Though nothing more would take place there during the winter, the workings still attracted curious visitors, chiefly children but many adults as well. This interest stretched even further than the parish boundaries, for Zeal once spied an unfamiliar horseman peering down from the Silchester track at the top of Hawk Ridge. Instead of continuing down into the Shir valley, however, he turned back and disappeared again.
I can’t think what they all hope to see, Zeal thought. Each morning, nevertheless, she walked across the muddy rock of the fair standing and peered impatiently over the protective wattle hurdles down into the raw holes of her future cellars.
She would not need as much knowledge of building as she had feared. When fine weather returned, a community of craftsmen would begin to play their own independent parts, as was the common practice, under the direction of Jonas Stubbs as master mason, and a master carpenter. Where she wanted a wall, the masons assured her they would raise one, turning corners as they saw fit. Where she wanted window openings and fireplaces, they would provide their own designs, chosen from pattern books, with her approval. She need only say, in the most general way, ‘A staircase, there!’ and somehow the master joiner and his men would accommodate one in the space created by the masons. Masons and joiners together would negotiate the exact nature and dimensions of a door. She need not concern herself with hinges and nails, they told her. By custom, many craftsmen even provided their own building stuffs, with the costs included in their wages.
‘But how do I know these things will please me?’ she asked.
‘Well, madam,’ said Jonas Stubbs, ‘I expect you’ll tell us if you want something different.’
In any case, she had to keep a grip on the costs. She had hoped to use Bowler as her clerk of works, to keep record of materials both needed and used, of wages and of costs. It was clear now that he would not be fit to add that burden to his own keeping of the estate books. The thought of hiring a stranger to sit at the heart of the project made her uneasy, even if she could have afforded his wages.
Each day, as she peered into the workings, she struggled with the problem.
I don’t see how I will manage it myself, not with the estate, not after the child is born.
And though grown more sociable than before the wedding, Wentworth was unlikely to tolerate such unrelenting contact with others. In the short term, she must find the time and strength to do it. By the spring, when work began in earnest, Bowler might again by some miracle be fit to help. She was not certain what Wentworth’s promised surveyor would do, but perhaps it might include being clerk of works. Or she would find some other solution.
If only John were here.
On these mornings, she also looked out over the valley as she and John had done.
We will need to carry the drive across the Shir, she thought. And she added a new bridge to the changes she must tell John about.
She held up her skirts and picked her way across the mud.
She must contain her impatience until the spring. Dried brown leaves now clung to the beeches in the avenue. Winter had suddenly arrived and turned life on the estate inward, into the shelter of roof and wall, wherever it might be found. A good housewife now bent herself to polishing, cleaning and cooking. To mending, knitting and needlework. To sorting and storing seeds so that mice and insects would not eat them before they could be planted. To inventories, lists and letter writing. To preparing for Christmas.
Christmas without John, she thought, as she knocked clods of mud off her pattens outside the lodge door.
As Zeal crossed the stable yard towards the tack room, one morning in late November, to look at a harness that Tuddenham said needed to be replaced, a raucous squawk came from the carriage barn, followed by the squeal of an inexpert attempt to butcher a piglet. She peeked through a window.
Bowler sat on a stool beside one of the carriage wheels with the violin braced under his chin. He had lashed his bow to the wheel. His useless left hand lay across his thigh, white and lumpy with bandages. As she watched, he swayed to the left, passing the violin under the fixed bow. The instrument squealed again. Zeal stepped back to keep him from seeing her.
‘I mean to play at Gifford’s funeral!’ Bowler called after her.
She leaned in through the door. ‘If you can play, I swear I will dance.’
But after two more days when, as far as she could tell, Bowler sat in his chamber doing nothing but stare into space and massage his bandage, he returned to the wrong-handed silent fingering.
Then he began to spend days in out-of-the-way rooms in the attics of High House, in the company of Jamie, with the ten-year-old serving as Bowler’s left hand until his own had healed. Jamie’s parents, both Hawkridge farm workers, seemed happy enough with his promotion to honorary house family. Then his father visited Zeal one evening at the lodge.
