The Town House (52 page)

I jumped up and went to him and took him by the arm.

‘Master Reed, you are unwell. Let me help you to your room.’

His weight, greater than I had reckoned for, defied me. I said to Walter, who throughout the whole business had sat watching, detached and observant, ‘Give me a hand.’ He came forward unwillingly and took the old man’s other arm. We got him to bed and sent for the doctor who bled him and diagnosed a fit of the choleric humour. No meat, he said, and no wine for two days, and we were all to take care not to anger him; he advised, too, that during the two days of low diet the old man should remain in bed.

So next morning, speaking as usual, looking pale after his blooding, Master Reed said, ‘Send Maude to me.’ My heart, which had been very low since those words about the novitiate, rose a little. He looked very pitiable, propped against his pillows, and she, I knew, was fond of him; maybe he could talk her round. But I found, when I went in search of her that she had gone already, stealing out before breakfast and taking one of the yard boys with her to bring back her horse.

I began then to think seriously about my future. With Maude in a nunnery and Master Reed likely, according to the doctor, to fall down dead any time he was crossed, my prospects were not promising. It was too late now to begin insinuating myself into Mistress Reed’s favour; in the event of my master’s dying I should be out on my ear smartly.

Up to that time I had been completely honest in my dealings, which included handling considerable sums of money and negotiating even larger ones. But from that St. Joseph’s Day I began to emulate the Unjust Steward in the Bible story, whom Our Lord Himself praised for his foresight rather than blamed for his dishonesty. I was very careful, never taking more in coin, or making as a false entry more than could at a pinch, be regarded as a genuine mistake; and it was all the easier because after that birthday visit and Maude’s running away my master began to decline, not only in body but in mind and spirit. He began to talk of Maude as though she were dead, and sometimes he would call her Kate, and then catch himself.

I said to him once, ‘You mustn’t despair too soon. Every novice doesn’t take vows by any means.’

‘Despair,’ he said. ‘It isn’t that. It’s acceptance. It all goes by rule and the rule laid down for me was that Walter the smith’s son should never have anything.’

Then he said, ‘Did I say Walter the smith’s son? My memory plays tricks. I knew him as a boy. It’s I who must lose all I gain.’

‘Oh come,’ I said, ‘you’ve been very successful in business.’

‘Yes, I’ve got a good business.’ He said it as though he mocked himself and it.

When the time came round for the five pounds to be sent to Clevely he sent it meekly; and charged me to tell Maude that she had but to ask for anything more that she needed. That message I was not able to deliver since Maude was either not allowed, or had herself chosen not to see me. Dame Clarice took the money and told me, kindly but firmly, that it was impossible for me to see Maude.

Before I got back to the high way I dismounted and lay in a field full of tall white marguerites. I threw myself from side to side, crushing the flowers, full of misery and self-pity and fury at my own folly. To have let romantic love get hold of me and wreck my happiness, fool, sickminded fool! Gay Nicholas Freeman, over whom several women had cried, lying in a damp field, perilously near crying himself!

I resolved to throw off this weakness. Good-bye to Maude Reed, I thought, when at last I rose up and brushed the grass and broken petals from my clothes. Being already half-way to Minsham I would go on, and see Clemence and take full pleasure in the thing I had, instead of crying, like a baby, for what was out of reach.

Half-way through the next month, July, any wrong which Mistress Reed had done her daughter, and through her Master Reed and me, was repaid ten-fold.

Walter walked into the dining hall for the mid-day dinner carrying his lute and wearing his best clothes. His mother made some comment upon his attire, and he said, as casually as though he were announcing a visit to church or a near-by fair,

‘I’m going to Walsingham. A party sets out this afternoon.’

I knew, and so did his grandfather, that the hour had struck. Mistress Reed, ever blind to what she did not wish to see, spoke for a moment as though he were merely joining a pilgrimage. Did they go mounted or afoot? Were any of the party known to her by name?

His smooth, secret face took on for a moment the bony stubborn look that was his sister’s.

‘They’re tumblers and jugglers, riff-raff. We shall walk, from Walsingham to Lynn and then to Lincoln.’

She could not be blind to that. She turned pale, and with trembling lips began to plead.

‘Too young,’ she said. ‘You’re too young Walter. Wait just a year, one more year. I promise then that you shall go, if you want to, with my blessing.’

‘I’m as old as Maude, and she has chosen what she is to be.’

‘Girls are always older for their age. Besides, Maude is safe.’ She reached out and took him by the wrist. ‘Walter, I beg of you. The roads are full of dangers. Thieves,’ she said. ‘Cut-throats.’

‘The poor are safe enough. Thieves only set upon merchants with fat money bags.’ He gave Master Reed a saucy, provocative glance.

