He was a wild spirit and if his granny was a Pellar, so was he.
He was morose and said little to the other stable boys; he did what he had to do grudgingly and his love was for the horses and never spilled over to his fellow human beings. Perhaps for Jacco and me he had a certain feeling. He did not forget that we had probably saved his life on that memorable night. Apart from us he appeared to have no friendly feeling for any others.
He was different; he was apart.
Moreover his presence was resented, although none dared show it. But resentment was there all the same. Nobody could really forget that he was the Witch’s Varmint.
Jacco and I had made him our protégé. We were fond of him because we believed we had saved his life, and every time I saw him I experienced a glow of satisfaction and pride because of this. And I was sure that Jacco felt the same. There is nothing which endears such a person to one so much as the knowledge that one has done that person a great service—and what greater service could there be than to save a life?
He never sought company. I fancied he lived in a little world of his own where he, the Pellar boy, was all-powerful. He had a deep-rooted pride in himself; he did not need other people—unlike the rest of us, who seemed to depend so much on one another.
He liked the Dogs’ Home. There was a little window in it. He broke it and climbed through. He made it his little sanctum, the place where he could be quite alone. When Jacco discovered the broken window he had it repaired and gave the key of the place to Digory. I think that key became his dearest possession.
He might have felt some gratitude towards Jacco and me but he had been too deeply wounded to trust anyone completely; he avoided us, and I believed that was because he hated to feel indebted to anyone; for just as we had that glow of satisfaction for having saved his life, his pride was hurt because he had been so dependent upon us.
Every day I waited for the return of Rolf. I longed for it and dreaded it. I wondered what I would say to him. I would demand to know how he could have behaved in such a way. Already I had begun to think that all that had happened on that memorable night was because of him. He was a natural leader and he had taken charge. He had goaded them on because he wanted to see if people of our century reacted in the same way as they had in an earlier one. At times I could not believe it of him and then I reminded myself that I had seen it happen.
He did not come back. Mr. Hanson came to dinner. He said Rolf was going straight to the University without coming home first. He doubted he would see him for some time.
Rolf had always had his absences. Mr. Hanson talked of his son as though he were a law unto himself. He spoke with such pride and affection. I wondered what he would think if he knew.
I was glad in a way that I did not have to see him. While I did not, I could pretend to myself that there was some explanation.
It was a sad summer. My mother tried hard to hide her unhappiness and she did to a certain extent outwardly; but I could sense how deeply she mourned her father.
The memory of what had happened on Midsummer’s Eve hung over us all. I did encounter some of the people who, I was sure, had been present in the woods and I could not believe that they were the same who had taken part in that fearful atrocity. They had become as strangers to me … just as, I told myself, Rolf had.
Change had come from all sides and my life would never be the same again.
My father’s presence helped a lot. I went riding with him and he talked about what was going on in London.
“One day you’ll have to go up to London and have a season, Annora,” he said.
“Must I?”
“I suppose so. You have to see something of the world. You’ll have to find a husband. You’re not likely to have much choice here.”
“That’s a long time away.”
“Yes. But time passes quickly. Your Aunt Amaryllis will soon be busy with Helena.”
“Oh, Helena is a lot older than I.”
“Is it six years? It seems a good deal now but when you get older it will seem nearer.”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“See how you feel later on. Life here might seem a little restricting to a lively girl.”
“You like it here.”
“Don’t forget I’ve settled down. It’s a good place to settle down in. When you are young you want to go out into the world. It makes you appreciate this more.”
“What a life you’ve had.”
“Not many men in my position can boast of having been a prisoner of Mother England.” I saw the faraway look in his eyes which came when he referred to those years in Australia. “I’ll tell you what,” he went on. “One day you, your mother, Jacco and I will pay a visit to Australia. I have some land out there. Would you like to see where your father toiled in the years of his captivity?”
“We’d all go! Oh, that would be fun.”
“One day we will.”
We were riding when this conversation took place and then suddenly we turned a bend and Cador came into view. It always amazed me when seen from a distance for it was then that one appreciated its grandeur.
“It is magnificent,” I said.
“I’m glad you like it.”
“It looks so grand … so bold. As though it’s saying, ‘Come and take me if you can.’”
“That was what it was meant to say in the days of the marauding barons.”
“Nobody ever succeeded in taking it.”
“No. There were skirmishes. Gallons of boiling oil must have been poured from those battlements. You can see the marks of the battering rams on the gate. But you’re right. No one succeeded. It would take more than brute force to get a footing in Cador.”
“Then it is safe.”
“Yes. Only cunning could find a way in.”
“You’re proud of it, Papa.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Of course.”
As we rode home he went on talking about the house, how one of the towers had been damaged during the Civil War when the King had sheltered there, for no Cadorson could ever be anything but a staunch royalist. Cadorsons had stood firmly beside Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses and had played a big part in that conflict.
