A Traveller in Time (7 page)

“Penelope Taberner Cameron,” said I, and the words dropped from my lips one by one as I made the effort to remember. As I stood there, breathing the air which was different, feeling strange emotions in my heart, so that I was half trembling with fear, I stretched out a hand to hold the table, to get courage from the rough wood. Sounds I knew came from the open door. Cuckoo! Cuckoo! called a bird in the wood, which I glimpsed through the portal, and the doves cooed in the yard. My heart stopped its wild beating and I turned with a timid smile to my aunt who was staring at me.

“Penelope Taberner,” she repeated, ignoring the Cameron. “I can scarcely believe it, yet thou art a Taberner, in spite of thy dark hair cut like a youth's. A dimple in thy cheeks, and the same crooked way of smiling, and the same round mouth, and the little twist to thy eyebrow, as one or another of us always has, and always will have as long as there is a Taberner left.”

She paused in her inspection and frowned and took my hand in hers as if she would read the lines.

“Thou hastna worked hard, for thy hand is soft and white as my lady's. Where dost thou come from, my sweeting? I know most of my kin round hereabouts, but I disremember you, although I can't keep stock of brother Andrew's twenty childer. Are ye one of 'em? Or are ye a daughter of Elizabeth, who had fourteen wenches as well as four boys? Where do ye come from, Penelope?”

“From Chelsea, Aunt Tissie,” said I, slowly, trying to remember more, but my mind was away, lost in the shadows which flickered across the doorway and raced over the fields outside.

“Chelsey? That's a village near London. I've heard Master Anthony talk about it, for he took Mistress Babington there once. Maybe thy mother was a serving-maid to her when she was there? It's a powerful way off, and I've no relations living there, as I knows of, but I've lost count of some of 'em. There was niece Margery, but she married a farmer Ashover way, and you're not one of hers. And there's niece Sarah, and Rachel, and Mary and Susanna, and Jane and every one of 'em has a mithering lot of childer, some of 'em old enough to be wed, and many a Penelope among 'em. There's Robin and Ralph and John Taberner, all got daughters. Whose maiden be ye?”

I shook my head. All memory of my mother and father had disappeared, I knew nothing about them. Only Thackers and the unchanging landscape remained, familiar and dear to me, as if I had known it from time everlasting, as if I were part of it, immortal soul of it come back to the loved place.

“Aunt Tissie,” I pleaded. “I've come to Thackers to learn the ways and to be with you, and to stay as long as you'll have me.” Then, with a flash of memory I added: “My mother sent me, to be with you.”

“Well, whoever ye be, ye are more than welcome, for there's no shadow of doubt you're a Taberner, and a good-bred one, although not as strong-looking as ye ought to be. Here ye shall live, Penelope, as long as ye will. The last Penelope who lived here died a while back. She was my favourite niece, and when her father was killed in the war in the Netherlands, she came to me. It was same as a ghost come back to see the likeness between ye, but she's in the churchyard yonder, under sod, and ye are alive and blooming like the rose.”

She looked down at me again with a kindly welcoming manner, and then she seemed to be aware of my clothes, for she gave a sharp cry.

“Where didst thou get those weeds, my chuck? Where's thy baggage? Have ye no belongings? How didst thou travel here?”

I shook my head dolefully. “I can't tell, I can't answer,” I muttered.

“Ye don't know?” exclaimed Aunt Tissie, astonished, but not more surprised than myself. “Nay, that beats all. If ye weren't my own kin I should say ye were simple,” and she clucked her tongue in consternation.

The kitchen-maids crowded round me and touched my dress with curious fingers. I looked down at my navy serge tunic and the little striped apron I had worn when I was helping Aunt Tissie. It wasn't I who had changed, but my surroundings, I reminded myself, as they whispered and nodded and pointed at my shoes.

“They're mebbe out of the oak chest on the landing,” said one of them, as I stood miserably blushing with the attention I had caused. “There's a store of ancient clothes for the poor and needy, gear of well-nigh a hundred years in that chest.”

“Or she found 'em in the play-acting chest, where the mistress keeps her garments for mumming-plays and Christmas routs and junketings. Ye might have found something seemlier than that doublet if ye wanted to dress up and surprise us,” said another.

