In the afternoon, I walked across the fields to the remains of the Roman villa and sat amongst its tumbled stones listening to the river run and the hum of the bees. It should have been soothing but it was not; I still fell stirred up and restless. I closed my eyes and concentrated on the sun on my face. I felt drowsy yet still oddly awake. When I opened my eyes, the sky above me was a clear crystalline blue and there was something that looked like a big grey and black barrel with wings flying high above my head, the sun glinting off it. I blinked and saw another and another, and heard a droning sound like none I had ever heard before. Panic leaped in my throat. The sound grew louder until it filled my ears and it felt as though my entire body was vibrating. Then, as quickly as it had happened, it faded, and I was left in a silence so loud it felt as though my head rang with it.
Machines that flew… I had never seen or heard of such a thing. There were legends, of course, of men who dreamed of flying like birds, but that was all they were—myths and stories. Those great, ugly machines I had seen were beyond my understanding.
I felt entirely miserable. I had not wanted the strange events of Wolf Hall to recur here at Middlecote. I had wanted to start a new life, to be ordinary, to belong somewhere. At last it had felt as though such a dream was within my grasp. Perhaps that was why I had cut myself off from Darrell, because I wanted something more earthly and commonplace: a home, a husband, a family. Marriage to Will—for my mind had already leaped ahead from one kiss to the altar—promised that. Not only was it a normality that I craved, it also meant that I would be safe; no accusations of witchcraft or heresy, like my mother. No danger of difference, or threat of death. I clung to the dream tenaciously. I would not beg Darrell to come back. I would forget Alison. I would never see any visions again.
I got to my feet and dusted down my gown, wandering back across the field towards the house. Immediately, I realised that something was different, wrong, and my steps faltered as I stopped and stared. The house… The house was much bigger than it had been before, and around it were scattered any number of ugly grey buildings, foursquare and squat. Men ran between them, men dressed in green and brown, like a monstrous regiment of ants, bustling, forever busy, an army of them.
‘Cat!’
Darrell’s voice burst into my mind like an explosion. A second later there was shouting, and a welter of light and sound all about me. The earth was blowing up about my feet and it sent me tumbling back down into the grass. I was blinded; clouds of white about me, and in my nose the acrid tang of smoke. I felt a sharp pain in my arm and saw blood.
Everything was dark and confused. I felt as though I was falling, tumbling down the centuries as if down a bottomless well, no longer sure of where I was or even who I was. I put out a hand to steady myself but it met nothing but air. I was a creature of no substance, a spirit flying through the night.
‘Mary! Mary!’
It was Eleanor’s voice. I opened my eyes and saw her face hanging over me like an anxious half moon. She recoiled at the sight of the blood. ‘Oh! What have you done? What happened?’
I sat up. The world was steady. There was nothing in my view; nothing but the empty fields and the little manor house basking in the sun, and the call of the birds.
‘I fell,’ I said. The blood was on my gown. Lady Fenner would be furious. It was monstrous difficult to get blood out of any material.
‘Come inside,’ Eleanor urged, clumsily trying to help me to my feet. ‘Come within before you take a fever.’
I let her take my arm and guide me up, and followed her inside obediently enough. She took me to my chamber where I allowed her to wash and bandage my arm, and listened to her exclamations over the strange white powder she said was scattered in my hair. I told her a dust cloud had blown up out of nowhere. There was an acrid taste in my mouth and I could still smell the sharp scent of the explosion in my nostrils. It had been so fierce it had closed my throat and set me coughing. Eleanor, of course, saw the cough as a sign I was developing an ague so whilst she brewed a mixture of herbs for me and one of the maids fussed over my gown, trying to remove the blood from the silk with water and salt, I sat peaceably in front of the fire and tried to think about nothing at all.
I did not call on Darrell. I did not thank him.
Will had still not returned by nightfall but late, when it was dark, I was woken from a restless sleep by the sound of hooves on the cobbles outside and the scatter of gravel against the panes of my window.
‘Mary!’ Will’s whisper.
