Gloriously united with her, sweating, snuggling, laughing, nuzzling, it occurred to Ralph that, though he didn’t like what he knew of the man, he owed Andrew Shearer something. Shearer had awakened this girl’s appetite, this magnificent, all-powerful appetite, and then, hatefully, abandoned her to yearn and starve for what he had taught her to need. But Ralph himself was the gainer. In many years of experience, with a goodly number of women, Ralph had never encountered a response like Sybil’s. Rosie was lukewarm by comparison; Dorothy always had resembled cold pottage, anyway.
With Dorothy, even at the very beginning, he had had to work to get himself to function, and could hardly manage it at all except in complete darkness. With Sybil it was all he could do, not to explode too soon, which he must not do, for he must withdraw in time to protect her from another pregnancy.
Fortunately, Sybil never kept him waiting long, and her climaxes were astounding. He sometimes had to put a hand over her mouth to muffle her cries of ecstasy.
This time there was an added intensity, because in two days, he and Dorothy were going away, and it had been hard to get to the barn this evening, with Dorothy wanting to discuss what their baggage should include. He’d finally persuaded her to go to bed early by saying she looked tired.
He had never spoken to Sybil about arranging a marriage. Now that he was her lover, he found the idea unbearable. He couldn’t let her go. It was unthinkable, as long as the straw pallet rustled and Sybil’s warm, joyous body surrounded him, and moonlight slanted in where the sunset had been earlier, silvering her pale hair and making her dark eyes shine and even showing the sweat on the skin that was becoming smooth again, now that she no longer had to work in the fields. He could not dream of parting from her, not now, with his whole being rising and surging toward the moment when the giant wave must break….
Her wave was breaking, too. It was the moment to get out; he was not Andrew Shearer and he meant Sybil no harm. Beneath him, Sybil was arching. Her mouth had opened for the shriek it mustn’t give and he clamped his own down on hers, and her body, totally given over to its satisfaction, closed so hard on him that for a moment he couldn’t escape. Then, with an effort so great that it left him gasping, he was free, and knew that he had been just a split second too late.
Silently he cursed himself. But very likely nothing would happen, anyway. The disaster with Andrew Shearer had been very bad luck. Women didn’t always take, just like that. Dorothy, confound her, had never as yet shown the slightest sign of taking at all.
“Don’t worry,” he said soothingly as Sybil relaxed and then looked at him with eyes that were anxious and questioning in the moonlight. “Don’t worry, love.” He lied, to keep her happy. “I was in time. You’ll be all right. I’m so sorry I have to go away soon. We’re going to Bideford and then on to Kent. We won’t be back till autumn maybe. But I won’t forget you. I promise.”
Mid-October brought gales and rainstorms and Jane, listening to the wind and rain, was glad to be by the fire in the hall at Allerbrook.
It was near the end of the afternoon. Harry was down in Clicket and Jane, for once, was embroidering. She was repairing some frayed decoration in a sleeve of her Sunday dress. Harry didn’t classify keeping Sunday clothes in good order as a waste of time. Today she could practise her skill, and in familiar surroundings. It was so good to be here, so good to feel secure, part of the place again, just as she had been as a child.
The Haywards had taken charge at Rixons and installed the Smith boy and his young wife, plus a thirty-two-year-old ex-monk from a disbanded Benedictine monastery at Dunster, as helpers. Neither Harry nor Jane expected that the Haywards would ever be anything other than shiftless, but with luck, their employees would be competent. She and Harry no longer needed to lend a hand there. Best of all, Harry seemed to be taking to the life of landlord. Tobias was thriving and fortunately was a well-behaved child who didn’t create disturbances. Harry was proud of him.
Harry had gone to Clicket to get new shoes for his bay Exmoor pony, Ginger. Ginger had been bred in the Allerbrook herd and carried the Allerbrook brand of two slanting lines with another crossing through them, but his wild days were far in the past. Ginger was reliability on four surefooted hooves. Master Hudd had no taste for exotic horseflesh and was thankful to be rid of Silvertail, while the aging Copper had been retired to grass. The clop of Ginger’s hooves and the usual livestock noises heralded Harry’s return. He came in, looking tired, but pleased to see her.
