by Norah Lofts
‘You are from Stordford? Come in. You are expected. Godfrey, run in and tell Janna that we have a guest. We’ll be there as soon as we have looked to the horse. My name is Henry Tallboys. I bid you welcome to my house.’
‘I am Peter Wingfield, sir.’
‘You have had a dirty ride. I’ll throw down some extra straw. Given enough dry litter, horses clean their own legs. The rest we can deal with tomorrow.’
‘The demoiselle Serriff…?’
‘She arrived safely and is well,’ Henry said, leading the way into the stable. ‘And so, you see, is the horse. I shan’t be sorry to be rid of him.’ While the young squire unsaddled and unbridled his horse, Henry forked down the extra straw, brought a bucket of water, put oats and hay in the manger. ‘Now for you,’ he said. ‘Come this way.’
‘… covered in mud,’ Godfrey was saying. ‘And I’m sure Guard would not have let him in if I hadn’t been there.’
So the bad moment had come. She faced it calmly. She would never leave Knight’s Acre again.
*
Calm, Peter Wingfield reflected presently, was the keynote of this most peculiar household which could have been part of a tale. Eating at a bare, scrubbed table, in a kitchen, eating food cooked by the demoiselle Serriff with whom he had never before been within speaking distance. Lady Grey believed in order. Each to his place. Sitting at the table with the family and favoured guests, Joanna had seemed as remote as the moon; but it was in order, in fact it was traditional, that young men, mere squires or just attained to knighthood, should worship from a distance. It was good for them; it gave them something to aim at. It did not prevent them—human nature being what it was—from consorting with and making occasional use of milkmaids, goose girls and such but it did, in most cases, forfend incautious marriages. In every way, Peter Wingfield had been a strict conformist, observing all the rules; he had therefore cherished an unrequited, unspoken devotion to the demoiselle Serriff. Now he was at the same table with her, eating food she had cooked. She wore a hideous black dress (Joanna had washed it on the day after her homecoming) and when he had entered the kitchen it had been protected by an apron. Any other well-born lady he could think of would have been embarrassed. She had been calm, smiled at him, said, ‘Good evening. You’re… Peter.’
‘Peter Wingfield, at your service, demoiselle,’ he said, and made his most formal bow.
‘I have water already heated. And I hope you are not superstitious about eating hare.’
Then Henry had lighted a candle and led Peter up to the barest sleeping chamber he had ever seen and gone away, to return with hose and jerkin of homespun.
‘A bit big for you, I fear,’ he said. ‘But they’ll serve while your own dry out.’
There was that curious calm about him, too.
On the bare scrubbed table there was not a thing that would have been out of place in a clod cottage—except the wine, which was a surprise. But Joanna—her apron removed—presided with gracious dignity. Even the little boy, at an age where boys had usually to be cuffed into good manners, had that same peculiar quality, handing the salt, in its plain wooden bowl, without being asked.
Talk seemed easy. Of all those she had left behind at Stordford, Joanna inquired only of two.
‘Lady Agnes? I was sorry to leave her so hastily. But I had reached the end of my endurance.’
‘Understandable,’ Peter said, relaxed by the calm, the wine and something within him, moving from an empty, distant, purely formal devotion to something far more real. ‘All of us in the lower part of the hall, when we heard, thought her ladyship had been over-severe.’
So far, so good! Joanna had expected a more formidable messenger. More informed. More vocal about betrothals.
‘Severe,’ Godfrey said, exploring a word not entirely unfamiliar, for now and then Mistress Captoft had used it. If he didn’t try harder, pay more attention, she would be forced to be severe to him. ‘Cruel? Did Lady Grey ever box your ears?’
‘No. By the time I went to Stordford, I was a bit too big for that. And at Jerningham, where I served as a page, the lady, our mistress, held that to give us a cuff on the ear would soil her hands. She would say: This boy spilt the gravy or let the dish wobble… Then we were beaten by the steward. Or his deputy. It did us no harm.’
‘And the wedding?’ Joanna said, stepping out on to ground that could not be avoided for ever; ‘how did it go?’