‘We’re very grateful for the honour, Doctor Bowler placing such confidence…’ Jake Grindley was civil but determined. ‘But we don’t want him to go on wasting so much time with music. The boy must learn how to make his way in the world. It’s not right to fill him with other ideas.’
‘Let me speak to him!’ said Bowler, when Zeal raised the matter as tactfully as she could. ‘Jamie has an ear like none other! And if his voice holds with the years, and we encourage him, and he can be taught by better tutors than I am, he could earn them a far more comfortable old age than ever pulling turnips could! I shall go at once and tell them as much.’
For a time after Bowler’s visit, Zeal heard no more from Jamie’s father. She assumed that all had gone well, given what later happened at Christmas. In any case, Jamie Grindley was driven entirely out of her mind by the arrival of Philip Wentworth’s promised surprise. The surveyor, who would help her to build the house, though she did not yet understand exactly how. The author of the Italianate drawing Philip had given her on their wedding night.
25
All her imagining had been wrong.
He’s too young, she thought. What can he know of leaping the chasm between the imagining and the raising of walls? Then she saw that he was older than he first seemed.
Lambert Parsley had a smooth angel’s face on a tall, broadshouldered man’s body. Though he was at least twenty-five or six, large, long-lashed blue eyes gave him the appealing air of a child. Red-blond curls lay so precisely on his high smooth forehead that they seemed carved from gold. His mouth, at which she could not help gazing, also had something of the child about it in spite of the glint of golden whiskers on his upper lip. He had a full, tender lower lip of a fresh colour. His ear lobes were a delicate pink. But what entranced her most was an alert readiness of both eyes and mouth, to be amused.
‘Oh, Philip,’ he cried. ‘You did not tell me that she was so lovely!’ Nor so young, added his eyes.
‘I feared you might expire from anticipation,’ said Wentworth dryly. He did not seem to mind the young man’s over-familiarity.
‘Forgive me, madam.’ Parsley shone on Zeal. ‘Your husband prepared me for such a painful task, warned me of so many difficulties – no money, difficult terrain, your impossible demand for perfection…’
Wentworth smiled and shook his head slightly when Zeal looked at him in protest.
‘…that I agreed to come out of pure charity. But if it is you I am to serve, the charity falls the other way. Madam, I live only to become the extension of your will.’
Zeal glanced again at Wentworth, this time in mild alarm. He was watching the pair of them without expression.
‘Look!’ cried Lambert Parsley, unabashed. He stood beside Zeal, shoulder to shoulder. ‘Same hair. Same eyes. Only a small difference in height. Could we not be Viola and Sebastian, brother and sister, twins, even?’
‘Both equally handsome.’ Philip now seemed amused.
‘Your husband invited me, but my fate depends on you. Will you have me, lady?’ Parsley’s eyes gleamed into hers.
She flushed. ‘If you will swear not to exhaust me with your c
ompliments and enthusiasm. We’re out of practice here with extravagant city manners.’
Lambert Parsley blinked and seemed for a moment to hang suspended.
I’ve offended him, she thought. When he is doing us a great favour.
‘I see why you love her, Philip.’ Parsley stepped a little away from her so that they stood in a triangle. ‘I should have known it would take more than a fine eye to haul you out into the light again after so many years in the celibate wilderness.’
‘A little more than a fine eye,’ Wentworth agreed.
Zeal glanced at him but he was gazing at nothing in particular. What do you think you are doing, husband, bringing this young man here among us? And who is he to be calling you ‘Philip’?
Then she saw that Parsley had retreated into watchfulness.
While she tried to think how to apologize for her sharpness, he said, ‘I have done such things before.’
‘Once,’ said Philip. ‘But that’s once more than either of us. And then there’s your experience of Italian practices. And your knack for drawing.’
‘And my enthusiasm.’ The amusement gleamed again.
I like him, Zeal decided. He makes me want to smile.
