A Traveller in Time

by Alison Uttley

  “She’s glorious,” I cried, patting the arched neck. “Whose is she? Is she yours?”

  “I’ve hired her from Bramble Hall for a bit, for you three to ride,” said Uncle Barny. “It will do you good to learn to manage her. She’s good-tempered, for I bred her myself.”

  The pony nuzzled at his pocket and gave a whinny of recognition. “Aye,” he continued, “she’s been inside Thackers afore this. Saw the door open and walked in, and helped yourself to a cake, didn’t you, Betty?”

  The pony whinnied and stamped her hoof, and the young man grinned.

  We thanked Uncle Barny, bewildered by the good fortune, for we had always wanted a pony to ride. We once had lessons in London, when father was able to spare a little money, but we had never been on a horse outside the riding school.

  Then Aunt Tissie came out with sugar and bread. “Betty, you beauty,” she cried, flinging her arms round the pony and kissing its soft nose. “Welcome home to your old stable, my pet.”

  “Ian must look after her, groom her, fettle her, and you must take turns in riding,” said Uncle Barnabas, and he gave us a lesson in management, and showed us where to hang the saddle. Ian mounted at once and trotted round the yard and out to the field. I raced upstairs to change my apron and tunic. I flung open the door, and I fell headlong down a flight of stairs. I had dropped into the corridor where I had seen the servants pass with their jugs and tankards. For some time I lay half-stunned with surprise, but unhurt, for I had fallen silently like a feather floating to the floor. I looked round at the door, but it had disappeared; I stared at the low whitewashed ceiling and the carved doorways, and I listened to the beating of my heart which was the only sound. Then life seemed to come to the world, distant shouts of men, the jingle of harness, and the lowing of cattle. A cock crew as if to wake the dead, and I sat up trying to remember...remember....

  “Grammercy! What’s this ado?” cried a shrill voice, and a young woman came round the corner and stood with arms akimbo looking at me. “What do ye here, wench? Ye’ve no occasion to come up here? I’ll lay ye are peering into what doesn’t concern ye. So get ye down to the kitchen. What are ye doing? Has my lady sent ye for ’owt? Who are ye?”

  “Who are ye?” I echoed, struggling to my feet dazed and confused, and even my own voice sounded hollow and remote to my ears.

  The young woman flared up angrily and shook a warning finger at me. Her clumsy body bent toward me and she muttered half under her breath: “Don’t ye be impertinent! Don’t ye dare mock me!” but I had no intention of mocking. I had used her words to recover my wits, which had forsaken me completely.

  “Haste down to the kitchen to Dame Cicely. The mistress is waiting for her posset,” said she more quietly, and she pointed down the passage. I went meekly past the closed doors with the carved lintels to a stone stairway up which a young and pretty servant-girl was coming. Her round face was tanned and freckled and her little snub nose and ripe, red lips were beaded with moisture. She wore a full blue skirt kilted out of the way, and her small, brown feet were bare. A bonnet of lawn covered her ruddy hair, and she tossed her head to shake back a curl. In her hands she carried a besom made of birch twigs and a mop and a wooden bucket of hot water. She looked up and saw me, and she stopped dead, staring at me with her wide, brown eyes startled like a deer.

  “Who art thou, mistress?” she asked, and she puckered her red lips and spoke with a broad accent which was homely and welcoming to me. “Dost want Dame Cicely Taberner?”

  “Yes please,” I faltered. “Miss Cicely Taberner I want.”

  “She’s down in the kitchen making the bread.” The girl spoke slowly, and she put down her bucket in the corner and accompanied me with many a backward glance at my dress and surreptitious peep at my face, along the stone passage to the room I knew so well. There was the same big oak table in the middle of the floor and the same spice cupboard with its multitude of little drawers against the wall. The bare, scrubbed boards of the table were heaped with a medley of things—wild ducks, in their soft feathers, pigs’ white pettitoes, bleached for cooking, a wide basket of apples, wooden and earthenware bowls and an enormous rolling-pin like a truncheon. Strange smells came drifting through the air, pungent odours of spices and meats and smoke from the fire, and strange people were standing about on the flagged floor where green rushes were strewn. A great fire burned in the open hearth and round it were saucepans of brass and iron simmering in the edges of the flames and sending out the heavy odours which pervaded the room and made me feel giddy as I stood in the doorway surveying the scene. The stove with its ovens and hobs was no longer there, but hanging from the iron ratchet which Aunt used for her pig-food kettle was a large cauldron with meat simmering, and curls of blue vapour rising among the flames. On the floor in front of the blazing logs was a spit with a humpbacked boy turning the handle and watching the roasting fowls drop their fat into a dish below. He stared at me, unsmiling, his green eyes bright in the firelight, his rough mop of black hair glittering round his small, pointed face. Then he went on with his work, but his gaze never left me and I felt discomfort under that inimical stare.

