Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (19 page)

She ran up to her narrow room and found the door to Henrietta’s open and her own travelling trunk in that room. No, she thought, I need to be enclosed, shut in. This smells still of Henrietta and she will come and haunt me in the night and demand to know why I am sleeping in her bed. She dragged the box back into her own room and ran to the old housekeeper’s room where she had slept when the Catholic chapel was in use. There she found Nurse in the big box chair with her feet on a stool.

“I want my old bed, Nan. No, don’t get up. I’ll change the sheets myself.”

Nurse had shown no sign of getting up. She only said, “Sir John said you should have that room.”

“I’m not used to it. The old chapel will be easier for Mary to keep clean.”

“Mary’s our only maid now. She has to be kitchen maid too and she’s not so pleased at that. Tom and Adam do the fires as well as grooming the two horses. You’ll have to clean your own room, my girl.”

“All the better if it’s small and nothing much in it. I don’t care about that, but I can’t stay here for ever. I have to go back to Cranmore House.”

“Eh, you’re in your old moods are you? You’ll do as your father says.” Nurse lay back in the chair with her arms folded across her substantial bosom and closed her eyes.

Bel stamped back to her own room and lay on the bed digesting all she had learnt from her father. For the first time ever she felt some sympathy with her mother. At fifteen she had been whisked to a foreign country and into a household that didn’t approve of her. The old grandfather, Bel recalled, had not lived long to enjoy his baronetcy. He had seen his statue erected and had had an apoplexy shortly after, but her father’s parents had lived till Robert was two years old. Then they had died within a few months of each other, before Henrietta was born. That was when her mother became Lady Horden and at last mistress of the Hall. But she must always have hankered after a return to France and now her own daughter was settled there, why should she ever come back?

“I don’t mind if she doesn’t,” Bel said aloud, trying to believe it. “When I have Ursula I don’t need a mother. But I haven’t got Ursula. How,” she cried, grinding her teeth, “can I get back to Cranmore House?”

Cambridge was a revelation to Nat in the springtime. The meadows, the river, flowers bursting in all the gardens, the rosy buildings burnished with sunlight. He wanted to be joyful but the news from home and the news from London were all disturbing. His father’s last letter had described how his mother had left the house at dawn one day and set off to walk northwards with little knowledge of the way and been found after a hue and cry thirty-six hours later in a state of exhaustion, wrapped in her cloak and curled up under a tree. She was quiet and resting now, but he never knew when the urge to break out and take action on her own would suddenly come upon her.

From London came news of Easter riots, of the trial of Lord Strafford and how the King, under duress, had dismissed all Papists from the court. Ben Hutton found all this very satisfactory. His father, with other members of the Guild of Tailors, had been on the streets again protesting, but Ben seemed sorry that he had not been part of the rabble that had tried to break into the Spanish ambassador’s house during Mass.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Nat said. “Violence is abhorrent to me and those who commit it in the name of a right cause are sinking to the level of the evildoers.”

“No,” Ben cried, “evil must be wiped out or how will God’s kingdom come?”

But Nat found himself quoting again and again from his father, for whom his love and admiration grew the longer he was away from him. “I stand by ‘Blessed are the peace-makers’. So let me hear no more of your rebel talk.” And he would bury his head in his book and ignore the rest of Ben’s ranting.

What he found most hurtful and disgusting was Ben’s glee in May when the Earl of Strafford went to the scaffold. That so powerful a nobleman and a favourite of the King should suffer so was deeply disturbing. Where was the country heading? He began to fear that Ben’s prediction of a civil war might not be so wide of the mark. Scuffles broke out among students from Queen’s and Emmanuel and Ben, finding himself branded a loyalist as a Queen’s man, applied to be enrolled in Emmanuel and changed his studies from Classics to Theology to start again as a freshman.

Nat was much relieved and even more so when his tutor told him that with his new status as a scholar he was entitled to a room on his own. He was allocated a room next to that of a young nobleman, Edward Branford, who as a younger son was destined for the church. Edward had come up the same time as Nat, but was only sixteen now and had often come to Nat for help with his Greek exercises. He was an engaging boy, not very clever, and Nat had to explain things to him many times over, but his company was a pleasant change from that of Ben Hutton.

Edward was fresh-faced, taller than Nat and gangly but he looked up to Nat and had none of the airs of superiority that some of the young nobility assumed. “You’ll be given a Fellowship, Nat,” he often said, “when you have your Masters’ Degree.”

“And since I am far from a Bachelor as yet you are speaking of years ahead,” Nat would laugh. “Besides, all I hope for is to be a country parson like my father.”

“No, no, you will go on to be Archbishop of Canterbury.”

“That I will not. There may be no Bishops at all if Parliament brings the Scots Covenant to England.”

“Will they, do you think, Nat? I can’t say I understand it at all.”

It was amicable conversations like this that raised Nat’s confidence and proved so delightful after the sharp arguments with Ben Hutton. If he had not been anxious about home and the divisions in the country, these weeks as spring grew into summer and the University began to empty would have been unalloyed peace. He could lie out on the grass with a book, absorbing sunlight and knowledge at once. But he knew he must return to Yorkshire and see the state of things there for himself.

It was August before he finally made the journey home. The meeting with his father was overflowing with love but, as he had feared, his appearance in the house filled his mother with horror.

“Why is
he
here and not Daniel? Where has he been? I thought we had seen the last of him if he could not bring Daniel back with him.”

He was shocked at her gaunt face in which her eyes looked larger and more fierce than ever. Until his return, his father said, she had gone about in their daily life in an apathetic daze which was at least bearable. He had Jenny to do the cooking and cleaning, a stalwart woman who accepted what life brought and managed her mistress with tolerant cajolery as if she were a child. When she was rewarded with occasional bursts of petulance, she disregarded them with a grunt of amusement.

