Miss Hartwell's Dilemma (11 page)

Lord Pomeroy behaved throughout the meal with perfect propriety, his composure threatened only when Daisy offered him a choice of lemonade or milk.

“Milk!” he exclaimed, outraged.

“It is good for you, Uncle Bertram,” his niece reproved him.

“Lemonade, please, Daisy,” he requested meekly.

Mrs. Vaux had warned him to stay behind with the vicar at the end of the meal, in order to give the girls an opportunity to practise withdrawing from the room and leaving the gentlemen with their port. This was accomplished in good order. His lordship was rewarded when Amaryllis returned to the dining room with a bottle of brandy, kept strictly for medicinal purposes.

Nothing could persuade him to go up with Mr. Raeburn to the common-room.

“Mr. Majendie is expecting me,” he pointed out smugly.

“Then wait while I put on my boots,” said Amaryllis. “It has stopped raining. I will walk with you as far as the corner.”

The clouds had blown over, leaving a starry sky. The air was mild and fresh, more like spring than autumn, though drifts of fallen leaves under the trees were a reminder of coming winter. Her hand tucked under Bertram’s arm, Amaryllis savoured the mingled scents of woodsmoke and wet grass as they strolled down King Street.

“Was dinner so very bad?” she asked, a laugh in her voice.

“Not at all. I wish the food at Eton had been half so good. And as for the company, I have had worse at many a diplomatic banquet.”

“There speaks a diplomat. I must turn back now. I shall see you on Wednesday?”

“I am looking forward to my history lesson. Goodnight, my dear.” He kissed her wrist between glove and sleeve, watched as she walked back until she turned in at the gate and then strode on into the village.

She was still very dear to him, though she had changed over those six missing years. She was still the only woman he had ever wanted to make his wife. He did not want to press her for a decision, yet he must have an answer soon, for his father was suddenly growing old and his dearest wish was to see his heir married and settled.

Still, if she refused him, he could do little to search for a bride until the new Season began in March, when every eligible damsel in the kingdom would be paraded for his edification. All the matchmaking Mamas in town would seek out the wealthy heir to an earldom. The thought, as usual, appalled him. All he wanted was Amaryllis, and he must spend the months until March proving and reproving his devotion so that when the time came for him to insist on an answer, she would have no doubt that he loved her. He looked back, but the night had swallowed even the white blur of the proud sign announcing the school’s presence.

Amaryllis opened the gate and lingered a moment with her hand on it, reading the sign by memory since the starlight was too dim to make out the letters. The expected feeling of achievement eluded her. The thought of going up to face her four and twenty pupils was disagreeable. Bertram’s reappearance had made her dissatisfied with her lot. Why had she not told him she would wed him? Was there a lingering sense that it would be unfair to marry only to escape?

But I love him, she thought in sudden panic. Don’t I?

A rustling sound drew her attention. She peered towards the group of silver birches on her right in the corner of the garden. Their ghostly trunks stood out clear, making the shadows behind them the blacker.

It could be a hunting cat, perhaps a hedgehog or even a badger. A twig snapped with a sharp crack. An explosive sneeze followed, then what might have been a muffled curse.

“Who is there?” Amaryllis demanded. “Ned! Bertram!” She had no hope that they would hear her, but perhaps her shout would give the intruder pause.

A figure muffled in a dark cloak rushed towards her. As she stepped back, raising her hands protectively, a swinging arm caught her a glancing blow and knocked her sideways to the ground. Her assailant leaped over her prone body, dashed through the gateway, and disappeared into the night.

For a few moments Amaryllis lay perfectly still listening. All she heard was her own heart beating madly. She became aware of her bruised hip and arm and shoulder, and the dampness seeping through her cloak from the ground.

Cautiously she raised herself and looked around. On the path beside her was a white handkerchief. She picked it up, stood up, and put it in her pocket. Trying not to make a sound, she moved to the gate, looked both ways into the blackness of the lane, then carefully closed the gate making sure it did not click. Then her nerve broke and she fled up the path to the front door. Locking and bolting the door behind her, she rang for Daisy.

“I slipped on the path and fell,” she explained. “My cloak is all muddy. Can you clean it?”

“Oh miss, I hope you didn’t hurt yoursel’!”

