And she was once more my dear friend, who knew just how to coax me out of the sullens and make me smile.
‘Is there something wrong with your toast?’ Margaret is talking to me, I realize belatedly, and I look down at my plate, where I have dropped the toast unawares. It looks brown and sticky and unappetizing. I pick up my knife but then am not sure what to do with it, so I set it down again.
‘I . . . I’m not very hungry,’ I say. I am still tangled up in memory. It is like waking from a deep sleep. I’m not sure what is real and what isn’t. I wriggle my fingers, feeling the flex of tendons. I lay my other hand on the table, feeling the smooth, polished warmth of the wood. The studs in the chair upholstery are digging into my thighs. A flurry of wind spatters rain against the windows, drowning out for a moment the oppressive tick of the clock. This is real.
I lift my eyes. Margaret is regarding me with acute dislike. Jasper is looking anxious, Fiona studiedly neutral. Philippa is drinking coffee and gazing moodily out of the window. George has his head down and is applying himself to his breakfast, watched fixedly by one of the Labradors, who is hoping for a scrap of bacon, while Joanna fiddles nervously with her teaspoon. These people, these strangers, are real too. I am still having trouble thinking of them as my family, but I feel as trapped here as I did – no, as Isabel did – by the weather. I want to leave, but where can I go and what can I do until I remember more? And Felix. If he is my son, as everyone says he is, I cannot abandon him. I must try harder to make a connection with him, to remember. I can’t move on until I do.
‘Oh, good God, she’s going doolally again—’ Margaret says in disgust, and I realize I must be staring blankly.
‘What were you thinking of doing today, Kate?’ Fiona interrupts, ever quick to smooth out tensions.
Her question gives me time to recover myself. I badly want to drink some tea, but I am afraid my hand will be trembling, and that Margaret will comment on it. She’ll think it’s evidence that I’m going mad like my mother.
No, wait, my mother isn’t mad. The mother I remember screaming on the bed, the one who laughed and ran through the grass with me, that isn’t my mother. That was Isabel’s mother. My mother is in Africa. She isn’t here when I need her. For a moment my throat tightens so painfully I can’t speak, but I manage to draw a breath.
‘I, er . . .’ I struggle to anchor myself in the present. ‘I thought I might have a look in the library,’ I manage, acutely conscious of how long it has taken me to come up with a plausible answer. ‘Angie told me that I was working on a display of family history. I was thinking I could get back to that. I need to do something.’
There is a tiny pause. ‘Of course,’ says Jasper heartily. ‘Use whatever you can find there.’
‘Do you know what I was looking at before . . . before the accident?’ I’m not going to say that I jumped. I don’t believe I did.
Again, an infinitesimal hesitation, a flicker of glances around the table. ‘Not a clue,’ Jasper says, sounding pleased to be so unhelpful. Fiona and Joanna shake their heads. Margaret and Philippa can’t be bothered to listen.
‘You were looking at the early history of the Vavasours,’ George offers after a moment, looking up briefly from his sausage and bacon.
‘What was the idea behind the display?’ I ask him, but George’s eyes slide back to his plate.
‘You’d better talk to Angie about that. She deals with all the visitor stuff,’ he says. ‘She’s awfully competent.’
Competent. It’s a good word to describe Angie, but it’s not very lover-like.
‘All right, I’ll ask her,’ I say, wondering why they seem to be making such heavy weather of a simple question. ‘I presume it was a history of the Hall. How long has it been open to the public?’
‘Only since the mid-seventies,’ Jasper says with an apologetic look at his mother. ‘My father wouldn’t hear of it, but when he died in 1971 . . . well, death duties, you know.’
‘Ralph would have hated it,’ Margaret says bitterly.
‘George has done a marvellous job of generating new sources of income,’ Joanna says loyally, before her mother can launch into a full-blown rant.
‘Yes, I heard it’s even been a movie set.’ I jump in to help her. ‘That must have been fun.’
It is as if I have thrown a brick through the window. The conversation, sluggish as it has been, stops dead, and the temperature drops. What have I said?
‘Film,’ says Margaret distinctly.
