A Traveller in Time

by Alison Uttley

  “Another court?” Tabitha was surprised, and I listened amazed.

  “He learned the ways of a queen and the manners of courts from a more beautiful queen than Queen Bess. With his gracious manners and wit and comely looks he was welcomed at Greenwich, but I doubt whether he pleased Queen Elizabeth, for he didn’t flatter her like others who flit around her throne. She’s a glorious, masterful woman and every one must admire her for the peace and prosperity she brought to England, but Master Anthony’s heart is elsewhere.”

  “He has his young wife waiting here, Dame Cicely,” interrupted Tabitha, eager for romance. She paused in her chopping of fennel and looked towards the window as if she sought her lover. “Surely he doesn’t love another beside Mistress Babington?”

  “He was married before he was eighteen,” said Dame Cicely shortly, “and he loves his wife in a right and proper way but his heart is given to one above all others. There are different kinds of love, Tabitha, and you know only one. There is love for your sweetheart and wife, which is different from mother-love for your childer; and there’s love for your country which makes you go to fight the French and Spaniards; and there’s love for God, which is the best of all. But there’s another love, born of beauty in sorrow. Master Anthony loves the greatest and unhappiest lady in the land, the queen’s cousin.”

  Dame Cicely had dropped her voice and she looked round cautiously as she spoke. The other maids were in the far corner of the room, busy with clanking pails and brooms, singing and teasing as they swished the stone passages, splashing water on one another, stepping through the pools in the flagstones in their high iron-heeled pattens.

  “Mary, Queen of Scotland,” she whispered, “the queen’s cousin and heir to the throne.”

  Tabitha started and dropped the speckled trout she was holding so that it slithered to the floor and was pounced on and carried away by a great cat. Away ran the sly creature and the maids ran after with their brooms shouting “Hi! Tibby!”

  “The captive queen!” cried Tabitha in surprise.

  “Hush,” warned Dame Cicely, nodding and glancing round to see if any one had heard.

  “She’s got beauty and wit, and a tongue of silver, and eyes that kindle a fire in all men’s hearts,” she continued, warmly. “She has no age they say, she is lovely and fresh as the dewy morning. Young Anthony was page to the Earl of Shrewsbury when he was nobbut fourteen, and he lived at Sheffield Castle, where the queen was imprisoned. His father died when he was only ten, and his mother was filled with pride when he was appointed there. Master Foljambe, his step-father, had a hand in it, and was mighty pleased, for he was fond of his step-children. There, at the castle, Anthony worked at Latin and Greek and French with his tutor, and there he learned to sing many a song and turn rhymes deftly, and make up sweet airs for the lute. There, too, his young heart was caught by the loveliness of the poor prisoned queen, alackaday!”

  “She must be a real beauty,” Tabitha agreed. “I’ve heard my father talk about her, for he saw her walking in the gardens at Hardwick Hall where he was working before he fell sick. He said that Bess of Hardwick didn’t like Mary Stuart, and called her cruel names, ‘Scarlet Woman’, and ‘whore’.”

  Aunt Cicely frowned. “Yes, every one knows the Countess is jealous of the Scottish queen, of her charm and her lively ways and witty talk. Those who go to Sheffield Castle to buy and sell, to show their wares to the queen’s servants and ladies—for there’s a fine lot of them, nearly four hundred serving-people—they say that the talk of her in the kitchen and servants’ quarters is that her skin is white as milk, her lips red as the rowan berry, her veins blue as the sky and the blood of her body flushes her creamy skin like the wild roses in the lane yonder. Her voice is low, and full of tremors, stirring to young hearts. That’s what they say, those who have heard her speak, although it is hard to get near her, she is guarded so closely. She is kind and loving to those who serve her, not like Queen Elizabeth, who is hard, but Mary Stuart never forgets a wrong.”

  “Then she’ll have a lot to remember,” said Tabitha.

