Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (17 page)

“Come, my love, you sound as fierce as she. No, I’m afraid this is something Dan has longed for himself. You remember the day when he said he would like to join the navy –?”

“And I said he should not. Are you overruling me now?”

“He has fulfilled what we demanded of him and now perhaps a spell of a different life will be good for him.”

“With a musket bullet through his heart! What about his duty to his estate? Perhaps we should produce another heir just in case. I am not too old you know.”

“Oh Bel, I do love you.”

“And I you, but I think you still doubt your own courage and want to be brave vicariously through your son.”

Nat stood up, his jaw set and his teeth clenched. Bel gazed at him in admiration. “Bel, that is not true. You and I have been tested sorely many times in the days of war and of persecution by the Puritans. We have come through together and I have never doubted
your
courage. But Dan has not been tested yet and he feels the want of it. If we stop him he will come home sulky and morose.”

“And if we don’t he may not come home at all.”

Ursula, trotting round from the kitchen, found her in a sudden paroxysm of sobbing.

“Oh my Bel. That letter was bad news.”

“Daniel has graduated but he’s going to join the navy.” It was choked out in jerks.

“He’s alive and well,” Ursula said. “So come in and have your dinner.”

Nat took her hands in his. “What would we do without you, Ursula?”

“Reverend sir” – since Nat’s ordination Ursula had been unable to use any other expression – “Reverend sir, you would do very well. You have each other.”

Bel smiled through her tears. “Yes, we are Nat and Bel, one flesh, but not quite complete without Dan.”

Ursula cocked her funny little head on one side. “Ah that’s what you have to learn, my Bel. Let go and he will come back stronger than ever, wife and children and all.”

“Wife! Ah, there is a thought. He must visit Eunice while he is in London. I know she has never left his heart. Perhaps she can keep him from throwing himself into danger.”

Nat drew her up and tucked her arm through his. “That is a wild hope, Bel. I do not believe he ever felt more than sympathy for her situation. Come, let us go in or the boiled beef I believe I can smell will be spoilt.”

They went in to dinner. I am the only one, Bel thought, prepared to admit to the dangers my boy may face. Surely, sweet Jesus, you wouldn’t let him grow to manhood and then take him from me like the others?

Daniel was delighted to receive letters from home giving him permission to join the navy. It was obvious that his mother was grieving which he was sorry for but he could bear that when he didn’t have to see her distress. One duty she said he should fulfil was to pay a call upon Cousins Cifford and Celia. This was easy enough since the Branfords’ house was in the same street. In another sentence his mother had written,
‘I am sure your heart will tell you to find a way to see Eunice too. I have rare letters from Celia and she said Eunice is teaching orphans in the crypt of St Mary Magdalen’s in Milk Street. You may be able to see her without encountering William.’

The sight of that name fluttered his heart briefly but it produced a rebellious knot in his stomach too. His mother should not presume to know what was in his heart. His way into the navy was now clear ahead. He had escaped the Diana trap by the skin of his teeth – with a little help from his mother he must acknowledge – and this was not the time to fall into another.

As for Cousins Clifford and Celia he knew he should pay them a courtesy visit but had been putting it off. He and Henry, released from obligations of study, were like two rampant puppies. They did everything together and Henry was not interested in calling upon his friend’s elderly cousins.

Henry’s parents, Lord and Lady Branford, seemed to Daniel young and energetic though Henry said they were ancient – over forty for sure – and it was strange to hear Lord Branford speak warmly of his friendship with Nathaniel Wilson at Cambridge.

“I would never have graduated in theology if your father hadn’t helped me through and you say he is now a country vicar which is what he always wanted to be like his father before him. And is his fierce mother still alive? He was anxious about her all the time I knew him.”

Daniel felt some pangs of homesickness, thinking of the folk back at Horden.

“She’s pretty dashed at the moment because my grandfather died. It’s near enough a year but she can’t get over it. She couldn’t get over my Uncle Daniel’s death and now she’s plunged in melancholia again. Father spends a lot of time there because of course it’s the vicarage and if she’s very low he’ll stay with her, though she’s got a girl lives in. I ought to go home and see them but it’s a long way and Mother would want to keep me for months if I went. I don’t want to miss my chance here.”

Henry, a short, wiry youth, restless and boisterous, distinguished only by protruding ears, exclaimed, “No, no, you must stay here. Father will get us on board a ship of the line next week. We might be at war with the Dutch by then.”

Lord Branford laughed. “Not next week, Henry. The King will delay as long as possible. The fleet is not ready. There is not the money in the coffers for a war. Nor does the King wish England to seem the aggressor. That would put us in ill favour with the French.”

Daniel listened in awe to conversations like this. Once more to be near the centre of power, to feel history unfolding around him thrilled his heart. Lord Branford, who had sat in the Lords since his father’s death, spoke freely of speaking with members of the government, even with the King himself.

To whet their appetite he arranged for the two young men to be allowed on board one of the ships of the line that was refitting. It was a three-decker carrying a crew of six hundred and fifty men. The spaces on the two lower decks where they would have to sling their hammocks had a headroom of less than six feet. Daniel walked with head and shoulders bent. Henry romped up and down companionways, peering here, there and everywhere till he was rebuked by the master mariner, but Daniel let his imagination play, trying to envisage this huge structure swaying on the ocean, running out its guns in earnest and bringing them to bear on an enemy ship, receiving fire, masts crashing down with spars and sails tangled. It was fearful but exhilarating.

“The next step,” Lord Branford said, “is to present you at court so you can offer yourselves for the navy under the King’s own patronage. But first, Daniel, you should visit your cousin, the merchant. Keep in with men of wealth. You say he has no male heir?”

