“From Chelsea, Master Anthony,” said I boldly, for I was sure he was the famous heir of the Babingtons who had come home from London.
“From Chelsey?” he echoed. “When I was newly married I took sweet Mistress Mary to Chelsey and we dwelt in a thatched cottage down by the church with the fields and flowers about us. Do you know it?” He didn’t wait for my reply but continued. “Later I went to Chelsey to visit the house of poor Sir Thomas More along with others of the court. We went by river, in painted barges, with musicians playing and flags flying, a gallant show, but it gave me no pleasure.”
“I live by the church, sir,” I interrupted eagerly, but he took no notice.
“I have had enough of court life,” he continued, low, as if I were not there. “I was kept dallying on the outskirts of Greenwich, wasting my money, for I never got near enough to the queen to make the show I wished. So there I stayed, dissembling my love for another, concealing my religion, talking to fools, gambling away my substance, turning witty speeches, sick at heart, till I met those who showed me how I could help the one I worshipped.”
He spoke softly as if to himself, standing at the window staring out at the lovely hill-side where I had walked that day. Something stirred in my mind, and I interrupted him. “There’s a badger’s holt in that wood and Jess is going to show it to me. I ought to go,” said I, but my words died away in forgetfulness, and I turned back to the young man at my side. His fingers were playing with a thin gold chain, fine as twisted hair which hung round his neck. On it I could see a gilded locket, with the letters M.R. engraved upon it. Instinctively he concealed it with his hand. Then he changed his mind, for he turned abruptly to me, and drew me into the room close by. The filmy lace of his ruffle swept my neck but his fingers were hard as iron as they pressed my shoulder and propelled me to the daylight. I forgot Jess and the badger and Thackers wood as I felt the pressure of his arm and heard his deep, low voice.
“Do you know who this is, Penelope Taberner? Have you ever seen a face like hers? Do you believe the evil they say or do you know the courage and splendour of her?”
He spoke passionately and he pushed me round to face the window of the little chamber, and then he slipped the gold chain from his neck. He pressed a catch and held the open locket in the palm of his hand.
I bent my head and gazed long at the miniature of a woman, wearing a black dress, bordered with fur, and a pointed lawn headdress winged and stiffly outspread like a lily’s petals, edged with narrow lace. The oval face was palely beautiful, the hazel eyes were laughing stars under the lovely arch of the brows, the scarlet lips seemed as if they were about to utter a mocking word. In her long fingers she held a carnation, red as her lips. Round her white neck, over the open ruff, was a gold crucifix. I stared enchanted by the delicate features of the lady, by the lacy detail of her headdress, the bunch of pearls which fastened the boyish ruff, and the little enamelled Christ on the gold crucifix. I saw the transparent beauty of those fingers which seemed to twist the stem of the flower before tossing it to one the lady loved.
“She’s very beautiful,” I murmured.
“She is the star of heaven and earth,” said Anthony under his breath.
“That’s a lovely carnation,” I added, for I love flowers always.
“ ‘Sops-in-wine’ we country people call it,” smiled Anthony. “Our garden is full of them in her memory. You know who she is?”
I shook my head, not venturing to guess.
“Her blessed Majesty, Mary Queen of Scotland,” said he. “My beloved and sacred queen. One day she will be Queen of England, on her rightful throne, and the true religion will come back, and all will be well on earth as in heaven.”
I knew something. I struggled to speak. I had foreknowledge, I could remember. The very air I breathed was vibrant with sorrow and foreboding of disaster, and the words came unbidden to my lips.
“She was executed,” I whispered, but Anthony heard me.
The effect of my word was startling. He sprang back with his hands to his head as if shot. Then he raised his fist as if he would strike me, and I shrank against the wall, terrified by his twisted face.
“Unsay those words, vile wretch,” he cried. “How dare you! Who are you to speak ill of the queen?”
I stared at him, terrified. He seized me and shook me violently and flung me back against the wall. I leaned there weeping softly, afraid of my own knowledge, scarce knowing why I had spoken.
