Lady of Lincoln

by Ann Barker

  As Emily prepared to slip out of the house after her father had retired to his study, it suddenly occurred that she was bent upon an assignation. I am meeting a man in secret, she thought, and all at once felt like some kind of femme fatale. Then she caught sight of herself in her prim bonnet and gown and instantly revised her opinion. No one seeing her would ever make such a judgement.

  Normally, if she was simply visiting the cathedral for her own personal reasons, she would enter by the small entrance known as the Richard door. On this occasion, however, because the building was unfamiliar to Sir Gareth, and because he would be approaching it from the other end, she decided to enter by the west door.

  Once inside, she found as always that her eyes were drawn upwards by the soaring pillars, and from there to the windows, which, on this bright sunny day, filtered the light through on to the stone, painting it with blue and red.

  ‘Glorious,’ said a deep voice behind her, making her jump, and she turned, a startled expression on her face. ‘I beg your pardon; I didn’t mean to alarm you,’ said Sir Gareth, smiling.

  Her heart gave a little lurch at the sight of him, but this she sternly repressed. However attractive she might find him – and she had to admit that she did – he was destined for someone more like Miss Cummings. His sister had made that clear. She, Emily, could not possibly be the heroine of any romance in which this man featured as the hero.

  ‘Not alarmed; surprised, merely,’ she replied, her calm tone at variance with her inner turmoil.

  He inclined his head. ‘I am looking forward to hearing about the cathedral from one who knows and loves it,’ he said.

  Her expression softened. ‘I will be happy to tell you all that I can,’ she replied. ‘In my turn, however, I am hoping to hear about my brother from one who was his friend.’

  ‘And I, too, will be happy to tell you all that I can,’ answered Sir Gareth. ‘Let us stroll about the cathedral and as we go, you can tell me about the things that we see and I can tell you about the things that I remember.’

  ‘All right,’ Emily replied. ‘Shall we walk up the south side first?’

  ‘By all means,’ he answered. ‘I have a very strong desire to stand in one of the places where the sunlight falls through the windows.’

  ‘I have always liked doing that,’ Emily admitted, as they moved towards the pillar on the south side that was presently bathed in coloured light. ‘When I was small, I used to think that it was magic, but when I told Papa, he was angry with me, for even mentioning such a word as magic in connection with a place like this.’

  ‘That rather depends what you mean by magic,’ the baronet remarked, as he stood in the light, looking up and wrinkling his brow as he observed the path of the sun through the window. ‘If you’re thinking of witches and warlocks and such, then I would say he was right. If, on the other hand, you are thinking of something special and beautiful and just a little mysterious, then I would have thought that this was the very place to find it.’

  ‘I’m sure that that must have been what I meant at the time,’ Emily exclaimed, looking up at him. ‘How clever of you!’

  He looked down and saw the glow on her face that resulted partly from the effect of the sunlight, and partly from the joy of being understood. Her hazel eyes sparkled, and the neat brown hair that peeped from beneath her unfashionable bonnet seemed touched with flashes of gold. All of a sudden, he found himself wondering why the deuce the canon’s pretty daughter was still unmarried.

  For her part, Emily found her eyes locked with his; her gaze dropped to his mouth and the shocking nature of her thoughts caused her to gasp, turn away and say, ‘This way, sir! I really must … must show you the … the bishop’s eye!’

  She hurried off, leaving the baronet to follow after her. In fact, she got so far ahead of him that she had turned into the south transept long before he had reached it, and stood there breathing rather fast for a moment or two, her hand on her heart.

  What on earth had she been thinking of? Bad enough that her thoughts should have been so wicked; for as she had looked up at the baronet’s well-shaped, generous mouth, she had wondered for a moment or two what it might be like to have his lips pressed to hers. How much more magical that place would have been had he done such a thing! She had swiftly repressed that shocking thought. But what had she done after that but treat Mrs Trimmer’s brother to a piece of childish rudeness by running off in another direction? Now, thanks to her inability to keep her unruly imagination in order, he was probably lost in the cathedral.

