Circle of Pearls

by Rosalind Laker

  ‘I took offence at the preface where none was intended,’ he admitted, taking the book from her, ‘but that is forgotten now. The author was kind enough to send me a signed copy and I’ll treat it with respect in future. Have you come down here to feed the swans?’

  ‘No. I want to ask you something. Let’s walk by the lake.’ Her idea of walking was to hop and skip, her exuberant good health giving her boundless energy, and she bounced along as she followed his leisurely stride, telling him of her dream.

  ‘So what is it that I can’t quite see?’ she concluded.

  He considered carefully before he answered her. ‘If I could work out your dream mathematically it would present no problem at all, but it’s in a sphere that can’t be deciphered on paper and I’m not a visionary. Yet I would say that destiny has decreed something splendid for you. You will know when it comes.’

  She was puzzled. ‘Would it be a fortune, do you think?’

  He smiled at the literal turn of a child’s mind. ‘I wasn’t supposing it to be monetary. It could be a rewarding experience as you go about in life.’

  ‘Why should I ever want to leave Sotherleigh?’ Thoughts of womanhood and marriage were far from her. ‘I love my home and all who are part of it, which means you as well, Christopher.’

  ‘I’m pleased to be included.’

  ‘I know my father might leave to fight in a revival of the Royalist cause one day, but he will come back when the war is over as he did before. Michael is going up to Oxford with you, but he will return and you will still visit. And Mama and Grandmother will always be here and so shall I.’

  He refrained from saying anything more on the subject. Let her suppose that nothing involving a break with her family would ever take place. The past Civil War had caused enough disruption at Sotherleigh, affecting her young years, just as it had done in his.

  ‘When and where your dream is fulfilled is not important.’ He sought to reassure her. ‘I tell you truly that I wish such a dream were mine.’

  To his surprise she stopped her hopping and clapped her hands excitedly, ‘I’ll wish hard to share my lovely dream with you.’

  He looked very seriously at her. ‘I’ll never receive a more generous gift than that.’

  For a while afterwards she began to think she had achieved her aim, for the dream came less often, as if its power were being divided.

  *

  As Julia had revealed to Christopher, she knew, young as she was, that her father would never rest until the monarchy was restored. He had hardened to a renewed resolve when the King was executed. Anne was less perceptive, supposing he had determined to make the best of what could not be changed and adjust to life under the Commonwealth. Katherine suspected that he felt otherwise, and this was confirmed when Robert commissioned a plaque to be moulded in plaster of the profile of the young man whom all the Royalists now regarded as King Charles II in all but his actual crowning. Within a laurel wreath the likeness was set in the north wall of the Long Gallery at Sotherleigh amid other decorative and ornate plasterwork that had been masterly created when the house was built.

  ‘Look well on that face,’ Robert said to Julia, his hand firm on her shoulder, ‘because it is that of our King. He is across the sea at the present time, but, God willing, before long he will receive the Crown of England at Westminster Abbey.’

  She glanced up at him with a puzzled expression. ‘I don’t think Oliver Cromwell knows that, does he?’

  Robert threw back his head or. a roar of laughter. ‘Not yet, my sweeting. But he will!’

  He said almost the same to Anne when she viewed the addition to the Long Gallery, but she listened to him compassionately, as if he were voicing a vain hope, and patted his arm almost consolingly. She was happy and content that they had picked up their lives together again after the war’s end and she refused to look ahead to troublesome times that might never come.

  He was everything to her. She loved the signs of his presence in the house — the aroma of tobacco smoke from his long-stemmed pipe, the riding gloves left carelessly on the hall table and the lingering scent of the soap with which his personal manservant barbered him. There were the masculine voices and roars of laughter after he and some of his friends came home to dine after hunting. The five-mile ban applied only to those who had been Royalist officers, and a good many gentlemen who lived in the area had not served due to age, disability or responsibilities that had made it impossible for them to join the cause, even though they were staunch supporters of the King. There were always those who had been officers who chose to take a chance and ignore the ban to meet again, for Parliamentarian eyes could not be everywhere. Often there were gaming sessions while Anne entertained the wives to less exacting games of cards. Yet once these gatherings had been far greater in number. Many people were absent due to the toll of war; others had had their estates sequestrated by Parliament, which had compelled them to move elsewhere, invariably out of the county of Sussex altogether.

  Sometimes on a mild evening she and Robert would go strolling on their own after Julia was abed and Katherine was being settled by her lady’s maid for the night. They would take one of the paths lined by high box hedges to a rose bower or the lake. Often he would caress her lovingly and she would preen under his touch like a cat brought to purring by a gentle hand. She supposed if they had never known separation in their married life they would have long since taken each other’s love for granted, worn it like a comfortable cloak, the thunderous waves of passion reduced to mere ripples. But his long absences had made them like young lovers.

  When they were married twenty years ago she was fifteen, innocent as a flower and just three years over the age of consent, and he was thirty and worldly-wise. He still liked to tease her playfully about their wedding night when she had been overwhelmed by shyness that he should wish to see her naked and kiss her everywhere. He had let her stay enveloped in her voluminous nightgown until eventually he had won it from her with caresses that had almost made her swoon with sensual pleasure.

