This Towering Passion

by Valerie Sherwood

  She was leaning pensively against the leaded window, staring out at the swirling white flakes, when she heard a jingle of sleigh bells and saw a sleigh drawn by two prancing black horses turn off Magpie Lane and come to a sliding halt in front of Mistress Watts’s house. Gilbert, smartly clad in a fur-trimmed tan cloak, was driving. He looked up, saw her at the window, flashed her a smile, and waved a gloved hand. She watched him leap out, caramel curls tossing as he landed on hard-packed snow, and heard his tan boots clatter up the stairs.

  “I’ve hired a sleigh and come to take you for that tour of Oxford-in-the-snow I promised you!” he told her exuberantly as he pounded on the door.

  Lenore threw the door open and gave him a doubtful look. To be pleasant to Gilbert in mixed company was one thing, but to drive out with him alone before all Oxford—when his low, intimate voice, his encroaching manner, his hot looks made it so clear he wanted her—she doubted Geoffrey would care for that!

  Gilbert moved past her into the room with a masterful stride, cloak swinging, snow sticking to his boots. “We’re off to pick up Lally,” he said carelessly, as if he sensed her doubt. “I promised her a sleigh ride as well.”

  Lally! That made it all right. Geoffrey could not criticize her for sleigh-riding in Lally’s company. Hastily Lenore put on her velvet clogs, slipped into her deep green wool cloak, and threw over her head a red shawl Geoffrey had brought home from one of his prowlings.

  Mistress Watts came out of her lodgings as they ran downstairs and stood in her doorway. She was clutching her blue shawl around her, and her big white cat was purring and arching its back and rubbing furry sides against her faded taffety skirts. “ Tis too cold for such frolics!” she exclaimed with a shiver. “Even Puss here seeks the hearth in this weather!”

  Lenore laughed and blew her a kiss. “ ’Twill be my first sleigh ride this year!” she declared gaily. “If the horses can stand the weather, I can!”

  Mistress Watts shook her head and watched them go. The sleigh was a graceful one, painted red, with a curving front and long runners. Expertly Gilbert handed her in and joined her. He arranged a blanket so that it swathed them both from foot to waist, and she forgave him for tucking her in so tightly that her skirted thigh was pressed against his neat fawn breeches—for it was indeed bitter cold and their breath fogged up in the stinging air. Gilbert flourished his whip and they were off around the corner into the hard-packed snow of Magpie Lane. She did not see the narrow look of satisfaction Gilbert gave her, for this sleigh ride would mark the first time he had gotten her out publicly without Geoffrey. She was too happy with this glittering white world and the merry tinkle of the sleigh bells to notice. How she loved sleighing!

  Down the curving High Street with its towers and spires they sped, the cobbled gutter that ran down the center of the street looking sugar-frosted. They passed other sleighs with laughing occupants, and struggling carts and lone riders, bundled up, breath fogging the air above the horses’ manes. Hugging the shelter of the buildings, women tipped, past on tall pattens and men trudged purposefully along with snow crusted on the shoulders of their short cloaks and spilling over their wide-brimmed peaked hats. People were out, Christmas shoppers fighting the drifts to bring home fat geese and sugarplums and expensive oranges—for tomorrow was Christmas Eve.

  “But—this is not the way to Lally’s,” she protested, when Gilbert swung off the street and reined up beneath some snow-laden concealing branches that almost but not quite dropped another blanket of white over them.

  “Did you think it would be?” Those hard tawny eyes considered her from beneath sleepy lashes as he dropped the reins and turned toward her. “What need have we of Lally’s company?”

  Lenore recoiled. She had been so eager for a sleigh ride she had not even considered this treachery. Lally was not waiting for them—Gilbert had but lied to her to get her alone! Instantly she struggled to toss back the blanket so she could leap out of the sleigh, but Gilbert’s long arm pulled her back easily.

  “Now, as I see it, ye’ve two choices, Lenore,” he said in a cool voice, his tan leather glove tipping up her angry chin so that her wide violet eyes looked directly into his own. “Either ye ride with me to a convenient inn where we will get to know each other better. Or ye set up a great howl betwixt here and there and alert all of Oxford that ye rode out with me and we had a lover’s quarrel.”

