A Traveller in Time

by Alison Uttley

  “Nay, don’t go. Forgive me, sweet wench! Everybody knows me and my short temper,” he cried running after me, and taking my arm, he gently drew me back to the swing. “I’m only Francis Babington,” said he. “I’m the youngest brother, the nobody. Anthony is the young lord who goes to the queen’s court and wears a white satin doublet and a pearl ear-ring. George is the gambler, the spendthrift of the family, who dices with his friends and never sees Thackers. I am the stay-at-home, with no money, for all goes to Anthony and George, and no goods, for all the land is Anthony’s and no clothes except cast-offs, and no fortune. All is Anthony’s, but I have a small talent for music and a great love for Thackers, with its woods and fields, and a surpassing love for brother Anthony in spite of his neglect ofme.”

  “I love Thackers too,” said I cheerfully, for I liked the boy with his freckled face and careless clothes, too tight at the wrists, too narrow to hold his growing body. I glanced at the leather-bound book he held. It was The Noble Art of Venerie, and he showed me the woodcuts of dogs and horses and stags, and spoke of his own hounds, Fleet, Fury, and Blaize, and the two mares, Silver and Stella which belonged to Anthony but which he rode.

  Then he leaned forward and touched my knee, and looked into my face with intent, anxious eyes.

  “What do you know of my brother Anthony?” he asked. “Why did you go and spy upon him?”

  “I didn’t,” I protested. “I don’t know him at all, but I wanted to see him, because this is his home.”

  “Yes. This is his home,” said Francis slowly. “He is the heir. He possesses all the estates left by my father, lands as far as you can see, and over the hills in other valleys, farms and homesteads and faithful friends. There are no great riches, no castles, but there are woods of oak and hazel and dark holly, where hide the badger, the marten, the tawny fox. In the valleys are meadows, heavy with grass, and cornfields yellow in autumn, and cottages and good country folk. There is hunting of deer, and hawking, and the sports of the chase, and fishing in our rivers, the Darrand and Dove. That seems enough for any man, but Anthony is caught in a net.”

  Francis spoke with deep feeling, his eyes flashed, and he looked like his handsome brother as he stood there under the tree’s shade.

  “What net is he caught in?” I asked timidly, for Francis suddenly seemed older than his years, matured by the responsibilities of his house, and not the boy who sang carols so light-heartedly in the church.

  “The net of politics,” he muttered after a pause. “A net baited to catch a young Catholic and a queen, I’ll warrant. When he was in London he was persuaded to join a company of young Catholic gentry, sworn to hide Jesuit priests, and to outwit Elizabeth’s Walsingham, and to help to put the Scottish queen....”

  He stopped and looked at me, just as Anthony had done. Then he went on. “You belong to Thackers, for Cicely is of our household for ever. You should know. Anthony belongs to a band of rich young gallants, a secret society, bound together by oath. Everywhere there are spies, a mesh of vagabonds and beggars, in many a disguise, and I fear my brother is being used by others stronger than he. Anthony isn’t clever enough for them, he can’t pretend what isn’t true, he shows his feelings too easily. He is no plotter like those cursed town folk, he is a simple Darbyshire squire, and they will lead him on, and when he is safely in their toils they will destroy him. Only here is he safe, here, in the midst of his own people. One of his friends was hanged, drawn and quartered at Tyburn. If Anthony stays here all may still be well. The land wants him, there is work to be done at Thackers. Our father died when Anthony and I were children, but our stepfather has been kind and helpful. Now Anthony is of age, and he has a young wife, but the queen has captured him.”

  “The queen?” I asked, puzzled.

  “Mary of Scotland. She fled to England long ago, as you must know, and there were terrible accusations against her. She threw herself on her cousin’s mercy, and Elizabeth has kept her imprisoned ever since. Anthony was a page at her small court, and now he would give his life for Mary Stuart. He has sworn to deliver her, to set her free from hateful captivity.”

