The House of Allerbrook

by Valerie Anand

  “Pottage,” said Peggy. “With oatmeal and pigeons and mushrooms in it. Apple fritters after.” She bore Stephen away.

  “Now…” Spenlove began, but Harry cut him short.

  “I’ve had enough. Spenlove, I’ll not have ’ee interferin’ between man and wife. Since the day we were wed it’s been one thing and then another. She wants to idle about readin’ they silly books she says has poetry in, or else she’d rather do fancy sewing than proper mendin’…”

  “Harry, that’s not true, it’s not fair…!” But Harry’s glare was so ferocious that Jane could not go on. A quivering finger pointed at her.

  “You get left this place and somehow or other it’s all tied up so that though I’m thy husband, I can’t decide what to do with ’un. So here I be, livin’ up here, the which I never wanted, and since we’ve been here it’s been worse. I’ve seen ’ee, readin’ when ’ee thinks I’m not lookin’! Then off ’ee goes to Lynmouth. No axin’ me if it’s all right. Just Harry, I’m goin’. And now…”

  “Harry, the child is half-starved. The Lanyons weren’t feeding him properly. I hope,” said Jane indignantly, “that I don’t set eyes on Katherine or Owen again for years. No one’s loved Stephen or cared about him, and for Sybil’s sake I had to rescue him and…”

  “I won’t keep her brat here, don’t think I will! I shan’t—”

  “Allerbrook!” Dr. Spenlove had ignored the order to remove himself, and now he used the name of Allerbrook, instead of Hudd, intentionally. Harry liked being called by the name of his house. “Please,” said Spenlove persuasively. “He’s a fine little boy. He could be a playmate for Tobias when Toby’s a little older and—”

  “That little bastard play with my son? If you think…”

  “It’s a little boy of six we’re talking about—Allerbrook.”

  It was no use. “Stop tryin’ to get round me with that there Allerbrook, Allerbrook. Yes, I’ve taken that name on and I’ll hold to it because it’s about the one good thing I’ve got out of all this, and what are you still doin’ here, Dr. Spenlove? I thought I told ’ee to get out of this here hall, that’s mine, not yours. Go and do some prayin’.”

  “Any praying I do this evening will be an appeal to God to soften your hard heart, Allerbrook!” Spenlove gave way to indignation. “There’s room and to spare in this house…”

  “That’s right, rub it in, that I’m a common old farmer and not fit to rule in a place this size!”

  “No one has said that, and no one is thinking it! Please be kind. That little boy…”

  “Will not stay here! I say he will not!” shouted Harry.

  “But there’s nowhere else for him!” Jane had mustered her courage again. Once more, if she were to keep that silent oath, she must go into the fray no matter how frightened she was. Oh, dear God, why had Francis married her to Harry Hudd? If only it could have been Peter Carew. He wouldn’t have treated her like this; she knew he wouldn’t. Where was he? Would she ever see him again? “Harry, please, please listen. That poor child’s hungry and—”

  “I say he’s not to have one crumb of my provender, do ’ee hear!”

  “You can’t mean that!”

  “Yes, wife, I do mean it. You go now and tell that Peggy not one spoonful of pottage is he to have, I won’t allow it, I…”

  Spittle had formed at the corner of his mouth. The orange tint on his skin had deepened. “’Ee’s drivin’ me mad. My head’s goin’ as if someone’s hittin’ ’un with a hammer. I never thought when I took ’ee to wife…I never thought…never…”

  His voice faded. A look of bewilderment crossed his face. His knees buckled. Jane and Dr. Spenlove stood frozen with horror as he fell to the rush-strewn floor of the hall and lay there, his mouth drawn down on one side, one eye wide open and the other closed, and the spittle still dribbling, dribbling, childishly down the side of his chin.

  In a Hungarian castle called Buda, Peter Carew was attending a banquet. The host was the Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, who had just seized the castle from the grasp of an unfriendly Hungarian ruler on behalf of a youthful prince from a pro-Turkish branch of Hungarian royalty.