He was pleasing, like a beautiful horse or dog which you want to stroke. His only visible imperfections were curious raw patches on his skin, which encircled each of his wrists like a pair of bracelets. And now that she looked closely, a fading bruise lay like a faint shadow under the skin of his left cheek.
A marred angel. All the more interesting. If Wentworth could be an executioner, footpad or murderer, perhaps this young friend of his was a fugitive convict.
‘I took the liberty of bringing you a gift from Italy, mistress. I had to have it the instant I saw it in Florence. And now I can’t wait a moment longer to give it to you. Will you open it now?’
He called for his man to bring his saddlebag into the lodge parlour. ‘You must sit down!’
Zeal glanced again at Philip, who did not seem to mind if another man gave orders to his wife.
Parsley laid a sacking-wrapped bundle in her lap. ‘Take care, it’s heavier than it looks. I do so enjoy this moment,’ he said, as she began to pick at the leather thongs tied around the sacking. ‘The anticipation! Before infinite possibility dwindles into a pair of embroidered gloves.’
She lifted the gift free of its wrappings. An owl made of a rough pale stone, into which the precise arrowheads of its feathers had been carved.
‘Athena’s owl. Do you like it? For an instant, when we first met I feared that I’d made a dreadful mistake in bringing you such a fierce little creature. And wisdom always has overtones of darkness. Now, on better acquaintance, I think it’s perfect, don’t you?’
Zeal glanced up at his eager blue eyes then stared into the large round eyes of the owl, which seemed to look back right through her own into the depths of her thoughts.
‘Bought in Italy,’ said Parsley, ‘but made in Greece. Born in the font of all perfection. Can you forgive me for bringing you an emblem of wisdom and not of beauty? I believe that wisdom must precede beauty in a venture like ours.’
The owl sat roundly in her hand, eight inches high, as familiar as if she had seen it being carved. The weight of its immense age tugged her back through time. She looked up at Parsley and nodded, unable to speak, not sure of what she would say if she did.
‘A fine thing,’ said Philip.
Zeal shivered and shook her head to clear the feeling that her husband, for that instant, was the stranger, the outsider, while this newcomer was an old friend. He had known she would value wisdom and recognize its darkness, even while he was still in Italy selecting a piece of carved stone.
Perhaps Philip means to distract me from John, she thought. With someone closer to hand, whom he can keep an eye on. Then she had a thought so ignoble she could hardly admit it. What if Philip meant for Lambert Parsley to stir and excite her, so that she might be more open to his own advances?
She likes him. I was right to take the chance.
Philip Wentworth felt only satisfaction as he watched the two young creatures circle each other like puppies getting acquainted. He was not certain which of them he might be doing the greater service. Young Lamb, who was so very unlike his naval father, urgently needed a refuge, from himself as much as anything else. With luck, Hawkridge was far enough from London to keep him out of trouble.
Captain Parsley, that would-be admiral, now owes me a favour in truth, he thought.
As for Zeal, so improbably his wife, he enjoyed watching her whatever she did. Her shape and movements gave him pleasure. He was amused by the way her clothing always seemed to be rushing to keep up with her sudden surges of purpose. He delighted in her occasional steeliness, which he suspected might match even his own. The thought of a clash caused a quiver that was not entirely unpleasant.
Now, as always, he had to fight himself to keep from finding excuses to touch her. In this, he succeeded chiefly because he feared feeling her flinch. As she had made so clear, gratitude was not love, and he was not yet such a helpless pantaloon that he had lost all pride. As it was, he had nearly spoiled everything after the fighting on Bonfire and Treason Night.
Not helped by spilling the tale of my poor, wretched wife.
Now her face was bright with surmise and possibility, and he, Philip, had brought that about. Young Parsley would more than earn his keep. Might even distract her from grieving over Nightingale. Meanwhile the young man was being kept away from London. A happy conjunction of needs, all around.
He desired her again now. But that was his problem.
