by Susan Price
"You're very kind," I said, but she had left the room, taking my letter with her, before I had time to finish saying even that.
I dropped my bundle on the floor and sat in the chair by the table. I opened the book she had been reading. It was the Bible, and there was a marker inserted in the Book of Revelation. My eye fell on the passage, 'And I looked, and behold a pale horse; and his name that sat on him was Death, and Hell followed with him.' Obviously, she had been reading for diversion, I thought; and then realized that the words were in English. An English Bible in a Catholic house? Why not? Perhaps they did not wish to appear too Catholic.
I left the table, crossed to one of the room's large windows, and looked across the moat to the orchard, deliberately refusing to think any more of the Bible. I had only just arrived, and sufficient unto the day was the evil thereof.
My hot water was brought, and I washed, and felt more alive. I went out on to the landing and watched those below being served with their breakfast, until the flimsiness of the floor under my feet made me go back into the room, where I couldn't see the drop below me.
My own breakfast was brought soon afterwards: bread, meat and beer on a tray. I ate some of it, and then had nothing to do but stroll about the room, prying into things which were none of my business, while from the hall came the whirr of voices, the sound of plates and cups scraped on tables, and of spoons struck against dishes. The noise faded, and I returned to the landing and watched as people left the tables, and girls cleared away the dishes. I also saw Brentwood. He came into the hall by the door beside the dais, and spoke to some men still sitting at table at that end of the room. They rose, and followed Brentwood through the door he’d entered by.
I went back into Mistress Cowling's room and leafed through her Bible again until I heard her climbing the steps outside. She entered, saying, "I am so sorry to keep you - '' She paused as she saw me sitting in front of her Bible. ''To keep you waiting." She hurried across the room, picked up her Bible, and carried it away into the garderobe.
"A beautiful book," I said, as she came out again, but she ignored this.
"I hope you enjoyed your breakfast? I can show you to your room now, if you'd like to bring your belongings.'' She glanced at my bundle, obviously unused to guests bringing their luggage tied up in old shirts. "And then I will show you the rest of the house, if you would like that."
"Oh yes," I said. "I'd like to see the house: it’s so old."
She smiled, and led the way from the room. We went down to the first landing, and turned into the room which opened off it: a long, narrow room, with those defensive windows which are wider on the inner side of the wall than on the outer. Near the door was a shelf of books, and, at the far end, a high wooden platform with a wooden ladder mounting to it. At the back of the platform was a large cupboard, filling the width and height of the room.
"Through here," Mistress Cowling said, and I followed her through a door in a wooden partition wall into another room, which was also long and narrow, and depressingly bare. The walls had been plastered, but were uncoloured, and the floor was of grey stone flags. There was one window, without glass, but covered with a sheet of waxed cloth and a wooden shutter. A girl was kneeling in front of a small fireplace, struggling to light a fire.
Mistress Cowling looked round this bare little room with a pride which I felt was unjustified. Its only furniture was a three-legged stool with a basin and jug standing on its seat, and a low truckle-bed with its rope mattress bare of any covering, just such a bed as I had slept on at the University, and had shared with George. I had expected Brentwood to own beds of better quality - though why I had expected him to provide one for me, in view of my reason for visiting him, I did not know, and I was rather surprised at my own disappointment.
"We shall find a table for you to write at," Mistress Cowling said, "and there is - ah - " She waved her hand toward the window, and, moving in that direction, I found another door in the partition wall, just beside the window. I ducked through it, went along a short passage, and found a grey stone privy at the end, with a narrow window placed above it to send a cold draught down the user's back. "Ah," I said, returning to the room I had been given.
"This used to be the priest's room, you know," Mistress Cowling said thoughtfully, as I put my bundle on the bed.
I was startled, and said, "What?''
"The priest's room. In the old days, when the chapel was in use, this was where the priest lived."
"Oh,'' I said, and suddenly the bare, cold, grey walls seemed sinister.
"It is cold in here," Mistress Cowling said. "It will be warmer when the fire has burned up - Shall we go on?" I agreed readily, glad to leave, and we passed through into the room with the platform, the cupboard and the shelf of books.
"What is this room?" I asked. ''What is the platform for?"
She stopped. ''Oh - the Rents Room. A table is set up on the platform on quarter days, and all our tenants come here to pay their rents. The records are kept in the cupboard - and in the chest." We were standing near the chest, by the window. It was a section of the trunk of a huge tree, hollowed, and bound with bands of iron, and with two iron locks. An ancient thing: it might have been Noah’s sea-chest.
Mistress Cowling had already started down the stairs and I had to follow her. We walked the length of the hall, and passed through the door beside the dais at the far end, the one I’d seen Brentwood come and go through.
This brought us into a short passageway of grey stone. To our left was an open archway leading into the courtyard; to our right were two doors, and, directly ahead of us, a flight of stone steps leading down into complete darkness. "That," Mistress Cowling said, pointing to the steps, "goes down into the cellar. That - " pointing to the further door, '' - is a storeroom, and this - ' the other door " - is the chapel."