  My eyes wandered over Thackers fields, to the cows feeding in the little field called Squirrels, to a pair of horses by the gate rubbing their necks in affection and comradeship. Afar I could see Anthony riding his grey horse, and beyond the yew hedge sat Jude with his elder pipe charming the birds, and old Adam digging and grumbling to himself. Blue smoke curled up from the chimneys, and a pigeon flew over my head. It was Thackers, a home for simple folk, and not the place to speak of queens, I thought; and other thoughts came surging up, troubling me, faces swam into my memory and disappeared as in a dream. The knowledge of a happening waxed and waned and faded to nothing.

  “There is work to be done,” said Francis. “The yeomen want him, for the fences are broken and the deer ravage the corn, harvests are bad, cattle die, and he is not here, and I am inexperienced to take his place. There is ploughing and reaping and sowing, which is better than trying to put a queen on a throne.”

  But my mind was struggling with other things, for a cloud seemed to go over the sun, and his voice grew faint, and I heard other voices speaking, my aunt and Uncle Barnabas. As in a vision I saw them. My mother and father, my sister and brother were forgotten as if they had never lived, but Uncle Barnabas who seemed part of the soil itself and Aunt Tissie who was living in both centuries were ever present. They were made of Thackers earth, they were the place quickened to life and I remembered them. Then an arm shook mine and the clear voice of Francis Babington spoke insistently in my ear.

  “Penelope! You are with us? You are for Mary Stuart?”

  I leapt with excitement, suddenly intensely alive, and the queer half-drowned thought swam to the surface for a moment.

  “Do you mean Mary Queen of Scots?” I asked slowly.

  “Who else? What have we been talking about?” Francis frowned impatiently.

  “She was executed.” The words framed themselves in spite of my effort to stay them. “She died in 1587.”

  “Then you are mad,” cried Francis. “She is as alive as you, her eyes are brown as yours, her body straighter than yours will be at her age. She’s at Sheffield Castle in the charge of Anthony’s guardian, Lord Shrewsbury. Why do you say such things? Are you a soothsayer? Can you foretell the future? For this is the year 1582.” Francis moved away from me as if I were crazed.

  “The future?” I whispered very low and my voice uttered the words without my willing it. “I live at Thackers in the future, not in your time, Francis Babington. That’s how I know about the queen.”

  “That can’t be,” scoffed the boy. “It’s not possible unless you are a ghost, and you are visible enough. The future hasn’t happened. This is Now, and you are in Thackers croft, and Dame Cicely is in Thackers kitchen, waiting you I expect, and Anthony is out riding in the fields.”

  “I belong to the future,” I said again, “and the future is all round us, but you can’t see it. I belong to the past too, because I am sharing it with you. Both are now.”

  “Nay, that is nonsense. You may have some powers to know what will happen. You may have second sight. You perhaps heard from some witch or soothteller that the Queen of Scotland will be executed, but you cannot say it has already happened, for that is absurd. Prove that you are not of our time.”

  “The queen was executed,” I murmured mechanically.

  Francis suddenly looked at me, staring into my face, into the pupils of my eyes as if to see the little inverted image of himself.

  “You are different in some way, and I half believe you.” He spoke hesitatingly and backed away for a moment. “But I won’t believe you,” he added quickly, jerking round. “Such things are magic and I have nothing to do with the devil.”

  I could not answer, I stood miserable and confused, and Francis went on. “You could be hanged for what you’ve told me, or worse, burned in a fire, burned till your body became a black cinder.”

&nbs
p; He spoke with vehemence, thrusting his face near mine, staring at me with horrified blue eyes so that I was frightened by his words.

  “But I won’t tell on you, because I think I like you, Penelope Taberner,” he added slowly. “I believe you are a sorcerer, but you are not evil, that I will swear. You are not like the village girls, or even my sisters, your speech is different, and your voice is gentle and full of music. I think I like you. Perhaps you have bewitched me too.”

  I tried to smile, for nobody was less witch-like than I. I remembered Uncle Barnabas; he would speak up for me, I thought. Then I forgot him again and there was nothing but the present.

