by Ann Swinfen
Chapter Nine
Mercy
The morning after Piet van Slyke had burst into Turbary Holm uninvited, I set out for the manor house, to confront Sir John Dillingworth. I should lie, were I to say that I was not a little afraid, but I strove to conceal it. I must go, so there was no reason to delay. Better to have done with it.
‘I hate to hide behind your skirts!’ Gideon burst out as I took up my cloak. ‘What kind of man am I, what kind of husband am I, to let you go to that place where you were humiliated and attacked? Stay, and I will go in your stead.’
I sat down on the bench beside the table, while he strode up and down the kitchen in frustration. Kitty gave me a sympathetic look, then slipped out to feed the hens.
‘We have already discussed this, Gideon,’ I said mildly. We had indeed discussed it for the whole of the previous evening. ‘We both know that you must keep out of the sight of your enemies. ’Tis pure common sense. I shall come to no harm. Edmund Dillingworth is away from home. We know that. And Sir John, though arrogant, is not uncivil. His lady is barely civil, but I shall have no need to see her.’
‘Let me come with you, at least part of the way,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘To Crowthorne, and risk Reverend Edgemont recognising you? In broad daylight, what harm can come to me? I have walked these lanes all my life.’
‘You know that we have had word that fighting has broken out again, between the Royalists and the Army. What if there should be renegade soldiers roaming about?’
I smiled. ‘You know as well as I that the fighting is miles away – the other side of London, down in Kent, or else up in the far north, near Scotland. The soldiers here are our friends.’
‘Those who attacked Huw’s christening were no friends of ours,’ he said grimly. ‘What if they are still about?’
‘There has been no sight of them for months. Nay, Gideon, I shall come to no harm and you must get on with the farm work. All this wet weather has brought the weeds on apace out in the arable. Everyone is going out to hoe the fields today. Nehemiah will go, and so must you. As soon as I am home, I will join you. It must not be said that we left others to care for our crops.’
He continued to protest, but he took up his hoe and set off with Nehemiah for the fields. Kitty came in with her basket of eggs just as I was about to leave.
‘What shall I do while you are gone, Mistress Mercy?’
‘Best start a new batch of cheese,’ I said. ‘And if there is time, we are running short of bread. With so many men to feed, we should open a bakery!’
For once in this miserable year it was not raining, but it was hardly sunny. The sky was a uniform pale grey, as though a painter had loaded his brush with a single colour and washed over the entire dome of the skies with it. We have wide open skies, here in the Fens, and you can see for miles, but nowhere was there a break in this dull, listless grey, neither a rip in the veil to show a fragment of blue sky, nor even a respectable solid cloud.
I had debated long over what I should wear to the manor house. They had seen me last in the poor clothes of a lowly kitchen maid, the rank in which they had condescended to employ me. I could wear one of my everyday gowns, such as I wore about the farm. Or I could wear my Sunday gown, which was made of finer cloth, but was not too ostentatious under the eye of a Puritan preacher. Or, finally, I could wear my best, the clothes in which I had been wed.
Nay, the memories attached to those were too precious to be sullied by contact with the manor. I would wear my Sunday clothes, and my silk Dillingworth shawl. It was unlikely the people at the manor would recognise it for what it was, but I would know, and it would give me the courage to conduct myself as a relative of the family, however little they might wish to remember it.
With the silk shawl about my shoulders, I decided I would not need a cloak after all. Although the weather continued so cold that it was difficult to believe it was June, yet I knew I should grow warm with walking. There were three different ways I could go. The shortest was across the fields, the way I had come home when I left my service at the manor, but that meant jumping ditches and was likely to be boggy in places, after so much rain. The longest way was to head for Crowthorne, then skirt round the village to the north, along a network of paths between small scattered patches of the moss. It was somewhere here that the military had pitched their camp. Although our soldiers had returned, the camp might still be there. Despite my brave words to Gideon, I did not care to encounter a group of soldiers, alone on a deserted lane.