  “Wrong,” she said steadily. “I’ve yet another choice.” For over Gilbert’s shoulder she had glimpsed Lally—magically Lally, her pale hair caught up beneath a tall beaver hat, her beaver muff crushed to her orange velvet bosom, trudging along in her pattens with her orange skirts held up. Head down, she was walking fast over the hard-packed snow. “Lally!” she shouted. “Lally!”

  Lally turned, bent down to peer beneath the overhanging snow-laden branches, and smiled in delight. “Why, what are you two doing here?” she exclaimed, and then the smile abruptly faded as she saw Gilbert’s arm encircling Lenore’s rigid shoulders, faced his sardonic smile.

  “Gilbert has hired a sleigh!” cried Lenore merrily, for though Lally was her friend she could not afford a chance word to Ned that might be repeated to Geoffrey. “We were just coming over to get you when a great cart near ran us off the street. We retreated here and have been rearranging our blanket. There, that’s better!” She gave Gilbert’s arm a push. “Won’t you come for a drive with us?”

  Lally hesitated. “I was on my way to buy sugarplums.”

  “We could drop you off,” suggested Gilbert.

  “All right,” said Lally. “For I’m meeting Ned at the Crown for supper—he’ll be back from Marston by then.”

  “Oh, no,” insisted Lenore, her voice growing desperate. “Forget the sugarplums. Come with us, do—we can all end up at the Crown and make a party of it!”

  Lally laughed. “Why not? You’ve convinced me I don’t need sugarplums.” She turned a bland face to Gilbert. “I’d enjoy a sleigh ride, Gil.” She waited for Gilbert to get out, gave him a gloved hand, picked up her orange skirts, and climbed in beside Lenore. “Where’s Geoffrey, Lenore?” She turned to give Lenore a penetrating look as Gilbert rearranged the blanket.

  “Still away,” admitted Lenore, her cheeks uncomfortably hot under Lally’s bright scrutiny.

  “Not back yet?” Lally was indignant. “But tomorrow is Christmas Eve! He leaves you too much alone, Lenore.”

  Her voice held an undertone of warning, and Lenore sighed. “ ’Twas because I was so lonely I leaped into the sleigh—when Gilbert told me we were to pick you up at your lodgings.”

  Lally’s worldly smile was as sardonic as Gilbert’s. “At my lodgings . . . Well, Gilbert’s a forgetful lad, he should have sent word by messenger, and I’d have been there.”

  “I clean forgot,” murmured Gilbert, and Lally laughed.

  “Did you now?” she scoffed.

  So Lally understood the situation perfectly!

  But that was no reason why she should be deprived of the pleasure of her sleigh ride! She’d been cooped up long enough! Lenore’s cheeks were still bright with anger, but she was determined to enjoy this treat now that Lally was here to make it respectable.

  Sandwiched between Lally and Gilbert, her shawl draped over her bright hair and her legs pressed against Lally’s orange velvet skirts on one side and Gilbert’s fashionable fawn-breeched legs on the other, Lenore snuggled down beneath the blanket wrappings with a sigh of comfort and took in great draughts of the frosty air.

  For all he’d been outwitted, Gilbert took his defeat in good part. Snapping his whip high over the horses’ heads, he took them for a merry ride over the snowy streets of the old walled city. Through big swirling flakes that drifted down lazily to melt on their eyelashes and sting their cheeks to red, they rode on long silent runners—past Christ Church, which had been founded by Cardinal Wolsey.

  “The meadow path on the north side is called Dead Man’s Walk,” Lally told her, and when Lenore wondered why, Gilber
t said it was because Jewish funeral processions used to pass this way to reach their synagogue which had once stood almost where Tom Tower stood today. Those Jews could afford memorable processions, he grinned; they’d charged interest of forty percent!

  Lenore studied Gilbert covertly as their sleigh bells tinkled past Tom Quad, the grandest quadrangle in Oxford, its snowy cathedral spire on the east perhaps England’s oldest. She missed what he was saying about it. It puzzled her that a little while ago this caramel dandy had been going to take her, willy-nilly—and now, completely without malice, so far as she could see, he was doing his best to entertain her, like any cavalier with a lady.

  Could that be Lally’s influence, she wondered, or had Gilbert just given up?

  Beside her, Lally, her gloved hands kept warm by her beaver muff, dodged a snowball tossed by a laughing tot who jumped up and down, shrieking with glee. Straightening up, she pointed out the Magdalen Tower, which had been a watchpost during England’s Civil War that had brought Oliver Cromwell to power. Staring upward, Lenore reached up to brush the snow from her red shawl with near-numbed fingers. Lally frowned and told Lenore her hands must be freezing, Geoffrey should buy her a muff.