“Was? Was did you say?” he continued. “Why, she is at Sheffield Castle now. I saw her only yesterday. I kissed those white hands and listened to words from those sweet lips.” The words came hissing from him in a broken whisper.
My head reeled, but he pulled me forward and held my face in his harsh hands and looked long into my eyes. Then as if satisfied that I was not mocking he was silent for a time.
What was Mary Queen of Scots to me that I should remember her and forget all else? Why did these fateful words come to my lips as I stood there in the little chamber? It must have been, I decided afterwards when I considered this happening, that her tragedy had impressed the scene, the vibrant ether had held the thoughts of the perilous ruinous adventure, so that the walls of Thackers were quickened by them, the place itself alive with the memory of things once seen and heard, for such grief was of eternity and outside time. As the scent which lay dormant in the oak chest for many years had spired upwards and detached itself, bearing a train of visions and half memories, so the spoken words, the desperate knowledge of the queen’s execution three hundred years before, had lain in some pocket of the ether and had entered a mind attuned to it. The ghosts of the thoughts were hovering to take possession and to me they came. The knowledge was insignificant to me, but in the past it was of such tragic import it pervaded my mind and became the most outstanding memory. She was alive, but she was dead, and always she was immortal.
“Hast thou second sight, wench?” asked Anthony, fearfully, “or didst thou visit Doctor Dee, Queen Elizabeth’s astrologer, when thou wert in London? Did he say those words to thee? Didst thou look into his crystal show-stone and see the future as I once saw it? Queen Elizabeth consults him and he has advised her and shown to her friends and enemies.”
“Doctor Dee? I’ve never heard of him,” I answered, aghast at the effect of my words.
“He looked into the pink crystal ball where all things are visible, past and future, and there in a circle of darkness he saw tragic happenings for me and for her. The queen he refused to speak about, for an astrologer must beware of his foretellings, but he told me my own end, and a worse one there could not be.”
Anthony’s face was drawn with horror and despair, and he leaned on the window-sill, shuddering at the memory. “But it shall not be. I will defeat my fate.” He sprang up and turned again to me.
“Forgive me for my harshness, but I was unbalanced by your sudden words. Can you swear you never saw him?” he asked.
“No, I’ve never seen an astrologer in my life, but once I heard my mother say she feared I had second sight.”
“My uncle, Doctor Babington of Bramble Hall, has second sight,” said Anthony slowly. “He prophesied evil of me when I was very young. He wrote these words to Henry Foljambe, my stepfather, warning him to keep me by him, away from temptation and freedom.
“Give him not, brother, his libertie in youth, or the Old Days he shall not see.”
“My mother hated him for his ill-bodings, and she never spoke to him again, nor does he ever visit us at Thackers. My dear stepfather gave me my liberty and I went to London. Yet I know I shall never live to grow old, never know the heat of summer days and the cold of our Darbyshire snows. I shall not see my children ride up yonder woods, and hunt the deer, and marry and beget children of their own to live at Thackers. That thought haunts me, but I am driven on by unseen forces.”
I hastened to comfort him, putting my hand timidly on his sleeve, for I longed to help him in the distress I had caused.
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bsp; Then he shrugged his shoulders and laughed. “I don’t know why I have told you about this except that your strange prophecy startled me. You have an air of foreknowledge which sits ill on so young a brow. Yet I know I can trust you in a world where few can be trusted. This sadness of which I have spoken is not to be mentioned at Thackers, for Thackers is an abode of peace. So keep it and hide it in your mind, Penelope.”
“We can alter the future, we have free wills, Master Anthony,” I cried, but the words came from me against my common sense, for his future was in my past. The fate of the queen was written in the Archangel Michael’s book.
Somehow, in the serenity of the sunny, bare chamber where we stood, with Master Anthony’s blue eyes looking into mine, and that lovely jewel dangling in his fingers touching mine as he spoke, I felt all things were possible. We would put back the clock of time and save her.
He took my hands in his, and held them tightly.
“You want to save her? I can trust you with my heart? You love her too, Penelope?” he whispered.
“Oh yes, Master Anthony,” I cried passionately. “I love her too,” and my words were true. A great love for this doomed queen swept over me, making me forget past and future in the clear present which I shared with him.
