“It’s not so simple. Not this time.” Spenlove, holding Father Drew’s eyeglasses in place with one hand, because Drew’s nose was broader than his own, pulled out one of the drawers under the tabletop, clicked his tongue, shut it again and pulled out another. Father Drew rolled his eyes at Jane. Spenlove, looking into the second drawer, said, “Ah.” He took out two scrolls, one bigger than the other.
“This small one is the pedigree for the horse Silvertail,” he said to Harry. “The man Russell will want that, I daresay. This other one is the will. Now. Let me see…”
He unrolled the parchment, spread it out on the table and pointed to the text at the foot of it. “There are the two paragraphs that I never read out. Oh dear, dear, how could I have been so careless?”
“Perhaps,” said Father Drew irritably, “you would give over this havering, Spenlove, and amend this here error without further delay?”
“Yes. Of course. Well, first there’s a description of the estate—that doesn’t matter at this moment—but then we come to this. ‘To safeguard my sister Jane against later misfortune and ensure that she always has a home, I enjoin that Allerbrook House and the home farm that goes with it should not be sold in her lifetime. On her death, they are to pass to her lawful heirs, if heirs there be, in accordance with the normal laws of inheritance.’
“It means, Master Hudd,” said Spenlove gravely to Harry, “that you cannot legally sell either this house or its home farm, with or without your wife’s agreement. They are to be kept and passed to your wife’s children—your children, of course. Your little Tobias is the heir.”
“But…that means I can’t do as I like with my own!” Harry shouted.
“Well, Master Hudd, the…er…provision I’ve just read out is for your wife’s protection and that of your children. Surely you can’t object to that.”
“You think I can’t look after my own wife and son without this here kind of charity and…and…” Harry was at a loss for words.
Jane, gazing at the spread parchment, which Spenlove was holding open, remembered how she had looked over his shoulder as he read it out a few days before. She hadn’t been close enough to read it properly, except for Francis’s expansive signature, but she could remember the pattern of the text. Surely there had been a bigger space between the end of it and the loops and swirls of Francis Sweetwater. There was little space now; indeed, the signature seemed crowded close to the last line.
Below it were the names of the witnesses: the Dulverton lawyer, who was now dead, and Dr. Spenlove himself.
Suddenly her eyes met Spenlove’s. His were greyish-blue in colour, usually bright, usually smiling. Now they were as opaque as breathed-on glass. They stared unblinkingly into hers.
She understood. She stood motionless, silent.
“Well, there’s no argument,” said Father Drew easily. “You can’t sell this here house, Harry, but why should you, anyhow? Don’t you fancy living in a fine place like this?”
“You’ve been called to live in it,” said Spenlove helpfully. “If God wanted you to stop at Rixons, He’d have made sure you did. Sometimes it’s that way. Sometimes a man gets picked out and given a promotion, so to speak. Men can join an army as just plain soldiers and find themselves turned into captains. Why, you’re to be congratulated! We’ve laid poor Master Sweetwater to rest with all respect. Now we’re all looking to you to take care of us, and we know you’ll do it well.”
Jane, recalling pigs in the Rixons kitchen, came within a hairsbreadth of hysterical laughter. Harry looked slightly stunned. She took heart. That wording in the will was there and she didn’t propose to ask how it had got there. As far as Harry was concerned, Francis had written it, and Jane wasn’t going to quarrel with that.
“I used to help Master Sweetwater with estate business,” Spenlove remarked. “I’m not usually as woolly-headed as I must have seemed over this. I can do the same for you, Master Hudd. It’ll all go smoothly—you’ll be amazed.”
Father Drew joined in. “It’s my opinion we should all go back to the hall and drink a toast to the new master. What about that?”
A few minutes later the bemused Harry was standing in the middle of the hall and having his health drunk in wine and cider. Russell, back from the paddock, pleased with what he had seen and now in possession of Silvertail’s pedigree, joined in. The occasion was becoming cheerful.