“No, I am just a little shaken. Pray do not mention it to anyone, for I do not want a fuss.”

Taking the cloak and folding it over her arm, Daisy felt in the pockets. “Here’s your handkercher, miss.”

Amaryllis took it and put it in the pocket of her gown, then hurried up to the common-room, glad for the nonce of the reassuring presence of so many people.

When she went to bed, she looked at the handkerchief. It was certainly not one of her own, being a square of fine linen too large to belong to a lady. In one corner was an embroidered rose, crimson with green leaves and stem and vicious-looking thorns. She could not recall ever seeing the thorns represented in embroidery before.

She folded it and tucked it away in the back of her drawer. It seemed likely that the intruder had been the mysterious Spaniard. She would be more careful in future not to go out alone in the dark, but she saw no reason to further alarm Aunt Eugenia by reporting the incident. She would mention it to Bertram, though she could not think of anything he could do about it. Judging by the enormous sneeze, the man ought to take to his bed for a while anyway.

The sky turned cloudy overnight, but the weather continued mild and dry, if grey. On Wednesday afternoon, Miss Hartwell assembled her beginning history class and they set off for the castle. They crossed Falcon Square, made their way up Castle Lane and over Bailey Street, where once a wall protected the outer bailey of the castle. From here only the tower on the top of the keep was visible, the rest hidden by trees now gold, bronze, and russet in their autumnal glory.

In mediaeval times the hillside had been carefully cleared of any growth tall enough to hide a man. The hill was not high but it dominated the surrounding plain and an attacking army must have been visible miles away. Even before the invading Normans took it from its Saxon lord, in ancient British days this place had been defended by ditch and earthen wall.

As they walked up the steepening slope, Miss Hartwell described the scene as it must have appeared when King John besieged the castle. The Earl of Oxford’s archers in coats of mail stood guard on the concentric walls circling the hill; men in armour, their surcoats emblazoned in red and blue and yellow, prepared for sorties, their weapons clashing, their shouts filling the air. In the fields below, where now cattle grazed, King John’s soldiers rode among tents and pavilions bright with pennants.

“What were they fighting about, ma’am?” asked Louise Carfax. “They were all English, were they not? They ought to have been fighting the French.” She had frequently joined her brothers in refighting the battles of the Napoleonic Wars.

Miss Hartwell sighed and explained Magna Carta for the third or fourth time. “When King John took the castle,” she said, “the barons invited the Dauphin of France, the heir to the French throne, to help them win it back. More often than not, throughout history, England has been at war with France, but not quite all the time.”

“King John was fighting the French,” Louise pointed out. “I beg your pardon, ma’am, but it’s true, is it not?”

“But King John was a bad king!” said Isabel, shocked.

Foreseeing the beginning of another civil war, Miss Hartwell hastened through time to Henry VII. The then Earl of Oxford had aided Henry Tudor throughout the Wars of the Roses, enduring exile for the Lancastrian cause. Safe on his throne at last, King Henry graciously paid a visit to Hedingham Castle. The earl had gathered all his retainers and dressed them in his livery, red and yellow with white star and blue boar. To honour the king on his departure, they lined the route from the castle, that very track where they were now walking.

“My lord,” said the king, “I have heard much of your hospitality, but I see that it is greater than the speech. These handsome gentlemen and yeomen which I see on both sides of me are sure your menial servants?”

“If it may please your Grace,” answered the earl, “that were not for mine ease; they are most of them my retainers, that are come to do me service at such a time as this, and chiefly to see your Grace.”

“By my faith, my lord,” said the king, “I thank you for your good cheer, but I may not have my laws broken in my sight. My attorney must speak with you.”

“And he fined him fifteen thousand marks,” said Miss Hartwell, “which was a very large fortune then.”

“That was not fair,” cried Isabel indignantly, “after the earl helped him win the throne!”

“You see, Henry Tudor had seen the private armies of the noblemen overthrow Richard III in his favour, and he had no intention of being deposed likewise. He made a law saying no one might have more than a certain number of armed followers in livery.”

“Very sensible,” approved Louise. “Only think, they might have gone on fighting each other forever, instead of the French.”

