Lisa and Peggy arrived with steaming water, herbal ointment and a feverfew tincture. “Where’s Blanche?” Jane asked.
“Tearing up an old sheet for bandages,” said Peggy. “Let me see that wound.”
“It’s a wonder I got here,” Stephen said. “Is there any news of Peter Carew?”
“He escaped to France,” said Jane briefly.
“Good.” He didn’t ask how she knew. “The men I fought…they might track me here. Can you hide me? I shouldn’t have come home—put you in danger—but I felt so ill.”
“Do these soldiers know your name?” Tobias sounded remarkably firm and more grown-up than his real age of twelve. “Would they recognize your face?”
“Doubt it. They were strangers. Anyhow, helmets change faces and I can shave this beard off. But they do know they wounded me.”
“You mustn’t be caught,” said Tobias. “Yes, you’ve put us in danger, but here you are. We’ll hide you somehow. We’ll find a way.”
“There’s one more thing,” said Stephen. He moved sharply as Jane bathed his arm, and sweat broke out on his forehead.
“The sooner you’re in bed, the better,” she said.
“There’s one more thing. It’s Ralph Palmer. Must tell you before Blanche comes back. He’s dead. He was with me when I fled from London. We had money. We bought food in small villages and slept mostly in barns. But we met trouble just as we came down off Salisbury Plain. We were ambushed in some woodland. We fought our way out, but a musket shot got Palmer and he fell out of his saddle….”
“You left him?” said Tobias sharply.
“No. I know what you’re thinking, but I never held Palmer responsible for my mother’s death. We’d been comrades, fighting side by side. Ginger was a steady pony but he bolted then…frightened…all too much for him…I swear I didn’t abandon Ralph Palmer.”
He swallowed and then said, “I turned back when I’d got Ginger under control. I thought they’d simply arrest him and perhaps I could follow and rescue him…but I found him. Dead. Hanging from a tree. Awful musket wound in his side. I suppose they reckoned he wouldn’t last, so there was no point in keeping him captive and he’d thrown a lot of insults at them, too, during the skirmish. They’d strung him up and left him. He’s dead, and when I met that other lot of soldiers at Taunton, I had to fight my way out on my own. I could have done with Ralph’s swordarm there.”
There was a silence, while Jane, horrified and anguished, tried to imagine Ralph’s last moments. Seized, roped, his life suddenly at an end. Poor Ralph, terrified, probably in great pain from his wound, hardly able to believe what was happening to him, and then left swinging, choking…
Ralph. He had used Sybil so badly that if Stephen really had deserted him, it would have been understandable. He had made unforgivable approaches to Jane herself. He had stirred her against her will, he had…
Been known to her all her life. He was Ralph. Aloud, as though he were there and she were speaking to him, she said, “I will look after Blanche. I promise.”
“Don’t tell Blanche what happened to him,” said Stephen. “Say he fell in London, with Wyatt. It’s kinder.”
“I agree,” said Jane.
Blanche, when they told her that her father was dead, wept bitterly. Dr. Spenlove was fetched from his room, where he had been reading, and offered her the consolation of prayer. “We are allowed to pray for the dead, now that the laws have been changed,” he said.
Blanche grew calmer, but the next day, when the household met in the chapel for the early Mass that Dr. Spenlove now held each morning, Lisa said worriedly that the child was still abed because she hadn’t slept. “I think she cried all night. I told her to rest. How is Master Stephen?”
“Improving, I think,” Jane said. “And I’ve posted Paul Snowe on top of the tower to watch for soldiers. If any come this way, I want to know in good time. If they’re looking for a wounded man and they find one here…! We’ll have to think of something, but God alone knows what!”
After Mass, while breakfast was being prepared, Jane and Lisa dressed Stephen’s arm again. His fever seemed to be down, but he was clearly still very unwell. Blanche had come downstairs by then. She looked pale and tired, but she apologized for missing Mass and asked after Stephen’s health.