“Where have ye hidden your ordinary gear?” asked the one whom I had seen the first, who now entered the room. “I found her on the landing, near the mistress's chamber, and mebbe she's been inside poking about.”

“No Aunt,” I cried, and tears sprang to my eyes. “These are my own clothes, and I haven't any more.”

“Well amercy! Don't weep, my pretty! I mun make ye some more, for those are not seemly,” said Dame Cicely, and she wiped my eyes with her apron and put her arm about me to shield me from the others. “Tabitha,” she called to the pretty girl who had met me on the stairs. “Take Penelope upstairs to my bedchamber, and put more womanly weeds on her to cover up her long legs. She's like a lad in that garb. I wouldn't have the mistress see my niece so.”

“It's the dress of a London prentice she's wearing, and it becomes her. Leave her, Dame Cicely,” said Tabitha. “She's bonny in them and the mistress won't mind anything on a day like this. She'll laugh mebbe, and it will do her good, for, poor soul, she has troubles enow with Master George's gambling debts and Master Anthony, God bless him, bringing anxieties to this quiet place where nothing's ever happed since Adam and Eve were on earth.”

“Have it thy own way,” laughed Dame Cicely. “I'll tell Mistress Babington and Mistress Foljambe that my niece has come from Chelsey to help me, and she'll be right glad to have ye in the household, and whoever was your mother, ye are a Taberner, and the very image of her who died and is buried out yonder. Ye shall sleep in my bed, for it's had an empty place since she left us. Phoebe shall make a new smock for ye, and I'll lend ye a night-rail of mine, although thy little body will be lost in it.”

She looked me up and down, considering my position in the household.

“Niece Penelope, canst thou sew and cook and milk the kine?” she questioned. “There's a-plenty of work to be done here, and no room for an idle maid.”

“I don't sew very well, and I can't cook,” I confessed.

“Maybe ye've been eddicated above thy station?” she said cheerfully. “Canst read and write like the quality?”

“Oh yes,” said I.

“That's more nor us can do! I can't read a word, but I keep this household going. I carry my knowledge in my noddle and have no use for printed books. Receipts for cooking, and making of drinks and possets, I know them all. I remember the old ballads and I know the Psalms, so that I can sing without a Psalter. I keep a tally on the doorpost of the number of eggs and chickens and ducklings we have. I've done very well without reading and writing, and I keep my wits clear by not addling them with rubbish. But Mistress Foljambe will be glad of thee. She'll maybe make thee her own maid.”

They all talked together, but I was too much astonished to utter a word, and I looked round the Thackers kitchen as if I had never seen it before. The passage to the dairy had gone, and the pantry was part of the big room. Aunt Tissie was different too, although I should have recognized her anywhere, whatever she wore. She had on a full dress, not much bulkier than the one she wore that morning when we sat down to breakfast at the same table, in a time that had slipped from my memory, so that I could not remember who sat there with us. The cherry-red woollen skirt was short enough to show her square, buckled shoes, rough and strong, but neatly made. Her black bodice was fastened up the front with little wooden buttons carved like acorns, each button slightly different from its fellow. A white cambric collar creased and crumpled with work was round her neck, tied at the front with a black, tasselled cord. On her thick hair was a fold of linen, like a cap, snowy and fresh, and her apron was gathered and pleated in many folds round her large waist. Her face had the same serenity, and she twinkled at me and laughed with loud laughter like a man's as she saw my astonished eyes which were open as wide as they could be in complete bewilderment.

“Thou art an odd moppet,” she cried heartily and she laughed so much that tears came sparkling into her eyes, and all the maids laughed too. But the green-eyed boy glowered at me, and covered his eyes with his hands when I peered his way.

“Ye are a sweet toad, and as like my great-niece Penelope was at thy age as two peas in a peascod. Come here, my sweeting, and give me a kiss.”

She enfolded me in her floury arms and printed a loud, warm kiss on my lips, in just the way Aunt Tissie always welcomed me when she saw me in the mornings.

“But dunno ye call me Aunt Tissie! That's a name for a she-cat! Call me Aunt Cicely. Cicely Taberner is my name, and Thackers is my home, and Heaven's my destination.”

She gave a rollicking laugh and went back to her bread-making.