“There you be, maid. It’s blowing hard out there now, fairly whistling through the combe and rippin’ the leaves off the trees. Tim’s seein’ to Ginger. Told me to come in and get a cider, not that I didn’t have one afore I started up the combe. Went into the White Hart for a drink, like I usually do. Don’t want old friends thinkin’ I’m fancyin’ myself above them.”
Jane put her work aside. “Peggy! Oh, there you are. Cider, please. The master’s tired.”
“Well, it ’ud be welcome.” Harry relapsed onto a settle. “Somethin’ interestin’ happened in the inn. Thank ’ee, Peggy.” He took the tankard she had brought him and took a long, grateful drink. Then he put it down and gave Jane his gappy grin. “Very interestin’! To start with, I were takin’ a drink and talkin’ to Job Searle, but there were a few others in there chattin’, it bein’ noonday, and Simon Miller was one, and suddenly Simon comes out with, Well, I don’t have land so I wouldn’t know, but there’s Allerbrook over there. Wonder what he thinks? He called me Allerbrook, Jane! Not Master Hudd, but Allerbrook, like I really belonged here!”
“Well, so you do. People used to call Francis that sometimes, you know. Ask Allerbrook, they’d say, or Come and meet Allerbrook. I often heard things like that. Francis liked it, just as you did today.”
“It made me feel real funny,” said Harry. “And he meant it. I mean, he weren’t sneerin’ at me. He was callin’ me Allerbook natural-like. Anyway, Simon don’t go in for sneerin’. But that ain’t all. He were talkin’ to the Clicket Hall head groom, about somethin’ I reckon’s worth thinkin’ over.”
“And what was that?”
“Usin’ heavy horses for the plough instead of oxen. Seems that since plate armour b’ain’t as useful as it was for war, what with guns and that, a lot of heavy horses are bein’ sold for farm work. A horse team eats more than an ox team, but that don’t matter because it can plough more land in a day, and a man can raise more feed than the horses can eat. We could make East Field twice the size it is now and put crops in!”
“It sounds like a good idea,” said Jane at once. East Field, which lay, as its name declared, on the eastern side of the house, was not large and had a stretch of rough grazing just below it. “The land above it might be too steep but not the land just below. We only use that for sheep and we’ve plenty of grazing for them without it. Yes, why not?”
Harry finished his cider, looking pleased, and proceeded to impart some more news. “The Palmers are back at Clicket Hall. They’re intendin’ to stop here over Christmas. Seems Master Palmer likes the west country—feels at home here.”
“Well, that’s natural. He’s a westcountryman, after all.” Jane yearned to ask after Sybil and knew that Harry realized this perfectly well. She was also certain that even if any news of her had come his way, he probably wouldn’t pass it on.
Dr. Spenlove came into the hall, pink and cheery as ever, with pigment stains on his fingers. “I think I can smell a rabbit stew being cooked. I could fancy that.”
“You may be in luck. Tim shot two rabbits yesterday,” said Jane. “Amyas, Harry has a very good suggestion about exchanging oxen for heavy horses. Do tell Amyas about it, Harry.”
Conversation settled down to practicalities. Sometimes Jane remembered how she and Eleanor, doing their embroidery together, would talk about whatever poetry they had been reading and how when guests like Sir William Carew or Thomas Stone were present, they and Francis would talk philosophy or discuss the latest tales from the New World,
to which ships from Europe were now taking colonists and explorers.
But those days were done. Harry didn’t like it if she spoke of things he didn’t understand. Dr. Spenlove had wider interests but he didn’t mention them in Harry’s hearing either, though no doubt he did when he visited Father Drew.
But at least she was here, at home. She wasn’t going to grumble.
“This evening, in our usual place,” Ralph said quickly, stepping into the dairy. “At about five of the clock. I’ll be about the farm all day, and on the way back I’ll come to the haybarn. It’ll still be light. We can have a half hour, maybe a little more. Are you all right to…?”
“Yes. I’m so glad to see you back!”
Her voice was intense, a little too intense, Ralph thought, but he wanted her as much as ever. “Until this evening,” he said.