  “Whatever made you say it?” questioned Francis, but his voice was kind and sweet to me now. “Who told you? Was it a wise woman? There’s one lives at Caudle, but only the ignorant and fools go to her. Maids ask her for love-potions, and servant wenches consult her. She brews them queer drinks and makes spells with adders’-tongues. She is really quite harmless, but she has wisdom and reads the stars. Our uncle, Doctor Babington, has some powers, and he prophesied evil for Anthony, but my mother always said it was jealousy of his beauty. My stepfather, Henry Foljambe, gave Anthony a heavy gold chain of great value on his birthday, and Anthony with the chain about his neck climbed into one of the apple-trees in the orchard yonder. He slipped, the bough broke and he was caught by the chain which nearly strangled him. There he hung, suffocating, and he would have died but my mother saw his scarlet doublet in the tree and saved him. That was an evil omen, people said, a prophecy of the manner of his own death. A cruel thing to say, and wicked. Yet the thought of this haunts my mother and Dame Cicely too.”

  He sat silent, and I shivered as I too remembered something which I could not say.

  “Anthony,” I whispered. “Anthony.”

  Then Francis began to talk to me of many things, asking if I could read Latin and Greek like Lady Jane Grey had done, and had I studied the science of numbers and philosophy? I said I had seen his Ovid and I too had read it, but of Greek I knew nothing, for we did French at school.

  “French? Anthony’s going to France on the queen’s business,” interrupted Francis. “He speaks the tongue perfectly. Mary Stuart is half French, and once she was the queen of France, but her husband died, and she came back to Scotland.”

  “I wish he would stay here,” sighed Francis as I was silent. “The church roof should be mended, and new buildings made. There’s a saw invented for tree-cutting I want him to buy, and two of the falcons are dead. We need another barn for wool-storing, and horses must be bought. But away he goes to Paris.”

  He caught sight of my wrist-watch, and examined its works eagerly. It was French workmanship, he told me, and never had he seen such a small time-keeper, although his brother’s gold clock was more beautiful.

  I looked down at the watch. The fingers had not moved while I had been there. Francis’s fair head was bent over it, listening with a puzzled expression, and to my ears came the bleating of sheep and the ringing of church bells. The other world seemed part of the world where I found myself, and there was no division between them. Then we walked across the grass to the great thatched barn where Uncle Barnabas kept his carts and harrows. We stood under the same oak-timbered roof and Francis showed me the hunting hounds baying with bell voices, and the litter of puppies squirming in the straw. I picked up one of the pups, but the mother growled and slunk away so I let it go, saddened that always the dogs feared me, as if they alone knew I did not belong to the world and time where I found myself.

  At the wide double-door was a pile of shepherds’ crooks with pointed iron spikes and curled iron handles, and some pitchforks and rusty halberds. A shepherd came by carrying a crook and Francis spoke to him, and asked how he fared on the distant hills, where he had been sheep-minding, but I could scarcely understand his reply. It was full of burrs as a burdock bush, although it reminded me of Uncle Barnabas when he was talking broad to one of his friends.

  The thought of Uncle Barnabas tugged at my heart, and I looked across the farm buildings seeking him. He was somewhere, alive and waiting for me. “I must go,” I stammered, suddenly filled with desire to get away, and away I ran without another word, hastening in at the open door, but there I was met by Tabitha, and I forgot why I had gone.

  6. Gossip in Thackers Kitchen

  “Haste thee, Penelope. Thy aunt calls thee. There’s work waiting and thou in the fields roaming like a boy. Thou mun make the pastry flowers and leaves for the pies and pasties,” said Tabitha, beckoning me indoors.

  I went to the kitchen and found the great baking in progress, the preparation of food for a large household. Enormous pasties were stuffed with pigeons and larks, which Margery and Tabitha had prepared, geese and capons were roasting, and Jude turned them before the fire, his eyes glancing round maliciously. I sat at the table to shape the roses and leaves out of strips of paste, to trim the pies. It was my work, Dame Cicely said, and my fingers were nimble for it. Town fingers were better than country ones when it came to making ornaments, and doubtless I had seen fine devices at the pastrycook’s.

  There was a ham baked in honey syrup and spiked with cloves, and brawn and pigs’ pettitoes soused, and tansy puddings.

  When I had finished my task the table was cleared and scrubbed and the servants’ dinner was set, with pewter plates and a horn-handled knife apiece, and a polished drinking-horn for the small ale and cider. I looked round for the forks but saw none, and Aunt Cicely was surprised at my inquiry. Mistress Babington had a silver fork and so had Master Anthony, but we used our fingers, and so did Master Francis. What were fingers given to us for, she asked, if not for eating? Forks were a newfangled habit from the Italians, and not for honest Englishmen.