26
Christmas began well. Lambert Parsley entranced Zeal by his willingness to sit for hours, sketching and making notes while she described her vision for her house. He gave himself so totally to anticipating her wishes, to reading her moods and making himself generally agreeable that she was both flattered and uneasy. His instant, unstinting gift of spirit made her feel responsible in a way she could not explain.
He talked of nothing but the plans for the house, or the daily gossip of the estate. If he mentioned Italy, it was only to suggest a model for a portico, or bridge he had seen that would suit Hawkridge exactly. She sometimes found it hard to believe that he had left a different, mysterious self stored away somewhere else. But, of course, he had. When he was drawing, she often eyed the circles on the skin around his wrists, which slowly faded to the palest pink. When she knew him a little better, she meant to learn how he had come by them.
Perhaps he had been captured by Italian brigands and held for ransom.
Lamb, as he was soon dubbed, impressed everyone else with his fine manners, handsome looks and the enthusiasm with which he threw himself into any task in need of doing. He helped to deck both the Hawkridge bake house and Sir Richard’s hall at High House. He bred festive anticipation by enlisting the smith, Mistress Margaret, and Todd, the estate carpenter, into an excited conspiracy.
‘Go away!’ Lamb shouted to Zeal when she hovered outside the locked doors of Sir Richard’s upper gallery, drawn by hammering and the smell of hot glue.
‘Just you wait, madam!’ said Rachel, who was allowed to spy.
Doctor Bowler had recovered enough to conduct the morning service at High House. They ate a modest feast of roast goose, ducks, hams, ginger breads, chicken boiled with preserved gooseberries, a poached carp, quince cheese and pickled cucumbers, followed by nuts, raisins and a fine almond soup prepared by Mistress Margaret. The remains of this dinner were then served the next day as a general feast for the poor of the parish, along with other roasts, soups and breads made especially for the occasion.
‘The number of the needy grows each year.’ Sir Richard eyed the jostling mob in his great barn. ‘I may soon have to ape my betters and escape the expense by spending Christmas in London.’ He had his steward see off two men who were known to visit different estates in turn and stuff their pouches with any food they could not eat.
&n
bsp; ‘We pay levies to keep such people fed,’ said the old knight. ‘Don’t wish to do it twice over.’
Zeal tried to forget his reference to levies. Hawkridge still owed the last year’s taxes. We just need a season to put things straight after the fire, she told herself. She suspected that Sir Richard might be deflecting the Crown agent as an act of charity.
As always, Philip Wentworth was absent from the feasting. On this occasion, however, he had been struck down by an ague, which he said had plagued him since his youth. He would not be budged from his chamber in the Hawkridge lodge and refused all attempts to nurse him.
‘I’ve survived such attacks before. Let me be!’
Zeal had to content herself with appointing a groom to keep Philip’s fire alight and his jug full of warm spiced ale. Though she had known better than to expect him at table, Zeal was sorry that he missed what followed the Christmas feast.
When the long table had been cleared and pushed back against the wall, Doctor Bowler asked the company to arrange themselves on stools and chairs.
‘Jamie and I have something we would like you to hear.’
Doctor Bowler stood facing them with his borrowed violin in his right hand. Jamie stood on a low stool in front of Bowler with his back against the parson’s chest, holding Bowler’s bow.
Bowler tucked his violin under his chin, placed the fingers of his right hand on the strings of his looking-glass fiddle and nodded. They drew breath at the same instant and began. Jamie drew the bow across the strings.
The violin squawked like a startled hen.
Zeal put her hand to her mouth. This was unbearable. The little parson had been driven mad by his misfortunes. She saw Rachel and Arthur exchange glances.
Jamie looked over his shoulder at Bowler who raised his eyebrows in comic dismay. Jamie giggled and they began again. Up, then down went the bow. Again the instrument cried and protested. Jamie frowned and fixed his eyes on Bowler’s fingers. Again Bowler nodded. Again they drew breath. Suddenly, the sound came right. A rich confident note sang out of the violin, then another. Jamie frowned in concentration. Bowler closed his eyes.
The Memory Palace Page 17