Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (5 page)

He had no wish to fight fellow Englishmen and the army had so lately been engaged in that horrible thing, a civil war. But it was a different matter at sea. The navy had fought for England against the Dutch.

If I didn’t go back to Horden, he was thinking, when the French family go with Father and Mother I could stay in London. Maybe Lord Branford, Father’s friend, could present me at court. Ah if I could see the King again and offer him my undying service, and I might contrive to do something for that poor little thing, Eunice Horden. Not
marry
her, God forbid. But rescue her to a life of her own choosing. I swear that for a moment she saw me as her champion knight. There are great things to be done in life and sticking my head in Greek texts is not for Sir Daniel Wilson Horden.

Reluctantly he followed his mother and father to the drawing room to face the French girls again. At least, he thought happily, I am not afraid of them any more.

CHAPTER 4

Eunice Horden had to scurry to keep up with her father’s long angry strides. He had let go of her the moment they were outside her grandfather’s door. He almost never touched her but his mental hold was so great that to attempt to run away now never crossed her mind. He was saying nothing so she guessed he was deciding which passage of Scripture she would have to learn by heart before she was allowed any supper.

I had a dinner with more meat in it than I usually have in a month, she recalled. If I am forbidden supper altogether I can last till morning. All I want now is to be alone in my little closet to think about Daniel Horden.

She would not torment herself with recalling every word
she
had said to
him
. They were a matter of indifference for she was unlikely ever to see him again. And she would not remember the awful hurt when he said, “As for loving Eunice the idea is preposterous.” No, the pleasure would be in dwelling on that moment when he stood with his back to her door.

He was like a Norse God with his bronzed face and flaxen hair. He stood so straight, taller than the door itself. He had stretched out his arms as though to bar anyone else from entering. His feet were planted solidly. His whole being breathed determination. He was as strong as an angel and as beautiful.

But of course he would have had his evil way with her if she had not escaped. That was why he had tried to stop her going. He would have come to her later – in the night perhaps – the door of that little room had no lock – and he would have had his evil way with her because that was what men did as her father had often told her.

“Never allow yourself to be alone with a man,” he warned, “and for the same reason never go out alone because men are lurking for that very purpose and they are stronger than you.”

When she had slipped out that morning she had taken with her a sixpence from his poor box and offered it to the first serving-maid she had seen in the street if she would accompany her to the Strand. The maid had objected she would be in trouble for being too long on her errand but the sixpence had tempted her.

She chatted to Eunice all the way there. Yes, she often ran errands alone for her mistress. Oh she would scream very loud if a man grabbed her but it didn’t happen in daylight. There were always people about.

Eunice stored these things in her mind and found links with the far off days when her mother was still alive. They had walked together alone, Eunice trotting fearlessly as long as she clutched her mother’s hand. No wicked men had seized her or tried to have their evil way with her mother, but she was never afraid.

Her world had closed down around her after her mother’s death in childbirth, bringing forth a dead baby boy. She could see plainly the coffins side by side and her broken father prostrated in grief.

Now he was unlocking their front door and motioning her ahead of him. The room they entered occupied all the ground floor. She was seeing it now in contrast to the house in the Strand. It was about the same size as the small room she had been allocated there and was quite crowded with a plain deal table and two benches, a fireplace on the right hand wall and a steep stair going up in the left hand corner. Along the opposite wall were shelves and hooks for a few pots and pans, a bread crock, a wooden cheese dish, a sack of turnips and onions and – she was pleased to see – a parcel of fish. He had been preaching early at Billingsgate when she had slipped out and that must be his reward. If she was contrite enough for her sins she might be allowed a baked fish for supper.

Remembering the feel of the velvet bed hangings in her room in the Strand she cast a sidelong glance at the piece of sacking that hung at the one small window next to the front door. Where there had been a volume of plays by Beaumont and Fletcher at her bedside there was nothing here but a Bible on the table and writing materials for her father’s notes.

She knew that this house – off Cheapside in a narrow lane between Milk Street and St Lawrence Lane – had been built by her father’s own hands. She remembered seeing the square of trodden earth between a leather-worker’s and a baker’s and her father saying, “The Lord has led me here. Here we will build.”

With the money from the sale of her mother’s few jewels he had bought the waste ground from the baker and some bricks and sheets of weather-boarding. The leather-worker had lent his man to help and the little two-storey house had risen between the wooden walls of the two shops. The bricks had made the chimney and hearth, the flue passing through the wall to link up with the baker’s substantial one. Both Giles Fletcher, the leather-worker and Luke Thomson, the baker were happy to be repaid with her father’s literary skills. He was teaching the leather-worker’s youngest boy to read and write and for the baker he wrote excellent letters to the many wealthy customers who ignored their bakery bills. He also sent Eunice to sweep up the leather workshop and the bakery floor at the end of each day.

Small amounts of money came in too from his open-air preaching where he had a bowl for coppers at his side. “A labourer is worthy of his hire,” he would quote but he would always place a tithe of his earnings in the poor box he kept on the mantelshelf above the fireplace. This was what she had daringly raided that morning.

Now he took off his hat, pointed her to one of the benches and faced her across the table. His gaunt face with the eyes close together like his father, Clifford’s, was thrust towards her. She lowered hers and gazed at a mark in the wood that was like a letter s. S for sin.

“No, you will look at me, Eunice, and tell the truth as we examine every sin you have committed today from the first thought coming into your head that you would go to the house in the Strand.”