Miss Hartwell could not help but wonder what would happen when she taught these two about the Civil War between Parliament and the Royalists.

They had reached the brow of the hill. On their left, a beautiful brick bridge, built in Tudor times to replace the drawbridge, crossed the dry moat. On the right stood the mansion raised a mere century ago by Robert Ashurst, who bought the castle when the de Vere line died out.

As they approached, the front door opened and Lord Pomeroy emerged, swinging a bunch of keys in one hand.

“I saw you coming,” he explained as he joined them. “Mr. Majendie has been telling me some tales of the castle’s history in preparation. Did you know that Henry VII...”

“...fined the earl fifteen thousand marks for having too many soldiers,” interrupted Louise. “Was not that famous, Uncle Bertram?”

“Brat,” said his lordship. “You have spoiled my best story.”

“You can blame me,” Amaryllis confessed, laughing. “I had hoped to dispose of at least part of the history lesson before you joined us. At least that is one little bit of history Louise will not forget in a hurry.”

She and Bertram led the way across the bridge past the brick gatehouse. The girls gasped as they caught their first unobstructed view of the keep. It was an impressive sight, the smooth grey stone rising sheer for seventy-five feet, broken only by a few narrow windows. Louise’s attention was immediately drawn by the square indentations that pockmarked the wall at regular intervals.

“Cannonball holes!” she cried with ghoulish glee.

“I think they would be round,” frowned Isabel, “and not so...so precise.”

“They would have smashed the wall to bits,” agreed one of the older girls.

“Quite right,” approved Miss Hartwell. “The castle was never attacked after the invention of gunpowder, and those that were, were indeed ‘smashed to bits.’ Can anyone guess what the holes were for?”

Even Lord Pomeroy looked blank.

“Mr. Majendie did not tell me that,” he complained.

“They supported the scaffolding when the castle was built. Come, let us go round the other side to the entrance.”

The keep stood near the centre of a roughly circular grassy area. Only overgrown hillocks showed where the other buildings of the inner bailey had been, and the once-proud curtain wall was now an encircling mound, easily crossed by the cattle that grazed where men-at-arms had gathered for war. A stone staircase rose from the ground to the keep’s arched entrance door on the first floor. They climbed up it to a landing just outside the door. Below them was a square, walled enclosure, windowless and doorless.

“There was a tower here to protect the door,” Miss Hartwell explained. “Its ground floor, below us, was an oubliette.”

Again her pupils looked blank, but this time his lordship knew the answer.

“If you please, ma’am,” he said with a grin, “was that not a dungeon entered only by a trapdoor in the ceiling?”

The girls crowded to the rail and looked down with wide eyes. A heap of blown leaves covered half the floor, some dozen feet below. Over the centuries since the roof had gone, soil had accumulated and now supported a few straggling ragwort plants, their yellow heads bright in contradiction to the grim purpose of the rough walls.

“I’ll wager ghosts frequent this spot,” said Lord Pomeroy with a grin.

“There are periodic reports of villagers seeing things, but no story of consistent haunting,” said Miss Hartwell with a shudder. “Let us go in.” Pausing in the doorway, she pointed out the slot in the twelve-foot-thick wall where the portcullis had been lowered from above as an extra precaution.

“I cannot imagine how King John ever captured the place,” exclaimed Louise.

They went down the wide spiral stair to the ground floor. Since there were no windows the only light came from the doorway, but to Louise’s disappointment the gloom concealed only storage space. Back up they traipsed to the entrance floor, where the soldiers had lived. The windows were mere slits, enough to let in light and air and doubtless howling winter gales, but too narrow to admit missiles from outside. Miss Hartwell, expecting some pertinent comment from Louise, looked around to find she had disappeared, and Isabel with her.

“Drat the child!” she said, vexed. “Bertram...My lord, where is your niece?”

“If I know Louise, she is back at the dungeon,” he said. “I’d wager on it. Do you go on upstairs, I shall fetch her.”

The next floor, the Banqueting Hall, was two storeys high. A huge arch in the middle supported the timbered ceiling over twenty feet above. Double windows admitted enough light to see easily the richly carved stonework, the huge fireplace, and the minstrels’ gallery tunnelled into the thickness of the walls half way up between floor and ceiling.