Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (2 page)

She shook out her crushed skirt. “Enough. Let us move. At least we are sure the Strand is west of London Bridge and we only have to keep the river in sight to find it.”

It was not so easy to move at all with the crowds still milling about. Boys were already piling up sticks and debris to make bonfires at the corners of every street. The maypoles newly erected since Cromwell’s ban were being hung with bunting. The bells were still ringing, the people cheering, sellers of nose-gays, sweetmeats, oranges were shouting their wares and blocking the way. Daniel, his long legs accustomed to taking great strides along country lanes or over the Horden land, was reduced to stuttering along.

His thoughts, though, were at a canter. There was some shame at his father’s estimation of his learning. What he knew was due less to his own application than his father’s extreme patience. Two of the cousins would be fluent in French and though his mother had tried to improve his, he would be halting sadly if they babbled to him in their native language. And what would they care for his Greek and Latin?

There would be Aunt Henrietta too, married to a vicomte, but thank heaven
he
was not coming. And his grandmother, Lady Maria Horden, exiled all these years for her Roman faith. He peered at his mother’s face. Was she longing to greet her mother and sister again? He wanted to ask but suspected she was holding back her deepest emotions. This was a day for new experiences joyfully embraced.

She had spoken lightly of the old merchant Clifford Horden, a cousin of her father. It seemed she disliked him for the episode with his son William. And William must be the father of the English girl cousin. What a tangle!

Now his terror of the young ladies was back a hundredfold. When his mother had first mentioned – so casually – that she would be meeting two nieces for the first time, he had been startled. Were they just little girls? No, they were around his age, one older, one younger if she remembered rightly. And there would also be an English cousin whom she had never met. “She may be grown into a young woman too. So at last, Dan, you will have some elegant female companionship. Just what you need.” Of course she was laughing when she said it. And now to throw out, so lightly again, that they would all be expecting to marry him! Did that make it easier for him or a thousand times worse?

What they would be like? He repeated their names in his head as he had done ceaselessly on the sea passage. Madeline and Diana Rombeau, dark French beauties perhaps, and Eunice Horden, a lovely English rose? But how did you begin to talk to such females? What subjects would excite them? He guessed they had not ventured into the thronged streets today so he could speak of that – but, no, that moment when the King smiled upon him was too special, sacred almost. It was not to be the stuff of social chatter.

“I think I will be very cold and aloof,” he said now out loud, breaking into his parents’ comments on the mass of craft on the river.

His father looked startled. “Nay, Daniel, be courteous above all things.”

His mother said, “Just show them your own pleasant nature.” But what, he wondered, at the raw, unshaped age of fifteen and a half years, did that amount to?

They had followed Thames Street and here many warehouses obscured the view of the river. Now they had to go inland a little to cross the Fleet, a dirty, stinking stream running down into the Thames. Daniel with his extra height could look above the thronging people and glimpsed up one of the lanes a massive building on the rising ground above them.

“What is that?” he asked his father, the only one of them who had visited London before.

“Ah yes, St Paul’s Cathedral. Look, Bel, the biggest church in London.” As they emerged onto Ludgate Hill they could see it in all its splendour.

His mother said, “We must visit it while we are here but we had better not stop now. I am parched and weary and this is taking longer than I thought.”

Daniel could see that his father’s excitement was growing. “We are not far away. We should pass the Branford’s place where a friend from my days at Queen’s College lives. I must certainly call upon him. He has inherited the title now.”

Daniel had heard this friend mentioned. He was an earl now. Father has moved in exalted company, he remembered. Why should I be so diffident before these French connections?

They had made their way from Fleet Street into the Strand at last.

“There,” cried his father, “that is the Branford’s town house.” It had no land in front but was set back with a paved area and stone steps and a pillared entrance and heavy polished oak door.

“Very grand,” Bel said, “but it looks as if they are from home. The shutters are all closed. Oh come, let us get on. I long to sit down.”

Nathaniel mumbled something about it being odd if a loyal nobleman was away on such a day as this but he followed Bel. Daniel lingered a moment looking up at the house. Horden Hall was larger and with acres of land about it but of course, he remembered, the Branfords have an estate in Hertfordshire. We are pretty small beer after all.

He soon caught up his father and mother. There were more big houses, some set so far back they were partly screened by the blossom in their gardens. His mother was now looking up at more modest ones whose front doors were visible from the road. They were elegant dwellings of three storeys with attics. In gaps between Daniel could glimpse the river which here looked bluer than the grimy current next to London Bridge.

“Celia, Clifford’s wife, wrote that their house has CC with an H below carved above the door frame,” his mother was saying, “Dan, your young eyes will pick it out if the house is set far back from the road. There is a walnut tree in front too, she wrote.”

They must be getting close. Daniel’s heart was pounding now. He brushed vainly at his soiled breeches. His buff cloak with the merest wisp of lace at the neck was too short to cover the stain and the cloak too was marked where he had tumbled against the slime-covered wall of the jetty. The tide had been low and the boatman – curse him! – had not thought a lad like him needed the steadying arm he had given to his parents.

“Is not that a walnut tree?” his father said suddenly. “What grand gates and gravelled carriage-way!”

Daniel narrowed his eyes. Yes, carved into the stone lintel were the initials CC with the H below and above it, incised much earlier, the date the house was built –1620. They had arrived. Clifford and Celia and all the other unknown relations must be lurking behind that handsome façade, while his little family approached, shabby and footsore, from the street like beggars.

“You will be able to change your clothes,” his mother said, boldly pushing open the gate. “Our travelling chests we sent ahead from the boat must have arrived long since.”