My heart leaped. I padded across to the window and threw the casement wide.
‘Will?’
‘Hush! Come down to the stables.’
I went the way that we had escaped the previous night, down the backstairs and through the chapel, out by the door into the garden. The stables were warm and smelled of hay and horse; in the corner, a bay mare stood tied to a post, looking cross and tired, a pair of bulging saddlebags beside her.
‘She’s a temper on her,’ Will said, ‘just like all the other women I know.’ He smiled at me, that dazzling smile of his. ‘Except you, Mary. You are the only one who is different.’
I felt a thrill of pleasure at his words, mixed with a gaucheness I could not hide. ‘She is the one you bought in Newbury then?’ I asked, to cover my embarrassment.
‘She is.’ His eyes gleamed with a secret amusement, his gaze travelling over my body, making me feel hot. ‘Thank you for coming to rescue me,’ he said gently. ‘That damn fool of a hall boy locked the door.’
I could not see why he, as master of the house, would not rouse the whole of Middlecote if he chose, but I said nothing. Instead, I watched as he moved over to the saddlebags and went down on one knee beside them, unfastening the buckle. Gold gleamed and there was the chink of coin. I stared.
‘My winnings,’ Will said. He looked up, the gold slipping through his fingers. ‘It’s been a good night.’
But my eyes were on the tear in the sleeve of his jacket and the ugly gash beneath. ‘You’re injured!’ I said sharply. ‘How—’
‘A scratch.’ He dismissed it with a flick of his hand. ‘I came across a footpad and had no wish to hand over my prize.’
‘What happened?’
‘A fight,’ Will said. ‘I half killed him.’
The satisfaction in his tone took me aback. Footpads were thieves, outlaws, and deserved neither sympathy nor protection, but the pleasure in Will’s voice chilled and bewildered me.
He swayed to his feet and I moved instinctively to catch him, thinking he might fall. Instead, he caught me up in his arms and kissed me. He smelled of wine and woodsmoke, and a sweet scent I did not recognise that caught in my throat. I knew he was half drunk and I did not like it. I tried to persuade myself that I did, but what had seemed amusing and exciting the previous night now felt wrong, careless and cheap. Still I fought the emotion, telling myself that this was Will and I loved him, but it was no good. The kiss repelled me and I struggled to be free. He released me at once. His eyes narrowed; there was a flash of anger in them.
‘Tired of my kisses already, my sweet?’
I was trembling, confused. He must have seen it in my eyes for his own expression softened and he smiled again, that wicked, devil-may-care smile that made me sigh with relief, for this was the Will I knew, back again.
‘Ah, I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘Forgive me, Mary. I am in no fit state to kiss the hem of your gown, let alone your lips.’ He staggered and I moved to support him again, sliding his arm about my shoulder.
‘I am weak from loss of blood,’ he said. ‘Damnation.’
‘Let me get you to your bed,’ I said.
He flashed me another grin, though this one was frayed at the edges. ‘Stow the money for me first, sweetness. Under the hay—’ he nodded to a corner of the stable ‘—where it will be safe.’
It seemed madness to me; if he had won the money fair and square then he had no need to conceal it. However, I did what he said beneath th
e incurious stare of the mare who seemed only to wish we would leave her alone.
Somehow we made it out of the stable and across the courtyard to the little door by the chapel that I had left open.
‘Let me call a servant to help you,’ I suggested, but Will only shook his head.
His weight lay heavily against me. He was a tall man as well as broad and I was only small. It seemed to me that we made enough noise to wake the dead as Will dragged himself up the backstairs, but no one stirred. Perhaps they knew better than to enquire when Wild Will Fenner was abroad at night.
I left him at the door of his chamber and went back to my own. My window was still wide. In my eagerness to help him I had left it open and the night air flowed in. Shivering, I lay down on my bed. It felt as though the new-minted happiness of my love for Will was already confused and tarnished somehow by the events of the night and yet I clung stubbornly to it. I was the one he had called for help when he needed it. I was the person to whom he had turned. I held his secrets.
