This Rough Ocean

by Ann Swinfen

  ‘But it’s excellent, Mistress Verey!’ said Anne. ‘And I think lemon improves the flavour.’

  The two women fell into an easy exchange of receipts, but the children were too busy eating the excellent meal to speak, and as for Patience and the servants, it seemed their smiles were irrepressible. London and its dangers had faded far into the distance. Half an hour later, the journey back to Swinfen along the same road in the inn’s well-sprung modern carriage was a contrast to the long uncomfortable trip from London. The horses were fresh and were, moreover, thoroughbreds of the highest quality, for Robert Verey was a man rising in society, who prided himself on his judgement in matters of horseflesh. They trotted along briskly, and were soon turning into the carriageway leading up to Swinfen Hall. Ahead and beyond the bulk of the house, looming dark above the snow-covered fields and orchards and gardens, the moon gleamed faintly on the waters of the lake.

  Yet the house stood in darkness. Unlike the poorer cottagers and yeoman farmers, the Swynfen family had no need to economise on candles. It was scarcely nine o’clock. Anne knew that John’s parents kept country hours, but at this time of the evening, Richard Swynfen was usually working at his rent table, bringing his estate records up to date, or seated in the parlour beside the fire with a pipe—to which he was extremely partial—and perhaps a book or newspaper. His wife, whose every hour was filled with the management of her large household, would probably still be bustling about. And the servants would not go to bed before their masters. Yet there was not a single spark of light to be seen from any window.

  The innkeeper looked troubled as he drew up the carriage before the door. ‘They’re early abed tonight, it seems. I did hear tell something about Master Swynfen being ill, but with the winter weather and the hard times, we don’t see much of folk from Swinfen and Weeford in Lichfield these days. I’ll knock them up for you.’

  He climbed the steps to the front door and rapped on it loudly with the butt of his whip, while the weary party of travellers clambered down from the carriage and unloaded the few pieces of luggage they had brought from Lichfield. Heartily tired of the Turkey bag, Anne looked forward to unpacking its heavy contents. Jack and Francis sat down on the steps as if they would never move from there. Dorothea was asleep in Patience’s arms and Mary against Hester’s shoulder. Bess was carrying the new baby, who woke and began to cry in a long keening wail that meant she would need to be fed soon. Nan and Ralph simply stood, trance like, in the midst of all the pother, getting in everyone’s way, as though they had lost the ability to walk.

  After Robert Verey had been knocking for several minutes, and Peter had suggested he should go round to the kitchen, the noise of someone moving on the other side of the door could just be heard.

  ‘Who’s there?’ a wavering voice cried out.

  ‘’Tis Mistress Anne,’ Robert shouted, ‘Master John’s lady, and all the children and servants, home from London. For the sake of God, open the door! We’re all like to freeze out here.’

  There came the groan of bolts being drawn back, and then the heavy ancient door swung slowly open, revealing old Biddy Earpe, the housekeeper, holding up a single candle, and behind her a young maid Anne had not seen before. Both looked frightened.

  ‘Mistress Anne!’ cried Biddy Earpe. ‘What are you doing here? We thought you were all in London town.’

  ‘I wrote three times to say we were coming,’ said Anne. ‘Did all of my letters miscarry? Did the master and mistress not expect us?’

  Biddy Earpe gave her a strange, troubled look as they all filed into the great hall of the house. Two stories high, it was the heart of the original manor, and usually had a huge fire of logs burning on the hearth and candles in sconces around the walls. Tonight it loomed eerily, a cave of darkness, in which the single candle looked fragile as breath.

  ‘Will you fare all right, Mistress Swynfen?’ asked the innkeeper. He was as puzzled as she by this strange welcome, but he was anxious not to leave his horses standing and taking cold.

  ‘Aye, of course,’ she said, more heartily than she felt. ‘I’m so grateful to you for all your kindness, for giving us a meal and driving us here. You must be away home. I’ll send a cart in the morning to fetch the rest of the luggage.’