In the end, the best way to go seemed to be through Crowthorne, then out along the lane to the manor. At one time I had always avoided Crowthorne, but I was no longer so intimidated by the people there. I had met Jack’s friend Joshua a few times since the flood and he seemed harmless enough.
The first part of my route took me past the place at the far end of the village where the three cottages had stood, the ones which had been washed away in the flood, then over the new bridge to the Crowthorne road. When I reached the bridge, I saw that three of the village boys were fishing from the bank beside it.
‘Any fish?’ I asked.
Rob Higson shrugged. ‘Enough to feed a cat. But us’ll keep trying.’
‘Aye,’ I said. ‘Patience is the answer.’
The next part of my way led between high banks topped with straggling hedges. The rain seemed to have brought on their growth, like the rampant weeds in the fields. The men needed to come along here when they had time, to cut back the new growth of the hedge trees and the whippy tendrils of brambles which reached out to snatch at the unwary passer-by. As I neared Crowthorne, I saw that someone had been out here to trim the hedges. No doubt the Reverend Edgemont had issued his orders.
The village was quiet. As at home, the able bodied, men and women alike, would be out in the fields, seizing this rare opportunity to tackle the weeds while it was not raining. The soil would still be claggy with the wet, which would make the hoeing difficult, but it must be done. Neglect it and you have a crop of burdock and sow thistles instead of wheat or barley. It is remarkable, sometimes, that the corn survives at all.
There were a few of the elderly people about in Crowthorne, minding the small children. The older children would be out in the fields with their parents. I nodded to one or two of the elders, sitting before their doors, to take advantage not of the sun, for there was none, but of the cessation of the rain. I followed the main street of the village to the end. Like our own village it consisted of houses built along this one street, with outbuildings and plots of ground behind, where there was room to grow vegetables and keep a pig. Narrow paths led between the houses to these back premises, just barely wide enough for a horse and cart. At the far end of the village, the street narrowed a little between more hedges and became the lane that led to the manor house.
The overhanging grey of the sky seemed to lean down ever more oppressively as I drew near the manor house, and my steps began to slow and drag. I had taken care to keep up a steady but unhurried pace as walked, for I had no wish to arrive hot and flustered. As usual, the house looked deserted, standing aloof amidst its formal gardens. The family rarely seemed to venture outside, except when Sir John or his son went hunting. I had never heard of Lady Dillingworth leaving the sanctuary of the house in recent years. It occurred to me for the first time what a very dull and even unhappy life she must lead. No one in the neighbourhood was of her rank in society, and she was not a woman to mingle with the lower orders. Before the war, I believe the family used to spend part of each year in London, for Sir John owned a house there, but like many of the country gentry they had retreated to their estates and kept their heads down during the struggle. Although many of his rank were royalists, Sir John had made much of his distant relationship to Cromwell since that man had come to power. My own father had believed that Cromwell would prove the champion of the common man, and it had been the subject of many arguments between him and Tom, for Tom did not trust Cromwell. When it
was rumoured that Cromwell was involved in the draining and enclosure of our common lands, the arguments had grown fiercer. I do not know what my father believed at the time of his death.
I walked boldly up to the front door of the manor. I would not allow myself to be intimidated by my previous experiences here. As I raised my hand to the knocker, I heard the first sounds of human activity from the stableyard. A dog barked and a man spoke to it. There was the clatter of a bucket which I judged came from the well-hus, out at the back, near the kitchen premises.
The door was opened by Master Rogers, Sir John’s steward. A momentary astonishment flickered over his face before he composed it to a look of bland indifference. I wondered whether he would admit to knowing who I was.
‘Yes?’ he said, looking down his nose at me, and effectively blocking the doorway.
‘Good morning to you, Master Rogers,’ I said, without expression. ‘I am here to see Sir John on parish business.
Rogers raised his eyebrows, clearly indicating that he doubted whether a woman could have any business, parish or otherwise, with Sir John.
‘It is . . .’ he made a show of ignorance, ‘. . . Good . . . Mistress Bennington, is it?’