Simon Miller pushed his way through the crowd to clink his goblet against Harry’s. “There’s something I’ll want to talk to ’ee about—maybe not now, but soon. The mill wheel wants a bit of repairin’. Master Sweetwater was comin’ to take a look at it this very week to see for hisself. Maybe you could find a moment.”
“Replacin’ or repairin’?” Harry asked. “Which?”
“Replaced ’ud be best. Repairs ’ud be just botchin’. They’d last a while and then want doin’ again.”
“All right. I’ll ride down when I can and take a look.”
“And when’ll ’ee be wantin’ to move up here?” That was John Dyer. “If ’ee needs a few boxes and crates and whatnot made, I’ll see to it.”
“Not yet. I’ve no tenant for Rixons. Can’t just leave ’un…”
Harry showed signs once more of digging his toes in. Jane watched him warily. But now Alfred Smith was clearing his throat.
“Well, as to that, would ’ee consider my cousin Vi and her husband? Don’t reckon they’ll let that son of theirs give trouble, not after this. How about makin’ it a condition that that gurt lump Tom goes to sea?”
“Not in my ship, he won’t,” said Owen Lanyon, though good-humouredly enough.
“My second boy’s as handy on my patch of land as he is in the forge,” remarked the blacksmith. “And he’s betrothed. Elder lad’ll have the forge but the younger’ll have to make his way, so there’ll be one young couple lookin’ for work. Rixons ’ud suit them, likely as not, if extra hands are needed.”
“Well, now,” said Harry, his voice by this time somewhat blurred due to the cider. “Maybe we could consider that….”
Secretly, in the dark folds of her mourning gown, Jane crossed the fingers of one hand. It was really going to happen. The miller, the Smiths were accepting Harry as the new master of Allerbrook and between them they were, so to speak, putting him into his seat of honour and filling up the empty space he’d have to leave at Rixons.
Standing there, looking around at the hall, so familiar and yet so strange, with Francis not there and such a crowd of solemn black-clad figures, she was swept by an extraordinary sensation. She was suddenly aware, as never before, of time and its ravages.
Only a few years ago there had been a happy family here: Francis and Eleanor, Sybil and herself. In those few years, that serene family had been ripped to pieces. Only she was still here, and the future was in the hands of Harry Hudd and, one day, of Tobias.
Others besides her must have felt like this. Time did similarly astonishing and sometimes dreadful things to everyone, however secure they had once felt, however solidly embedded in their own lives and families.
She looked at the friendly faces of the people around her. Here they all were; this was her community, and time would tear this to pieces, too. Oh, people would fight back; they always did, trying to defend their own, but they never won. Was the whole of human life a desperate attempt to defy time and hold back chaos?
If there was no chance of winning, it ought to mean that there was no point in fighting, but it didn’t feel like that. All her instincts cried out to her to do her utmost in the gallant, useless resistance until she herself was overcome by the years. While she could, she would safeguard this household and all the people who belonged to it—indeed, all the people she cared about, who made up her world. She would keep them happy and defended.
It was like taking an oath.
“And may I ask,” said Ralph Palmer as he and Dorothy rode down the combe on the way back to Clicket Hall, “why you’re looking so sour?”
�
�I didn’t know I was,” said Dorothy, as usual slumping on her sidesaddle rather than sitting up straight. She was on a quiet mare. Any horse ridden by Dorothy had to be quiet; a mount with an ounce of spirit would have rid itself of her awkward, ill-balanced weight as fast as it could.
“If you looked like that at a quart of milk, it would turn on the instant,” said Ralph.
He had never expected to love his wife. He had been reared to think of marriage as way of adding to the family fortunes by seeking a bride whose money and land could augment his own, and producing children to carry the family on. If one were fortunate, affection would grow. Most people hoped for that.
Dorothy had obliged with the money and land, but affection had failed to develop, though he had tried hard enough, and as for the hope of a child…
It was becoming harder and harder, in fact, to do his duty in bed. More and more, he found her pale plumpness unattractive and her passive unresponsiveness a discouragement. And yet she was jealous, always jealous of him. She was suffering it now. He knew the symptoms—that droop of the mouth, the way she wouldn’t meet his eyes.