  Peter had taken part in the siege, not exactly forgetting his status as a merchant dealing in alum but volunteering on the grounds that he had had military experience earlier in life. He had enjoyed himself. To Peter Carew, nothing put a shine on living more thoroughly than danger.

  He had learned much, too. He knew now that many luxury goods from India and other eastern lands were finding their way westward by new routes, in an attempt to avoid both political uncertainty and Venetian customs duties. He was in a position to report on the more northerly European markets where such goods might now be found. New trade routes could be created, extending to England.

  He also knew now what Suleiman’s foreign policy was like. The sultan clearly was prepared to be a good friend to those who were friendly to him. He was worth cultivating. Recommendations about that would also go into Peter’s report. He had done his work well, and knew it.

  Though he mustn’t, even now that the siege was over, let down his guard. Tagging along with the army were a couple of Venetians who would probably prefer him not to take his information safely back to King Henry. He had had one bout of what might have been ordinary food poisoning—or might not. Now he took food only from the common dishes. He was taking care, to ensure that one day he and his report would reach England.

  Dancing girls had appeared, to entertain the banqueters. He watched them appreciatively. They were lovely, brown as nuts, dark eyed as deer, graceful as ferns in a soft wind. It was a little odd that another picture kept forming in his mind, coming between him and them—a vision of a sturdy young woman with beechnut-coloured hair and brown eyes and beautiful English skin.

  He had seen her dance at court, but her dancing was nothing like the sinuousness of these young girls. Yet, mysteriously, he preferred hers. He preferred a style of dancing in which he wasn’t just an onlooker. He liked to take a woman’s hand and match her steps to his. He would be glad to get home. Would he see Jane Sweetwater then? Perhaps not. He’d heard that she was married now, and his family would certainly expect him to marry soon, and choose someone suitably well-off and wellborn. Anyway, he would have to wait a while. It was the wrong time of year for travelling, with rain and swollen rivers and stormy seas. It was the second of November, All Souls’ Day in England.

  In England, King Henry VIII was reading, with horror and disbelief, a letter from the Archbishop of Canterbury telling him that his queen, his Kate Howard, his rose without a thorn, was, alas, a mass of thorns of the most vicious nature. She had had lovers before her marriage. She might even have been precontracted to one of them. And since her marriage she had become the mistress of a courtier called Tom Culpepper. It was even possible that the child she had lost had been Culpepper’s.

  He stood with the letter in his hands, staring at it. Just a few lines on a piece of paper, but they were as deadly as though they were a signed death warrant. They spelled the end of love, of hope, of trust.

  Oh, dear God, how could You let this happen? I need a son. I need a wife who won’t betray me. I’m so tired. I’ll have to try again, but…

  In this dreadful moment, his hurt mind opened and fore-knowledge rushed in. For a few brief seconds he knew, without possibility of doubt, that he had no more than five years left to him, and that his two daughters and his one, often ailing, son were all the lawful children he would ever sire.

  His mind snapped shut, rejecting this hideous certainty. It rejected Kate Howard, too. However near his death might be, she would meet hers first.

  Part Three

  KEEPING THE FAITH

  1550–1562

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The Persistent Visitor

  1550

  “There you are,” Jane said, giving Harry’s chair a twist so that he could see out of the window, and propping his stick ready to hand if he wanted it. �
��I’m going up to the ridge for some bilberries now. We can have bilberry pie at supper.”

  “Don’t…don’t be away long.”

  “I won’t,” said Jane. She gave him a smile and then went off to collect a basket.

  In clear weather the view from the high, smooth ridge of moor behind Allerbrook House was remarkable. The gleaming line on the northern horizon was the Bristol Channel. Nearer at hand, to the northeast, was Winsford Hill with its barrow mounds, where lay the chieftains of a long-departed pagan people. There were many barrows on the moor, including one on Allerbrook Ridge itself, though those on Winsford Hill were the most famous. Everyone who lived on the moor knew them.

  Beyond Winsford Hill was Dunkery, the highest point on Exmoor, with its beacon on top, ready to be lit in warning if an enemy should invade. To the west, the moorland rolled on and on, like the swell of an immense and petrified sea. Turn to the south and in clear weather the more jagged heights of Dartmoor, Devon’s equivalent moorland, might be glimpsed.