  She hurried back around the corner at exactly the same moment as Sir Gareth had reached it, and she bumped into him, causing him to catch hold of her by her elbows, as he laughed down at her. ‘My my, you do seem to be in a hurry today,’ he exclaimed, as he released her. ‘I do hope I’m not detaining you from anything.’

  ‘No, no, not at all,’ Emily replied, flustered because she had almost ended up in his arms.

  ‘So what is this bishop’s eye that you were going to show me?’ he asked her, looking round. ‘I take it that it is an architectural feature of the cathedral, and not one of the two that are to be found in the bishop’s head?’

  She laughed at that. ‘The bishop’s eye is the round window immediately above us,’ she told him. ‘Although, to be truthful, the dean’s eye is seen better from here.’ She pointed to the round window set high up at the end of the opposite transept.

  ‘That is very fine,’ he remarked. ‘Which do you prefer?’

  Her face took on a thoughtful look which, he decided, was strangely becoming. ‘I know that I am in a minority, but I prefer the bishop’s eye,’ she told him. ‘It is true that the window does not have any pictures, but the tracery is so very beautiful.’

  They both considered the windows in silence for a time, then the baronet said, ‘Your brother was never afraid of holding a position adhered to by the minority.’

  ‘Oh yes, you were going to tell me about him,’ Emily said eagerly.

  ‘Yes, I was, wasn’t I?’ he agreed. ‘Shall we go and sit down somewhere?’

  She led him into a side chapel known as the works chantry, that opened out from the south transept, and sat down beneath a brass plaque on one of the stone seats by the wall.

  ‘Patrick and I were the same age,’ the baronet said, when they were both settled.

  ‘Oh. So you are—’ Emily stopped abruptly.

  ‘I’m forty; yes,’ Sir Gareth agreed with a smile. ‘Had you been wondering, Miss Whittaker?’

  ‘No, certainly not,’ she replied defensively, and, it must be confessed, not entirely truthfully. ‘Do go on.’

  ‘We met at Eton, and soon became friends. We always stuck together, looking after each other; defending each other if anyone tried to act the bully. In fact, it very soon became known that to attack one of us was to attack both. We even acquired a shared nickname – Thunder and Lightning.’

  ‘Which was which?’ Emily asked curiously.

  ‘Oh, I was Thunder; bigger, darker. Patrick was lightning; bright, quick, with flashes of brilliance.’

  ‘I didn’t realize that you knew him so well,’ Emily responded. ‘Although you did tell Papa some things that pleased him very much last night.

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Everything I told him was true, but I held a few things back. Patrick certainly was a fine scholar, and he did use his gifts to help those less fortunate.’

  ‘How did he do that?’ Emily asked curiously.

  ‘Well, he let me copy his work occasionally.’

  Emily stifled a giggle. ‘No, Papa would not have approved of that,’ she agreed.

  ‘I thought not. Though to tell the truth, he was looked up to by the other boys. He was very kind to the younger ones. Not all of the older boys were. Some of them liked the power that they had through age and superior strength, and used it to intimidate others. He never did.’

  ‘Papa would have liked that.’

  ‘Yes, but as for the rest, I didn’t
want to tell him a lot of lies, and nothing that he said to me the other night gave me the impression that he would relish the recounting of schoolboy pranks.’

  ‘He might not,’ Emily agreed, ‘but I would. What did you do, Sir Gareth? The two of you, together, I mean.’

  The baronet laughed. He told her many stories of the camaraderie that had existed between himself and the canon’s son, making her laugh as well. Then, eventually, in carefully unemotional tones, he told her about that fateful day when, with some other friends, they had gone down to the river to go boating. A child had fallen into the river and Patrick had been the one to jump in and try to save her.

  ‘They both got into difficulties,’ Sir Gareth said, in a calm tone that masked the distress that he still felt at this particular memory. ‘I jumped in after them, but it was no good. I dived and dived …’ He paused and collected himself. ‘Even now, I find it difficult to believe that he has gone; all that brightness, that life, that promise.’ Again he paused. ‘Now that you have heard how close we were, you must wonder why I did not come to the funeral, or even make contact with you. The truth of the matter is that having tried to save them, I then succumbed to a fever which laid me low for some time, and after that, well, I suppose I was just not brave enough. I think I wanted to blot what had happened from my mind.’

