Читать книгу: «The Memory Palace»

5

She took her place at the middle of the long, scrubbed elm table in the Hawkridge bake house kitchen where the small house family most often ate supper following the fire. Even this outbuilding smelled like the inside of the smokehouse, but with a colder, seeping edge. A light dusting of ash from the fire seemed always still to salt the food. She looked at the familiar faces around the table with a stranger’s eye. She might as well have been a Mede or Ethiop dropped by magic carpet.

Since the recent fire, the estate residents had split their lives between Hawkridge House and assorted temporary lodgings. Her nearest neighbour, Sir Richard Balhatchet, had given rooms at High House to Zeal and Mistress Margaret, who was the unmarried aunt of Harry and John. Their two serving women, and Agatha, the chief house maid, and Doctor Bowler the estate parson also slept at High House. Others of the house family, including three house grooms, two kitchen grooms, and John’s former manservant, Arthur, slept where they could in the outbuildings and barns. The large mid-day dinner was served at High House to those not in the fields. Apart from the house family, the rest took supper wherever they found themselves.

Thank the Lord, Master Wentworth never comes to the table, Zeal thought. I could not bear to see him just now.

According to Mistress Margaret, he had never eaten in company since he first took up residence on the estate long before Zeal arrived.

Now, as they sat on borrowed stools along either side of the long table, their voices and laughter, the sound of their chewing, the scrape of stool legs on the stone floor, a dropped knife, all made her flinch.

As Mistress Margaret supervised the passing of rabbit stew, she hummed with grim glee at news that a neighbour (not Sir Richard) had been fined five hundred crowns for ploughing across the boundary of an adjoining estate. ‘He always takes the largest portion at table, too!’ she said. ‘And the last sweetmeat.’

Doctor Bowler paused for a polite beat of silence then ventured, ‘But surely, that is exactly what the king did to John! Boundaries, I mean, not sweetmeats.’

The king meant to cut across John’s land – the very same estate so recently awarded to him for service to the Crown. A great wall was to be built right between John’s new horse barn and his paddock, to enclose a royal hunting park at Richmond, taken from common grazing land and other men’s farms.

‘But the king is the king,’ protested Mistress Margaret. ‘Our dear neighbour is not even a knight.’

‘Do you mean to say that the right to trespass is defined by rank?’ asked Doctor Bowler with a degree of heat uncommon in him. ‘Do you say that John did not have good reason to protest to the king? Did the king have the right to call such reasonable protest “treason”? I expected more support for your nephew’s cause!’ Doctor Bowler turned to Zeal. ‘Are you not proud of him, my lady? He did not creep away with his tail between his legs like so many others who were equally wronged.’

Zeal stared blankly at their animated faces, then realized that they were expecting her to speak.

Mistress Margaret and Zeal’s serving woman, Rachel, exchanged looks.

‘Zeal,’ begged Mistress Margaret, her face mottled pink with emotion. ‘He puts words into my mouth! Why don’t you help me? Our parson has me at an unfair advantage with all his education. We women are never taught the tricks of debate.’

‘Why gild the lily?’ murmured Doctor Bowler. He peered closely at Zeal across the table and changed tack. ‘Isn’t it excellent news, my dear, that Sir Richard plans to give us that wagon load of oak beams from his old barn to help us rebuild the hall and west wing?’

‘Indeed,’ cried Mistress Margaret, diverted into this new turning. ‘We could never afford to buy them! It’s all very well to say that the Lord will provide, but kind neighbours are more certain.’

Doctor Bowler pounced with delight. ‘And who do you think prompted this Christian charity in Sir Richard?’

I must act, one way or another, thought Zeal. And if I can’t decide for myself what to do, I must leave it to chance. Or ask Doctor Bowler’s advice.

‘My lady…?’ The little parson always requested attention as if certain that you had far more important things to do than talk to him.

Zeal forced herself to smile at his anxious face, with its slightly too-close eyes. She sometimes thought of him as an earnest moth. A man of infinite good will and equal fragility, Doctor Bowler should never have taken on the moral burdens of a clergyman.

While Sir George Beester was still alive, Bowler, an Oxford man, had been tutor to the baronet’s two nephews, Harry Beester (who had married Zeal and brought her to Hawkridge) and John Nightingale, the son of Beester’s only sister. His sweet temperament, urgent curiosity and good Latin and Greek made him an excellent tutor for a willing pupil like John but a poor task-master for the likes of Harry. He had survived on an allowance from Sir George, and on small tithes, eggs and milk from estate tenants whom he christened, confirmed, married and buried. When John took over running the estate, which Harry inherited after their uncle’s death, Bowler bent his classical education to the estate accounts. When on the annulment of their marriage Harry deeded the estate to her, Zeal saw no reason for change.

‘When you have a moment,’ Bowler said now, ‘if such a time should ever arrive, I would be grateful for your thoughts about the Fifth of November.’

‘The Fifth of November?’ She gazed at him blankly.