Jane began to tell her, but before she was half finished, Paul Snowe came down from the tower at a run. “There’s men on horses comin’ over the moor from Withypool way. Air’s clear, though there’s snow on the wind. It’s that dark to the north.”
“He’d best take to the moor,” said Tim. Paul had fetched his father, who had come inside to join them.
“A sick man can’t hide on the moor in a snowstorm!” said Jane, horrified. “And I think there’s going to be one.”
“I’ve an idea. He could have got a slash like that by chopping wood,” said Tobias. “We’ve got to say he’s been here all the time and the wound’s an accident, the sort that happens on farms. What else can we do?” he added in a disgusted voice.
Blanche timidly said, “The room he’s in has those green curtains around the bed, but your bedcurtains, Mistress Allerbrook, are crimson.”
They all looked at her in astonishment. “What I mean is…well…” said Blanche, and then turned scarlet and lost herself in stammering.
“Have you lost your wits, child?” demanded Lisa indignantly. “Jabbering about bedcurtains—what’s wrong with you?”
Dr. Spenlove said, “One moment. Blanche, just put your thoughts in order. You’ve had an idea, haven’t you? Well, tell us. Even if it’s not a good idea, no one will be cross with you. Come, now.”
“When I had smallpox three years ago,” said Blanche, “I was put in a bed with crimson hangings. The physician said that would bring out the spots and the poison would come out with them, and with care, I still might not be badly scarred—and I wasn’t. I just thought…”
A few moments later, when Blanche had finished her timid explanation, Jane said, “In North Molton Master Grede had a similar idea as a way of keeping the crowd from finding me. Blanche, my child, we’ve hoped you would blossom in our care. You’re in bloom now, my dear!”
“Blanche,” said Jane, “cry for your father if you like, but pretend the tears are for Stephen.” Jane was finding in herself a surprising degree of generalship. “We’ll have the story of the accident with the chopper as a second line of defence,” she said. “It could easily happen if a man were beginning to feel ill.”
“We need a bloodstained axe blade,” Tobias said. “I’ll see to that.” And he added, surprisingly, “Chicken for dinner?”
“Well done, Toby,” said Jane. “That shows spirit.”
“We’d better explain to Stephen,” Spenlove said.
Stephen greeted Blanche’s idea with relief. “It’s better than lying out in the heather! Or being dragged out of a clothespress or a hayloft! Thank God Tim managed to clean my beard off last night.”
“Give me ten minutes,” said Spenlove, “and I’ll make Master Stephen look like nothing on earth. I’ll get my paints.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
To Live in Peace
1554
Captain Herbert Clifton of the Taunton Militia was in a disgruntled mood. If the messengers from London were right, southwest England was swarming with stray fugitives from the queen’s justice, but the only miscreant he’d even glimpsed had cut his way out through Clifton and six troopers and vanished into the dusk. A little later, trying to give chase through a wood in the hope of catching the fellow before it was too dark to see a hand before a man’s face, they’d found a dead pony which was surely his, lying in a pool of blood from a sword slash in its belly.
Wanting to look closely at the animal, though, in case it needed to be released from pain and also to ascertain that it really had belonged to their quarry, he dismounted and called for a light. Someone produced a tinderbox and lit a flare for him. Kneeling beside the pony, he saw that it was dead and no
longer suffering, for which he was glad. Then he saw that it was a moor pony with a brand mark on one haunch—two parallel lines and a slanting line through them. Clifton was Somerset born. He had never visited Allerbrook or met anyone who lived there, but he knew every brand mark on the moor.
It proved nothing, of course. The pony could have changed hands half a dozen times since it was taken from its herd, but it was a starting point. “We make for Exmoor and a place called Allerbrook,” he said as he got to his feet. “Our man must be making for somewhere, and that just could be the place. We’ll start first thing in the morning.”