  “Aye! She was born for delight, but she has had little enow these last many years, pindling in captivity. Master Anthony once told me she would play with her pages and make a pretence of a banquet when they sat in the gardens, with wee silver cups of wine and dishes of tiny cakes and sweetmeats and they would eat and drink, forgetful she was a queen. She would laugh merrily and one would sing a ballad and she clapped her white hands and rewarded him with a box of comfits or a toy. There she romped with her little dogs, or fed her birds from her own lips. Then she would remember and sit for hours, unspeaking, with her eyes staring far away, and her mouth working bitterly with her unhappy thoughts.”

  “That’s like Mistress Babington,” said Tabitha. “Sometimes she plays with her dog Belle, and sometimes she sits all forlorn, and tears fall on her hands.”

  “How long has the queen been imprisoned at Sheffield?” asked Tabitha. Dame Cicely counted on her fingers. “Ten—twelve—yes twelve years come Michaelmas. I know because it was a wild, windy autumn, and one of the great walnut-trees was blown down. We thought it was a sign of something, and the next thing we heard was that the Queen of Scotland was coming. Master Anthony’s father went to see her travel the road with her suite, crowds of horsemen and soldiers. We thought it wouldn’t be long before she was moved to London to be with the queen in her palace, perhaps, but it seems she’ll stay there till she dies.”

  “And now Master Anthony’s coming home,” cried Tabitha, excitedly.

  “Yes, and quite time too, for he ought to look after the lands his father left him, Lea and Codnor and Wirksworth, with farms and woods and lead mines and quarries and all his people waiting to welcome him back. Thackers is his home, not London.”

  “Thackers is my home, not London,” I echoed. Then I remembered something, and I looked at the weapons above the fire.

  “Aunt Cicely,” I cried, springing to my feet and clutching her woollen sleeve. “Where is Uncle Barnabas?”

  “Uncle Barnabas? My brother, Barnabas?” she asked astonished. “What’s the wench talking about? Your Uncle Barnabas was killed in the wars in the Netherlands. There’s his dinted helmet, brought back by Abel Fletcher. ’Twas his little wench, Penelope, you favour so much.”

  “Killed! Uncle Barnabas!” I burst into tears. Tabitha put her arm round me to comfort me and Aunt Cicely came round and kissed my wet cheeks.

  “There! Don’t take on, my dear,” said she. “He’s in Paradise, along of Sir Thomas More and all of ’em.”

  But from outside there came a great clatter and noise, shouts rang through the air. Men came into the kitchen, buttoning their leather jerkins, fastening the buckles unloosened while they worked. They drew on their long boots, and their wooden heels clanked on the stones, and their spurs brought sparks. They smelled rankly of stable and byre, as they pushed and jostled and talked loudly to Aunt Cicely.

  “They’re coming! They’ve been sighted from the top of the Starth. Will Stoker was minding the swine in the woods by Cliff Rocks and he saw the cavalcade riding in the south. They’ll be here in an hour, and we’re going to the ford to meet them, for the river’s high and they’ll want help. Young Master Anthony’s coming home for good!”

  Horses were saddled, and men rode down the lanes, past the brook to the hills whose rounded shapes I already knew by heart. Away they went with a pennon waving in the air, with the arms of Master Anthony upon it. Tom Snowball ran to the church with Abel Fletcher and rang the bells in a joyful tumult of music. Young Mistress Babington came out of the house wearing her green riding habit and the white horse was brought round for her. Tabitha and I watched her ride away with the boy Francis to meet her husband. A flag was hoisted on the tower and Aunt Cicely and the maids hurried to prepare the rooms.

  I went to the porch to see the flag flutter on high, to watch the rooks fly cawing from it in a fright, and the pigeons wheel as the ringing bells tossed in the h
igh tower. As I gazed up in the blue, limpid air the flag faded away into a white cloud, the bells were the sheep-bells in the pastures. Across the fields I could see a chestnut pony with a boy astride. I looked back to the kitchen where Aunt Cicely and Tabitha were lifting the iron pot from the fire, but even as I looked they became dim as wood-smoke. I met the eyes of the boy Jude, who was staring at me as if he saw a ghost. I waved, but he shrank back, covering his face with his hands in terror. Then I ran out of doors, across the grassplat where white cloths were bleaching, to the gate.

  “It’s your turn, Penelope. Didn’t you go upstairs? I suppose you hadn’t time to change you were in such a hurry to get back.”