5. Francis Babington
I left the room and went unsteadily and sadly down the twisted back staircase which led through the passage to the kitchen. I sidled past the door before Dame Cicely noticed me and went along the stone passage to the dairy, for that was a room I knew very well. I put my finger through the same thumb-hole I had always used and lifted the latch. There was the familiar ice-cold chamber with sanded benches ranged round the walls and rough oak shelves unplaned and knotted, along the whitewashed walls. A tall wooden churn with an upright dasher for butter-making stood on the floor and immense shallow bowls were set for cream. I took the copper skimmer from the shelf and dipped it into a bowl, and sipped the thick yellow cream which was sweet as nuts. Then I wandered round staring at the utensils on the shelves, the wooden prints, one carved in the shape of a Tudor rose, and another with the Babington arms upon it. There were wooden bowls, some of them worm-eaten and cracked, others fitted with covers or lined with coarse linen ready for the table. There were sieves for the milk and pewter measures shiny with use. Down on the floor was a tiny wooden bowl as big as a walnut-shell filled with cream, standing on a few fresh flowers. I stared at it, wondering, not daring to touch.
The door was pushed open very quietly and an old woman entered with a bucket and mop. Her skirt was kilted, and she wore wooden shoes on her bare feet. She began to mop the floor and as she finished each flagstone she knelt down and bordered it with a rim of yellow sandstone.
“I knew you would do that,” I said to her, and she looked up from her lowly position with a toothless smile.
“Aye. It’s to make it purty, my dainty lass. It’s allays done that way in this countryside of Darby. Foreigners don’t do it up Lunnon. Robin Good-fellow likes to see the floor clean and purty when he comes to the dairy for his sup of cream.”
“And where does he have it?” I asked, but I had already guessed.
“There’s his bowl left ready. We fills it every day and sometimes he do sip it, the elvish fellow, and sometimes he don’t. But we leaves it allays, for he brings good luck to the house. He sweeps out the houseplace and minds the fire from danger, and fettles the horses in stable, and does many a thing. Fairies lives in country places same as this, but not in Lunnon nowadays. Not since a long time have they lived in Lunnon. They all trooped back to the country where we looks after ’em.”
“How do they get in if the window is shut?” I asked, and I stooped over the pannikin on its posy of flowers.
“By the thumb-hole in the door, o’ course. Now don’t talk about ’em any more, for they don’t like folk noticing their ways. Get ye out, for I want to wash where ye stand,” said the old dame and out I went.
The door in the porch was wide open and hot sunshine poured through. I passed the kitchen and went outside towards the garden where Tabitha had taken me. Labourers and farm men were working in the fields; some came back to the yard leading horses, dragging loads of hay on clumsy rafts of wood, others were making haystacks under the church walls and the smell of new-mown hay filled the air. I had left spring behind that morning, the seasons had flown like birds on the wing. There were old men with dark, leather breeches and young men in green jerkins stained with earth and torn, chopping wood, working in the brew-house, cleaning out the stables. “Dame Cicely’s niece from Lunnon,” they told one another, jerking thumbs at me, as I crossed the yard.
In the garden I wandered free, looking at the many-coloured flowers, bright blue borage, striped carnations, and tawny tiger-lilies. I knelt by the beds of little yellow pansies and blue columbines which nid-nodded their heads in their encircling box-hedges, and filled my pockets with camomile, and rubbed my hands in the lemon-balm. An old man stepped from behind the yew hedge and came towards me, with a sickle on his shoulder and a rake in his calloused hand. He took off his leather cap and scratched his head.
“Be ye a friend of Mistress Babington’s?” he asked in a deep slow voice, low like water bubbling in the earth.
“No. I’m Dame Cicely’s niece,” said I.
“I seed ye were furrin, but if ye belongs to Dame Cicely I needner be on my bestest manners,” he said relieved and he replaced the crooked worn cap and came over to my side.
“See them oxlips?” He pointed to a group of golden-red flowers which filled a corner by the path. “I made ’em! I got a tuthree roots of yellow oxlips from Westwood medder and planted them upsy down and they comed up like this.”