He searched the hamlets along the way, which held the pursuit up to some extent, but by the second morning he and his men had reached Clicket. Here he became more thorough and began by investigating Clicket Hall, where the butler cooperated with the utmost grace and nothing of interest was discovered. He then took his men up to Rixons, where the Haywards were sullen but seemed unfeignedly astonished by the intrusion. He told his men not to do too much damage.
When Rixons yielded nothing, they made for the big house above it.
Snow began to fall as they rode in. The place seemed orderly, with poultry and animals all shut inside as they should be in such weather. The yard was untidy, though—God’s teeth, they’d left a pile of chopped firewood out in the snow and a perfectly good chopper on top of it, getting rusty. Could that be a sign of disturbance—a task interrupted by the arrival of a fugitive, perhaps? He’d soon find out.
Dismounting, he handed his reins to the nearest man and advanced to hammer on the iron-studded front door. There was a delay before it was finally opened by a middle-aged priest who stood nervously fingering his pectoral cross and looking at Clifton in a distracted fashion.
“I am Captain Herbert Clifton, Taunton Militia. We are searching for a fugitive believed to have come this way. This is Allerbrook House?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
“I have a warrant entitling me to search any premises where such fugitives may be hidden. The man we are looking for had a pony bearing the Allerbrook brand. We must search your house and outhouses forthwith.”
“I’ll have to ask.”
“You will not have to ask. I said I have a warrant.” He glanced over his shoulder and called to his men to find a barn for the horses and search the outhouses. “And then follow me inside. You!” He turned back to the priest. “What’s your name?”
“Spenlove. Dr. Amyas Spenlove. I’m the chaplain here. But we’re all in confusion just now and…”
“Are you, indeed? Well, you’ll be in even worse confusion if you don’t stand aside and admit me into the house at once. You may announce me to your master.”
“It’s Mistress Allerbrook, Captain. She is a widowed lady.”
“Then take me to her.”
Spenlove shrugged and led the way into a panelled hall, with a good fire in the hearth and plenty of rushes on the floor. And a distracted air.
For one thing, though the morning was well advanced, there were still people around what was presumably the breakfast table. There were three women servants, one of them apparently a nurse or tirewoman, since she was sitting protectively beside a girl child who seemed to have been crying. There were two youths, one dressed like a son of the house and one like a groom, and an older man, very like the young groom, and probably his father.
And just crossing the room with a steaming bowl of something on a tray was a lady wearing a plain dark dress and no cap at all on her brown hair, which was knotted up so roughly that some of it had slipped loose and was trailing over her shoulder.
“This is Captain Clifton, from Taunton, m’am” said the chaplain in a flurried way. “He has soldiers with him. They’re searching for fugitives. It will be something to do with this Wyatt rebellion, I suppose.”
“We’re behind the times with the news here,” said the lady. “We leave the farm so rarely in winter. I am Jane Allerbrook. Why have you come here?”
“Wyatt has been taken, but some of his followers got away. We’re chasing a fugitive who was wounded in the left arm when we tried to seize him. He escaped us, but his pony was killed and bore the Allerbrook brand.”
“Indeed? And you come here on that account? We often let our colts run on the moor till they’re old enough to be broken to saddle and sold as riding ponies. My late brother Francis said we made more money from them that way. You’ll find ponies bearing our brand all over Somerset. Excuse me, please. I must take this to my nephew. He is sick.”
“Ill?” said Clifton sharply.
“Yes, very,” Jane told him with equal sharpness. “You may see him if you wish, but I trust you have had the smallpox. If you have not, then you had best be careful.”
“I haven’t. Nor have any of my men, to my knowledge.” Clifton had paled. An uncle of his had died from the pox, and had caught it simply by entering a house where someone was abed with it. “You are sure it is smallpox?” he said.
“I fear so, and we are all very concerned. I want him to eat this broth if he can. I am going up to him now.”
“I can’t send my men to do what I dare not,” said Clifton, “and pox or no pox, this house must be searched. I must see this nephew of yours.”