  To walk up to the ridge alone was something she had always loved to do and now actually needed, as a means, once in a while, of escape from a life both humdrum and difficult.

  Harry had recovered from his fit very well at first, and for some years had remained sharp of mind and able to get about, though he limped and had lost the sight of his left eye. That was before the hot summer two years ago, with the peat fire that threatened their fields. Despite his disabilities and the fact that he was by then fifty-five years old, he had insisted on going out with a firebroom to join the fight against the flames. Nearly everyone from Allerbrook, Rixons and Greys had been there, and they won their battle, but afterward, Harry had had a second fit and this was the result.

  Now his voice was slurred and he could walk only by leaning heavily on a stick. He was still capable of giving orders, but Jane and Tim Snowe took most of the decisions these days. Meanwhile, Harry had become a curious mixture of frustration and irritation combined with a dependence on Jane which sometimes verged on the pathetic. He could bully her no longer and sometimes she found herself secretly weeping for him. Also, she was racked with guilt for having caused the illness originally by inflicting Stephen on him, though what else she could have done she didn’t know. The memory of her visit to Lynmouth and the boy’s thin body in her arms remained so vivid.

  Dr. Spenlove, always her friend, said roundly that if a man were going to have an apoplectic fit at all, sooner or later he would have one anyway. But the guilt remained and always would, though Harry himself had never, in fact, blamed her.

  He had emerged from the critical stage of the first fit to find that his wife’s small nephew was now solidly part of the household, and since he was both too unwell to argue and not, in any case, a basically cruel man, he had mumbled that no, he wouldn’t after all turn the lad out of doors.

  He didn’t like Stephen, though, and Jane was hardly surprised. Her nephew was boisterous and disobedient and she had soon understood why he had annoyed the Lanyons.

  He and Tobias had never made friends, either. Tobias, who was now nine years old, was a quiet little boy, very unlike Stephen. To begin with, because Stephen had been six when he came to Allerbrook and Tobias had been a mere infant, the two had taken little notice of each other. As Tobias grew bigger, however, this changed, first to mutual dislike and then real antipathy when Stephen, aged thirteen, dared Tobias, aged seven, to climb a small tree by the stable and walk along the ridge of the sloping stable roof.

  Tobias, predictably, fell off. He landed in a midden and emerged filthy and stinking rather than injured but from then on he detested his cousin Stephen, who in turn regarded Tobias as a sissy.

  Dr. Spenlove, who had taken on the task of tutoring the boys, had beaten Stephen soundly but without apparent effect. Stephen was tough as well as boisterous and not at all given to remorse.

  Up here on the ridge she could leave it all behind. She could gather her berries, enjoy the late-summer sunshine, follow the fortunes of a hovering kestrel, watch ponies grazing on the moor across the valley.

  From time to time she glanced down at Allerbrook below her, with the roofs and fields of Rixons farther down still, tiny with distance. Rixons was flourishing quite well in the hands of the Haywards—mainly, Jane suspected, because the hands they had hired were competent. Nothing would ever make a hard worker out of Violet. Tom had long since been sent off to sea and Harry had remarked caustically that he didn’t know who he was most sorry for—Tom or the captain and crew who would have to put up with his dim-wittedness. Just now, however, Jane was not thinking about Rixons, but about Allerbrook and the changes that Harry had wrought when he was still able to manage major decisions, before his second fit.

  She had to admit that under Harry’s guidance, Allerbrook had prospered. No money now was spent on goshawks or showy horses, and he had taken very good care of the sheep.

  The flock had first been improved by Francis, when he bought a dozen ewes and a ram from the dissolved monastery at Cleeve, thus introducing a new and better strain into the Allerbrook sheep. Harry had made good use of it, by selective breeding. Allerbrook fleeces and surplus lambs fetched good prices nowadays.

  Harry had also gone ahead with buying a team of heavy horses for draught work and had duly extended East Field, though at Jane’s suggestion a slice of land close to the house had been walled around and turned into a garden. With the ground dug over with manure (the two heavy horses, Giant and Thunder, could provide plenty of that) a satisfactory garden could be made.