  Since the birth of Julia she had suffered one stillbirth and two miscarriages, which she blamed on anxiety due to the war.

  It was her hope that eventually she would conceive again.

  ‘Don’t ever leave me again!’ she implored one night in bed as if some slight misgiving had caught up with her from viewing the plaque of the young King in the Long Gallery a few weeks before.

  Her plea had come at the very moment he was possessing her. He chuckled low in his throat, cupped her head in his hands and looked down into her face, making a lover’s jest. She smiled and he kissed her hard, leaving her plea unanswered in his rising passion.

  There were times when Robert tried to discuss with Anne, when they were strolling or on their own in the house, the possibility of another Royalist uprising, but she always steered him away from the subject or changed it skilfully. He and Katherine never tired of discussing such a possibility, for she had a political awareness that was lacking in his gentle wife. In the year following the regicide the two of them sat often together, both seeing Scotland as a source of hope.

  ‘Cromwell has found the Scots troublesome from the start,’ Robert said with satisfaction. ‘What with their clan loyalties and their stubbornness and their Highland hideaways! Now they’ve shown their contempt of him by proclaiming Charles II as their king even louder than they did after the regicide!’

  Katherine inclined her head wisely. ‘I agree that it’s a light at the end of what has been a long dark time.’

  ‘I see it as evidence that they have been making contact abroad with the King.’ Robert leaned forward eagerly in his chair. They were in the library where he had located a book for her before they had settled to talk. The sunlight through the diamond panes caught the bloom on his velvet jacket and full-cut breeches pouched at the knee. Across his chest was a dress sword-band, encrusted with gold and silver thread embroidery by Anne, whose needle had also executed the flowers on the bunches of silk ri
bbons that flowed with the lace over his bucket-topped boots. Caveliers took delight in extravagant wear and in having their hair long and curling — wigs if their own did not suffice — to contrast with the severity of garb worn by the Puritan Roundheads, whose nickname had been gained through a skirmish just prior to the outbreak of the Civil War between the King’s men and a band of crop-headed apprentices supporting Parliament. Hardly any in the Parliamentary forces wore their hair shorter than shoulder length, but the term ‘Roundhead’ had stuck. Similarly a derisory taunt from the Roundheads had resulted in ‘Cavalier’ for Royalists, meaning they were as foppish and Papist as the Spanish caballeros. But the King’s men had taken it up as a badge of honour and displayed their hat plumes and their finery even in the thick of battle. Anne, with her love of needlework, contributed much to Robert’s constantly grand appearance.

  ‘How old is that royal young man now?’ Katherine asked. Sometimes she was inclined now to be forgetful.

  ‘Twenty, and he is full of fire and spirit. I can’t believe it will be long before he makes a move to claim his rights. Every Royalist sword-arm will rally to him again!’

  Katherine gazed at his strong, well-shaped face that held such a look of her beloved husband. That he was a man of intelligence, great discipline, and courage was to be seen in the cut of his features, with Ned’s blue eyes, the same longish nose and firm mouth. His hair had lost its bright gold now, so brindled with grey that only a trace of its former colour showed here and there, but it was still thick and he was destined to be one of the few men who escape baldness in one form or another. The likeness was accentuated not by the thin moustache, but by the crisply trimmed arrowhead beard, a fashion such as Tudor men had flaunted. Although there were lines about his eyes, a thickening of the neck, and the threat of stoutness to the body, he was as striking-looking a man as he had ever been, active and energetic. She wished for his sake that he had had more than one son, although Michael, presently following in his footsteps at Oxford, was as hard-working at his studies as he was when home on the estate, a credit to the name of Pallister, and that counted for much. As for Julia, no man could have had a brighter and more interesting daughter.

  It had not been easy bringing Robert up on her own, not that she had ever let him know. As a boy he had been wild, which was partly due to the fearlessness of his character and to her own resolve not to smother him with maternal love. He had sobered down with regard to his studies by the time he left Westminster School and went up to Oxford. Yet there had remained in him a restlessness that she recognized all too well and that at times had filled her with dread.

  ‘I’m going to sea, Mother,’ he had announced the very day he came down from Oxford, barely before he had flung aside his hat and pulled off his riding gloves.

  So the moment had come. Everything in her baulked against it, but she retained an outward calm, ‘Indeed? And what is to happen to Sotherleigh? Did I not raise you to be master here? Is there anything you were not taught about the husbanding of land and all that entails? Have I not promised to make Sotherleigh over to you when you come of age?’

  His blue eyes under the peaked brows were serious and direct; his attitude serious, determined but reasonable. ‘Agreed. But I’m not sailing away for ever. There’ll be an end to my voyages when the right time comes. I’ll marry some day and I promise you grandchildren for your old age, but in the meantime I have to see something of what lies beyond this realm.’