An hour before supper Sybil stole out of the house. The gale snatched at her skirts, and she had to clap a hand on her cap to keep it in place as she hastened to the barn and climbed to the upper room. A fresh pallet was on the bedstead. Oh, wonderful Ralph. He had smuggled the old one away before he left for Bideford and had now replaced it with another. At night, probably, from a storeroom in the house where spare pallets were kept. He was so resourceful. Dear Ralph. Thank heaven for Ralph. She could trust him. He had returned to her at last, and she needed him.
He came promptly, smelling slightly of sheep, his black hair all windswept and a corn husk caught on his sleeve, but as handsome, as smiling, as beloved as ever. She went into his arms gladly, thankful to be there. She badly wanted to talk to him but he was impatient, silencing her with his mouth, eager to unite with her. She surrendered. It was a tender reunion, as though their first wild raptures had matured while they were apart, into something deeper, something warm and sweet like mulled wine.
Afterward, with their clothes in a pile on the floor beside the bed, they lay closely folded together in the stillness that always followed satisfaction. They were utterly lost in it when the footsteps sounded on the stair and the trapdoor was flung back.
They sat up, startled, as a figure rose through the opening to stand menacingly at the top. Sybil instinctively grabbed for a garment, seized the first she could find, which happened to be Ralph’s shirt, and clutched it to her. It was dusk now but there was light enough to see the intruder’s face. It was Dorothy.
She stood there motionless, hands linked at her waist and head high. Her eyes glittered and her whole body shook with anger.
“So I’ve caught you. I’ve suspected something ever since you first came to Clicket Hall, Rosie—if that’s your name. You’re slow to answer to it sometimes. I’ve kept watch. Chance was with me this time. I looked out of the right window at the right moment and I saw you go into the barn and then Ralph, a few minutes later. Well, well.”
“I…” Ralph began, and then stopped. Sitting up, conscious of the sweat of passion still on his naked chest and Sybil there beside him, he felt a fool, and was lost for words.
“You’re not the first,” Dorothy said to Sybil, who stared at her, openmouthed but speechless. Dorothy turned back to her husband. “I’ve been loyal to you, Ralph. I have never spoken of your unfaithfulness to any other person, but now you’ve gone too far. I’ve caught you at it in our own home! Get up, please, and get dressed.”
“Just a moment!” Ralph took refuge in indignation. “You can’t give me orders, my lady! I am your husband!”
“You’re a knave and a scoundrel and I am giving you orders. Young woman, give him that shirt and put on your own clothes. I do not steal the property of others and you may fetch your belongings before you leave, but leave you will, and at once. I will wait for you in the courtyard and watch your departure in person. You will leave Clicket Hall, and Clicket itself, forthwith. Never let me see your face again, even in the village. If I do, Father Drew will be told of your behaviour. You will do penance for it.”
Sybil, trembling, began to whimper, a pitiful sound like a hurt puppy. Ralph wanted to take her hand, but with Dorothy’s glittering gaze on him, dared not. It was almost like the moment when he and the first Rosie had been caught, he thought wildly. But no, it was not. This was his house. He had authority.
“One moment, Dorothy! Syb…Rosie can’t be turned out of the house in this fashion, least of all in a gale like this, with night coming on. She has nowhere to go and she has done nothing but obey my wishes and—”
“Many people,” said Dorothy, “would tell me that half the men in the kingdom play games with their maidservants while their wives look the other way. But I will not look the other way and I rather think that if I tell him of this, your father won’t, either!”
“My father has no rights in this house!” shouted Ralph. “And I forbid you to tell him. Do you hear!”
“You can’t stop me,” said Dorothy. “I’ll find a messenger when your back is turned, don’t think I won’t, and if you ill-use me for it, your father will be on my side. No rights in this house? Do you think that would weigh with him?” The scorn in her voice rang out. “I’ll hold my tongue if this girl leaves Clicket today. But if she doesn’t, then inform him I will and he’ll deal with you. On our betrothal day he promised aloud, at the feast, that he would do that if ever you were unfaithful to your wife.”