  I saw a woman who was surely my Aunt Tissie, grown taller, stouter, younger, and more comely, but with the same broad good-tempered face, and the same hooked nose and rounded cheeks. Her lips were parted, and her forehead wet with sweat. She was kneading the bread in a great wooden trough like the horses’ manger and her plump arms were deep in the folds of the dough. A young girl was cracking and beating eggs in an earthenware bowl and tossing the shells to a corner of the room where a vast heap lay like foam. Another woman was stirring custard in a brass-pan, chattering all the time. On a rack above their heads hung a hundred or more oaten cakes, big as dinner-plates, drying in the fire’s heat, and a barrel of meal stood on the floor with a wooden jug beside it.

  The serving-girl pushed me gently forward as I lingered in the doorway, and my aunt looked up from her kneading-trough.

  “Lord ’a Mercy on us! Who’s this?” she cried, and for a moment her cheeks paled, and the pupils of her blue eyes dilated, but her voice was deep and rich as ever, with the burr in it which always made me feel warm and happy.

  “It’s me! It’s Penelope, Aunt Tissie,” I cried, running forward quickly, and my heart rejoiced to see my beloved aunt. The others stared open-mouthed, but Aunt Tissie carefully removed the clinging dough from her arms and dipped her fingers in the flour-barrel to dry them. She came slowly across the room to me, for I had hesitated half-way across the floor, bewildered by the strangeness that assailed my eyes and nostrils. I stood mute, like a little wild creature, wrinkling my nose at the smells of humanity which were unlike those I knew.

  Aunt Tissie put her hands on my shoulders, and tilted my chin to the light. Her puzzled blue eyes gazed into mine, her fingers caressed my cheek-bones and her thumbs poked my dimples.

  “Who art thou, little wench?” she asked quietly, softly. “Thou call’st me Aunt, niece Penelope? Art thou a niece of mine? What’s thy name?”

  “Penelope Taberner Cameron,” said I, and the words dropped from my lips one by one as I made the effort to remember. As I stood there, breathing the air which was different, feeling strange emotions in my heart, so that I was half trembling with fear, I stretched out a hand to hold the table, to get courage from the rough wood. Sounds I knew came from the open door. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! called a bird in the wood, which I glimpsed through the portal, and the doves cooed in the yard. My heart stopped its wild beating and I turned with a timid smile to my aunt who was staring at me.

  “Penelope Taberner,” she repeated, ignoring the Cameron. “I can scarcely believe it, yet thou art a Taberner, in spite of thy dark hair cut like a youth’s. A dimple in thy cheeks, and the same crooked way of smiling, and the same round mouth, and the little twist to thy eyebrow, as one or another of us always has, and always will have as long as there is a Taberner left.”

  She paused in her inspection and frowned and took my hand
in hers as if she would read the lines.

  “Thou hastna worked hard, for thy hand is soft and white as my lady’s. Where dost thou come from, my sweeting? I know most of my kin round hereabouts, but I disremember you, although I can’t keep stock of brother Andrew’s twenty childer. Are ye one of ’em? Or are ye a daughter of Elizabeth, who had fourteen wenches as well as four boys? Where do ye come from, Penelope?”

  “From Chelsea, Aunt Tissie,” said I, slowly, trying to remember more, but my mind was away, lost in the shadows which flickered across the doorway and raced over the fields outside.

  “Chelsey? That’s a village near London. I’ve heard Master Anthony talk about it, for he took Mistress Babington there once. Maybe thy mother was a serving-maid to her when she was there? It’s a powerful way off, and I’ve no relations living there, as I knows of, but I’ve lost count of some of ’em. There was niece Margery, but she married a farmer Ashover way, and you’re not one of hers. And there’s niece Sarah, and Rachel, and Mary and Susanna, and Jane and every one of ’em has a mithering lot of childer, some of ’em old enough to be wed, and many a Penelope among ’em. There’s Robin and Ralph and John Taberner, all got daughters. Whose maiden be ye?”