  I sat down to the table for I was very hungry, and the good smells of roasting and baking meats filled the air. I ate first some solid white pudding, heavy with lumps of fat which I carefully removed.

  “You’re too pernickety,” cried Dame Cicely. “London living’s spiled you for wholesome vittles,” but secretly I dropped the scraps on the rushes for the dogs to eat. On the same plate I had a wedge of pasty stuff with pigeon and herbs and chopped apple. I ate this with my fingers, like the others—Aunt Cicely, Tabitha, Margery and a thin-faced girl called Moll. The men sat at a long trestle table and I was glad, for their manners were uncouth, and they spat out the food they did not like.

  The drinking-horns were filled with ale, made in the brew-house across the yard, from our own barley. There was honey-mead for those who wanted it, but I wished for water. I knew where the spring was, for I had often filled the kettle for Aunt Tissie, and I ran out now with a leather jug.

  On my way I passed a small room where a spinning-wheel clacked, and a girl sat turning the wheel and spinning the wool. She nodded and smiled and I went to her. She touched my dress and wondered at its smoothness of texture, and asked if my mother had spun the wool and dyed it in Chelsey. I said we had bought it in a shop.

  “Ah! On London Bridge! I’ve seen the water of the Thames swirling under the arches, and I’ve been to the shops on the bridge. My name is Phoebe Drury, and I was born at Bow, but I’ve been in service here for ten years. Tell me, Penelope, have you seen the queen? They say she has a dress for every day of the year and her stomachers are stiff with pearls and rubies.”

  I confessed I hadn’t, although I had heard of the richness of her dress. Then I went out for the water, which came bubbling from the same spring, in crystal coils jutting from the ground. As I sipped the earthy coldness of it, cupping it in my hand, I was aware once more of the continuity of life, as if I were part of events past, present, and to come, and I could choose my way among them.

  They were all talking when I returned, telling tales of magic and wonders, of fire-eaters and performing animals, speaking of a bear led by a warder which danced at Darby Fair, and a horse which talked at Nottingham Goose Fair. Yes, they said, the horse could tell the hour like the nightwatchman, and it pawed
the name of Queen Bess. The serving men were leaning back, drinking from their horns, joining in the discourse. They spoke of Master Anthony, how he was visiting the farms on his estates, collecting his dues, paying wages owed, hearing complaints, and being well received, because his manner was affable, with no conceit or arrogance. He was going hunting in the great woods which stretched across the hills, and the huntsmen were to meet at a little manor hidden in the woods. There was new life coming to Thackers, they said, for the news of his homecoming had spread, and pedlars came with many-coloured ribbons and laces, coifs and silks, men who had been with gewgaws to Sheffield Castle. Dame Cicely had bought a bunch of ribbons that morning, and Mistress Babington had chaffered for a silver lacing and tassels of gold for her dress. Song-writers sent ballads to please him, and presents were arriving for his birthday.

  Then the old shepherd seated at the men’s table spoke up in quavering high-pitched tones.

  “There ain’t no good coming here. There’s evil abroad. I’ve seed a comet in the heavens when I was a-minding sheep, and it bodes no good. Something harmful’s coming,” said he, mournfully. “Young mester won’t bide here, where he was born and bred. He won’t bide. Stars are agin him.”

  “He’s going to Paris, that city of Satan,” said another, and the old shepherd shook his head. “He won’t bide here,” he repeated, “and there’s a comet in the sky.”

  “All clever noblemen go to Paris and Rouen where there is much learning. There’s no harm. Be silent,” cried Dame Cicely shortly. But the aged shepherd would not be silenced, and he mumbled on.

  “It’s for the Queen of Scotland’s sake, and I dunno hold with her. She’s in league with the Spaniards, and they’d utterly destroy us, like flax in the fire. I ’member things you young folk forget. I ’member tales of fire and burning in Queen Mary’s reign. Those bloody days will come again if Spain gets here. Aye, we shall all be consumed like flax in the flames.”