"Oh - yes, the chapel," I said. "Could we see it?"
She shook her head. "I am afraid not. It is disused now, and my cousin keeps the key to it - this way, if you please."
We went out through the arch into the courtyard, and took me on a short tour of all the wattle and daub buildings there: a dairy, a laundry, a still-room and a brewery.
She pointed to a small, squat door in the defensive wall between the gatehouse and the Hall itself, and told me that it led into the garden, and then we turned back towards the house. Instead of re-entering it, we climbed an exterior staircase which mounted the side of the house, with a wooden cover over it, supported by posts, to keep off the weather. At the top was a square landing, and the door to a first-floor room. Mistress Cowling pushed open this door, saying, "Here is the solar.'' I followed her into the finest room I had seen.
It had a wooden floor of polished boards, with rushes spread over them, and the windows, although they were the funnelling, defensive kind I had already seen in other parts of the house, had coloured glass set into them, and wide, wooden seats below them, with embroidered cushions. The walls were plastered, and a coloured frieze had been painted round them, just below the ceiling.
The fireplace was the most impressive feature; it was almost as wide as the wall it was set in, and was sheltered by a great stone hood, carved with a dragon whose hind legs merged into a curling tail, and who held, in one upraised claw, a fleur de lys pierced by an arrow.
While Mistress Cowling was saying something about the plate in the cupboard I noticed, on either side of the fire-place, a curious square niche with a little latched door at the back of it. I went over to one of them, unlatched the door, and found that it was a peephole enabling Brentwood to look down into the hall and see what was going on. I was delightedly watching two girls scrubbing the tables when Mistress Cowling, behind me, said "Master Uptake.'' I jumped, and let the little door swing shut. She was standing at the entrance of a room which opened off the far corner of the solar, and I went to join her.
"This is where my cousin sometimes works," she said.
It was a long room, very narrow, containing a table
and two stools, and nothing else except a cupboard on the wall. "Master Brentwood is your cousin?" I said.
She hesitated, and then said, "A second cousin," as if she wasn't very pleased about it, but had to be truthful. "Now I will show you the tower."
From the landing outside the solar a rope and planking bridge led across to a door on the first floor of the tower.
There was no way of reaching the tower except by the bridge - it had been built like that, obviously, for defensive reasons. We crossed the bridge and entered a very small room. Doors in partition walls led into other rooms.
"These are storerooms,'' Mistress Cowling said. "I will see if I can take you on to the roof - ' She began climbing a dark, stone staircase built into the wall of the tower itself.
I followed her, climbing slowly up and round the triangular steps. Even at their widest point, there was hardly room to set down one foot at a time. I wondered if the tower had been a castle before the rest of the house had been built. Had any battles been fought there; had it ever been besieged? I dragged my hand over the stone of the wall and envied Brentwood for living in such a beautiful, fascinating place - and then remembered that I would have to meet him soon, and explain my presence here, and how I had come by the knowledge that had enabled me to warn him of his danger.
Mistress Cowling stopped, and knocked on a door which was hidden from me by the turn of the stair. We waited, then the door was opened, and Mistress Cowling asked someone if we could go up to the roof. Brentwood's voice then said, “Christopher, are you there? Come up, come up!''
Mistress Cowling went on into the room, and I climbed the few remaining steps to find Brentwood waiting for me in the doorway. He held out his hand, saying, ''I am so glad that you could come." He took me further into the room, his hand on my shoulder, and said to Mistress Cowling, "You may go," in a way I thought unnecessarily curt.
She went out, closing the door behind her, and Brentwood asked me, "Have you had an accident, Christopher?"
He meant my face; and I explained again that I had been robbed in town, which was why I had followed him down to Alston rather than riding with him. I wondered that I could speak the words so naturally while waiting for him to question me about the warning I had sent him.
"That is bad news,'' he said. "But you will soon forget about it; no one will rob you here. You have breakfasted? Yes; I was told you had. I did not come to greet you because I was told you were washing and eating, and I thought I would give you a moment to yourself.''
I remembered how he had come into the hall as I had stood on the balcony above, and had called out some men on some errand - but it was his house, and his business what he did in it; and then I remembered with a jolt that I was there only to investigate what he did in his own house.
"Have you seen the house?'' he asked. ''Do you know where everything is?"
"Most of it," I said. "The hall, the solar, the priest's room - I haven't seen this tower. Is it very old, sir?"
''Yes," he said, as if it were a bad thing. "It's the oldest part of the house, and the most uncomfortable, and so, of course, this is where I have my room." With a wry face, he spread his hands to indicate the room in which we stood.
It took up the entire floor of the tower, with tall, narrow windows on either side, unglazed except for an unshuttered roundel at the top of each one. They had very deep, stepped stone sills beneath them: platforms on which two men could easily stand in order to shoot arrows from the windows. Brentwood's bed stood near one of the windows, hung round with thick, dusty curtains. The rushes on the floor were being lifted by the draughts, and I could understand why Brentwood wore a long robe with a fur collar, and long, fur-trimmed sleeves. It may have been old-fashioned, but it was the only sensible way to dress in that house. I rubbed my own chilled arms as Brentwood turned away, and thought that, perhaps, the priest's room, where there was only one small window to let in the wind, wasn't so bad after all.