‘Well,’ Peter Wingfield said, remembering the extra, rather wild festivities which had marked the double occasion, a wedding and Twelfth Night. Remembering, too, the malicious talk that had run around. For what those at the lower end of the hall did not know, they were ready to invent; and as the story went, that decrepit old man had set his lecherous eye on Joanna Serriff and been fobbed off with Maude Grey. Common talk but it should explain why, just at Christmas, Joanna had been banished. Feeling for once free of all rules, Peter Wingfield said, ‘It was unfortunate that one of his lordship’s new teeth should fall out, only three days after.’
Godfrey said, ‘Mine fall out, too. But better ones, bigger ones grow. Look!’
He smiled, showing the new tooth which was taking the place of the one Mamma-Captoft had said had been ready to fall anyway.
It was then that Peter Wingfield realised that in addition to the calm, the unruffled manner, the three people with him at the table shared another thing—a marked physical resemblance. Difficult to define but unmistakeable… They were of three generations. Like most people who came into contact with Henry Tallboys, Peter Wingfield overestimated his age; wind and weather, and worry and responsibility—and tragedy—had given Henry the appearance of being well on into his fourth decade. Their colouring varied, too. Henry had inherited his father’s fawn coloured hair and there was grey just above his ears; Sir Godfrey’s fawn colour, mingled with Tana’s crow black had produced the dark copper, the dead-leaf colour of Joanna’s hair; and Godfrey was almost golden, Henry’s fawn colour muted by Griselda’s—which, until the child’s birth, had been the bright pale colour of fresh straw. Their eyes varied, too, Peter Wingfield saw, looking from one to the other in the light of four candles which Joanna had set on the table, an extravagance to honour the guest. All blue—but different blues. Master Tallboys’ almost sapphire or cornflower; the demoiselle’s—well who could describe, even to himself, eyes which were so changeable—grey-blue, blue-grey, greenish; and the boy had a limpid, almost a periwinkle-blue look. It was not so much colouring as shape, Peter Wingfield decided, the way the hair grew, in the same way from foreheads identical, except that the man’s was grooved; and that smile.
The conversation at the table was light; nothing of any importance being touched upon. Afterwards Godfrey said eagerly, ‘There are four of us now. Joanna, we could play that game you said needed four, couldn’t we?’
They played a lively game of Naib, using beans as counters, and Godfrey won outright. He was the only one whose mind was wholly concentrated on the game. Then Henry said he must take a last look round and lit his lantern. ‘I’d better take Guard out, too,’ Godfrey said, adding with that enchanting smile, ‘I enjoyed that. Thank you, Peter.’
As soon as they were alone Joanna, her manner changed, said, ‘Were you sent to take me back?’
‘No… At least… No. My orders were to find out, if possible, what had become of you.’
‘I am glad of that. Because nothing, nobody would get me away. And I should not wish to make you fail in a set task.’
It was the custom to test young men aspiring to knighthood not only in feats of arms but in other ways; persistence; diplomacy; self-control; behaviour when drunk.
‘Her ladyship was naturally anxious about you, demoiselle. There was a difference of opinion. If you had gone afoot, the snow would have… hampered you and forced you to seek shelter. Then there was the horse. Sir Gervase held that you could not have taken him; and held with equal assurance that had you done so you would have been thrown.’
Youth spoke to youth across the card-scattered table and they both laughed.
‘No,’ Peter said. ‘I was told to seek, if possible to find but of retrieving there was no mention. Although the word goes round that Lady Agnes feels her loss.’
‘And with good cause.’ She must, she knew, be ruthless where Lady Agnes was concerned, make her appear to be the scapegoat. If she had a chance, once this innocent, young, terribly young man was about to mount, she’d send a little message to the poor old woman. Until then let Henry accept, undisturbed, the tale she had told him. Let the word betrothal, with all that it would bring to the surface, remain unspoken.
‘If,’ the young man said with great diffidence, ‘the thought of returning to Stordford is repugnant to you, my mother, I know, would welcome you. My father is dead but my mother is able to maintain a substantial household. And she is… kindly.’