“I saw you,” she said.
“Saw what?” He pushed his horse close alongside her and tried to get her to turn to him.
“Saw the way you looked at Jane Hudd. Saw how you kissed her.”
“I kissed all the ladies. I kissed Katherine Lanyon.”
“Not the way you kissed Jane. And I saw how long you held her hand and talked to her when we were taking our leave.”
“Dorothy, please! We’re cousins. We’ve never looked on each other as anything but close kin.”
He hoped he sounded convincing. What he had just said had been true enough once, but Jane had changed. Something—marriage, was it? The birth of Tobias?—had altered her, deepened her. He was attracted now.
“You’re not that close,” said Dorothy. “I suppose she’ll be the next in your long line of doxies.”
“Dorothy!”
“About number five, I’d say, unless there have been some I didn’t know about.”
“You imagine things.”
“No, I don’t.”
And no, of course she didn’t. He had had affairs since their marriage. He had been as discreet as he could, but it was astounding how she always managed to ferret out his infidelities, though she didn’t always succeed in identifying the women. She didn’t, for instance, know that Marjorie Wright’s third child, a dark-haired little girl now growing up in the White Hart amid a crowd of flaxen siblings, was Ralph’s and not Arthur’s. Arthur attributed the dark hair to his Welsh mother.
“Let us not quarrel,” he said. “Your father is very ill. We should be thinking about him.”
“Lisa thought this morning that he seemed better.” Dorothy grudgingly accepted the olive branch.
“I trust she was right.”
But as they rode into the stable yard of Clicket Hall, Lisa ran out to meet them. “Master Ralph, Mistress Dorothy, there you are! He’s taken a bad turn. He’s unconscious and his breathing…well, I’ve sent a groom for the physician but he’ll have to come from Dulverton and God knows how long it’ll take to get him here or what he can do when he comes anyway…I’ve left a maid with Master Stone….”
Ralph was already out of his saddle and reaching to help Dorothy from hers. “We’ll go to him at once. Come, Dorothy.”
They found the maid on her knees at the bedside, praying through her tears. Thomas Stone’s troubled breathing had entirely ceased.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Appointment of a Dairymaid
1541
With a feeling of great relief Ralph touched his heels to his horse and rode away from Clicket Hall. Father Drew was there and would be better than Ralph at comforting Dorothy and arranging Thomas Stone’s funeral. He was thankful that for a whole day he would be astride a horse in the sun and wind of early summer and away from the sight of Dorothy’s puffy, tearful face.
Ostensibly he was on his way to inform her mother’s cousins in Porlock of Thomas’s passing, but he had another purpose in mind, as well. He had gathered at the Allerbrook funeral the day before yesterday that Francis’s sister Sybil did not yet know that he was dead. Jane, when saying goodbye to him, had remarked worriedly that she hadn’t let Sybil know and must see to it but couldn’t be sure when.
“I’ll take word to her,” he said. “You’ve enough on your hands. Where is she?”
“It’s a place called Stonecrop Farm, near the coast, west of Porlock. I’ve never been to that part of the moor but I think Perkins, the Lanyons’ manservant—he found her—said it was in Culbone parish. There’s a little hamlet there, I think, and a small church. The farm itself is on the moors. I think that’s right.”
“I’ll find it,” Ralph said.
Some time later he found himself ruefully concluding that this might be more easily said than done. He had been to Porlock before, but not by taking the coastal route, and he had never heard of Culbone. He began by riding almost to Lynmouth, since Sybil must have started from there. Going right into Lynmouth to ask for help from the Lanyons’ manservant did occur to him but Jane’s instructions seemed clear enough and why waste time? Turning the other way, he took the coastal track eastward, toward Porlock. Poor girl, setting out on foot through this landscape, looking for shelter! He had never seen such a lonely district.