“Then you had better come with me now,” said Jane. “Beth, go to the kitchen and soak a cloth in herbal water—use the mixture in the jar at the end of the top shelf. Captain Clifton can hold it to his nose and mouth for protection.”
Clifton, with a wet and astringently scented cloth clutched to his nose, accompanied his hostess upstairs and was led to a large bedchamber. Inside was a bed with crimson curtains, drawn close. A good fire blazed in the hearth and because the day was now becoming murky, there were candles. Jane, telling him to stay in the doorway, went into the room, drew the bedcurtains back and held a candle where the light could fall on the patient’s face. Clifton took one appalled look and then retreated.
He went straight down to the yard, told his men to stay out there but to look down the well in case they found anything suspicious dangling in it, such as a helmet and breastplate in a bucket, and then searched the rest of the house himself.
In the kitchen an old woman he hadn’t seen before was plucking a chicken, and cursed him because he threw the door open too roughly and the draught sent feathers flying. After that he found a dairy, a cider press, a small family chapel very properly appointed with crucifix, candles and a statue of the Virgin; a ladies’ parlour containing nothing more suspicious than a lute and two workbaskets; a study where there was a desk with an abacus; some bedchambers used and unused; a privy and a spartan-looking chamber which evidently belonged to the chaplain.
He did not find any wounded fugitives and was very aware of the fact that to the inhabitants of the house, he was a thoroughgoing nuisance.
He apologized for the inconvenience caused, and left.
“It’s over,” said Lisa, watching Clifton and his men ride off.
“Don’t be too sure,” said Spenlove shrewdly. “We wait awhile.”
With his companions, Clifton went on through the steadily falling snow, over the ridge to Hannacombes, where, once more, he found nothing. He gnawed his lip, overcome by misgiving. He had heard of people being fooled by the pretence of disease. He hated the thought of going back, hated the very idea of looking at that sick man again, but just in case…
“The people at Rixons said that as well as this place, there’s one more farm on this estate,” he said to his men. “Over the other side of the combe. Go and search it. I’m going back to Allerbrook House.”
Spenlove admitted him with a look of sheer exasperation. “You’ve been gone only two hours. What can you want with us now? Haven’t we trouble enough without all this?”
“I regret it,” said Clifton stiffly, pushing his way inside and stamping the snow off his riding boots, “but I wish to see your sick man—the nephew of your mistress, I believe—once again. Please show me to his room.”
�
��Only with the mistress’s consent. She is in the hall. I’ll call her.”
Once again Jane—in stony silence and this time without offering him any perfumed cloths—led the unwelcome visitor up the stairs to the room with the crimson-hung bed. The patient moaned in protest when she opened the bedcurtains and in a hoarse voice begged for water. She gave him some from a flask at the bedside. His right hand emerged from the covers to take it and the back of the hand, too, was dotted with pustules. Clifton once more retreated in haste.
“I am sorry,” he said over his shoulder as Jane followed him down the stairs. “I will not trouble you again.”
At the threshold he paused to make a bow to her and Jane, looking at him tiredly, said, “Do you not know, Captain, that all most people really want is to live in peace? We wish the laws would stop changing, so that we knew for sure how we should worship. We want to raise our crops and our children, conduct business, enjoy festivals, celebrate marriages, baptize our babies and mourn our dead. Rebellions happen because we grow weary of never being let alone.”
“Madam, the queen, and no doubt her prospective husband, too, wish all people not only to have happy lives but the promise of heaven for their souls.”
“I’m sure they do. I rather wish they would leave our souls to us. Now, Captain, please go away and don’t come back. I hope you don’t take the pox. I wouldn’t wish that on anyone. But I would rather not set eyes on you again. Ever.”
“Will he stay away this time, do you think?” she asked Spenlove when, once more, the invader had gone.
“I hope so, but we’d better wait till tomorrow. Master Stephen must stay abed, anyway.”
They went together up to what had been Jane’s room until they’d moved Stephen into it because it was easier than exchanging the bedhangings.
The House of Allerbrook Page 28