“Much of the history of England is written on this house, Annora. It’s something to be proud of.”
Mr. Hanson came to dine with us frequently. Rolf did not return. There was always a great deal of talk over the dinner table and at this time there was trouble in various places. We were a backwater and sometimes seemed apart from the rest of the country, but as my father said, what happened in London would affect us all eventually.
Jacco and I had taken the meal with our parents ever since we were out of the nursery. My mother said she had dined with her parents at an early age and she thought it was good for us to listen to adult conversation. We were delighted with the arrangement and I was sure she was right and we did profit from these occasions.
Having stayed in the Capital, my father had returned with a greater awareness of what was going on. A year or so ago the old King had died. He had been ailing for a long time and was almost senile. He had been dominated by his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, who was rather a sinister character and had been suspected of trying to murder the little Princess Victoria who was living with her forceful mother at Kensington Palace.
All these scandals and intrigues fascinated me. I daresay a great deal of it was exaggerated but it did give me an interest in what was going on in the country.
As soon as the old King died, Cumberland was dismissed by the new monarch, William IV, who had married the Princess Adelaide and they were shortly to be crowned.
“Perhaps we will go to London for the coronation,” said my father.
“There’s a lot of trouble up there, I believe,” said Lawyer Hanson.
“Oh yes,” replied my father. “It’s due to this Reform Bill. And not only that. There is unrest everywhere among the working classes. They are determined to
revolt and form unions against the employers. My wife’s relation, Peter Lansdon, is right at the centre of it.”
“Oh, that Peter Lansdon,” said the lawyer. “If he goes on as he is now he could be Prime Minister in due course.”
“Peter is a very ambitious man and seems to succeed in everything he touches.”
There had always been a lot of talk about Peter Lansdon. The family connection was rather complicated, which was mainly due to the fact that Grandfather Dickon had married Grandmother Lottie late in life when he already had two sons by a previous marriage. My mother’s half-brother, David, was the father of Amaryllis, so my mother was almost the same age as she was and they had been brought up together more like sisters than niece and aunt. It was always difficult to explain these relationships to people.
It was Amaryllis who had married Peter Lansdon, and their children were Peterkin and Helena, who were sort of second cousins to me.
However, Peter Lansdon was a very colourful character. He was an enormously successful businessman. He exported rum and bananas, I think from Jamaica, where he had spent his childhood. Having succeeded magnificently in business, he had turned his attention to politics and, as was to be expected, he rapidly began to make himself heard.
My mother had a great aversion to him. She never spoke of this but I could see how she felt whenever his name was mentioned; then a certain stony expression would creep across her face and she would become very silent.
The rest of the family admired him; and Jacco and I thought it exciting to have a relation whose name appeared in the papers now and then and of whom it was said that he might one day hold the highest post in the Government.
“Peter thinks there will have to be reform,” my father was saying. “Not only with franchise but with the workers. He thinks it would be better to placate them now than to have them forming societies which will attempt to force employers to do what they want.”
The lawyer nodded gravely. “All very well,” he said, “but the more these people get, the more they will want.”
“They haven’t very much at the moment,” my father reminded him.
My mother said: “I don’t think workers on the land realize how lucky they are when they have a benign squire who is prepared to look after them.”
Mr. Hanson agreed. “They have that and at first they are grateful. But people grow accustomed to what they have and start to want more. It’s a difficult situation. If they are given more, mark my words … once they get it they will want more and more.”
“What is generally known as the vicious circle,” I put in.
Everyone looked at me and my father smiled. “You have hit the nail on the head, Annora,” he said.
Rolf came back in August. I was riding with my father when we met him. He looked no different and smiled at me in that warmly affectionate way as though everything was as it had always been.
He told us that he was interested in a house his friend’s family were buying. They were restoring it and he had been helping them to make decisions. It had meant exploring old records, for the place was very run-down and much of the original character was in danger of being lost.
It was hard to believe that he was the same person who had leaped over the bonfire and led the mob to destroy an old woman.
He came to dine with us and the talk was all about the Reform Bill and the unrest among the workers. Then it turned back to property and Mr. Hanson’s desire to buy more land. He talked with pride about the pheasants they were breeding in their woods. “We’ll have a good shoot this autumn,” said Mr. Hanson proudly.
“Luke is determined on that,” said Rolf.
“Still giving satisfaction, that fellow of yours?” asked my father.
“Couldn’t be better,” Mr. Hanson told him.
“I can see Lawyer Hanson will soon be becoming Squire Hanson,” said my father.
“Our place will never be a Cador,” said Rolf regretfully.
“But yours is a wonderful old house,” my mother consoled him, “and you’re making an excellent job of the reconstruction. That staircase of yours is magnificent.”
“Put in for Queen Elizabeth,” said Mr. Hanson. “Rolf tells me those carvings of the Tudor roses and the fleur-de-lys are the best of their kind.”
