. Cool; quick. ‘You said that some of my money had been placed with Sir Barnabas Grey at Stordford but that there was more to come. I said I wanted it used here. You refused. Please, Henry, think again.’
‘I said what I meant, Joanna. I hold to it.’
‘Then you would rather be beholden to her than to me?’
‘It has always been my wish, my intention, to be beholden to nobody.’
‘You drink her wine.’
‘Very little. John is the one with the ready mouth. Set against it, I stable and feed her mule.’
‘You will eat her pudding and her mincemeat.’
‘And she will eat our goose.’
‘But Henry, surely you see…’ She changed, gave one of those closely observed, rather cruel imitations. ‘Oh, Master Tallboys, you must just taste this wine. Master Tallboys, my saffron cakes turned out exceptionally well. Master Tallboys, I have a self-winding spit, too wide for my own hearth, but it would just fit…’ She dropped the mimicry which had not been exaggerated and said, in her own voice and almost fiercely, ‘Is that how it is to be for ever? When your jerkin is past mending, she’ll buy cloth and make you a new one. Godfrey will outgrow his clothes, she will provide. Can your pride bear it? Even if her mule had five meals a day?’
That was what she hated, even more virulently than the meddling, the subtle reduction of Henry.
‘It will not come to that, dar—Joanna. It just happens that we are at low ebb now. The tide must turn.’
‘But why wait? With my money there to be used? Why is it all right for Sir Barnabas Grey to use some of my money and not for you to use the rest?’
‘There is a world of difference. You see, it is a question of how the money is used; what return it will bring. I might take your money, buy stock that’d sicken, clear a field that took three years to come to fertility. Then where should we be? As I understand it, Sir Barnabas is a man of business. He would not put the money entrusted to him into a farm, only just holding its own. And nor will I.’
‘Not just a farm, Henry. It is my home.’
A true, perfectly natural thing to say but that was not the way he wished her to think. His desire to get her away, into a different life, was genuine and of long standing.
‘It is your home, in that you were born here. And of course you will always be sure of a welcome.’ For some reason that sounded pompous. He hurried on: ‘But it isn’t suitable. First working like a farmhand, now like a servant. I want you at least to see, to try, something different.’
‘Like Stordford?’
‘Yes.’
The matter had never been long absent from his mind and now that Mistress Captoft seemed to have settled in and certainly seemed prepared to stay until after Christmas, he had given his
own circumstances some thought. He could manage, he thought, with the cheapest possible kind of kitchen labour, possibly an orphan girl, just glad of a home. To her Mistress Captoft would gladly give such elementary instruction as was necessary and all would be well. Henry had never done any cooking, had only seen it done and was inclined to underestimate the skill required.
Joanna closed her eyes for a second; the lashes, some shades darker than her hair, lay in crescents against the warm pallor of her cheeks. Pretty, pretty little thing, Henry thought; she must not be wasted here!
She was trying to visualise what her next remark would mean in terms of homesickness and misery. She was deliberately inviting the kind of seeing forward, or seeing into the distance, which had afflicted her sometimes in the past. Now nothing came; she’d lost that kind of eye. All she could see was the immediate situation; Mistress Captoft encroaching, inch by inch; Henry’s pride and independence being worn away and herself reduced to servant status. There was a world of difference between doing hard, even rough and dirty work, in your own place, of your own choice, and being ordered about, even when the orderer was punctilious about saying, ‘my dear’.
Her eyes, which could change so rapidly through many shades of blue and blue-green, were bright aquamarine when she opened them and said, ‘Very well, then, Henry. I will go. On certain conditions.’
‘Well?’ He was eager. Willing to comply.
‘First, three years, not the four you mentioned.’
He was certain that six months would suffice. Six months of the kind of life he could remember his aunt Astallon’s ladies living at Beauclaire and she’d forget all about Knight’s Acre.
‘I agree.’
‘And what remains of my money to come here and be used.’
‘Joanna, I have tried to explain. It would not be right. No, to that I cannot agree.’