"This is the way to the tower's roof," Brentwood was saying, and he disappeared into the wall. I crossed the room and found a continuation of the stone stairs within the wall, and climbed after him.
"Isn't it inconvenient, sir," I asked, "to have every change of guard tramping through your bedroom?"
"It must have been, for my ancestors," Brentwood said, "but I no longer post a guard. We rarely have to defend the house these days."
Light shone into my eyes from above as Brentwood reached the top of the steps and moved out on to the roof. I followed him a moment later.
The top of the tower was covered by a low-pitched roof of tiles, but there was a path running round it below the battlements, and we looked down on the island on which the house was built, and the lake surrounding it; and the meadows, orchard and farm-yard beyond that. It was windy, blowing our hair across our eyes, and we had to shout to one another, but Brentwood pointed out various fields by name.
I thought of all the age, and all the lives that were under my hands and feet wherever I touched these walls. "Was there ever a battle fought here, sir, or a siege?"
"Minor scuffles," he said. ''A mob once marched here intending to destroy the chapel, but the drawbridge was raised against them, and although they threw stones and shot arrows at the walls, they weren't generals enough to gain entry, and when it started to rain, they all went home."
"When was that?" I asked, and he laughed, and said, "Hardly ancient history, Christopher - although, I suppose it may seem so to you. It happened when I was a small boy of six or seven years. I can remember the crowd shouting, and the noise of the things they threw striking the walls - I can remember my grandfather ordering the bridge to be raised.''
I didn't answer for a moment, as my thoughts turned inward, making the sounds for me to hear; the shouts, the excitement - "Was that during the old Queen's time?" I asked, when I remembered him.
"Yes . . . the Spanish Marriage.* Some malicious person had been busy rousing anti-Papist feeling."
"Could I see the chapel, sir?"
He turned away. "The turret there was the look-out post," he said. "It gives an even better view of the approaches to the house."
The turret was built at one side of the tower, over the door to the stairs. It was a short flight of steps leading only to a small balcony just big enough for a man to stand on. I climbed the steps. The extra height gave a clear view over the tops of some trees in the distance, and I could see for miles in all directions. No one could have approached the house without my seeing them. I rested my hands on the wall and tried to imagine what it would have been like to be there, in the eighth hour of a night's watch, waiting for the first sign of the Yorkist or Lancastrian armies.
Brentwood was looking away from me, so I tried to get further into my part by drawing back an imaginary bowstring and squinting along an imaginary arrow, aiming at some men who were pushing a small boat out on to the lake below us. I glanced round and saw that Brentwood had seen what I was doing; but was too polite to give any sign of it other than a slight, amused compression of his mouth. I quickly dropped my hands back to the turret's wall. "Are those men fishing?'' I asked, nodding toward them. Brentwood nodded too, as he made his way back round the tower to the stairs. I followed him.
We reached his room, and coming into that comparatively sheltered place made me realize how chilled I had become while we were on the roof. I rubbed my arms, and shivered a little. I didn’t think Brentwood had noticed, but he said, "Go to the fire if you are cold, Christopher - And wait; wait a moment."
He soon came back, carrying over his arm a long robe like the one he was wearing. "Here,'' he said. "You had better wear this. Even at this time of the year, it can be cold, and the house is draughty, as you will have noticed. You’ll find it useful if you have to leave your bed in the night, too."
He gave me the robe. It was ankle-length, and long-sleeved, but had no fur-trimming. As soon as I put it on I felt warmer. We went down the tower stairs to the floor below, and to my surprise, since he had ignored
my earlier requests to see it, Brentwood led me from the tower to the door of the chapel, where he took a key from a ring on his belt, unlocked the door, and stood aside for me to enter.
I went in cautiously, my shoulders prickling with alarm. This disused chapel was at the very centre of my reasons for being there, and I was sure that, at any moment, Brentwood would bring up the awkward subject of the poem I had sent him.
The chapel was long and narrow, as many of the rooms at Alston seemed to be, and there was a sweet, dry, dusty smell inside it, as if, having been closed for so long, the smell of incense had been trapped inside, as the scent of old lavender may be trapped inside a linen chest.
There was only one window, opposite the door. It was arched, the only window in the house that was not funnelled for defence, and it was glazed with stained glass showing the Virgin and her child. The blue of her robe, the red of the fruit she was holding, the yellow of the baby’s halo, and the green of the grass about the Virgin's feet fell in beautiful, blurred pools of colour on the tiled floor – and the floor was fascinating in itself, for every tile of it was painted with a picture. The border around the walls showed knights, dressed as they are in plays and old romances, with plumes in their helmets, pennants flying from their lances, and brightly patterned caparisons on their galloping horses. The other tiles were painted alternately with palmer's shells, and dragons holding pierced fleurs de lys.