‘I wouldn’t call it fun.’ George hurries in to head off another rant. ‘It was a damned nuisance, but it paid good money.’
‘And has brought in loads of new visitors,’ Philippa puts in.
‘It was very disruptive,’ Fiona says.
‘What was it called?’ I ask. ‘The movie?’ I prompt when they all look at me.
Another exchange of glances. ‘The Tower,’ says George.
Tower. The very word is enough to set something shrieking and scrabbling at the back of my mind, and in spite of myself, I shrink into my seat, my mind swerving in panic.
‘It was a horror film,’ Philippa says clearly, a spark of malice in her face. ‘It was based on the story of our ghost who, as you know, threw herself off the tower. You can see now why we didn’t mention it before.’
‘I think we should change the subject.’ Fiona puts a stop to the conversation. ‘Look at whatever you like in the library, Kate, but do call someone if you want to get something from the higher shelves. You’re not steady enough to use a ladder yet.’
The library is lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves enclosed behind glass, each one stacked with leather-bound books. I have to squint to read the titles that are picked out in gilt on the spines: Enshrined Hearts, Epistle to the Learned Nobilitie of England, Arcana Fairfaxiana and various other Latin titles that mean nothing to me.
I can’t see anything that says it’s a handy history of the Vavasours, and I wonder where I started before. One tall book has Askerby in the title, and I need both hands to pull it down from the shelf. It is very old, and the smell of musty paper hits me like a blow when I open the book carefully. The print is hard to read – I can’t distinguish an ‘n’ from a ‘u’, and the ‘s’ looks like an ‘f – so I soon give up trying to decipher the text and look instead at the illustrations. One in particular catches my eye. It is an etching of a tomb, and shows a knight lying next to a lady. Their feet rest on small, carved dogs. The lady’s face is plump and serene, the knight’s is remote. He looks stern in his armour, but one gauntlet is off and the sight of their clasped hands makes my heart twist with a memory so sharp and sudden that I suck in a gasp.
Yes, I remember: I was in the parish church with Edmund. Perhaps it was after a service; perhaps Edmund had business with the parson. I don’t recall. But we stood in the choir admiring the fine tomb of Sir Piers and his lady. Gently, I traced the fold of the Lady Anne’s cold, stone gown. ‘One of your forefathers?’ I asked Edmund, and that half-smile I loved tugged at the corner of his mouth.
‘I fear not. The Vavasours were but raggle-taggle mercers in York when Sir Piers sat in high estate here. We would not have presumed to look so high then!’
I touch the clasped stone hands. ‘Once they were warm flesh and blood like us, and now, now they lie here in their dark tomb. Will it be the same for us?’ I shivered, and Edmund took my hand.
‘It is our lot,’ he said, ‘but at least they are together. It is touching, is it not, to see how close they lie? Let us have a fine tomb too, and I will hold your hand for eternity, and our grandchildren and our grandchildren’s grandchildren will look on us and smile to think of how much we loved each other.’
I have to blink away the tears as I touch the illustration in the book. Is this still part of my elaborate fantasy, or is there a tomb for Edmund and Isabel in the church? Surely that would be proof that I am not making it all up.
And if there is, what then?
I flick through the rest of the
book, but I can’t see any other double tombs. It doesn’t mean it isn’t there, though. When Mary lets me walk to the village, I will go, and I will see for myself.
And Michael, I remind myself guiltily. Michael may be buried there. I must ask.
I should be thinking about Michael, not about Edmund, but the two keep getting muddled in my mind. I just have that one memory of Michael to treasure, but there is so much more of Edmund to remember. Isabel’s memories crowd into my head, as if jealous of the one tiny sliver of memory that ties me to the present, desperate to overwhelm it with clearer, more vivid images of a different life altogether.
I don’t like the feeling of being pushed. Now that I have remembered Michael, I shouldn’t need to invent a completely different life. For the rest of the day I concentrate fiercely on the present, and for a while it works. I am congratulating myself on my success at keeping Isabel at bay when I limp along to the landing and put my hand on the great carved finial at the top of the staircase, and a wave of horror washes over me. I snatch my arm back, my heart hammering in my throat.