I clenched my teeth. The pretence of nearly demeaning me to ‘Goodwife’ was deliberate. Of course, when I had worked here, I had been merely ‘Mercy’, or more often simply ‘You’.
‘I am married now, Rogers. I am Mistress Chandler.’
His face hardened at my form of address, but I could not resist playing him at his own game. His brief hesitation gave me the opportunity to step forward into the house.
‘I know my way to Sir John’s study,’ I said, ‘if he is at home. Or will you announce me?’
This was by way of calling his bluff. He would be forced to announce me, or be clearly failing in politeness to his master. Without a word he walked ahead of me, turning into the left hand wing of the house and following the hallway to the end, where Sir John’s study stood.
Rogers knocked on the door, then opened it. ‘Mistress . . . Chandler, Sir John.’
He stood slightly to one side to let me enter, but not quite far enough, so that I was crowded. I let my skirts brush his legs and ignored this petty discourtesy. Sir John rose and I realised that he did not at first know me. Then I saw recognition in his eyes.
‘Mistress Bennington!’ Clearly I was the last person he expected. He bowed. ‘Thank you, Rogers.’
The steward withdrew and I dropped a polite but not obsequious curtsey.
‘Good day to you, Sir John,’ I said. ‘However, I am no longer Mistress Bennington. I am married now. I am Mistress Chandler.’
I hated using this false name. As a name, there was nothing amiss with it, but I wanted to shout to the world, ‘I am married to Gideon Clarke!’ I wondered whether the day would ever come when he could emerge from the shadows and resume his rightful name and vocation.
‘My felicitations, Mistress Chandler.’ He bowed again. ‘Please, be seated.’
As I sat, I remembered when I had last been in this room. My father was imprisoned and the whole family had struggled to raise the money to pay the fine for his release. I had been received with little courtesy then. I drew Mary Dillingworth’s shawl closer around my shoulders. I do not suppose Sir John recognised it, but I could see that he appreciated its quality. Clearly I had not returned to my position as his lowest kitchen maid.
‘I wished to see you, cousin,’ I said, ‘on this matter which touches everyone in these five parishes. The matter of the drainage works undertaken by the company of adventurers.’
If his eyebrows had been raised a fraction when he assessed the quality of the silk shawl, they rose higher when I mentioned our kinship. Yet it was much closer than his supposed connection to Cromwell. My great-grandmother had been his great-aunt. Or to put it another way, he was my mother’s second cousin. When I mentioned the drainage works, his eyes narrowed and I saw that he looked wary. For the moment he said nothing, either to encourage me to explain, or to discourage me.
‘It is more than a year now since my late father and many men of our village came to you for help in resisting the attempts to steal our land. At that time you promised us help. You said you would set your lawyer to work on the matter. Yet in all this time, nothing has been done.’
‘Matters at law are slowly dealt with, Mistress Chandler,’ he said. I saw that he was not going to acknowledge the kinship. His tone was patronising. What could I, a mere countrywoman, understand of the law?
‘Ah, but some matters have moved on,’ I said smoothly. ‘My brother Tom has returned to his legal studies in London, at Gray’s Inn. Moreover, he has called upon your man of law at Lincoln’s Inn, James Blakiston.’
His eyes widened when he realised I knew the lawyer’s name.
‘Now here is a strange thing,’ I said, ‘for Bencher Blakiston has told my brother that he is retained by a company of adventurers, and therefore it would be a conflict of interests for him to work with my brother in taking them – or any such company – to court in order to stop their activities. He did not tell Tom which company of adventurers he serves, but surely it cannot be in your interests to retain such a man in your service.’
‘Indeed,’ he said, but his tone was reserved. I thought I saw calculation in his eye. It was clear he was taken aback by the fact that Tom was in London and had found the lawyer.
‘So it seems all this time has been wasted,’ I said, ‘while the drainers have gone about their destruction of our lands. They have extended their works to Crowthorne now. You are aware, of course, that the devastation wreaked by the recent flood was due to their ill-judged activities. Even here on the manor you must have suffered, although much of your land stands higher than our villages.’
