A Traveller in Time (21 page)

Through the window I could see the miners come from the tunnel and enter the great barn. They played skittles, and slept, awaiting their turn to go back. Tabitha took them food, for they were not asked to the house.

“It's a lead vein we are seeking,” they spread the report. “A fine vein of lead which will bring money to Thackers.” The villagers rejoiced, for they knew lead had been found on the other side of the hill at Tandy for centuries. Lead-mines were worked there in Roman times and every day a train of pack mules went down the lane to the west of Thackers with panniers containing loads of lead-ore to be smelted at the little “cupellow” in the valley.

It was no lead vein they had found in the earth, as we knew quite well, but it served as a blind for the curious who might ask about the digging.

Aunt Cicely gave me the dish of sweetmeats and a silver jug of canary wine to take to Mistress Babington's parlour. I went across the hall, staying for a minute to gaze up at the great sword and longbow which Master Thomas Babington had used at Agin-court, for to me they were the most romantic things in the house. Then I tapped at the parlour door and entered timidly, for I was unused to this service. But before me I saw the old parlour of Thackers, changed and made beautiful. In the window-seat was young Mistress Babington in her rich blue silk dress over a kirtle of night-blue. Her ruff was stiffly starched and pleated, and round her neck hung a gold chain with a pomander which scented the room. On her fair hair was a lace coif which gave her a matronly look, although she must have been scarcely twenty-three.

She sat with a piece of embroidery before her, and I watched her needle go in and out as she deftly painted in silks a picture of Joseph's Dream. There were the golden sheaves bowing down to a sheaf in the centre, and in the background were the trees of the wood's edge. Over all the sun shone with a smile on his yellow face, and long beams pointing like fingers at the sheaf. I recognized the scene as Uncle Barnabas's great cornfield on the borders of the wood, and I knew that Mistress Babington had chosen the rich old ploughland as the subject of her embroidery.

She saw me glance curiously at the work as I walked across and curtsied to her, and she smiled and showed me her stitches of yellow and gold silk. Then I held out the fluted dish with the little almond and honey sweetmeats shaped like acorns and leaves which I had helped Aunt Cicely to make, and she put one in her mouth, thanking me.

“You have made them as if you created things of beauty, instead of confections to be eaten,” she said, and I was glad, for I had taken great pains with these sweets.

Then I saw others, the girl who had scorned me at the Fair, and a priest who watched me with keenly searching eyes, so that I felt uncomfortable. Anthony laughingly called to them, and the priest walked across to me. He muttered something in Latin and pointed to the dogs, which had retreated from me with their hair on end, growling and shaking.

“Nay, Penelope is a friend,” explained Anthony. “She's Dame Cicely Taberner's niece from Chelsey. She is of the family which has lived here as long as the Babingtons, which will live here till we go, and maybe will survive us in that future when all shall be changed. They are bound to us by generations of service; they are true as steel. Though not of our faith they understand and are always loyal.”

The girl came forward, her dazzling white skin and her flaming hair enhanced by the rich brown velvet dress she wore. Lace-edged lawn hung from her wrists, and a ruff of lace tied with silver beads stood up round her slim, young throat.

She moved with a superb arrogance, her long body swaying in the stiff skirts like a sunflower.

“So here's the wench who rides with Cousin Francis as an equal,” she cried scornfully, and she stared at me with hard eyes and her thin scarlet lips curled in a cruel way.

“Why shouldn't I?” I retorted. “Francis asked me to ride, and this is a free country.”

“A free country! Harkye! Not for a Babington with Queen Eliza on the throne,” snapped the girl bitterly.

“You forget yourself, Coz,” said Mistress Babington quietly. “We are all free in this year of grace, 1584. What we shall be in a hundred years time I know not, but now we are free.”

“All except one, and she the greatest of all,” said Anthony. “But Cousin Arabella, seat yourself, and eat a sugared comfit. These are such as we seldom have, they are so delicately made.”

He held out the sweetmeats to her, but she pushed them away.