  Satisfied that he was aware of his responsibilities, she had shown nothing of her inner fears of shipwrecks and cannibals and other hazards of far-off places, but had let him go with encouragement and her goodwill. He was not to know the extent with which he had tipped her back into those agonized times of waiting and hoping and praying that all was well with a ship no bigger than a tiny cork on the mighty oceans of the world.

  She had filled her time with overseeing the estate and ensuring that everything was kept in order for his eventual home-coming. At every social gathering she mentally selected one young woman, and then another, as a possible bride for Robert, but gradually they all married and she gave up her hopeless task.

  He came home again after thirteen years away. During all that time he had visited Sotherleigh only twice and she was not at all sure that he had even now turned his back on the sea. Then, by sheer chance, he met Anne and any thoughts he might have had of going away again came to naught. They were married within a matter of weeks and by then he had taken up the reins of Sotherleigh as if he had never been elsewhere.

  His voice broke in on her reverie. ‘The war was a drain on every man’s purse, no matter whether support was for the King or Parliament, and I was more fortunate than many in that the estate remained productive in my absence. As you know, the bailiff could not have been more reliable and Anne kept the accounts as meticulously as she embroiders. Yet it has to be accepted that a Royalist uprising will impose a further financial strain on Sotherleigh’s resources until victory is won.’

  ‘Yes, it will, but we managed here before, as you have said, and we shall do the same again. Never let concern for us womenfolk hold you back in any way.’

  ‘That was bravely said.’

  ‘When the time comes to serve the Crown again, remember that some of the best plate is safely in hand should you need funds in a dire situation.’

  He knew what it meant for her to contemplate his going off to fight again, but there was no show of the anxiety that she felt either in her voice or on her somewhat stern features. Neither would there be a fuss when the day of his leaving dawned, as he believed it must, ‘I trust it won’t be necessary for me to draw on it. It belongs to Sotherleigh and those generations of Pallisters who will live here after us.’

  As a Royalist officer he had received no pay during his service and neither would he next time. When at war an English gentleman of wealth and position was expected to provide for himself and also to arm and clothe and supply horses to those men in his employ who went to war with him. Some of the lesser plate, still valuable enough in itself, had been looted in two Roundhead raids during his absence. Fortunately the most precious pieces, mostly Elizabethan and studded with jewels, had been buried in the kitchen garden in the nick of time and thus escaped confiscation. It was Anne herself who had dug some of it up to send to him when his purse needed replenishing and the King’s cause was desperate for funds. He felt it bitterly that he had come home from the war with only the battle-stained garments on his back, his arms and horses taken from him, and his retainers who had served with him had been in similar straits. That in itself had to be revenged.

  ‘You’re a true warrior, Mother,’ he said admiringly.

  The compliment pleased her. ‘I thank heaven that the late King, who was not often as wise as he should have been, had the good sense to send his son Charles and his younger brother, James, to The Hague for safe keeping when the war began to turn against us. Poor little Harry should have gone too, but at least he will be reunited with his brothers on the day when the monarchy comes into its own again.’

  *

  For some months nothing happened to bring that day any nearer. At Sotherleigh the daily routine went on undisturbed, through 1650. Christmas went by and the year of 1651 rolled on through spring towards summer. The most talked-of happening between Anne and Julia was that Michael would not be coming home for the summer vacation. Julia was bitterly disappointed. The previous year’s June he had come home full of a first-year undergraduate’s cockiness, highly pleased with himself over his examination results and such fun with his quips and laughter. Christopher had visited for three weeks and although he and Michael had spent much of their time dallying with two pretty sisters that lived beyond the village, Julia had had many talks with him. She was fascinated by the weather clock he had made as a gift for her mother, the workings of which he had explained to her so clearly that she found it easy to understand. But this year she would not be seeing him. It caused an aching in her heart that she kept t
o herself and did not mention to anyone.

  The reason for Michael’s absence was that he had been invited to the home of Christopher’s sister, Susan, and her husband, Dr William Holder, at Bletchingdon. The purpose was that Michael might benefit with Christopher from special mathematical studies with William, who was a Cambridge don and a renowned mathematician. William had met Susan when she had lived at Windsor in the days when Christopher had played with the present King and the other royal children before clouds of war had begun to gather on the horizon.

  Robert, much as he would have liked his son to come home for this summer more than any other, having had wind that events were stirring, raised no objection. This was a time of enormous interest in all the new sciences, knowledge in previously unexplored fields bursting forth, and he would not deny Michael a share of extra-intelligent tuition in the sphere of mathematics.

  June had melted into July when the dramatic news reached Sotherleigh that Charles II had landed in Scotland and been crowned at Scone. In spite of its being good tidings and a cause for rejoicing for others, to Anne it was a warning knell that could not be shut out. All the sparkle went from her like a candle snuffed as anxiety mounted in her with every passing hour. Then the clatter of galloping hooves up the drive heralded the message that the new King had raised the Royal Standard again and loyal Cavaliers were joining him and the Scottish army he had rallied. Robert made immediate preparations to leave.