He rode for a long time, keeping his eyes open for farmland but without seeing any. Empty moors were on his right hand, while thick woods dropped away on his left toward the coastal cliffs. He had gone about ten miles when the sun went in and low cloud swept in from the sea, surrounding him with fog. He slowed from a trot to a walk. In this he could ride past a dozen farms without noticing them.
He rode on slowly, studying a tangled verge of ivy and brambles, looking for a likely turning. It would be to the right, if the farm was on the moorland as Jane had said. In the end it was sound and not sight that drew his attention. He heard the squeals of a piglet and then a squelching thud, and a girl’s voice cried, “Come here, you horrible little beast!” and after that emitted some most unwomanly curses.
Voices were astonishingly individual and memorable, too, even if one hadn’t heard them for years. Ralph pulled up and shouted, “Sybil! Is that you?”
“Who’s that?” The voice came from closer now.
“If you’re Sybil Sweetwater, I’m your cousin, Ralph Palmer! Over here!”
A shadowy figure emerged from the mist. A moment later she was beside him. He blinked and had to look twice before he was sure that his ears had not misled him, but yes, it was Sybil. Thinner than he remembered, with weather-roughened skin and a hardness in her face that had never been there before. Her dress of undyed wool was splashed with mud, and when she reached up a hand to take his in greeting, he felt calluses on it. But the hair escaping from a grubby cap was still ash-fair and still an astonishing contrast to the brown eyes.
“I was looking for you,” he said. “I have news for you, though not happy news. Your sister Jane sent me. It’s about your brother. I’m sorry, Sybil. There’s no way to break such things gently. I’m afraid he’s dead, in a riding accident. He was buried two days ago. His wife died, too, last year.”
“Francis and Eleanor—both dead! No, I didn’t know.” Her hard expression intensified. “Well, I wouldn’t have wanted to go to Francis’s funeral, even if anyone had bothered to tell me in time,” said Sybil. “But I’m sorry I missed Eleanor’s. I suppose Francis just didn’t trouble to let me know. But why didn’t Jane get word to me about him?”
Ralph said, “Jane has had a great shock. Please forgive her. Things have been difficult for her.”
“It was kind of you to come.” Sybil was remembering her manners. “How is Jane? Didn’t she go to court after all?”
“She went but she wasn’t happy, and came home. Francis married her off to Harry Hudd at Rixons.”
“He did what?”
“She’s Mistress Hudd now, and
has a little son. But she’s inherited Allerbrook.”
“I’m glad to hear that, at least,” said Sybil waspishly. “What made Francis push her off onto Harry Hudd? Was he angry because she didn’t stay at court?”
“I think so, yes.”
“That sounds like my brother,” Sybil said. Dismissing Francis, she added, “I long for news. I never get word of my little boy, Stephen. You know I had a little boy?”
“Yes, I know about Stephen. Francis told me a long time ago. He’s still with the Lanyons. He’s all right as far as I’m aware.”
“Is he? He could be dead, too, for all I know! I think that’s deliberate—that the Lanyons want it that way and probably so did Francis. So my dear brother is gone. Well, as I said, I am sorry about Eleanor but if you expect me to mourn for Francis, well, I shan’t! I don’t suppose Jane will, either!”
“I think Jane feels a natural sorrow, but in your place I don’t think I’d feel very grieved, either,” Ralph said thoughtfully. He swung out of the saddle and alighted beside her. “What was happening when I called to you?” he asked. “You sounded as though you were having trouble of some kind.”
“Piglets,” said Sybil bitterly. “I didn’t shut the sty gate properly and a piglet got out. Everyone was angry with me and told me to get it back. I went after it in the fog and caught it, but it got away again, loathsome little thing, and trying to hold on to it, I slipped and fell down in some mud. I hate it when they’re cross with me.”
“Who are they?”
“The family here. The Reeve family. And Marian, their maidservant. They’re not really unkind,” said Sybil, “and they do pay me, but they get annoyed if I get things wrong and sometimes I do. Not in the dairy—I can do that sort of work. But I’m not used to all the outdoor things. I get tired and make mistakes, like not shutting a sty gate as I should and then they shout at me.”
The House of Allerbrook Page 15