A flush slowly rose all the way to the top of his shiny bald head. ‘The bonfire. Bonfire and Treason Night. It seems a little…After what happened. In any case, I’ve heard some…’

‘Of course. We’ll speak whenever you like.’ She could never consult Bowler. His own helplessness would cause him too much pain.

‘Troublemakers!’ said Mistress Margaret briskly. ‘It’s the young men.’

‘Some older heads agree with them,’ protested Doctor Bowler. ‘Doctor Gifford for one. Then we also have to consider the bells.’

Zeal looked at them both as if they were speaking an alien tongue.

With revulsion, she eyed the rabbit stew in front of her, smooth white flesh to which adhered a blob of shiny, mucilaginous pork fat. She swallowed against her rising gorge and smiled brightly in the direction of Doctor Bowler’s voice.

‘Does anyone have a coin I could borrow?’ she asked.

When supper finally ended, she put on her wool cloak and took Doctor Bowler’s farthing to the solitude of the orchard. The quincunx of trees shifted before her eyes, one moment apparent disorder, the next a harmony of straight lines.

‘Good evening, to you, madam.’ An estate worker intercepted her cheerfully. ‘Can I have a word about moving the piglets?’

In the dusky shadows under the trees, she was free at last of all those eyes.

She felt out of control, as if bits of her might fly off without warning. It was a new experience. The world had given way, in the past, more than once. It was the nature of the world to give way. But she herself had always survived, clamped down like a limpet to the best piece of rock she could find at the given time.

She threw the farthing in the air, caught it, covered it with her other hand. Then she put it back into her hanging pouch without looking.

She sat in the grass and leaned back against a tree, trying one last time to think straight. She felt as if she were already a ghost, out of place in the living world. Her hands moved in her lap like small restless animals.

She had already been Harry’s wife when she first met John. If John should find her married again, neither of them would survive it, she was certain.

But Wentworth was an old man. Anything might happen in seven years.

She stopped, appalled at her own wickedness. If she did accept him, she must not ever let herself wish for his death. He was a good man, to make such an offer.

Even though he did trick me down from the roof.

He was also taciturn, solitary, obsessed with fishing, spent most of his days on the water and his evenings alone in his chamber. He disappeared during feast days and celebrations, when work eased enough for people to take fresh note of each other in their unfamiliar clothes and exchange glances of startled rediscovery as they passed each other in a dance. He ate and walked alone. He was less present in her life, in fact, than the cat.

His offer was all the more surprising because she felt that he avoided her even more than he did the others. It was perfectly reasonable for a man of his age to find an inexperienced chit like her to be of little interest. Her guardian, of much the same age as Wentworth, had no more than tolerated her, and he had had the use of her fortune.

Wentworth’s generosity deserved better than she could ever give him in return.

She began to pace the diagonal aisles between the trees. Fallen pears squelched under her shoes, releasing little gusts of fermentation.

He offers a solution just as reasonable as death. And kinder to everyone.

But marry him? Marry anyone but John?

No, she thought. She tried to imagine Wentworth in a nightshirt, in her chamber, without his flapping black coat, but her thoughts started to slither like a pig on ice.

She made another turn of the orchard. Plucked a leaf from overhead, shredded and dropped it.

Try once more to reason it through.

Have the child and expose herself as either blaspheming perjurer or fornicator? Impossible.

The parish minister was a fierce Scot named Praise-God Gifford, who brought the unforgiving spirit of Calvin with him to England when he had trotted south with his clergyman father in 1604, after Elizabeth died, at the heels of the Scottish king who had come to rule England. As he grew older Gifford added a moral ferocity all his own.

She feared that she could not trust her standing as a landowner to protect her from him, even if she somehow escaped the civil law. He would want to make an example of her all the more, she who stood above her people like the sun and should lead them into light, educating through her own peerless example. She had seen one poor girl – not from Hawkridge, thank the Lord – stripped naked in front of all the parish council and have her hands tied to the tail of a cart. Then she was whipped all the way from the Bedgebury market square to the May Common. As the lash laid bloody lines across the girl’s skin, Zeal had seen the eager faces of some of the watching men. The girl had later drowned both herself and her babe.

The brilliant light of the day had now softened into a lavender haze that promised a warm night. In the distance, a few cows complained that they had not yet been milked. The orchard smelled richly damp and sweet, with a prickling of rot.

If I died, I would so miss this place, she thought. She began a circuit of the high brick walls, noting the ripeness of espaliered apricots and cherries. She picked and ate a sweet black cherry and spat out the stone.

Try to hide the child?

Others had succeeded in that deceit, she knew. Fine ladies who put on loose-bodied gowns and paid a married woman to unlace her stomacher and pad her petticoats, then produce the babe as her own.

Not here on this estate. Rachel already knew the truth from washing Zeal’s linen. Though she would never tell, others might guess as she had done. Secrets here were as safe as pond ice in May, and now that they lived hugger-mugger on top of each other since the fire, any such sleight of hand stood even less chance of success.