“I couldn’t have kept my sanity without her,” his father confided to Nat. “But do not be distressed at your mother’s greeting. Most of the time now she hardly seems alive. It is as if a part of her died with Daniel. I knew there was a danger that your presence would revive her passion but if you are here for some weeks she may sink again into a sort of torpor.”

Sadly this failed to happen. Nat had grown stronger and broader and even added an inch to his height in the months since he had been better fed and more comfortable without Ben Hutton. With his distinctive flaxen hair and bronzed cheeks from long hikes on the moors he was more like Dan than he had ever been. His walk was neater and more brisk but sitting in a chair he could rouse his mother to a frenzy when she came into a room behind him and shrieked that her Dan was home. This was very painful and Nat often longed to be back at his desk in Queen’s.

One balmy morning in September he had decided to walk to Easingwold to purchase a quire of paper and some ink when his father drew him to the bench outside the vicarage saying softly “Jenny has got her occupied in the kitchen. Let us speak of the situation in the country. In Cambridge you are nearer to London and must have some sense of the lengths to which Parliament will go now that the King is in Scotland.”

Nat sat down willingly enough, though he was unsure what to say. “It’s hard to predict, sir. Parliament has taken advantage of the King’s absence to make peace with the Scots and they have withdrawn their forces from the border counties. All that happened since I left Cambridge, but I would guess that since London is hot for Parliament and cool towards the King, Mr Pym will feel strong enough to push for more reforms, as he calls them.”

His father sighed and ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. “Surely, son, the land can be at rest now. Cambridge is peaceful, is it not? When you return, I trust you will learn that London too has quietened . No more riots, no more arrests, no more horrible executions.”

Nat had to confess that Cambridge was far from peaceful. “Students and dons all take sides, sir, and I fear Parliament is set on testing its strength against the King to the limit. I can but pray that here at least, you will be spared from any more trouble.”

“I thought we would but Pym’s men have eyes and ears everywhere. They object to my taking a prayer book service, but just now they are determined to root out the last poor skulking remnants of the Catholic faith hereabouts. They even raided Cranmore House lately, for no reason but that it was established in a former nunnery. The vicar in Easingwold tells me the girls walk in procession to his church every Sunday without fail. But I believe the Mistress drove the raiders out empty handed.”

Nat stood up. “I am glad of it. But speaking of Easingwold reminds me. I must go there for paper and ink. Can I bring you anything, Father?”

“Nay. I believe Jenny stocked up on provisions from the market. But you go. I will accompany you as far as Granny Woodman’s and see how she does.”

When he left his father there, Nat walked sadly on. His father was too gentle for this world. It was a cruel fate that had given him turbulence in his own home when he longed for all mankind to live at peace. Nat felt his own guilt keenly, but his father was not free from blame himself. He had abdicated his headship of the family for peace and quiet. His mother had had free range for her excesses, for the partiality of her love which had left Nat himself out in the cold. If I ever marry, he thought, slashing off the heads of the long grasses with his stick, I shall rule my household and my children will be treated with scrupulous fairness.

As he walked, enjoying the motion and the benign air, his spirits rose. His present life was study which he loved and he had no need to delve into the future. He would not allow the turmoil in the country to fill his mind with foreboding. But as he strode into the small bustling town of Easingwold, he noticed three men of puritanical dress accosting every passer-by, apparently demanding signatures as most people scrawled something on the sheaf of papers that was pushed under their noses.

Sighting Nat, they advanced upon him.

“A scholar by his looks. No labouring man. He must sign.”

A chill of apprehension shot down his spine. They were three and the square was emptying of people.

“A petition to Parliament, young man,” the tallest of the three said.

Nat’s quick eye glanced over it and found it was demanding the closure of a girls’ school in the county which was described as ‘a viperous nest of covert Papists from the Mistress downwards, offering an ill example to the pupils under their charge.’ The paper was headed Cranmore House.

“Well!” He smiled round at them. Here was a chance for sweet reason to confound bigotry. “I heard this place mentioned only today. My father spoke of it as a well-run school, where girls are turned into young ladies. I believe a recent investigation cleared it of Roman associations.”

“Perhaps your father himself is a secret Papist.” They began to gather round him menacingly.

“Certainly not. He is the vicar of Darrowswick.” As soon as he had said it he wanted to bite back the words.

The tall man who seemed to be the leader laughed evilly. “There are some doubtful vicars about. Is he not Parson Wilson and was he not found in vestments and with candlesticks and images in his church?”

Nat had thought that as soldiery had ransacked the church these men would know nothing of that incident. It seemed his father was right that nothing escaped Pym’s spies. He was managing this badly, but now he gritted his teeth and determined he would not sign their paper. He was sure his father would refuse. He glanced about hoping to see some friendly onlookers. He had been crossing the paved square to the jobbing printer’s where he knew he could buy writing materials. He was known there, but they were almost certainly the people who had printed this petition. These days all businesses were glad of work whatever it was. The printer appeared at his door at that moment but when Nat met his eye he ran inside and shut the door. A few-passers by looked in his direction but hastened past.

One of the men jostled him, thrusting the petition under his nose. “Sign, vicar’s boy!”

He gave the man his most courteous smile. “I cannot put my name to something when I know not the truth of the matter.”

“Take that then!”

Under the paper the man’s hand punched him in the stomach and he doubled up, only to be knocked sideways to the ground by the other two. One kick landed in his ribs and the thought flashed through his brain that the next might be on his head and that this was a stupid thing to die for. But before the next blow came he heard a shout.