And so he had, and so he would. Ralph knew, all too well, what his father meant when he talked of driving out the old Adam. He had been reminding Ralph of Rosie and that other haybarn at Bideford. He would arrive, breathing fire. Ralph would not be able to withstand him; he never had been able to. Dorothy would reveal all his infidelities, not just this one, and Luke, full of moral outrage and oblivious to all matters of rights, would do to his son and to Sybil, if she were within reach, exactly what he had done, years ago, to Ralph and Rosie. Sybil must not be exposed to that, nor to the public calumny afterward. Luke had also said that he would talk, and he would do that, too.
And nothing would stop Dorothy from telling him. Ralph knew that he was not in any case cruel enough to use violence to intimidate her.
Beginning to scramble into his clothes, he said to Sybil, “My poor girl, for your own sake, I think you should go. I’ll give you some money.” He glared at Dorothy. “Don’t try to stop me from doing that! She can’t sleep by the wayside.”
“Your money is your own,” said Dorothy contemptuously. “Even when it’s mine! If you want to waste it on this idle little whore, then do so.”
“I’m not idle!” said Sybil tearfully.
“You’re a lazy little wretch who only scours the milk pails if someone’s watching you.” Ralph had never found it easy to attribute any virtues at all to Dorothy, but she was in fact a good chatelaine, who watched over the work of house and dairy. “Do by all means give the little vagrant some means of support,” she said. “Go and fetch it while she dresses.”
“I…” Sybil looked at Ralph with desperate eyes. “I…I need to talk to you. I thought I could trust you.”
“Trust him?” Dorothy laughed, and now the edge of hysteria was there. “Trust him? My poor child—Rosie or whatever your name is. He almost used another name just now, didn’t he? If there’s one man in the world you’d better not trust, it’s this one here. Now, dress!”
Sybil obeyed, clumsily, because she was shaking so much. Ralph thrust his feet into his boots, clumsily treading on Sybil’s cast-off cap in the process. She threw him a look of appeal, but he shook his head at her. “I’ll get the money,” he said. As he went down through the trapdoor he turned to give her one last backward glance, in which there was apology and regret but no trace of hope. Then he vanished down the stairs.
Sybil began to cry openly. Dorothy said, “Stop that. Go and fetch your own belongings. Hurry.”
Shortly afterward, in the courtyard, Ralph handed money to Sybil and wished her luck, though with Dorothy standing there, he did not feel able to kiss Sybil goodbye. “There’s enough there for food and lodging for a month,” he said. “Find somewhere safe.
God go with you.”
“I fancy the devil’s a likelier companion for her,” said Dorothy coldly. She stood where she was to watch Sybil creep miserably out of the gate. Ralph, unable to bear it, went inside.
The air was full of the smell of supper. It made him feel sick.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Into the Fray
1541
When the knocking on the door began, it was loud and frantic but the gale was wailing in the chimneys and blowing squalls of rain and what sounded like hailstones against the windows. It was several moments before the Allerbrook household, gathered around the supper table, realized that someone was desperately pleading to be let in.
“Bit late, b’ain’t it, visitin’ after supper?” Harry said, wiping custard off his chin.
“I’d better see,” said Jane, getting up.
She was back in a few moments, her arm around her sister. Sybil, sickly pale, a wet cloak clutched round her and hair trailing like seaweed from under a soaked and grubby cap, seemed hardly able to walk. She carried a bundle, a few things pushed into a meal sack and tied at the neck with twine.
“Sybil!” said Harry, recognizing her, and then added, “What ails the wench? Is she drunk?”
Jane sat her sister down by the fire and said to Peggy, “Bring some cider and some stew. And a dry shawl. Take this wringing-wet cloak away. She’s freezing cold.”
Harry was frowning. “What’s all this, then? Thought you was at Clicket Hall, milkin’ cows.”
“I was. But…”
Letty fetched a shawl while Peggy filled a bowl with stew and poured cider into a tankard. “Thank you,” Sybil whispered. She huddled into the warm woollen fabric around her and spooned stew into her mouth, but she was avoiding Jane’s eyes. Jane looked at her worriedly.
The House of Allerbrook Page 17