  Gilbert, wheeling the black horses expertly about to avoid some snowballing children who were fighting a mock war from their mounded snow forts, said carelessly, “I’m giving Lenore a fur muff for Christmas.”

  Lenore flashed him a startled look, for fur muffs were valuable. She hoped Geoffrey would not make trouble about it, for Gilbert would assuredly be angry if she rejected his gift.

  “You should not do it,” she said simply. “For I’ve naught to give you. These are lean days for us.”

  “It gives me pleasure just to see you.” Gilbert smiled down at her from heavy-lidded eyes. “And a muff you shall have.”

  Lenore gave him a long, slow smile of winsome beauty. Perhaps this was Gilbert’s way of making amends, his way of saying; At last I accept the fact that you belong to Geoffrey and there is nothing I can do about it. Perhaps this attempt to get her to an inn had been in the nature of a last try for what he had once called in a hoarse whisper her “sumptuous body.” People changed—even Gilbert. They might end up being friends after all.

  She was in a warm mood when they reached the Crown Inn at Cornmarket, finding it crowded, for none of the roads to the north were passable at this time of year and many students had waited too late to journey home and must spend their Christmas season in Oxford. Friends across the room waved tankards at sight of them, and a table was hastily set for them in a corner. Lenore was glad of the great fire blazing on the hearth, for the cold air had chilled her, and she stamped her clogs on the stone floor to restore her circulation.

  Lally cast a quick glance around the crowded room.

  “Ned isn’t here,” she said in disappointment, sliding onto the bench beside Lenore.

  “ ’Tis the heavy snow. He’ll make it,” Gilbert assured her, and raised a gloved hand to wave at some newcomers. “Ho there, Michael! Lewis! Join us.”

  Glad of the extra company, which made it doubly obvious to all that she’d not been out sleighing with Gilbert alone, Lenore squeezed back to make room. Michael, with his cherubic face, his brilliant red garments crusted with snow, and awkward Lewis, stumbling over a protruding boot, threaded their way through the crush and pulled up chairs at their table.

  Lenore was hungry and ate heartily, but Lally seemed subdued and only picked at the good dressed crab and hare soup and wild fowl which Gilbert ordered. Midway through the meal Ned came through the door, clad in a great Manderville coat and gauntlet gloves. He brought a great gust of snow with him, and Lally’s face lit up as she moved her orange skirts to make room for him beside her on the long bench. He’d barely made it from Marston, Ned told them blithely, for it was snowing hard all the way—in truth, he might have stayed the night in Marston but the house was so jammed with visiting relatives, there for the Twelve Days of Christmas, that they’d no room even to sleep him in the attic!

  Lally’s bright smile faltered a little at that and she was silent for a while, picking aimlessly at the food on her trencher. Lenore promptly inquired as to the depth of the snow, and Ned said he’d seen nothing but the tops of men’s hats—their bodies were buried in drifts! At this jovial exaggeration, the party became very merry. Soon Lally too began to laugh almost hysterically at the jokes that flew about. Lenore studied her from beneath shadowed lashes. She had noted a tenderness in Lally’s gaze when she looked at Ned which belied her cheerful, offhand “We don’t love each other.” Lenore guessed that Lally was caught up in something too big for her and was ruefully determined to play the game out, wherever it led. She had to admire Lally’s aplomb, counterfeit though it might be, as she lifted her glass in a toast to Ned’s Marston lady which Gilbert callously proposed.

  Even Michael looked a bit startled at that, and he and Lenore promptly engaged Lally in conversation, covering Gilbert’s blunder. Lenore liked Michael. His brown eyes sparkled and his new red coat already bore the stains of wine, for Michael was careless in his ways. His cheeks were pink as a girl’s in the cold weather, his cherubic countenance adoring as he watched Lenore. Bumbling Lewis watched her avidly, too, and Lenore basked in their devotion, for it was hard to face Christmas without Geoffrey, and her sagging spirits needed a lift.