“But you are the lucky ones,” said Rolf, “to live in a place like this and know your ancestors have been there through the ages. That makes a difference.”
Rolf was not the only one who was interested in Cador. I discovered someone else who was and I must say that was a surprise.
October had come. All through September there had been talk of the Fair. On the first and second of October St. Matthew’s Fair was held in the marketplace in East Dorey. Jacco and I had been taken often when we were young, usually by one of the grooms. We had bought comfits and gingerbread; we had seen the fat woman and the bearded lady; we had had our fortunes told by Rosa the Gypsy; we had done it all.
Now that I was nearly twelve and Jacco was fourteen we felt ourselves to be too sophisticated for these simple pleasures and, rather condescendingly, said we did not want to go.
The servants, of course, would all go. They had been talking about “Matthey’s Fair” for weeks. Even Mrs. Penlock liked to have her fortune told.
My parents were out visiting and would not be home until late; Miss Caster was taking tea at the vicarage. I think the general idea was that I was going somewhere with Jacco; he, however, had other plans.
Thus it was that on that October day the house was deserted, and I realized that it was very rarely that I found myself alone there. In a house like Cador—even though it has always been one’s home—one is very much aware of the antiquity, of the intruding presence of another age when there is no one around to remind one that it is the present day.
I had been reading in my bedroom and decided that I would go for a ride. I would go and look at the Hansons’ wood, of which they were so proud. It was about half the size of ours, a fact which I knew Rolf deplored. He had said: “One day our woods will rival yours.” I wanted to see him, to force myself to talk with him about that night. But somehow I had always held back. I think in my heart I was trying to pretend he had not been there and sometimes I almost succeeded in convincing myself that this was so. Suppose I talked to him. Suppose he admitted what I suspected, that it had been one of his experiments. I did not want my feelings for Rolf to change. But I feared they would. I feared they had. I was rather bewildered and I seemed to be more so every day. If only it had been someone else, someone I did not care about. I found it very hard to stop caring about Rolf.
I was trying to shake off these thoughts as I came through the solarium, and as I did so I had the eerie feeling that I was not after all alone in the house. How is it that one is aware of a presence? An unexpected movement? A footstep? The creaking of a door? Was it being stealthily opened?
These thoughts crowded into my mind as I went to the peep in the alcove and looked down on the hall.
It looked the same as usual. There was the long table at which Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers had sat when they came searching for the King; the weapons on the wall which had been used by Cadorsons long since dead; the family tree spreading out on the wall … everything that I had seen many times and grown up with.
And yet there was that uncanny feeling that someone was there. Then I saw him. From beyond the screens he came stealthily, looking about him with a kind of wonder: Digory.
What was he doing in the house?
I watched him for some time. He examined the family tree; then he came to the wall and very reverently touched the weapons; he turned to the table and picking up one of the pewter goblets, examined it closely, put it down and stood for a moment staring rapturously at the vaulted roof. Then he began to tiptoe cautiously up the stairs.
I was at the top of the staircase when he reached it.
“Hello, Digory,” I said.
He stared at me silently, a look of blank dismay on his f
ace. Then he spluttered indignantly, “Why don’t ’ee be at the Fair?”
“Because,” I said, “I remained at home. I had no idea, of course, that you intended to pay a visit.”
He turned and was about to dash down the stairs but I caught his arm.
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You looked as though you liked the place.”
“I weren’t doing no wrong.”
“I didn’t say you were. Why aren’t you at the Fair?”
He looked contemptuous.
“You preferred to come to Cador,” I said. “You do like it, don’t you?”
“It ain’t bad at all.”
“I remember in the woods you used to ask me about it. You wanted to know all the details.”
I saw the shadow cross his face and I reproached myself. He would probably be remembering that in those days he had a granny and a home.
I said gently: “I’m glad you like this house, Digory. I’m glad you came in. I’m going to take you round and show you everything.”
He looked at me suspiciously.
“It’s all right,” I assured him. “You know I’m your friend … Jacco too.”
He relaxed a little.
I said: “Do you like working in the stables?”
He shrugged his shoulders.
I remembered a bird I had once seen. Jacco had found it when it fell from its nest. We fed it. I kept it in a cage. It seemed content for a while; then it started to flap its wings against the bars. I opened the door and set it free. Digory was like a caged bird. He was well fed, he was safe, but he was not free.
“I’m going to show you the house,” I said.
He tried not to look excited but he could not hide his feelings from me.
“Come on,” I said. “We’ll begin at the bottom and go right to the top.”
“All right,” he said.
“There’s a dungeon down there. Would you like to see it?”
We came through the kitchens and descended a short spiral staircase.
“It’s very cold down here. Mrs. Penlock uses it as a place to store things. That’s very different from the old days.”
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