‘We did indeed suffer some damage,’ he conceded. ‘So Blakiston is retained by a company of drainers? I wonder who they might be.’ There was something insincere in his tone.
‘They seem very skilled at hiding their identities,’ I agreed. ‘I wished to be sure that you knew the truth about Blakiston, but that was not my principal reason for seeing you.’
‘And that is?’
‘My brother is determined to find the royal charter granting the common lands to us in perpetuity. There must be a copy in London. And I believe that the Dillingworths held the other copy.’
He spread his hands apologetically. ‘I am afraid that it appears to be lost. There was a fire here in this very room, some century and a half ago, and an entire chest of documents was destroyed. Alas, that copy of the charter appears no longer to exist. You say your brother hopes to find the other. Is he not somewhat disabled?’
‘He has lost a leg, certainly,’ I said coldly. ‘That will be no impediment to my brother, once he has made up his mind. Besides, he has friends amongst the lawyers who are also assisting in the search.’
It was clear that Sir John was listening very carefully to me now.
‘I have come to ask that you support your neighbours and fellow commoners in putting a stop to the work of the drainers until the matter can come to court, and to lend us your assistance when we do take the adventurers to court.’
‘That may be difficult, if you do not know who they are,’ he murmured.
‘Oh, I am sure we will find them out in time. Meanwhile, will you help us put a stop to their present activities? You are a Justice of the Peace. Surely you can do something, within the law. It would be a pity if it came to violence again.’
‘It would, indeed it would.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I will see what I can do, Mistress Chandler, but it may be difficult. I understand that damage was done to the drainers’ two pumping mills.’
‘The pumps had to be stopped, or the flood would have been even worse,’ I said. ‘The damage to the mill on our land was mostly done by the flood and the winter storms. The machinery was merely stopped. I believe the Crowthorne mill suffered worse, but people were desperate and in danger of drowning. Are you aware of
all the homes swept away or severely damaged?’
‘Some sad losses,’ he said, but without a great deal of sympathy.
I wished he could have suffered what we had suffered. I stood up. Clearly he wanted me to be gone.
‘I will see what I can do about the drainers’ present activities,’ he said, as he opened the door. ‘It may not be possible to do anything at once.’
‘I understand,’ I said, ‘but perhaps you will keep us informed?’
‘Certainly.’
He began to walk with me toward the front door.
‘And I hope you will keep me informed about your brother’s attempts to find the charter.’
‘I will indeed. Once the charter is found, we shall be able to take the adventurers to court.’
He held the door open for me.
‘You seem very certain that it will be found.’
‘My brother does not easily abandon a task, once he has undertaken it. If the charter still exists, he will find it.’ On the threshold I dropped him a small curtsey. ‘I wish you good day, cousin.’
He smiled. I believe he even admired my boldness. ‘Good day to you.’
I walked briskly back to Crowthorne. Now that the interview was over, I was anxious to reach home and return to all the tasks that awaited me there. I could not decide whether my meeting with Sir John had been successful or not. He had promised to look into putting a stop to the resumption of the drainage works, but he had made promises before. And when he told me that a chest of documents had been destroyed in a fire, he had not actually said that the charter was amongst them. And there was something else that worried me. When I had told him that Blakiston was working for the adventurers, I could have sworn that he knew it already.
The farm was deserted when I reached home. Apart from my mother, resting in her chamber, everyone – including the soldiers – was out in the fields, hoeing. I changed quickly into my workaday clothes and laid the silk shawl safely away in my coffer. It had, I was sure, fulfilled its function today. Then I checked that Kitty had done what I had asked her to do. There was a batch of bread dough rising in the bread trough under a cloth. Out in the dairy the curds had been set to drain. She was a good girl. Hardly past her thirteenth birthday, she could do almost a grown woman’s work. One day we must find a good husband for her, but I should be sorry to lose her companionship.