“Cousin Anthony, Cousin Mary, will you let me be insulted?” Arabella stormed, stamping her small foot. “Send her away, back to the kitchen where she belongs, a scullion and a dish-clout.”

“Silence, Arabella! Hold your tongue, girl! This is not your house, and you must restrain yourself here. Penelope is my guest.”

“Where is your jewel? She told you she had found it. She's the one who prophesied evil, worse than my father's prophecy,” cried Arabella. “Didn't you, wench? You can't deny it. Didn't you say Her Grace would be executed? Nay, you said stranger things than that. Have you dealings with the unholy ones? Who is a spy sent here by Walsingham's underlings?” She pushed her flaming face close to mine and suddenly boxed my ears so that I reeled. “Answer me, slut,” she cried.

“Arabella! Silence!” shouted Anthony, white with anger. “How dare you! Leave the room!”

Arabella swept out with her long dress trailing in a royal way, her eyes blazing, her hands twitching as if she wished to strike me again. I rubbed my smarting cheek, bewildered by the sudden onslaught. The priest hurried after Arabella and the door was shut.

“Penelope, help me to eat these sweetmeats,” said Mistress Babington in a calm voice as if nothing had happened. “Sit down by me and forget Arabella. She is jealous of our honour, and her love for Her Grace of Scotland inflames her. You must excuse her.”

She pointed to a low velvet seat and, shaken and unhappy, I sat down. Mistress Babington went to a cupboard and brought a pierced, silver box. She removed the lid and held out golden butter drops.

“I made these myself, Penelope,” she said. “These are made from a new substance called sugar which is too expensive a luxury for the kitchen.”

“I should think so,” said Anthony, dipping his fingers in the box. “Twenty shillings a pound! Sugar is scarce and comes in our ships across the seas from the Spice Islands.”

“I have been talking about you to Dame Cicely,” Mistress Babington continued, “and I want you to belong to my household. Would you like that?” Her sad eyes were fixed upon me, as she waited for my reply.

“I should like it very much,” I replied, “thank you, Mistress Babington, but I have to go home. I couldn't stay here always, I have to go home.”

“You can read Latin with Father Hurd,” went on Mistress Babington, unheeding, “and I will study French with you. You shall be my personal maid and companion. You will work in the kitchen with your aunt, for that is good for you. I, too, often help with baking the small breads and making the dishes for feast days. But I will train you in other ways, for you have talent. Your fingers are clever. You can draw and model, and you may become a good embroidress. I saw you admiring my tapestry of Joseph's Dream. Yes, it will be well for all of us if you are here.”

Anthony's blue eyes turned from his wife and watched me keenly as if he wished to read my thoughts.

“My wife will be very much alone, and you will be a companion for her,” said he, and his grave words had a double meaning for me which I could not miss.

Alone! How terribly alone she would be, I knew, and I realized for a moment the agony in which Mistress Babington lived, the dreams from which she awoke terrified, with thoughts of martyrdom for her husband, of hanging and all the barbarities by which traitors to Queen Elizabeth met their ends.

Then a flash of memory came to me, tearing my breast with pain. My mother and father, my sister and brother, and Uncle Barnabas and Aunt Tissie. Suppose I could never get back and those who loved me, those I loved, never saw me again. Those others —who were they? I was suddenly frightened.

“I must go,” I said breathlessly. “They are waiting.”

“Who? Your aunt knows you are here? Who will be waiting, Penelope? You came freely from London to live here. Who waits?”

I couldn't remember, and I stood gazing round helplessly at the half-panelled walls with the candle sconces the wide, empty fireplace, the carved stool with its fringed, velvet seat, the table with a basket of coloured wools and silks by Mistress Babington's high-backed chair, and the tapestry on her knee. I had no fear of the room, nor of the occupants, who eyed me calmly. I didn't know what it was, this sudden panic of alarm.

I stood there, looking from one to another, hesitating, when the door was flung open and Francis came in.