  As if realizing that he had offended Lenore by this mention of Ned’s betrothed before Lally, Gilbert, whose rum-soaked mood was expansive, now showed off his knowledge of local lore. His distinctive enamelled buttons glittered on his fawn satin coat and cuffs as he beat his tankard on the table for emphasis and told them in a loud strident voice that Will Shakespeare, the playwright, whose plays, though forbidden, were sometimes seen around Oxford and would be again—he winked broadly—had stayed here at the Crown on his way to the Globe Theatre. Hence, yearly on Shakespeare’s birthday, he informed them with a hiccup, they drank malmsey here.

  “Naturally,” Michael piped up in his strong high voice, with a delighted smile at Lenore. “Since Will Shakespeare was godfather to the landlord’s son!”

  Somewhat discomfited at young Michael’s superior knowledge, Gilbert turned to Lenore. “And where is Geoffrey gone to this time?” he asked with asperity. His voice carried piercingly across the room.

  Lenore tried not to look concerned at this blunt question, though she feared for Geoffrey, perhaps at this very moment being pursued down icy roads, blundering through great drifts. “I do not try to hold Geoffrey too close,” she answered with an indifferent shrug.

  “Wise of you,” commented Lally dryly. “Though I don’t think Geoffrey would mind if you did!”

  Gilbert’s laugh rang out discordantly. “Geoffrey always had the devil’s own luck with women—and now he’s found an Angel!”

  They all laughed at that, but Lenore looked about her uneasily, for not all in this room tonight were Royalists, and she feared Gilbert, the worse for drink, might drunkenly propose a toast to the Angel of Worcester. But Ned, perhaps sensing the same thing, quickly ordered another round in a loud voice, banging his tankard on the table, and the subject of Geoffrey and his Angel was quickly forgotten. But it had served to remind Lenore of Geoffrey’s warning, that Gilbert was mercurial and could be dangerous.

  Even though Michael and Lewis tried to rally her with droll stories and quips, her joy in the evening was quenched. She felt she had endangered Geoffrey by being here. Later, when Ned, Lally, and Gilbert dropped her off at her lodgings, Gilbert offered to “see her up.” She shook her head, and Lally reinforced that by saying reprovingly, “Nay, ’tis nearly curfew—Tom bell will be tolling! We’ll be caught out by the watch!”

  Lenore threw them all a bright smile and ran to Mistress Watts’s front door through snow that was up to the tops of her tall clogs even though it had been shoveled clear when she’d left earlier. From the open doorway she blew them a kiss, quickly closed it, and ran past her landlady. For, nightcapped and curious at the jinglin
g bells and laughter, Mistress Watts had come out into the hall. Lenore ran past her up the stairs before she could be taxed with idle questions as to Geoffrey’s whereabouts.

  As she closed the door of her lodgings behind her, she heard all the way from Christ Church the Great Tom bell —loudest in Oxford—reverberate, sounding curfew. Its hundred and one peals, carried on the swirling snow, had a mellow sound ... it was five minutes past nine o’clock then, for that was when Great Tom always tolled. Lenore stood at the window, watching the sled’s departure through frosted panes, hoping they’d safely avoid the watch. When it had disappeared around the corner into Magpie Lane, she sighed and went over and stirred the red coals on the hearth with a poker until yellow flames leaped up. Gwynneth must have been keeping the fire going all day, for the room was not cold.

  She studied the yellow flames wistfully. Christmas would be lonely without Geoffrey. She could only hope that he would return in time—and if he did not, that it was snow and not the Ironsides that deterred him.

  Lenore was still working at rebuilding the fire when a scratching at the door announced Mistress Watts’s cat, who regularly called on the lodgers for tidbits. Poor thing, she thought, Mistress Watts must have latched her door, forgetfully leaving the cat outside in the freezing cold corridor! When she opened the door, the cat, a big white tom, rushed inside and rubbed against her legs, purring vigorously. Lenore laughed and rubbed his furry neck with gentle fingers.

  “There should be a bite for you somewhere. Puss,” she said, tossing him a scrap of ham from the cupboard and going back to building the fire.

  The cat gobbled the ham and looked up brightly with big lamplike golden eyes, hoping for more.

  “Puss? Where are you, Puss?” Mistress Watts, calling in a low scolding voice from downstairs.

  Lenore opened the door. “He’s up here. Mistress Watts.”

  “Ah, you’re a wicked Puss!” Energetically, Mistress Watts flopped up the stairs in a pair of slippers and picked up the cat, holding his big furry body against the faded rose taffety of her ample bosom. “If Puss bothers you, Mistress Daunt, just you boot him out! Lord, it’s cold in this hall!”