  “Hurry to get back!” I echoed, softly. I had been away for hours, days it seemed, but the fingers of the grandfather clock had not moved while I was away. Like a dream which abolishes time and space, which can travel through years in a flash and to the ends of the world in a twinkling, I went into another century and lived there and returned before the pendulum of the grandfather clock had wagged once behind the bull’s-eye glass. I had experienced the delights and anxieties of another age, moving quietly in that life, walking in the garden, talking and loitering and returning in the blink of an eyelid. It was neither dream nor sleep, this journey I had taken, but a voyage backward through the ether. Perhaps I had died in that atom of time, and my ghost had fled down the years, recognized only by Jude, and then returned in a heart-beat.

  I looked down at my hands, from which a sweet and disturbing scent came. It was musk from the garden path of another age. I stood motionless, waiting for something to happen.

  Ian rode up on the pony, Betty, and I mounted. I took the reins without speaking, and galloped up the fields, my head in a whirl, my heart pounding as I breathed the icy coldness of the air. I pulled up at the top of the hill and stared about through the gaps in the trees, trying to catch a glimpse of a company of horsemen riding on a distant slope. I listened for the sound of the horn which the fair-haired boy Francis had wound as he cantered away, for the echo was still in my ears. I looked up at the sky, at the floating clouds and the wind-swept, tossing trees which moaned under a rising wind. The fivefold hills were lavender, indigo, violet in the soft light, one behind another, concealing the small villages in their shadowed troughs. Life went on unseen in those misty shallows, and another life moved in the folded layers of time.

  I turned the pony round and came slowly back to the farm, trying to puzzle it out. There before me was the church, with its broken shields on the tower and the latest one, which the unseen mason was shaping, was already weathered and worn. Hens clucked around the doorway, as they had always done, and a cock crowed with shrilly challenge. In the yard cattle were lowing, and the sheep with their tinkling bells came down the pasture with the dogs. I was living in the past and the present together, at Thackers, the home of my ancestors. I saw the web and woof of time threaded in a pattern, and I moved through the woven stuff with the silent footfall of a ghost.

  Slowly I rode across the yard to the stable door, and Ian met me angrily.

  “You’ve ridden too fast,” he cried. “You galloped her up the hill and then you let her stay still, all sweating. She’s all of a lather. Penelope, you don’t deserve to share a pony.”

  He rubbed the darkly streaked sides and I bit my lip, already forgetting. I didn’t know what possessed me, except that I wanted to see someone before he disappeared, to catch a glimpse of a pageant of blue and silver somewhere in the distant woods, to hear the sound of a horn.

  “Don’t scold her,” said Uncle Barnabas, and I clung to his warm, work-hardened fingers. He was there, touching me, and I had had a bad dream about him. He would never die as long as Thackers existed. “She’s my brown lass, and she’s done nowt amiss,” said Uncle Barnabas valiantly. He gave a hearty laugh as we went into the farm kitchen, and I started, for it was the deep laughter of Dame Cicely.

  There was the fire burning unchanged, but the great cauldron of venison was replaced by a copper kettle which sang a quiet song. In front of the blaze, instead of the spit turned by a swarthy, green-eyed boy was a Dutch oven with a bird grilling in it for dinner. Instead of the long-shafted weapons, the pikes and halberds, were my uncle’s guns, polished and cleaned ready for use.

  There on the left was a cupboard where the bread-oven had been and I opened the door and looked inside. It was filled with flat-irons and crimping irons of many sizes and weights.

  “Penelope! You mustn’t open Aunt Tissie’s cupboards like that,” cried Alison, but Aunt Tissie turned from the fire, her old face crimson with heat, the little white tucker in her dress all creased and crumpled.

  “That was the bread-oven once, Penelope, in old days. Even in my grandfather’s time we made our bread in it, but now we cook in the ordinary oven. Times have changed but they say bread is never as sweet now as it was when they baked it by charcoal.”

  She took some herbs from the table and dropped them in a brass pan on the fire. Then she called us to the table.