He stroked his stubbled chin and waited for my admiration.
“I did! I, Adam Dedick, did ’un!” he continued proudly, “but it takes some skill, for ye mun get good roots, and not cover ’em wi’ soil, but let the air get to ’em. I’ll show ye next spring, if so be we’m above sod ourselves. It’s like this, thinks I. We’re buried by sexton, upsy down in earth, and up we come angels. So I puts my oxlips in upsy down and ups they come like angels.”
He laughed uproariously and I laughed too. Here was somebody who was merry and cheerful with no fears for the future.
He took me round the garden pointing out the apricot-tree growing on a sunny wall with the fruit ripening under a net.
“We get many a lot of apricocks from that tree. There’s never another in these parts, but here there’s shelter. We grow a fine lot of strawberries on this bed,” he continued, showing me the red fruit. “But mindye, never a one can ye pick, for they’re all for Mistress Babington and the gentlefolk. Some we send to Darby to Babington House, when we pack hampers for Mistress Foljambe. But there’s aplenty of wild strawberries in the lanes on the banks and you can eat ’em.”
“Here’s radishes and onions all agrowing, and peas,” said he, leaning over a hedge. Then his eye grew fierce and he shook his fist.
“Them plaguey bullies eatin’ buds off’en cherry-trees, and eatin’ off’en peas, and blackies and spinks too, all feasting like Queen Bess’s courtiers. Where’s that boy Jude? He oughta be here. There’s no spit to turn this morning. Where is he? I’ll warm him. And he’s got nothing to do but to turn his clacker.”
The old man hurried off, uttering fierce curses on Jude, and a few minutes later I saw the hump-backed boy dragged by the ear, his wooden rattle in his hand. He squatted on the wall and swung the clacker so that a loud, raucous noise filled the air, and away the birds flew. Then he took his elder pipe from his pocket and played an entrancing tune calling them back again as soon as Adam was out of earshot. Robins and throstles and blackbirds hopped round him, and he tossed crumbs from his pocket. He was like a bird himself I thought as I watched him through the hedge, a wild creature.
I went through the herb garden with its strong odours of medicinal possets, past a hedge of sweet-briar to the colony of beehives, where Tom Snowball was bending,
so I turned hurriedly back, lest he should kiss me as he had kissed Tabitha. I saw a little fountain which sprang from the earth and filled a stone basin, and it was where my Uncle Barnabas had a water-trough for his horses. I dipped my hands in it and supped the fresh spring water, and bathed my face. Then I left the garden by a wicket and started away for the woods, past the orchard wall.
In a great leafy walnut-tree hung a swing and a boy was lolling there, idly reading a book. When I came near he looked up and I recognized the boy I had seen in the church.
“Who are you, trespassing here?” he demanded, rudely enough I thought.
“Penelope Taberner,” I said. “And I know who you are, Francis Babington.”
“Master Francis Babington,” corrected the boy. “Yes, I’ve heard of you, the niece of Dame Cicely, come to help in Thackers kitchen from Chelsey,” said he in the same haughty manner which angered me.
“You entered my brother Anthony’s room the night he came home and he thought you were a witchgirl.”
“I’m not,” said I indignantly. “There aren’t any witches, either.”
“Some are burnt every year,” he retorted, “but you seem real enough. Anthony thought he had seen a ghost.” He calmly pinched my arm. I shook off his hand and turned back my sleeve to see the blackening bruise.
“And what are you doing at Thackers, Penelope Taberner?” he asked, swinging backward and forward.
“Learning manners, for one thing,” I replied crossly, for it was my home as much as it was the home of this bold youth.
“Nay, I didn’t mean to be rude,” he said suddenly with a disarming smile and he sprang from his seat and sent the swing flying. “I heard my mother speak of you, and she said you were well educated for your position, and much better read than Cousin Arabella. I’m sorry if I hurt you. You came from London to visit your aunt, I know.”
“Good-day, Master Francis Babington,” I said coldly, and I turned my back and started away, angry and disappointed.
A Traveller in Time Page 9