  When he was gone, she turned to Biddy, and said briskly, ‘Now, we must have more candles, Biddy, and see the children off to bed. They’ve eaten a good meal in Lichfield. If we weren’t expected, I suppose the beds will be cold and damp. Hester, will you go with this girl to the kitchen and fill some warming pans? Patience and Bess, take the children up to their old rooms and get them ready for bed. Peter? Ah, there you are.’

  Peter was leaning against the wall in a dark corner, sleeping on his feet like a horse.

  ‘Not long now before we’re all in our beds, old friend. Will you carry up the small trunk with the children’s night shifts? Then I think you should sleep in the kitchen tonight. ’Twill be warmer there than in your attic.’

  They all hurried to do her bidding, glad of some activity to drive away their fears about what was wrong here. Biddy opened the candle-box and handed out candlesticks. As they were lit, one by one, the hall came to life. The hearth was quite cold. Evidently no fire had been lit there for days past. A fine layer of dust covered everything. There was a smell of neglect about the place and, curiously, no smell of food cooking, yet—by some trick of the draughts within the house—the scent of roasting meat usually flowed into the hall from the kitchen and lingered here long after the food was served. As Hester and the new maid headed towards the kitchen and the others went upstairs, Anne turned to Biddy.

  ‘Now then, Biddy, what’s amiss? I come expecting a warm house, with candles and food, and my husband’s parents to welcome us, and I find . . . I’m not sure what I find. Two fearful servants with a single candle in an untidy, cold house, and no sign of anyone else. Something has happened.’

  Biddy began to sob, and set down her candlestick on the windowsill so that she might wipe her eyes on her apron. ‘Oh, Mistress Anne, such terrible times we’ve had! I know the master didn’t want to worry Master John, but this year’s harvest was all but lost, and since then most of the beasts and winter provisions were looted by soldiers, and the stock that’s left near starved, and all of the young men pressed for service in the army, with only the old men and the women to tend the land. We’ve scarce food enough left in the storerooms and pantry to feed us through the winter, and now with all of you come, I don’t know how we shall ’scape starving. And then the master . . .’

  ‘What of the master?’ Anne cried, seized with a terrible fear. ‘He’s not . . . he has not . . . died?’

  ‘As good as,’ wailed Biddy. ‘He’s had an apoplexy. He can’t speak or move. He can do naught but lie abed, and we try to dribble a little soup into him, but I can’t think he’ll last long.’

  ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘A month ago? Or was it more? Nay, I am so confused and weary myself, I can’t rightly say. Before Christmas, it was.’

  ‘But Mistress Joane? Surely she’s not ill?’

  Biddy sobbed harder. ‘Oh, Mistress Anne, I don’t know what to do. She’s become quite ’mazed, I think her wits be gone. She wanders about the place, talking to herself. After the master fell ill, she’s become like a child or a half-wit. Only yesterday, Margit—that’s the new girl you saw just now—she found the mistress walking by the lake in nothing but her shift, in the snow, and the lake frozen round the edges. If she’d strayed on to the ice, sure as fate she’d have fallen through, and drowned or froze to death. I will say this, though, she was as biddable as a good child. Margit took her by the hand and led her back inside with no trouble at all.’

  Anne sank down on to a stool and covered her face with her hands. Her whole body ached, and she felt as though someone had just laid a builder’s hod of bricks on her shoulders.

  Chapter Sixteen

  The next morning was deceptively lovely. The heavy clouds which had clos
ed in the skies for weeks had blown away; the sun lit up a world of glinting, crystalline beauty. Anne stood at the window of the second-best chamber, the one she and John had shared when they were first wed, before they moved to the manor of Thickbroome. She had stood here the morning after her wedding, a girl of nineteen on the threshold of a new life. It was a balmy, sweet spring that year, and the view then from this window had been green with the leaves fresh on the trees and with thick meadow grass, already starred with flowers. She was watching a flock of ducks on the lake, teaching their young ones to swim and dive, when John came up behind her and put his arms around her, burying his face in her mass of dark hair, which by day was coiled and pinned out of sight under her lace cap, all but a few wayward curls.

  ‘I wish you would release your beautiful hair so I could see it always,’ he said.

  ‘That wouldn’t be seemly.’