So it is to be one of these long inquisitions, she told herself, and he will know if I deviate one iota from the truth.

She lifted her eyes to his and began in a small bodiless voice.

“Last week you showed me a letter from my Grandmother inviting me to come to meet my cousins. You said I was not to go.”

“What was my reason?” he snapped.

“Because the French relations are Catholic and the family from the north includes a young man.”

“And why did you conceive of disobeying me.”

“I was curious. You went out early to preach in Billingsgate and I took my chance.”

“What else did you take?”

“Sixpence from the poor box to pay a maid to accompany me.” She rushed on now, the words tumbling out. “That meant I had to lie to Grandmother that it was my own maid and that I had your permission and when she seemed pleased and asked if I was allowed to stay a few days I said, Yes. When you came for me I hid in the room and when Madeline and Diana sought me I refused at first. Then I knew I must come so I put on my cloak and came down.”

He pounced as she expected.

“The young man, Arabella’s son, came down with you. Explain this.”

She hesitated for a fatal second.

“Tell me not that he had his evil way with you!” His eyes were like flames.

She shook her head. “He came into the room and I told him to get out.”

“How did he know which was your room? He had been there before?”

“Never. He tried other doors. I heard him.”

“Was there no lock that you could have barricaded yourself from him?”

“No, I believe it was what they call a dressing-room to the larger one where the French young ladies were staying.”

“Did he leave you when you rightly ordered him out?”

“I pushed past him and picked up my bag and went out.”

“He
said
nothing?”

“He said he wanted to save me.”

“Save! He would have sent you to the deepest abyss of Hell.” He flung back his head and looked with despair at the ceiling. “Oh Eunice, Eunice! Has all my guidance been in vain?”

“No, I came away with you.”

He shook his head, his eyes again probing hers. “But that you should ever have thought of putting yourself in such danger! Have I not striven night and day since your poor mother died to keep you from sin and the wiles of the devil?”

At the mention of her mother she was impelled to get up abruptly and pace about the room. He rose too in alarm.

“An evil spirit has hold of you. Let me pray it from you.”

“No,” she cried. “God is telling me to ask you a question.” She stood still and faced him. “I was five years old when my mother died but I saw how you were stricken with grief. You loved her.
That
was not evil. Am I then never to know a man’s love and bear children?
She
did.”

He thrust his hands into his short cropped hair as if he would tear it out.

“Oh name her not. She died bearing a child. Would I not spare you that? And other babes died barely out of the cradle. I begged her to abstain. I couldn’t bear to see her agony. But love – oh it is not evil but the act itself brings such suffering – even when it is lawful. No, my child, spare yourself. And oh when it is unlawful – when it catches you unawares – then there is terrible retribution. Even if there is abject repentance there must still be lifelong punishment on earth if one is to escape the fires of hell. Would I not strive to keep you from that? And you had a man in your room in that house of sin? You were so close to danger. I can hardly breathe for thinking of it.”

She was pleased to have moved him so much. She must pursue this.

“You say Mother suffered. But there was happiness too. I remember a summer’s day when you had returned from your Father’s business and we walked through streets to some fields. Then we saw people practising archery. I was excited because Mother begged sixpence from you to try her hand. The man who let her have a bow said she should go nearer to the target but she wouldn’t and she hit it right in the middle. We were happy and laughing all the way home.”

He sank down onto the bench. “Moorfields. We left the city wall by the Moorgate.” He looked at her. “You remember that? All the City amusements had been suppressed, the playgoing, cockfighting, bear-baiting, dancing, singing, but the archery was still going. She was so beautiful, drawing on a bow, so strong. I hadn’t the heart to stop her.” He bent his head and she looked for rare tears but he fought them fiercely.

She reached both hands towards him. “Oh Father. It wasn’t evil. Why can we not be happy again?”

“Because she is dead. She was taken away from us.” He lifted his head and looked her in the eye and she saw he was back in the old groove. “Eunice, I have found the strait gate as I told those silk-clad Jezebels hung about with jewels. What did our Lord say? ‘Sell all thou hast and give to the poor.’ My father made much money buying and selling under the Lord Protector and when he moved into that house in the Strand I knew it was the temptation of riches and fame. Lords and ladies inhabit those places. He has grown proud. Now he will court the new King and flaunt his titled French cousins among his neighbours of the aristocracy. I was glad to be free of his business. I was glad to come here and create this little dwelling for me and thee. But I must know that you will never leave me again. You speak of happiness. Happiness comes from trust. If I say I am walking to Billingsgate to preach there you know that is where I will be. Now that you have broken trust and lied to cover it up can I trust you again? Must I take you with me wherever I go? When you go next door to sweep the shop am I to be racked with doubt that you will run away?”

“I won’t run away.” They were just words and she spoke them to see the end of this.

But now he lifted up the great Bible and placed it before her.

“Lay your hand on it and make a vow.”

Sickness gripped her stomach. “Oh Father, does not the good book say ‘Swear not at all’?”

His brows came together and his eyes pierced her. “Are you being defiant? I call not this swearing. You are making a vow before God. If you doubt yourself, if you doubt that you will keep it you must be mewed up here for always.”

Her spirit quailed before him.

“I do not doubt.” She laid her right hand on the Bible. “I promise I will never run away again.”

“And you repent of your sins?”

“I repent of my sins.”