  He was sitting looking down at his hands which were clasped between his knees. To his great surprise, he saw one of Miss Whittaker’s hands reach out and grasp his. ‘You were only a boy yourself,’ she said. ‘It’s not surprising that you could not bring yourself to come, but you have come now, and I am glad that you have told me about Patrick. You are right. He was alive; really alive. I have tended to think of him as being like a figure in one of these stained-glass windows. Now, I feel as if I knew him. Thank you.’

  He turned slightly to face her, took hold of the hand that she had placed over his, and raised it to his lips.

  A sound of footsteps on the stone flags broke the spell, and they both got to their feet. ‘That stone seat is dam – decidedly cold,’ the baronet remarked, recollecting his surroundings just in time.

  ‘But very convenient,’ Emily responded. ‘Have you never heard the saying, “let the weakest go to the wall”? That’s so that they would have somewhere to sit down.’

  ‘Is that what it means?’ Sir Gareth exclaimed. ‘I never knew.’

  Further up the south side of the cathedral they came to a tomb underneath an archway, which Emily pointed out to her companion. ‘This is the tomb of Katherine Swynford,’ she said. ‘She was—’

  ‘The mistress, then wife, of John of Gaunt,’ Sir Gareth put in. ‘You see, I didn’t rely on Patrick for all my answers. The tomb is very plain: surprisingly so.’

  ‘There should have been brasses on there but they were taken at the time of Oliver Cromwell,’ Emily told him.

  They strolled on into the Angel choir where stood another, more ornate tomb, with shields of arms at the base. ‘This is very fine,’ remarked Sir Gareth, crouching down to take a closer look at some of the markings. Emily, observing him, suddenly realized that she was looking, not at the tomb, which she knew well anyway, but at how the breeches he was wearing did nothing to hide the powerful muscles in his thighs.

  Horrified by the increasingly depraved nature of her imaginings, she exclaimed, ‘The imp! I … must tell you about the imp. Have you had him pointed out to you? Lots of people cannot find him for ages and ages …’

  The baronet rose easily to his feet, dusting off his hands, and caught hold of her by the elbow. ‘What is it?’ he asked her, wrinkling his brow. ‘You seem to be very jittery today, and I’m blessed if I can think what I might have done to make you so.’

  ‘It’s … it’s just hearing about Patrick, I suppose,’ she gasped, desperate for something to say, and finding that she had hit upon part of the reason why she was so unsettled. ‘You have made me realize what I have missed.’ She paused then went on more slowly, ‘When I hear you and Mrs Trimmer talking together, I wonder whether Patrick and I might have teased one another in the same way.’

  ‘Almost certainly, I would have thought.’ He looked at her for a few moments, as if trying to take her measure. Eventually he said to her, ‘There is one other thing that I want to tell you about Patrick, but it’s something that I could never, ever tell your father, for I think it would distress him even more than hearing about childish tricks.’

  ‘What is it?’ Emily asked him apprehensively.

  ‘He didn’t want to enter the church.’

  Emily gave a tiny gasp. She was so used to hearing that Patrick was almost a candidate for canonization that this revelation came as something of a shock. So surprised was she that she almost missed the baronet’s next few words. ‘Oh, he knew how much his father planned for it, and he was dreading disappointing him, but he felt that that life was not for him at all.’

  ‘What did he want to do?’ Emily asked him curiously.

  ‘He wanted to be a soldier. He was trying to nerve himself up to come and ask your father to purchase his colours. So the next time you look at his portrait, Miss Whittaker, imagine him not in clerical bands but in the red and gold mess dress that he so much desired. No doubt, had he been spared, he’d have been itching to fight the French! Now tell me about the Lincoln imp, and in particular how to find the elusive little fellow.’