I don’t need to remember Isabel’s life. I don’t want to remember it. But I do.
Edmund was still away. It felt a very long time since he had kissed me farewell and I had stood with Judith, watching as he clicked his tongue, touched his horse with his spurs and cantered out through the gate, followed by his servant Richard. The silence after they had gone had settled over the courtyard like a long sigh, and I was very glad of Judith beside me.
I missed Edmund. It was not an easy pregnancy, and I was queasy and sluggish and cold the whole time. Where once I would stride out at every opportunity and call for my horse, now I huddled by the fire, wrapped in Edmund’s furred gown. Judith fussed over me, bringing me decoctions she assured me she had prepared with her own hands, but nothing seemed to help. The days and nights blurred into a fog. I forgot what day it was and my only sense of time was knowing it was too long until I could see Edmund again.
I had always been robust and I did not like feeling so listless and miserable. If this was what it was like to bear a child, I wanted no more of it. ‘I am not sick,’ I had told Edmund, but now it seemed that I was.
I thanked God for Judith. It is true I had been a careless housekeeper, but still, I had my duties, though even those I abandoned when my head swam and when my stomach squirmed and rolled and would never settle, no matter how often I held toasted bread steeped in strong vinegar to my nose or lay with a warm wormwood plaster on my stomach. Judith coaxed me to drink wine and chervil water, but it only made me feel worse, and one day when she was out of the room the thought of its sourness made my stomach rebel. I tipped it into the chamber pot and hoped the maidservant who took it away would not tell Judith I had spurned her remedy.
That afternoon I felt steadier. I even crept along to the parlour by the long gallery, though Judith clucked and fussed. ‘You are not well,’ she told me. ‘You should stay abed.’
‘I have been abed,’ I said fretfully. ‘I cannot look at the bed hangings any more.’
Judith pursed her lips. ‘It is a good sign that you are minded to be stubborn again, I suppose. Very well, mistress,’ she said with mock subservience. ‘Do seat yourself and I will send you some more remedy, since it seems to be working so well.’
She poked up the fire and I sank into the chair, looking around me with pleasure. The parlour was warm and welcoming. The wood was polished to a glow, the silverware gleamed. The cushions were precisely arranged. The carpets had been beaten, I could tell, and the tapestries aired. The scent of lavender hung in the air. There were no clumps of hair from Edmund’s dogs gathering dust in the corners. There were no books discarded on the tables, no scattering of petals dropped from long-dead flowers as there usually were.
Quietly, unobtrusively, Judith had wrought a miracle, I realized. This was how the house should look, and I was ashamed of my own slatternly approach to housekeeping, comfortable though it made Edmund.
‘Thank you, Judith,’ I said, and she paused with her hand on the door to look over her shoulder. She did not pretend to misunderstand me.
‘It is always a pleasure to help you, Isabel,’ she said. ‘Now, rest.’
‘Will you not sit with me?’
‘I must talk to the cook,’ she said apologetically. ‘I find there is great wastage of bread in the kitchen here. Every day there are trenchers left over which are given to the poor.’
‘Oh, but so it has always been done at Askerby,’ I protested, and Judith shook her head.
‘Dear Isabel, the servants take advantage of your kindness. They do not get much past me, I do assure you. Do not worry about it. Now, are you warm enough?’ She smiled as I nodded, vaguely troubled. ‘I will send Bess up with the remedy forthwith.’
She bustled off, happy to be busy, I knew. I pulled the gown closer around me, finding comfort in the softness of the fur trimming. I should have been talking to the cook myself, although not to chide him for the extra bread he made. I had been neglecting my duties since I had been ill. In truth, I had neglected them since I came to Askerby as a bride. Edmund didn’t concern himself with the servants. He just wanted things to be comfortable, like any man. Dealing with the house and the servants was women’s work. My work. And it was time I did it, instead of leaving it to Judith to manage the house for me.