  “Dinner’s ready, my dears. Blow the whistle for Jess. He’s out with the sheep. I hope you’ve got good appetites with your riding, for I’ve got something very nice, and you’ll never guess what it is. Fresh trout from the Darrand! A gentleman staying at Bramble Hall caught them this morning, and their servant-lad brought some down for me, seeing as I have visitors from London who don’t get trout every day of the week, I’m sure.”

  4. The Book of Hours

  That night we sat round the great oak table in the kitchen at Thackers with Uncle Barnabas and Aunt Tissie in their high-backed chairs, and played dominoes. Even Jess joined us, for he scrubbed himself very clean and damped his hair and put on a Sunday coat in our honour. We each built a wall with our store and put out the dominoes from our black-and-white ramparts into the circle of lamp-light. When the game was over we asked riddles, and Uncle Barnabas posed many an ancient riddle to puzzle our London wits.

  A riddle, a riddle, it dances and skips,

  It is read in the eyes though it cheats on the lips.

  If it meets with its match it is easily caught,

  But when money buys it, it’s not worth a groat.

  and the answer to that is “A heart”.

  Then Alison asked me to bring down my sketching book to show my aunt and uncle the drawings I had made at the Zoo. With my lighted candle, which Aunt Tissie called:

  Little Miss Etticoat, in a white petticoat,

  The longer she lives, the shorter she grows.

  I went through the door. I didn’t much care to leave the warm fireside to go up the dark staircase where there was never a glimmer except the pale ghostly ray on the landing from the window which overlooked the church. I kept glancing about at the shadows which came out of the corners and moved alongside me, and I thought a voice might call or a hand stay me. I opened our bedroom door and found the sketch book lying in front of the mirror, and as I picked it up I saw again the reflection of my pale face. I had changed my dress for my green tussore with long, full sleeves, and I wore my coral necklace. I always felt proud of this dress, for Mother had made it for me. As I peered into the dim, smoky glass I wished those people, wherever they were, could see me. Then I leaned from the window and looked out at the dark church tower with its broken shields and the great door with the plaited stone rim. In the yard I saw the lamplight from the house fall in regular pattern upon the grassplat, I could hear the stamp of hooves in the stable, and from the field came the snuffling grunt of a grazing mare. Moths flew in and fluttered round the candle-flame, and then the draught caught the little yellow flag and tore it away, and I was left in the darkness.

  I never could get used to candles, I told myself in a panic as I fumbled my way across the room. In the faint light of the landing I thought I saw the doors drift out of obscurity. Dare I open one of them? I asked myself. Dare I? From down the narrow stair came Ian’s laugh and then the deep voice of Uncle Barnabas. The safe world was there, and I had o
nly to turn away, but I longed to enter that hidden timeless world where the hours and seconds were crystallized into one transparent drop, round and clear.

  I put out a hand and lifted the shadowy latch, and stood on the threshold, not venturing to take a step, held breathless by what I saw. There in the room, brooding in the firelight which dappled the walls in pointed flames, was a young man. His gloomy handsome face was in the shade, his hands clasped round his knees. His hair was flaxen, curled and shining like fine gold in the light, his chin had a little beard, pointed and downy. His clothes were rich but stained and splashed with mud, his doublet open at the neck, where he wore a narrow lace collar. His leather thigh-boots stood wrinkled and drooping in the corner, and on his feet he had soft scarlet shoes with slashed toes. I stood still as a dream, watching him, hearing his sigh, seeing his breast rise and fall, and his fingers move convulsively. Suddenly he spun round and uttered a cry as he saw me.

  “’S blood! Who’s there? Who are you? Speak!” he commanded, and his brilliant blue eyes flashed as he clutched the arms of his great chair and I saw the firelight gleam on a jewel which hung from a gold chain round his neck.

  Quickly I shut the door, but I heard him mutter: “A ghost! Or a wench, but a lovely little wench!”

  Breathlessly I ran downstairs, stumbling headlong into the kitchen.

  “You look as if you’d seen a boggart,” said Uncle Barnabas dryly. “Is ’owt amiss?”

  I was trembling with excitement, and elated because I had gone there again, and seen him—Anthony—but I was silent.

  Aunt Tissie went to the cupboard and took out a bottle of cordial and a little fluted glass.