  ‘Ah well, perhaps it’s for the best. I should be jealous if any other man beheld it by light of common day. ’Tis my secret treasure, and I alone can cherish it by the moon’s light.’

  She turned then in his arms and they kissed fiercely, renewing the turbulent pleasures of the night.

  Now, on this January day, the manor lands of Swinfen stretched out frozen hard and glittering, stiff under winter’s mordant touch, down the slope to the lake and rising again beyond towards the woods, the trees winter black, no sign of bird or animal, the whole exquisite but heartless. She longed then for John so bitterly, that she tried to conjure up the warmth of his arms around her, but there was nothing but icy cold and loneliness.

  She shook her head, angry at herself. How could she be lonely, in a house full of people? This was pure folly. Yet it was deathly silent. The sun was up, but no one seemed to be awake. The travellers were weary and would sleep late, but where were the servants? She could not even hear a sound from the home farm, which was near to the house. Biddy had said something last night about the loss of stock, but there must be breeding stock kept to overwinter—the milch herd and the bull, the breeding ewes, some sows. And chickens—surely there must be chickens?

  No maid had come to attend her, so she dressed herself in her plain travelling dress, which she could fasten without help. It was to be hoped that Mistress Joane was not yet abroad, for she would not dare to appear before her mother-in-law unless she was laced into her stays and had dressed according to her rank. Twice during the night she had fed the new baby, who was asleep now, in the cradle which had once belonged to John. Anne closed the door softly behind her and went down to the kitchen. There she found Peter, yawning and rubbing his eyes as he made up the fire from the pile of logs in the wood store. Biddy and Margit were sitting at the table, elbows amongst crusts, whispering together, but there was no sign of any food being prepared. When they saw her, the two women jumped up, looking guilty and uncertain.

  Anne frowned as she looked around. The kitchen was even dirtier than the great hall had been, with splashes of spilt food on the floor, and soiled platters piled up at one end of the table. A dish of milk had been left to go sour on the dresser, where a few sleepy winter flies had found it and drowned. One paltry ham hung from the beam nearest the fire, where it benefited from any smoke that drifted up. Scarcely halfway through the winter, there should have been at least six hams hanging there, and gigots of mutton, and several sides of salted beef. If illness had struck down the elder Swynfens only during the last months, it could not explain why no more meat had been smoked or salted for winter provision, for it should have been done earlier, around Martinmas. Distracted from the dirty state of the kitchen by the lack of meat, Anne turned to Biddy.

  ‘Why is there but one ham? Where are the rest?’

  She had not meant it to sound like an accusation, but Biddy answered indignantly.

  ‘I told you last night, Mistress Anne. The soldiers have been here, carrying off what provision they could lay hands on. That ham was still in the smokehouse, and they overlooked it.’

  She spoke rudely, in a tone Mistress Joane would never have tolerated. Indeed, servants had been dismissed for less, but Anne turned away, her mind on other things.

  ‘What about salt beef? Bacon? Dried ham? Potted mutton? Smoked gigot? Did you put up no pickled fish during the autumn?’

  Without waiting for an answer, she strode through the kitchen to the back passage which led to the storerooms, the scullery and pantry, the game larder and fish room, and, at the far end, the cold, stone-lined dairy. She opened cupboards, searched the shelves and kists with growing horror. It was last night’s ordeal, when her dream of welcome had turned to ashes, made more terrifying by daylight. Her mind could not accept that there was so little food. There was a barrel of coarse oatmeal and a single sack of wheat in the grain. No doubt the soldiers preferred their flour already ground. There were a few preserves—a very few—and half a dozen pots of salted and pickled meat and fish. The shelves in the fruit store still held a remnant of small withered apples, no more than three dozen. At the back of a cupboard in the dairy there was one round of cheese, covered with mould, clearly another item missed by the soldiers, who must have taken all the rest. The brewhouse was in the yard of the home farm, close to the stables. No doubt it too would have been stripped bare. Well, they must make do with well water. She went back to the kitchen.

  ‘How many chickens?’ she asked in a curt tone, concealing her own terror.

  ‘About two dozen,’ said Biddy sullenly. ‘But being as it’s winter, they’re not laying to speak of.’