Chapter Seventeen
I rested my hand on my belly and I made a vow to my babe that I would be careless no more. I would be mistress in fact as well as in name. I would take pleasure in the making of cheese and the brewing of ale. I would learn to scrutinize the accounts, and order a feast fit for a nobleman. I would make sure the maidservants chased the last tumbling bundle of fluff out of the corners of the room and cleaned the windowpanes and I would ask Judith to teach me how to make remedies in the still room.
Fired with resolution, I sat up straighter in my chair, and when Bess came in bearing a goblet I even told myself that I would drink it.
‘How do you do, Bess?’ I asked. She was usually a sonsy, smiling lass, but she just mumbled an answer, stony faced, and set the goblet on the table beside me.
Now I came to think of it, it was not usually Bess’s duty to fetch and carry. ‘Where is Jennet?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Turned off, mistress.’
‘Turned off?’ I shook my head slightly. I could not be sure I had heard correctly. ‘But . . . why?’
‘Your orders, mistress.’
‘Mine? No! I would not turn Jennet off.’
She shrugged. ‘Mistress Judith said you said she was to go, so she went.’
When I demanded to know what she had done, Judith looked puzzled. ‘But did you not want her to go?’
‘Of course not! Why would I say such a thing?’
‘She is a cripple,’ Judith said, as if the answer was self-evident. ‘She cannot work sufficiently. I was not surprised when you told me to send her away.’
I stared at Judith. ‘ I told you to do that?’
‘Why, yes. Do you not remember?’
‘No.’ A dull fear was building inside me. How could I not remember thinking such a thing? ‘No, I don’t remember.’ I put a hand to my head, which was thudding suddenly. ‘When was it? What did I say?’
‘Why, I do not remember exactly,’ Judith said. She picked up a cushion and plumped it before placing it, very carefully, back in position on the settle. ‘But you were very clear, I assure you.’
‘But you must have known I did not mean it!’ Agitated, I got to my feet and paced around the chamber.
‘Indeed I didn’t.’ Judith tutted when she saw that I had not drunk her remedy. ‘Come, there is no need for all this fuss. It did you no honour to have such a creature in your house. There are many more servants where she came from.’
I felt as if I had never seen Judith before. ‘Jennet has no family, and you have turned her off without a recommendation.’
‘You have turned her off,’ she reminded me. ‘I acted onl
y on your orders, Isabel. Now, drink your remedy.’
I struck the goblet from her hand. It smashed on the carpet, spraying liquid everywhere. Judith’s mouth dropped open and a look raced over her face such as I had never seen before. I thought for one terrible moment that it was excitement but when she blinked and carefully composed her expression, I realized to my horror that it must have been fear. Judith, afraid of me? I saw myself as she must see me, wild eyed, no memory, and the parlour shrieked with the reminder of my poor, mad mother. I drew a shuddering breath. I must be calm and controlled. But then I thought of little Jennet, of what would happen to her, of what she must think of me. It was not to be borne.
‘Where has she gone?’
‘I have no idea. The poorhouse, perhaps.’ Her voice sharpened as I turned for the door. ‘Where are you going?’
‘To find her.’
‘Isabel, no! There is sickness in the village!’
‘I care not,’ I said. ‘I did not send Jennet away. If I did, it was in a delirium. I never meant that.’ I drew the robe around me. ‘I am going to find Jennet and bring her back. She has a place at Askerby as long as I am mistress here.’
Judith hurried after me. ‘There is no need for you to go. If you insist, we can send one of the other servants to fetch her. Oh, what will Edmund say when he learns I let you go?’
Careless of my dishevelled appearance, I strode down the long gallery towards the stairs, with Judith almost running to keep pace with me. ‘This is my duty,’ I said. ‘I will send no servant to go where I would not go myself.’
I was lashing myself for dropping the reins of the household, for falling so sick that I did not know what I was saying. In my haste, I didn’t look where I was going, and when I got to the top of the stairs, I picked up the trailing gown too late.
I think that was what happened, anyway. I think I tripped. And I think Judith was trying to catch me, to pull me back. That must be why, for a split instant, I felt a hand at my back. But she wasn’t pushing me. She was trying to save me.
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