  I shook my head. All memory of my mother and father had disappeared, I knew nothing about them. Only Thackers and the unchanging landscape remained, familiar and dear to me, as if I had known it from time everlasting, as if I were part of it, immortal soul of it come back to the loved place.

  “Aunt Tissie,” I pleaded. “I’ve come to Thackers to learn the ways and to be with you, and to stay as long as you’ll have me.” Then, with a flash of memory I added: “My mother sent me, to be with you.”

  “Well, whoever ye be, ye are more than welcome, for there’s no shadow of doubt you’re a Taberner, and a good-bred one, although not as strong-looking as ye ought to be. Here ye shall live, Penelope, as long as ye will. The last Penelope who lived here died a while back. She was my favourite niece, and when her father was killed in the war in the Netherlands, she came to me. It was same as a ghost come back to see the likeness between ye, but she’s in the churchyard yonder, under sod, and ye are alive and blooming like the rose.”

  She looked down at me again with a kindly welcoming manner, and then she seemed to be aware of my clothes, for she gave a sharp cry.

  “Where didst thou get those weeds, my chuck? Where’s thy baggage? Have ye no belongings? How didst thou travel here?”

  I shook my head dolefully. “I can’t tell, I can’t answer,” I muttered.

  “Ye don’t know?” exclaimed Aunt Tissie, astonished, but not more surprised than myself. “Nay, that beats all. If ye weren’t my own kin I should say ye were simple,” and she clucked her tongue in consternation.

  The kitchen-maids crowded round me and touched my dress with curious fingers. I looked down at my navy serge tunic and the little striped apron I had worn when I was helping Aunt Tissie. It wasn’t I who had changed, but my surroundings, I reminded myself, as they whispered and nodded and pointed at my shoes.

  “They’re mebbe out of the oak chest on the landing,” said one of them, as I stood miserably blushing with the attention I had caused. “There’s a store of ancient clothes for the poor and needy, gear of well-nigh a hundred years in that chest.”

  “Or she found ’em in the play-acting chest, where the mistress keeps her garments for mumming-plays and Christmas routs and junketings. Ye might have found something seemlier than that doublet if ye wanted to dress up and surprise us,” said another.

  “Where have ye hidden your ordinary gear?” asked the one whom I had seen the first, who now entered the room. “I found her on the landing, near the mistress’s chamber, and mebbe she’s been inside poking about.”

  “No Aunt,” I cried, and tears sprang to my eyes. “These are my own clothes, and I haven’t any more.”

  “Well amercy! Don’t weep, my pretty! I mun make ye some more, for those are not seemly,” said Dame Cicely, and she wiped my eyes with her apron and put her arm about me to shield me from the others. “Tabitha,” she called to the pretty girl who had met me on the stairs. “Take Penelope upstairs to my bedchamber, and put more womanly weeds on her to cover up her long legs. She’s like a lad in that garb. I wouldn’t have the mistress see my niece so.”

  “It’s the dress of a London prentice she’s wearing, and it becomes her. Leave her, Dame Cicely,” said Tabitha. “She’s bonny in them and the mistress won’t mind anything on a day like this. She’ll laugh mebbe, and it will do her good, for, poor soul, she has troubles enow with Master George’s gambling debts and Master Anthony, God bless him, bringing anxieties to this quiet place where nothing’s ever happed since Adam and Eve were on earth.”

  “Have it thy own way,” laughed Dame Cicely. “I’ll tell Mistress Babington and Mistress Foljambe that my niece has come from Chelsey to help me, and she’ll be right glad to have ye in the household, and whoever was your mother, ye are a Taberner, and the very image of her who died and is buried out yonder. Ye shall sleep in my bed, for it’s had an empty place since she left us. Phoebe shall make a new smock for ye, and I’ll lend ye a night-rail of mine, although thy little body will be lost in it.”

  She looked me up and down, considering my position in the household.

  “Niece Penelope, canst thou sew and cook and milk the kine?” she questioned. “There’s a-plenty of work to be done here, and no room for an idle maid.”