  Only two dozen. No doubt the soldiers had enjoyed stewing up some of the best laying hens.

  ‘Cows in milk?’

  ‘Twenty, I think.’

  Better, though the winter milk would be thin and scarce and poor for cheese-making, but they would have to contrive to make some. The children could drink the whey. If they could make cheese, however little and poor, it would compensate somewhat for the lack of meat.

  ‘Rabbits,’ said Anne, thinking aloud. ‘Are there still rabbits in that spinney on the far side of the lake?’

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know, Mistress Anne. I ha’n’t been over there these twelve months past. My legs trouble me something terrible.’

  Nothing to the trouble you shall have from me, thought Anne, but she kept it to herself.

  ‘I could go and see after breakfast, mistress,’ Peter volunteered. ‘I ha’n’t forgotten how to set a snare for rabbits in the three years we’m been in London.’

  ‘Aye, good, Peter.’ Anne struggled for control. She must not let them guess at her dismay. The stores she had seen would feed them poorly for a month, or at the most, rationed frugally, for six weeks. ‘Let’s breakfast and then we shall see what we can contrive. We must think how many there are to feed. There are twelve of us come from London: five adults, six children and a babe. In the household here, how many, Biddy?’

  ‘The master and mistress, the two of us here, and old Josiah and his boy to look after the stock, and that’s all. The day labourers are laid off for the winter—still we ha’n’t but old men and boys these last years.’

  No wonder the house looked so ill cared for. Only four servants to run both house and farm. Anne had never known there to be fewer than a dozen household servants, not counting the farm hands and day labourers on the land.

  ‘No cook?’

  ‘Old Meg died last November. Margit and I have managed as best we can,’ Biddy said defiantly, but her voice shook.

  Anne sank down on the bench beside the table. By daylight she could see that Biddy’s shape, once as firm and plump as a bolster, had caved in upon itself. Her skin was greyish and blotched, her hands cracked about the knuckles, her hair dry as old rope.

  ‘Oh, Biddy, I’m sure you have. I didn’t understand how badly all had fared here. I’m not vexed with you, just dismayed. At least we’ve brought Hester home with us, who’s an excellent cook. Bess will help when she’s not minding the children. Go and wake Hester now, she’s had long enough in her bed.
Tell her we need breakfast made for all.’

  ‘And what should she make it with?’

  ‘There’s oats a-plenty,’ said Anne. ‘We’ll eat porridge. It’s good wholesome food, enough to keep a labourer working all day, and that is what we must all do. You, girl—Margit, is it? Go and see if there are any eggs in the chicken house. Is it your job to feed them?’

  The girl nodded and whispered, ‘Yes, mistress.’ She was a pale scrap of a creature, not much taller than Nan, with hollowed cheeks and temples. Under her gown she seemed no more than a bundle of twigs.

  ‘Have we enough corn for them?’

  ‘Plenty. The soldiers didn’t touch it, and now there’s fewer chickens . . .’

  ‘Then give them a little extra. It may encourage them to lay better, and we’ll be dependent on them this winter.’

  While the women went to do her bidding, willingly or unwillingly, Anne caught up her cloak from the chest in the hall where she had laid it the previous night and went out of the front door into the frosty morning. Her hands were shaking as she fastened it around her shoulders and she strode quickly down towards the lake, to put as much distance between herself and the household as possible. Near one of the ancient oaks on the ridge above the lake she stopped. Her arms went instinctively around the great bole as far as they could reach, and she laid her forehead against the rough bark, lined and weathered like an old man’s skin.

  Her dream of sanctuary and rest had transformed itself into nightmare.

  The household—yes, that she could try to sustain. It was in a perilous state, with starvation lurking and the threat of more raids by renegade soldiers and masterless men, yet she could manage a household, if she could but obtain food enough. The management of the land was beyond her powers. It was a man’s business. She had neither experience nor training in such an enterprise. But who else was there here to undertake it? Her father-in-law stricken, John imprisoned, her own family far away. Mary Swynfen’s husband Thomas Potts was not far, in Weeford, yet she felt a curious reluctance to go begging to him.