“Here you are, Penelope! Have they asked you to stay? You will, won't you? I'll teach you to shoot with the bow, and we will ride, and you shall learn never to fear.”

I was suddenly happy. Nothing could go wrong. I was safe.

“Yes, of course I'll stay. Why,” I laughed, “I've nowhere else to go. This is my home! Thackers is my home.” Indeed I had forgotten all in the brightness which came in the room when the boy entered.

Mistress Babington went across the floor to a little virginal in front of the window. She lifted the painted lid, and dusted the ivory and ebony keys with a silk rag. On the lid's surface I saw a picture of blue sky and white cloud and a green flashing river flowing between dark trees, foaming over rocks.

“Do you recognize this?” she asked me, smiling.

“Isn't it the valley, where we rode to the Fair?” I asked, but doubtfully, for the artist had used his freedom of imagination to make the rocks greater, the river wilder than the one I knew.

“Yes, it is the Darrand, our beloved river. It was painted by a famous artist from Italy who once visited me. I look at this scene as I play the virginal and I feel I am walking in the valley by the river, for I love the sound of water above all things.”

“You have the brook at your door, Mary,” said Anthony, “and I would bring the river if I could.”

He went to her and leaned over the virginal as she played a sweet tinkling air like bells in a wood, or water dropping from a spring among meadow grasses. Then Francis and Anthony sang a madrigal with her, and I listened with delight.

“And you? It's your turn, Penelope. Everybody sings in these days, music is the possession of the poorest in the land, for we are all born with an instrument of our own.”

I was shy, but I wished to please them, and I remembered that Dame Cicely and Tabitha and Margery all sang unconcernedly, with no false modesty. But I could remember nothing, except: “It was a lover and his lass, with a hey nonny no,” which I had sung a hundred times. So I sang this falteringly, and when I finished they all applauded. Nobody knew it, and when I said it was by Shakespeare, Anthony had not heard of him.

Mistress Babington took a manuscript book of music from a desk and showed it me with great pride. I couldn't read the notes, for they were square, and the clefs were different, curled and decorated with flourishes. Delicate pictures were drawn in the margins and the words were written in a good clear hand.

“The Caroll of Huntynge,” I read, and I saw a sketch of deer under a tree. “The carol of Christmasse,” was another, and “Lulla, Lulla, thou little tiny Child.”

Mistress Babington took the book from me and propped it on the virginal. She sang King Henry's song: “The holly and the ivy” and we all joined in the chorus.

They were all songs of the countryside, she told me, and everybody in the villages could sing them, and at Christmas men would come to Thackers and all would sing together.

“Here's a new song I heard at Babington House last year when I was at Darby,” said Mistress Babington, turning the pages of the book. “I copied it out along with others in my song-book. It had come from London and it is as pretty a ballad as ever I knew.” She pointed with her slim finger and Francis began to laugh.

“That's
my
song, Sister Mary. That's a song I have taken for my own. Hearken to me sing it for you!” His eyes twinkled with mischief and he gave me a teasing sidelong look as he threw back his head and sang to Mistress Babington's accompaniment:

“Aunt Cicely will want me now,” I excused myself, for my heart was aching with a strange foreboding.

I gave a low curtsy and went out, leaving Francis at his song. Then I heard other music, a dancing merry jig. It was the Irishmen singing in the yard, and I wanted to go back to them before I was caught in the web of this beloved household. I went along the passage to the kitchen, and looked in at the door. Tabitha and Margery were dipping long strips of rush-pith into fats for the rushlights, and hanging them to dry. Jude sat on the hearth whittling a little figure out of wood. He looked up as I stood there, and stayed motionless watching me. The spinning-wheel clattered and all the time another music came out of the air, calling me back. The music grew louder, and the rattle of the spinning-wheel and the fierce heat of the fire were lost. Those in the room grew shadowy and pale, disappearing in the light which streamed through the open door. Jude held out a hand as if bidding me stay, but I stepped through the doorway to the yard. The Irishmen were singing and Uncle Barnabas was playing his accordion just as I had left them.