“Now make thyself useful,” she continued, “and ye mun feel at home.”

“I do, Aunt Cicely,” I murmured, breathlessly.

“Go and pile wood in the bread-oven, for the loaves will soon be raised, and it's not near hot enow.”

She pointed with a stout forefinger to the heap of brushwood in the corner and I went across the flagged floor, treading softly on the rushes through which I could see the yellow-bordered stones.

I pushed the green wood in the deep oven which went into the wall at the side of the fire, on the left of the open fireplace. Above my head, slung across hooks in the wall, were longbows and spiked halberds, long-shafted with hatchet heads, but the blades were rusty and the wooden handles dark with age and wood-smoke. Next to them was my aunt's warming-pan, which she used for airing my bed. “To take the chill off, mind you, for you'll be nesh, my dear, coming from London.” It was polished like a mirror, and one of the girls stood before its reflecting surface and tidied her cap. I stared fascinated, wondering at its strange companions which might have been used in an ancient war.

“Ye've mebbe never seen a longbow afore,” said Aunt Cicely as she caught my curious glances. “They don't have 'em in Chelsey, but here we keep to the old ways, and these were used in long-ago battles by our family. We'm got many an aged thing kept from days long past, and if they could speak they'd have perilous tales to tell. The warming-pan is new and as good as a mirror for the wenches to set their caps straight.”

She stooped over the trough and pommelled the dough into a great creamy-brown bolster, not white like the dough I had seen before. Then she lifted the whole trough down to the floor and set it by the fire for the bread to rise. The young boy moved aside from his place on the hearth. His eyes were fixed upon me, never for a moment did he look away, so that I felt as if a savage beast were watching my movements, ready to spring.

The custard was poured out into a shallow dish and the girl stirred it with slow, even motion, murmuring a rhyme to keep the eggs from curdling. The second maid gathered up the broken shells and put them in a tub, and crushed them into fragments.

“Them's ready for washing-day, Penelope,” smiled Dame Cicely. “We uses up all our egg shells for whitening Mistress Babington's linen. But get ye gone and gather some herbs for the possets.”

“Where from?” I asked faintly, and my voice sounded husky and dim. “Where from, Aunt Cicely?”

“Hark 'ee now! Where from! And where should they be from? Herbs for beer in the fields and hedgerows, but for possets you mun go to the herbgarden, beyond the yew hedge. Pick fennel for the fish, and rue and borage for Mistress Foljambe's health and a pinch of lemon balm for young Mistress Babington who likes it spread on her pillows. Get aplenty of comfrey and strewing herbs and some bay for the venison stewing in the pot over the fire. Here, Tabitha will go with you and help. She'll like to get a breath of fresh air and a peep at Tom Snowball who's trimming the hedges this morning.”

Tabitha blushed and drew a ruddy curl from under the edge of her cap. I liked Tabitha's cheerful face. Her arms were as brown as nuts, her skin freckled where the sleeves were rolled back, and her face was good-natured, although she seemed quick-tempered. She lifted a lidded basket from the wall and took my hand in hers, and then we ran out of the white porch into the sunshine. Hens clucked and pecked in the sweepings from the stables, and cocks strolled lazily across the yard. Scents of sweetbriar came from the little hedge by the door, and the spaces of the stones of the path were filled with yellow musk. I looked up at the house, to seek for my room and others, which I had forgotten. The house was larger, another wing was there. There were many windows with small leaded panes in squares and hexagons and tiny casements through which I got a glimpse of striped woollen curtains and brightly woven stuffs. Some of the farm buildings had gone or were part of the house, but the church was the same. Then I noticed that the shields around the tower were clean and fresh with the carvings distinct. A mason was chiselling one of the shields, and Tabitha stopped and looked up at him.

“Thou wilt have to be speedy,” she cried, pitching her voice high. “Thou wilt have to hurry with thy carving, Master Stone. Young Master Anthony's coming home, and he'll expect to see it finished.”

Master Stone shouted something which made Tabitha blush.

“Impudent hound!” she exclaimed. Then she pointed out the new emblazon on which the mason was working. “A.B. and M.D. That's for Anthony Babington and Mary Draycot. Her arms are put alongside his, as the custom is.”