‘Like you,’ Joanna said and smiled. And Peter Wingfield understood what it was about—the family smile which made it distinctive. It flashed, swift, sudden and brief across faces not ordinarily set in cheerful lines. Serious faces, even the boy’s.
‘A kind offer,’ Joanna said. ‘But one I cannot accept. My place is here. And here I intend to stay. It is my home.’
And the young, terribly young man had a thought, sudden and brief as the Tallboys’ smile; I wish it were mine, too! A mean house, he had thought it at first sight, and about that he had not changed his mind; it was mean, ill-furnished but there was something, the quiet, the calm and the dignity. He had the fanciful but none the less positive feeling that if the King of England suddenly arrived here, Master Tallboys would greet him courteously, see to his horse, bring him in and offer what he had. It was a fanciful thought, for the King was growing old now and made only short Progresses and even in his best days could never have dreamed of visiting a mere farmhouse, miles from anywhere. But Peter Wingfield entertained the thought, comparing favourably, in his mind, Knight’s Acre with all the other places he knew; the crush and bustle, the jostling for place, the eagerness to be noted, the craving for promotion, the constant chase, even amongst those already rich, for money; money and more money. For a moment he viewed his own future—knighthood at Easter, attachment to the household of some great lord, an advantageous marriage and perhaps, with good luck, a manor of his own or the castellanship of a castle—with distaste.
He was shrewd enough, however, to recognise that this sudden desire for the simple life, the abandonment of ambition was only a passing thing and directly connected with the girl seated opposite to him at the table. In the course of an evening his distant conventional devotion, no more than an attitude, had changed into something warm and genuine. He thought: I am in love! And he knew that young men in love often did rash things. But even as he warned himself to be careful, he began to wonder whether it would not be possible to have the best of both worlds. Joanna and his career, if she had only a small dowry.
Henry came back, extinguished the lantern and said to Godfrey, ‘Off to bed with you, son. Joanna, you too, please. I wish to have a private word…’
She was not much perturbed. Peter was too young, too low in the hierarchy of Stordford to know much. He was unlikely to bring up the mention of betrothal and thus force Henry into the open before he was ready. That was the thing she dreaded.
‘Remember, Peter, to turn your clothes again before you go to bed. They’ll be ready to brush in the morning.’ The mud-spattered garments had been hung well to the side of the hearth, within range of the warmth, out of reach of any direct spark.
Into the coarse mugs Henry poured some more of the wine which he had, in a moment of exuberance, bought to share with Mistress Captoft.
‘Whether you can help me or not, I don’t know,’ he said with the directness that was characteristic of him, ‘but there are things I need to know before I decide upon her future. As a child, she was singularly frank and open. Now she is reticent. I do not even know why Lady Grey imposed a punishment which even you considered over-severe. Do you know?’
‘By hearsay only’ Peter said cautiously. ‘Not kitchen gossip, Master Tallboys.’ And how odd that here, in a kitchen, such emphasis upon rank should seem necessary. ‘Squires’ talk,’ he said, ‘but we are trained to keep eyes and ears open, to make rational judgements by deduction, even by elimination. It was considered that Lord Shefton was enamoured of the demoiselle and wished to marry her; came armed, for Christmas, with a marriage contract and a betrothal ring. Which she refused and was therefore banished.’
‘Tell me something of him—what you know, that is.’
‘He is immensely old. Past seventy. Extremely rich but said to be close-fisted.’ Nowhere else would Peter Wingfield have spoken so frankly of a man of the kind to whom young knights looked for preferment. Nowhere else would he have added, ‘There was an alternative story, sir. That Lady Grey coveted such a match for her daughter… There may be truth in that, since it came about, betrothal and wedding so hard on each other’s heels.’
‘I was badly advised,’ Henry said. He got up, laid a log of the kind unlikely to spark on the fire and turned Peter’s clothes about. Some of the mud, dried to dust, fell on the floor. ‘I wanted the best for her. I said a suitable marriage. This I did not regard as suitable. But I have her future to think of. And now, what with one thing and another, I cannot feel, in good conscience, that I can send her back to Stordford.’