‘If your mind’s not set that way,’ Rachel had said, ‘you know as well as I that not all babies that get planted need to be born.’

When Zeal did not reply, Rachel had folded the petticoat and pressed it flat with both hands.

‘Could you do it?’ Zeal finally asked.

‘Perhaps I have.’ Rachel met Zeal’s eyes defiantly. ‘Better than a public flogging, I daresay you’ll agree. But you won’t have to fear that, madam. You’re a lady.’

‘Would you take that risk, with Doctor Gifford?’

If I kill John’s child, I might as well kill myself at the same time.

She reached the far wall of the orchard and turned to look back at the chapel roof.

But life had carried her on past that point, with a push from Philip Wentworth. Not knowing quite how it came about, she had fallen out of love with that flight into darkness.

People really do wring their hands, she thought, suddenly noticing that her own were turning and twisting together against her apron.

You are feeble, she told herself. Take a grip!

She climbed up into the nearest apple tree. No one can see me now, she thought, as the shadowy leaves closed around her. At the centre, near the trunk was like a secret house. An abandoned nest sat close above her head.

How lucky the birds are, she thought. She and John had first looked at each other properly, soon after she arrived, when he had caught her up an apple tree in her bare feet and mistaken her for one of the estate girls.

She smiled, shut her eyes, and remembered the warmth of his hand closing around her bare ankle, and the shock of their unguarded recognition. She had slipped and showered down leaves in catching herself, while he stood looking up at her with an expression both startled and benign.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said when safely on the ground, clutching stolen blossom, aware that she wore only her petticoats.

‘They’re your trees,’ he said. ‘Harry’s, anyway.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Trees ask to be climbed.’

For the next two years, they tried to pretend that look had never happened.

She pressed her forehead against the bark of a branch and felt his hand encircling her ankle again. Then it came to her how she could decide. She would not trust her life or death to the pettiness of a farthing, but Chance could take more noble forms than a plucked daisy or a tossed coin.

She climbed down and went to the estate office. In the thick dusk, she felt along the top of the mantle piece until her fingers found what they wanted. John’s glove, dusted with ash, like everything else.

I will accept the answer, she vowed. Life, or death. Either way.

She went to sit beside Nereus on the bank of the upper pond, to wait until she was alone. She found the old sea god’s company comforting. Like her, he could never have expected to end up at Hawkridge, and she was sure that he was equally content to be here. A white dove sat on the head of the nearest nymph, who also wore a wilted daisy chain around her neck. Her sister just beyond still had a fishing line tied to her wrist.

‘I don’t suppose any of you knows what I should do,’ she said. ‘Never mind. I mean to ask elsewhere.’

The estate workers and house family usually collapsed soon after supper, worn out by the battle to keep up with daily chores, while also salvaging whatever they could from the house, restoring what they could recover and remaking or rebuilding the rest. Meanwhile the advance of autumn brought its own burdens of digging, cutting, picking, binding, threshing, butchering, salting and preserving.

When she passed the bake house on the way to the ponds, Rachel and Agatha had nearly finished clearing supper, with the help of the kitchen grooms. The two women stood side by side in the last of the dusk, sleeves rolled to the elbow, scrubbing the last of the spoons and cups with fistfuls of green horsetail pulled in the water meadows.

The two kitchen grooms came out to the ponds with the dry ends of bread and hard-baked dough trenchers they all had to use until the cooper could make more wooden plates. These, in their turn had replaced the pewter plates Sir Harry had taken when he left Hawkridge for London. The grooms threw the bread onto the middle pond and disappeared downstream towards the mill where they were nested.

While she waited impatiently for all the others to go to bed, Zeal stared up into the sky. A faint glow in the haze showed where the moon was trying to press through the clouds.

Six ducks splashed down and jostled each other aside to get at the bread. With obscure pleasure, Zeal watched a female snatch a crust from under the jabbing beaks of two battling drakes. The mêlée reminded her of a gang of drakes she had once seen pile onto a single duck and drown her in their eagerness to tread her.

A carp slapped the water with its tail. Sheep bleated raggedly in unending querulous complaint. Frogs had begun to sort themselves into soprano, alto and bass. In the still air, the voice of a house groom carried clearly from the stable yard, headed at last for bed in the loft of the hay barn. She heard Rachel and Agatha set off with Mistress Margaret and her maid on the long walk to High House.

The moon pressed harder against the restraining clouds. In the final luminous glow as dusk slid into true night, straight lines wavered and the black humps of bushes breathed. The nymphs around the ponds stirred and reached out their hands to her. She felt their concern, and a pull, as if they invited her into sisterhood.

If only I could turn to stone and stay here with you, she told them.

In the remains of the house, Doctor Bowler began to play his fiddle in the dark, in the chapel antechamber. His tune was fierce, incautiously pagan, and totally suited to her present purpose.