“Only a son who abandoned working for him long ago.” Somehow he couldn’t bring himself to mention Eunice. “But I don’t think Cousin Clifford approves of me since I too rejected his offer to come into the business. Still I suppose I must go.”

Henry sprang to his feet. “If I come too you will not have to stay long.”

“We will go in the morning then when Cousin Celia will be on her own. The merchant will be at his desk with his piles of ledgers and his commodities ceiling-high in his vast warehouses.”

“What a dreadful fate you escaped!”

“Indeed. I would have died of suffocation.”

So with much merriment they set off on a pleasant April day to walk to the house with the gravelled drive, the stone pillars and C C with H beneath carved above the doorway. To Daniel it seemed a lifetime away that he had crept up to that door ashamed of his soiled clothing.

Now he wore a velvet doublet, which he had purchased from the Branford’s London tailor, and a sword hung from a new belt, adding not a little to the debts he had left behind in Cambridge and which he had not yet confessed to his father. He had an idea that things back home were looking up after some better peacetime harvests. Besides his father was now receiving a small stipend for the living of Nether Horden – though he paid most of it over to his mother – but there might, Daniel thought, be the wherewithal to pay his debts.

A footman carried the names of Sir Daniel Wilson Horden and Sir Henry Branford up to the drawing room and they were immediately invited to walk up.

Cousin Celia, plumper than ever in both face and figure, greeted them with delight.

“Well, are you not two fine young gentlemen fresh from the University and bachelors too! Daniel, I swear you have grown another inch. You’ll have to bend to give your old cousin a kiss.” Daniel pecked her on both cheeks though the flesh felt spongy and distasteful to his lips. “And you are Lord Branford’s son! I made Lady Branford’s acquaintance at the play not three weeks ago when we were in adjacent boxes. Now you shall stay to dinner. My husband returns prompt twelve o’clock.”

Daniel looked at Henry who shrugged his shoulders up to his large ears.

Meeting Clifford was not to be avoided. Celia was already summoning servants to give her orders. Daniel walked over to the doors which stood open onto the balcony and looked down at the terrace below where he had first cornered Eunice. When she had escaped from him and the French cousins had collared him that was when he had uttered the unlucky words “That I should love Eunice is preposterous.” He felt a tender pang at the thought of her. He was reluctant to ask after her in case Celia made too much of it. But they had scarcely sat down when Celia, quite undeterred by Henry’s presence, clapped her hands and exclaimed, “Did I not say you would be back when you had graduated?”

Daniel could remember no such thing. He half smiled, shaking his head.

“But
I
did. I told Eunice. I said, ‘I warrant he’ll be back for your hand in marriage as soon as he leaves the University.’ And here you are.”

Daniel’s jaw dropped before he could master himself.

Henry was grinning at him. “You never told me you were betrothed, you sly thing.”

“I’m not. I mean nothing has ever been
said.
Well, things have been
said
but not arranged.”

Celia was not at all perturbed at his reaction. His confusion seemed in fact to please her. She shook a finger at him.

“Ah but your mother and I knew your feelings and I know Eunice’s. Never mind her father. Clifford and I can be too many for him. You’ll see.”

Daniel looked hopelessly at Henry, wishing he would come to the rescue about their plans for the navy but he just sat there chuckling like a monkey.

“I fear marriage is still a long way off, Cousin Celia,” he said at last. “Henry and I hope to be commissioned in the navy soon and who knows what the next few months will bring. There could be war.”

“With the Hollanders? Ah, Clifford did tell me there was a loyal vote in the Commons on that very matter. I take little note of these things, Daniel, but I cannot see how that would affect your marrying.”

Henry butted in proudly, “My father voted in the Lords to concur with the Commons’ vote but he thinks the King will play for time.”

“Then nothing hinders you to be married, Daniel. Your father and mother would be happy for you.”

“But Cousin William –?

“He must have his daughter married one day and the way they live she will meet no one else of any suitability.”

“I thought – I mean marriage settlements take so much time to arrange and with my family so far away –”

Henry did step in then. “The fact is, Ma’am, my father is taking us to court tomorrow to kiss the King’s hand and after that we will be away. There is a young lady in mind for me too but she must wait while Daniel and I do some living first.”

Celia folded her arms on her capacious bosom and beamed at them both. “Ah well, as long as these things are understood we know where we stand. So, Daniel, we can be working it out with your father in the meanwhile.”

Daniel gave up. Further protestation would sound hurtful but he resolved to make it plain in his next letter home that he was not betrothed, he would not be hemmed in by anyone, and he expected to be allowed the same freedom his parents had had to make their own choice of spouse.

They chatted of other things. Celia was concerned about the effect on the price of silks if trade should be interrupted by hostilities and when Clifford arrived, not too pleased to see his comfortable dinner-time invaded by two young men, he would talk of little but the ships he had at sea and the danger of piracy or attack by the Dutch.

“So you are going into the navy, young cousin?” he said when he finally heard their news. “You know as little of that as you do of business.”

“We will learn, sir. And at Cambridge in our mathematical studies we were once shown how the new Mercator’s Projection is used in navigation. We are not totally ignorant.”

“I’m blessed if I can remember it,” Henry giggled, “but as Dan says we can learn.”

They were ready to take their leave when Celia said casually to her husband, “We will be writing to Cousin Nathaniel about getting up a match for Eunice with Daniel when he has seen some service.”

Clifford bent his thick brows on Daniel. “What, have you declared yourself, young man? Are you after my fortune without being prepared to work for it?”

“No, indeed sir. It was only that your honoured lady believes Eunice has no other –” He didn’t know if he was going to say ‘chance’ or ‘choice.’ Either way he was in hot water. He finished pathetically. “I mean I haven’t said anything yet. It’s too soon.”