“But to greet them like this!”

His father drew him forward as he hung back. “Daniel, it is the inner man that counts.” It was a favourite theme of his father’s but here, Daniel was sure, it would carry no weight with ladies familiar with the French court.

But now the door was being opened by a footman and behind him in an oak-panelled hall a thin grey man and a round pudding of a woman were hastening to greet them.

“Cousins Clifford and Celia,” his mother whispered to him. “Not royalists, so keep silent about the King.”

“We were listening for a carriage, dear Arabella. What! You have been caught in all the crush? We dare not venture out ourselves but we saw from the windows when the procession passed to Westminster. And these are your menfolk. Greetings, Cousin Nathaniel, and you, young man. My, what a height you are! Come come, your family are all agog to meet you,” and she led the way up the wide staircase.

He was not to have time to make himself presentable and behind that door where Cousin Celia’s hand was reaching to the handle were Madeline, Diana and Eunice, one of whom, if he was not very careful, he might be obliged to marry.

CHAPTER 2

There were too many people rising to greet them. At first Daniel’s bewildered ears could take in only that they were all female by the massed rustling of skirts. He ought to look at faces. He ought to sort them calmly into young and old but he could hear only exclamations puncturing the air.

“My dear little sister – so long – and how handsome she has grown, Mamma!”

“Arabella, my child, my dear child – such cruel years apart!” An older deeper voice.

Then shriller squeaks. “But he’s so tall and not yet sixteen!”

“
Sacre Dieu
! He will be through the roof when he’s a man.”

Daniel was only aware of the two delicate hands that were being thrust towards him. He glimpsed glossy petticoats as he grabbed the hands one after the other and planted hasty kisses without lifting his eyes.

The older deeper voice was saying, “So I meet my grandson at last. He has the Horden height and slenderness but the flaxen hair is his father’s.”

Daniel kissed heavily-ringed, wrinkled fingers.

Another cultured voice. “Well, nephew, this is a pleasure.” A smooth hand. More rings, more shimmering silk. He was taller than everyone here so it was hard to keep looking down and avoiding faces. He straightened and looked over the heads.

The sun was shining full in his face through an open door onto a balcony. There was the opposite bank of the Thames. He was staring south across London. He could see fields beyond crowded houses.

The narrow shape of Clifford Horden interposed between himself and the scene.

“And this is my granddaughter, your Cousin Eunice.”

Daniel looked down. A small, piquant face was looking up at him. Gracious, she was a mere child. He grinned at her and then saw she was also holding out her hand to be kissed. As he took it she lowered her eyes and something about the movement and the sight of her hair coiled tightly up at the back of her head made him doubt that she was a child. She was wearing a white collar over a plain grey dress which hung to the floor.

He kissed the hand and it was swiftly withdrawn as she scurried back to whatever corner she had been lurking in.

He could no longer avoid the other two girls who seized him from both sides and propelled him out onto the balcony. He had no idea which was which. Both had glossy black ringlets and surprised blue-black eyes with long lashes and arched eye-brows. One was in a rose-pink gown and the other in forget-me-not blue. Both had well-formed bosoms that looked ready to escape their bodices, which he thought extraordinary in day-dresses but perhaps that was the French way. Neither was beautiful, their noses too long and their mouths too wide. He was absolutely sure that he didn’t want to marry either of them.

What irritated him most was that they persisted in speaking of him to each other in the third person. He felt like an exhibit that an explorer had brought back from foreign parts.

“How did he come in such a state?”

“Do
les jeunes hommes
wear their hair so long where he comes from?”

“And are they all outgrowing their clothes so fast!”

“If he sends his breeches to a
blanchisseur
they will be too short when they come back.”

“Did you ever see hair so fair? It is made of straw,
n’est ce pas
?”

Their cackles of mirth brought their grandmother to the balcony.

“Madeline! You should know better. You should restrain your sister. Such unseemly noise. This is a sober, quiet house. Young man, pray come inside. Your hostess is inviting you to see your chamber and refresh yourself from your journey.”

Daniel gave the girls a brief bow and his grandmother stood aside to reveal the round shape of Celia Horden beckoning to him. His father and mother had already disappeared. As he passed through the room his eyes sought the silent English girl, Eunice Horden. There she was in a corner, hands folded in her lap, eyes cast down.

Daniel hurried after Celia to a higher landing and was thankful to be shown a small chamber, evidently partitioned from a larger one where his parents were to sleep. His mother had unpacked fresh linen for him and his one fine doublet and breeches with clean white stockings. There was an ewer and basin and silver backed hair brushes laid out.

“What think you of the young ladies?” she asked him when they were all ready to proceed to the dining-room.

“I think nothing of their manners.”

“And your Cousin Eunice?”

“She has not so much as opened her mouth but I am determined to hold talk with her soon.”

“She reminds me of her father William who was courting me but had not a word to say. Of course she is overwhelmed by the French cousins. My sister tells me they took ship from France as soon as they heard King Charles had sailed and though they landed after the King they hired a coach and four and drove straight here to seek their English relations. Eunice only came this morning so she has had no time to get used to them. Come, we must go down. Cousin Celia says there are oysters, salmon, roasted pigeons, a haunch of venison and three sorts of tarts and they have brought up their best wine from the cellar for this happy reunion.”

“I think I might manage most of that.” Daniel was aware that he had felt hungry for some hours. He rushed down the oak staircase and found everyone heading for a long dining room which must be below the drawing room as it had windows giving onto the terrace above the river.