  Emily pointed him out at the top of his pillar, and recounted the tale of how two imps had come into the cathedral to wreak havoc. They had been reprimanded by an angel, and one of them had climbed to the top of the pillar to throw rocks at his heavenly accuser. As a consequence, he had been turned to stone. ‘And there he stays, but I cannot feel sorry for him,’ Emily concluded. ‘After all, he doesn’t look at all sorry for himself, and he can see everything from up there.’

  She smiled up at the baronet, and saw that he was looking down at her. An arrested expression came over his face, and for some reason, her heart began to beat faster. She could not know how very winsome she looked at that moment; so much so that the baronet, already unsettled by their previous conversation, found his usual common sense flying away and emotions taking over.

  ‘So he can,’ he said. ‘Better give him something to look at, then.’ Leaning towards her, he tilted her chin with one finger and kissed her lightly and swiftly on her mouth.

  ‘Oh!’ she gasped, looking up at him. ‘Oh, goodness me! I … I must be going! I am needed to … to …’ She turned and began to hurry past St Hugh’s choir in the direction of the west door.

  ‘Miss Whittaker, wait!’ called the baronet, hurrying after her. He caught up with her easily, and grasped her elbow, firmly, but gently. ‘Wait, please. I don’t know why I did that. I didn’t mean to insult you, especially when you have been so kind.’

  ‘Kind?’ she exclaimed in response, staring up at him with an expression that he found impossible to read. ‘I had supposed that you, also, were kind, Sir Gareth.’

  At that, he released her, his face flushed. He ran a hand through his hair, the gesture betraying his agitation. ‘You do right to rebuke me,’ he told her. ‘No, pray do not run away,’ he added hastily, for he could see that she was about to flee. ‘At least give me a chance to explain myself.’ At first, when he had caught hold of her, she had pulled away from him. Now, she paused, ready to listen to what he had to say. After a moment or two, he said ruefully, ‘That’s confounded me. Of course there is no excuse for me. All that talk about Patrick unsettled me a little, I think.’

  Looking away from him, she said quietly, ‘Perhaps the Lincoln imp was trying to wreak more havoc.’

  ‘Perhaps he was,’ Sir Gareth agreed, with a light laugh. ‘I would be grateful if you would lay the whole matter at his door, and forgive me for my discourtesy.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Emily agreed, in subdued tones, but deep down inside her, something was singing, He kissed me!

  By mutual unspoken consent, they did not look at the rest of the cathedral in a
ny detail, but instead walked slowly back towards the west door, talking idly of the number of services that were conducted in the building, and about the terms of Canon Whittaker’s residency in the close. It must be confessed, however, that for varying reasons, neither of them would have been able to have given an account of what was said during the conversation.

  Light though it was inside, the brightness of the summer day caused them to blink as they stepped out into the warmth of the sunshine. Sir Gareth turned to Emily to thank her for conducting him around the cathedral, but before he could say anything, a voice hailed him from just inside Exchequer gate.

  ‘Blades, m’dear fellow! Houghton swore we’d find you here, but I never believed it.’

  If Sir Gareth looked a little out of place in Lincoln in all his London elegance, that was nothing to how incongruous this newcomer appeared. Tall and willowy, he was clad in an elegant blue coat with gleaming brass buttons, red silk waistcoat, yellow breeches and glistening black boots with snowy tops, and his cravat was so high as to make it difficult for him to turn his head. He looked to be about the same age as Emily herself.

  ‘I don’t see why not,’ Sir Gareth replied easily. ‘I have never known Houghton to lie.’

  ‘Devil take me, that wasn’t what I meant,’ said the other. ‘It’s good to see you, even in this benighted place.’ The two men shook hands.

  ‘How kind of you to say so,’ the baronet answered ironically. ‘You can now make your apologies to Miss Whittaker, who happens to live here.’ He turned to Emily. ‘Miss Whittaker, this graceless fellow, who deserves to be taken to the top of the tower and hurled off it immediately, is Lord Stuart Fenn, youngest son of the Duke of Barnwell.’