When we broke our fast the next morning, Will seemed as fresh as a daisy. White linen and velvet covered the injury to his arm. He gave me a wink and a special smile and I glowed with the pleasure of being the only one in his confidence. A half way through the meal there was a knock at the door and a servant, flustered, said that the constable had called to enquire about a highway robbery the previous night. The man was shown in; a valuable horse had been stolen and its owner robbed and left for dead, he said. Had we seen a bay mare?
Will swore blind that he had returned from Newbury in time for dinner and had not stirred again all evening. He looked at me as he said it, holding my gaze with his. There was no pleading in his eyes but a secret amusement that took for granted my connivance.
I said nothing at all.
*
The weeks of summer seemed enchanted. Whether it was wilful blindness I was suffering from or painful naïveté, I am not sure. Perhaps it was a little of both. I was determined to love Will, so bewitched was I by the sensation of loving and being loved. I ignored his long absences, excused his erratic moods, and joined the conspiracy of silence. If there were strange coming and goings in the night, voices, raucous noise, laughter, we kept our doors firmly closed and our lights doused. Once, I even heard a woman’s voice, soft, pleading, with a note in it I did not recognise, and Will’s reply:
‘We have all night…’
Then the door shut. I shut the thought of his debauchery out too, such was my infatuation with him.
During the day, all was sunlight and pleasure, riding, walking in the gardens or by the lazy stream, even music and dancing on some evenings when Will exerted himself to play the charming host and his mother was able to find sufficient of our neighbours to invite whom he had not cuckolded or cheated. I knew none of that, of course, or if I did I pretended I did not. I felt worldly; a man was not a gentleman if he did not drink and gamble and take a mistress, I told myself. Besides, when Will stole moments alone with me, I did feel as though I was the only woman he had ever cared for. His kisses were ardent and exciting but he took care not to frighten me as he had done that night in the stables. Degree by slow degree he was seducing me, with sweetness and gallantry, until I ached for him with an abandon I scarcely understood.
Eleanor noticed a change in me. She said I was dreamy. Lady Fenner said nothing at all but she watched me with her sharp, dark gaze. I started to read poetry. I even wrote some bad verse of my own though I would share it with no one. Will brought me small gifts—a bolt of cloth, a ribbon and some lace. I floated on air through those hot summer days. And I had no more visions.
An odd thing happened one afternoon. Eleanor and I were sitting in the gardens, she with her sketching, I with my verse. It was a still day, ripe and heavy as though there was to be a thunderstorm and, sure enough, out of a blue sky came a ruffle of wind, snatching my book from my hand and sending Eleanor’s drawing bowling away over the grass. She gave a cry of distress and ran after it but it was Will who reached over and plucked it from where it was wrapped around his boots. He had come out onto the terrace to find us and now he started down the steps and onto the lawn.
All might have been well had he handed Eleanor the drawing back without looking at it but he glanced down at it once, casually, and his expression changed from indulgence to fury in one frightening second.
‘What the devil—’ He held it out to her. ‘When did you see him? Did he come here?’
Eleanor seemed to have shrunk into herself. ‘I haven’t…’ she stammered. ‘He didn’t… It’s only imagination, memory.’
With one violent movement, Will tore the parchment across and across again, leaving the pieces to scatter over the grass as he stalked away. The first fat drop of rain fell. Eleanor gave a sob, one hand pressed over her mouth as though trying to hold back the sound. I grabbed at the pieces before they could be blown away in the rising wind.
‘Don’t tell Mama,’ Eleanor said, clutching them to her. ‘Please don’t tell her.’ She looked agonised.
‘Of course not,’ I said. I squinted at the scraps of paper in her hand. It had been a portrait, a man; young, tall, good-looking. In fact, he looked like Will although he was fairer and not as handsome.
‘Who is it?’ I could not help my curiosity. I thought it unlikely I would not know if Eleanor had a suitor.
She looked evasive. ‘It’s Thomas.’
‘Thomas?’
‘Our brother.’