  “Though it’s got to be some use, mind,” Harry had said. “So put some sensible things in it, maid, not all gillyflowers and heartsease and whatnot. Put in cabbages and onion, and don’t ’ee need more space for herbs? They’ve got flowers and smell pretty and they’re useful.”

  And so they were. The farm sent cabbages and onions and herbs regularly to market, and if they hardly brought in a fortune, every little bit was a help. She was standing, basket on arm, looking down at her garden when she saw a rider emerge from the trees of the combe and turn toward the house. She sighed. She knew who it was. Harry might not have continued Francis’s tradition of acquiring individual-looking horses, but Ralph Palmer had something of the same inclination and he owned the only piebald for miles. The rider down there was on a piebald.

  “Confound you, Ralph!” said Jane. And if she did not put the thought that followed into words, even inside her own head, it was there all the same. I wish you were Peter. Oh, Peter, why didn’t you come to see me?

  She hadn’t seen him since that spring in 1540 when he’d brought her home from the court, and that was now ten years ago. All she had had was occasional news of him, mainly through Ralph Palmer.

  She would never forgive Ralph for his treatment of Sybil, but like it or not, he was still the lessee of Clicket Hall and when he and Dorothy were there, normal social interactions were bound to bring them together. Nor did she really want to avoid him, for a reason that she would not, would not admit even to herself. He went to court at times and heard the news, which meant that he sometimes heard of Peter Carew. Since her family knew the Carews, it was reasonable for her to ask after Peter occasionally and maintaining Ralph’s acquaintance gave her the chance. Only, she had encouraged him more than was perhaps wise.

  It had certainly annoyed Dorothy, all the more so because Ralph insisted that he and his wife should spend half of each year at Clicket Hall. Her dislike of Jane was plain. As far back as 1543, when the one child that Dorothy did finally produce, her daughter, Blanche, was christened, Jane had attended the christening party and been so pointedly ignored by Dorothy that one or two people had commented on it.

  But the need to obtain news of Peter Carew still remained. She harvested what she could.

  He had gone abroad and returned, having successfully performed some unknown service for the king. Then he had distinguished himself at sea and been knighted. He was Sir Peter Carew now.

  He had married, tak
ing a wealthy bride, Margaret Tallboys, widow of a baron. Ralph had attended the wedding.

  And last year Carew had come to the west country for the first time in nearly a decade. When King Henry VIII finally died, leaving his crown to young King Edward, the boy’s maternal uncle Lord Somerset had been made the Protector of the Realm until the young king was of an age to rule. Lord Somerset had declared that England must turn Protestant. In the west, there had been protests and riots and Peter Carew was sent as a mediator.

  According to Father Drew, who, though he had not counselled violence, had been among the protestors, the Carew notions of mediation were somewhat abrasive. Jane remembered him as capable. On the ride from London he had reassured her with his air of always knowing what to do, always getting it right. On this occasion, she gathered, he had got it spectacularly wrong. His attempt to talk a group of armed rioters into peaceable dispersal had been far too combative, and anything but calming.

  As Father Drew told Jane later, “The silly fellow just inflamed them more and it’s a wonder he didn’t get himself shot. He almost did!”

  Fortunately, Jane learned, the blacksmith responsible (who was not Alfred Smith of Clicket) was no marksman with a musket, however accurate he might be with his hammer. He missed by a safe margin. Peter had however decided on a strategic retreat and returned to court to be lambasted for his tactlessness, which had come very near to turning a minor disturbance into a full-scale rebellion.

  The violence fizzled out, and now was all but forgotten. But when he first came to the west, before that confrontation, said a persistent little voice in her head, he could have called on her. If he remembered she existed at all. He probably didn’t. It was absurd that she should feel like this toward a man who obviously had no feeling at all for her, had probably quite forgotten her, but there it was.

  During that ride from London to Somerset, years ago, he had stamped himself on her brain and on her heart and even after so long, the image had never faded. Certainly Harry Hudd—or Harry Allerbrook as he was now known—had never had the power to print himself on top.