‘I agree, sir. But there are other places.’
‘None known to me. That was the trouble,’ Henry said. ‘I always wanted the best for her. I chose my way of life and it suits me. I wanted something easier for her. And when I discovered that she had means of her own, I wanted them used to her advantage. But the only suitable place I knew was my Aunt Astallon’s; Beauclaire—totally destroyed in the civil war. So I sought advice, which was bad. This situation is the result.’
Peter Wingfield was young enough, and at the moment infatuated enough, to regret, very mildly, that two things in that speech pleased his ear. But he knew his world. Young knights with no prospects took service with a great lord, were housed, fed, equipped: there were prizes to be won at tournaments, loot and ransom money to be gained in any real fighting; but such sources of income were uncertain. A wife with means of her own was very desirable; equally desirable was that she should be of good family; and although Beauclaire was a ruin now it had been famous, in its day, for splendour and hospitality. Even its end had been dramatic. Lord Astallon, the most neutral of men, had suddenly and inexplicably opted for the side of Lancaster, a lost cause. People still talked of the long siege which had been necessary to reduce it.
He began to speak of his mother in her comfortable dower house near Winchester; not a large establishment but lively and gay, ruled by a gentle and accomplished woman. He had reason to speak well of his mother who, out of her necessarily limited means, sent him money from time to time. Such gifts would cease with her death when everything would revert to his eldest brother, but by that time…
‘I am sure my mother would welcome the demoiselle. I am equally sure that she would be happy there.’
‘It is a kind offer,’ Henry said; but he looked dubious. It would be, like Stordford, another shot in the dark. His ignorance of the world which he himself had avoided, and yet wished Joanna to inhabit, clamped down like a fog. Such different standards! Even this pleasant, likeable boy had seemed to see nothing fundamentally wrong in the mis-mating which Lady Grey had proposed between a very old man and Joanna and had achieved between the very old man and her own daughter.
At the same time he could not help thinking that he himself had made a marriage of convenience, if ever man did. Not that he and Griselda had been so ill matched until Godfrey was born. There’d been no ecstasy, that rare thing, but they’d got along together well enough, until she had centred everything on the child and begun to go a little queer.
‘A kind offer,’ he said again. But how could he know that this unknown Lady Wingfield might not
turn out to be another Lady Grey? Stordford Castle, to his ignorant ears, had sounded perfect.
He thought too of how happy Joanna had been since her return. How well she and he and Godfrey had fitted together. No echo, no sign of the thing that had so disturbed him. At least, he thought, I was right there; Stordford cured her of that fancy!
‘It needs thinking about,’ he said. ‘And perhaps the person most concerned should have some say in the matter.’ It was the only time in his life when he had deliberately tried to shuffle off responsibility.
The young man smiled; fairly sure of his ground now. In his world girls did what they were told. Joanna could have broken that rule by refusing to marry Lord Shefton—but the other story was far more likely. Lady Grey had wanted him for Maude.
‘Surely, sir, as her nearest male relative… ’ He had worked it out; the family resemblance, the differing names; uncle or cousin. He was totally unprepared for the effect of those few innocent words. The man stared blankly, rather wildly and then said, ‘Good my God!’
The realisation of how very blind he had been seemed to affect his physical sight and he put a hand across his eyes. Seeing it all now.
Peter Wingfield, so worldly wise, thought of illegitimacy. He had plainly touched a very sensitive spot and hastened to make amends.
‘I am indeed very sorry, sir, if I have said anything untoward. But… But the family resemblance is unmistakable. But if I have mentioned anything l should not… I assure you, sir, you may rely upon my discretion.’
Henry was furious with himself for letting loose that exclamation. A second’s thought and he could have said something casual about resemblance between cousins. Too late for that now!
He said, gruffly, ‘No discretion is called for.’ More than in his present shattered state of mind he could not find words for. And yet he must, because he knew what the boy was thinking.’
He thought: All along, I have been blind as a bat and as stupid as an owl, and I’ve let my mind sink to peasant level. Dumb.