  “I don’t sew very well, and I can’t cook,” I confessed.

  “Maybe ye’ve been eddicated above thy station?” she said cheerfully. “Canst read and write like the quality?”

  “Oh yes,” said I.

  “That’s more nor us can do! I can’t read a word, but I keep this household going. I carry my knowledge in my noddle and have no use for printed books. Receipts for cooking, and making of drinks and possets, I know them all. I remember the old ballads and I know the Psalms, so that I can sing without a Psalter. I keep a tally on the doorpost of the number of eggs and chickens and ducklings we have. I’ve done very well without reading and writing, and I keep my wits clear by not addling them with rubbish. But Mistress Foljambe will be glad of thee. She’ll maybe make thee her own maid.”

  They all talked together, but I was too much astonished to utter a word, and I looked round the Thackers kitchen as if I had never seen it before. The passage to the dairy had gone, and the pantry was part of the big room. Aunt Tissie was different too, although I should have recognized her anywhere, whatever she wore. She had on a full dress, not much bulkier than the one she wore that morning when we sat down to breakfast at the same table, in a time that had slipped from my memory, so that I could not remember who sat there with us. The cherry-red woollen skirt was short enough to show her square, buckled shoes, rough and strong, but neatly made. Her black bodice was fastened up the front with little wooden buttons carved like acorns, each button slightly different from its fellow. A white cambric collar creased and crumpled with work was round her neck, tied at the front with a black, tasselled cord. On her thick hair was a fold of linen, like a cap, snowy and fresh, and her apron was gathered and pleated in many folds round her large waist. Her face had the same serenity, and she twinkled at me and laughed with loud laughter like a man’s as she saw my astonished eyes which were open as wide as they could be in complete bewilderment.

  “Thou art an odd moppet,” she cried heartily and she laughed so much that tears came sparkling into her eyes, and all the maids laughed too. But the green-eyed boy glowered at me, and covered his eyes with his hands when I peered his way.

  “Ye are a sweet toad, and as like my great-niece Penelope was at thy age as two peas in a peascod. Come here, my sweeting, and give me a kiss.”

  She enfolded me in her floury arms and printed a loud, warm kiss on my lips, in just the way Aunt Tissie always welcomed me when she saw me in the mornings.

  “But dunno ye call me Aunt Tissie! That’s a name for a she-cat! Call me
Aunt Cicely. Cicely Taberner is my name, and Thackers is my home, and Heaven’s my destination.”

  She gave a rollicking laugh and went back to her bread-making.

  “Now make thyself useful,” she continued, “and ye mun feel at home.”

  “I do, Aunt Cicely,” I murmured, breathlessly.

  “Go and pile wood in the bread-oven, for the loaves will soon be raised, and it’s not near hot enow.”

  She pointed with a stout forefinger to the heap of brushwood in the corner and I went across the flagged floor, treading softly on the rushes through which I could see the yellow-bordered stones.

  I pushed the green wood in the deep oven which went into the wall at the side of the fire, on the left of the open fireplace. Above my head, slung across hooks in the wall, were longbows and spiked halberds, long-shafted with hatchet heads, but the blades were rusty and the wooden handles dark with age and wood-smoke. Next to them was my aunt’s warming-pan, which she used for airing my bed. “To take the chill off, mind you, for you’ll be nesh, my dear, coming from London.” It was polished like a mirror, and one of the girls stood before its reflecting surface and tidied her cap. I stared fascinated, wondering at its strange companions which might have been used in an ancient war.

  “Ye’ve mebbe never seen a longbow afore,” said Aunt Cicely as she caught my curious glances. “They don’t have ’em in Chelsey, but here we keep to the old ways, and these were used in long-ago battles by our family. We’m got many an aged thing kept from days long past, and if they could speak they’d have perilous tales to tell. The warming-pan is new and as good as a mirror for the wenches to set their caps straight.”

  She stooped over the trough and pommelled the dough into a great creamy-brown bolster, not white like the dough I had seen before. Then she lifted the whole trough down to the floor and set it by the fire for the bread to rise. The young boy moved aside from his place on the hearth. His eyes were fixed upon me, never for a moment did he look away, so that I felt as if a savage beast were watching my movements, ready to spring.