That confused me. I had no notion that Will and Eleanor had a brother. No one had ever mentioned him and I was certain that he did not feature on the vast and elaborate family pedigree that hung in the Great Hall.
‘I mean half-brother,’ Eleanor amended. ‘Thomas’s mother was Mary Fortescue, Papa’s mistress.’
I gaped. I had heard nothing of this. Lady Fenner had been a widow for a long time and no one spoke of what had happened before. ‘But… How old is he?’ I asked.
‘Younger than Will and older than I am,’ Eleanor said. ‘Mistress Fortescue was Papa’s mistress for over twenty years. I think perhaps he always did prefer her to Mama. Thomas is nice,’ Eleanor added. ‘He’s the opposite of Will.’
That distracted me for a moment. ‘Will is nice too,’ I argued hotly. ‘Will is lovely!’
She gave me a very hard look from her red-rimmed eyes, a shrewder look than I would have imagined Eleanor capable of. ‘Will is unkind, Mary,’ she said. ‘There is a darkness to him.’
I didn’t want to quarrel with her. Instead, I gestured towards the picture. ‘But how did you meet Thomas? When did you meet him? Surely he did not grow up with you and with Will and he hasn’t been to Middlecote in all the time that I’ve been here.’
‘It was before you came,’ Eleanor said. ‘Thomas used to live here. Papa left Middlecote to Mistress Fortescue when he died. It was Will who drove her out, pursuing her through the courts to reclaim his inheritance. I heard Mama telling him that he had killed her with his lawsuits and Will agreeing, and saying how fortunate that was.’
I sat down abruptly. The rain was starting to fall in earnest now but I did not notice. That was the sort of thing that Will would say, I thought, but surely only in jest. And it was right for a man to want to reclaim his inheritance. Will was Sir Edward’s legitimate son. Middlecote and all the other Fenner estates were his by right.
‘I met Thomas once when I was about nine years old,’ Nell said wistfully. ‘We were visiting a friend of Mama’s and I was playing in the garden with some other children. Thomas was older, fifteen perhaps. He was very kind to me. We talked for a long time. I think Mama was not aware that he was there because when she found out she came bustling out to take me away and we never went back.’
I could see Lady Fenner now, sweeping towards us across the lawns, skirts flapping like a great black crow. Will must have told her what had happened. I could not help but reflect that it was no great wonder Sir Edward had shunned her bed for that of another woman. There was no
warmth in her at all. And perhaps it was good and right that he had tried to make provision for his mistress and her child. I had heard he had been an honest and respected man.
‘You are to come indoors, both of you!’ Lady Fenner was looking around suspiciously, almost as though she expected to see Thomas lurking behind a bush. ‘What are you thinking, to be sitting out here in the rain?’
‘Yes, Mama,’ Nell said submissively. The rain was mingling with the tears on her cheeks and she looked wan and bedraggled. I thought it odd Lady Fenner had come to fetch us herself rather than sending a servant for she hated the rain. She was like a cat in that respect. Then I saw her craning her neck to try to get a glimpse of the picture in Nell’s hands. She did not ask for it; she made no reference to it at all but there was a spark of something in her eyes. I thought then:
She is afraid. She is afraid of Thomas Fenner.
I waited all day for someone—Lady Fenner, or Will or even Nell herself—to speak more of Thomas, but they did not. Will took himself off to his study with a bottle. Nell went and hid in her chamber and Lady Fenner took out her vicious bad temper on the housekeeper. It was as though a blanket of silence had fallen over Middlecote Hall, a silence tinged with fear. It was most odd. Will was too aggressive a man to scare easily yet there was something here that frightened him, something to do with his half-brother.
I overheard Will and Lady Fenner talking in Will’s study that night. I confess I eavesdropped; I was hoping to hear more of the mysterious Thomas. However, it was of something quite different they spoke.
‘She should have been married off long before now.’ Will sounded as irritable as a man could when troubled by business he thought beneath him. ‘She mopes around here like a pale ghost. It annoys me beyond measure.’
The Phantom Tree Page 17