‘Don’t be so sure,’ his grandfather retorted. ‘The only time I was set upon, beaten and left for dead, I was in rags and hadn’t a farthing to my name.’

‘There are plenty on the road who would kill you for your shoes,’ Mistress Reed said. She turned, still holding her son’s wrist, and appealed to the old man. ‘Forbid it,’ she said. ‘You are head of the family and he is only a child. Forbid him to go.’

He said harshly, ‘What would be the use?’

Walter jerked his wrist free.

‘All this fuss,’ he said disgustedly. ‘It isn’t even sudden. I’ve been saying for years what I would do. And now, I know, is the time.’

As he said the last words he threw back his head and the fine black hair that was smoothly clubbed about his skull shifted and stirred, as though, in that still place, a free wild wind blew on him.

‘You must take some money,’ Master Reed said, ‘in case of sickness, or other ill fortune. It must be sewn into the lining of your jerkin.’

‘You’re encouraging him,’ said Mistress Reed, beginning to cry. ‘I see it … because I let Maude go, you. … Walter … yes, I see. I’ll fetch her home, I promise. Make Walter stay here and I’ll persuade Maude.’

Walter jumped up and grabbed his lute and looked ready to run.

‘Wait,’ the old man said. ‘You must have the money and the names … the names of honest men I know in many towns, who would help in case of trouble. I’d have done as much for her,’ he added inconsequently, ‘if I had known.’

‘Nor is that all,’ cried Mistress Reed, checking her tears, ‘Walter, wait. I never wholly believed – you see, your father talked the same way and he never … no matter now – I never believed you would go, or so soon. I would have done something about it. Don’t waste your music on the greasy gaping crowd, Walter. Make something of it. Go to Beauclaire or Rivington, or to your Uncle Godfrey at Horsbury where you could be heard by those who could advance you. Music like yours should be played at Westminster or Windsor.’

That was flattery. To do him justice I will say that during the last months his playing had improved and the spell which he could cast on his hearers now had solid worth behind it. But Westminster and Windsor!

Walter said, ‘I would hate that way. To be taken up because this man was my cousin or that one my uncle. Not for me! When I go to Windsor of Westminster it will be as plain Walter Reed, the strolling player. And I shall go by invitation.’

Since the day when I heard the fourteen-year-old grandson of a wool merchant speak those words I have mingled with the great; I have spoken with crowned kings and stood in the presence of St. Peter’s anointed successor. I have never, anywhere at any time, heard anyone speak so arrogantly.

Mistress Reed, her last card thrown and the game lost, said in a dull voice, ‘Come, let me sew in your money.’

‘Wait, ’Walter said. He looked into the hall, where the weavers and yardmen and such pack-whackers as were home for dinner that day had their eyes and ears upon our table, even as they plied their knives and spoons. He climbed on to the bench where he had been sitting and took up his lute.

‘I am going away for a little while,’ he said in the clear, confident voice of one already used to addressing a mob. ‘This is my farewell to you. It is called “A Song At Parting”. I made it for this occasion.’

He had based it on one of those old pagan tales which had managed to slip through the close net of censorship which the Church had tried to drop between the stories of the antique world and those of Christendom. In a light, pleasing voice, neither child’s nor man’s, he sang of the final leave-taking between Orpheus and Eurydice, when he, having broken the condition of her release from Hades, she must turn back into the shadow world.

I suppose everyone within hearing, the stolid Flemish weavers, the rough urchins who swept the stables, the brutal drivers of the pony teams and the maids who came crowding into the doorway to the kitchen had at some time known a parting from someone of whom they were fond. The song spoke direct to the memory. I sat there, thinking of Maude, that tender mouth never to be kissed, that slim, just nubile body doomed to sterile virginity. I felt my own eyes moisten. Mistress Reed broke down and put her face in her hands and sobbed without restraint. Everyone cried except Master Reed who stared straight ahead of him, God knows at what ghosts.

Walter struck the last note; looked around with satisfaction and jumped down from the bench.

Perhaps his music had touched his own heart. He laid a hand on his mother’s shoulder and said,

‘I’m not going for good. I shall be back one day.’

Master Reed got heavily to his feet and said, ‘I’ll go get the money. Show it to nobody, Walter, and don’t speak of it. Keep it in case of need.’

Walter’s departure had two results. Martin Reed now began to speak openly of me as his successor.

‘It’ll be in your hands,’ he said, speaking of the business. ‘Even if Walter comes home when he tires of the road, he’ll know nothing. I want my daughter-in-law kept in comfort so long as she lives and I’ve always helped keep her father who’ll probably live to be a hundred. Then there’s Maude’s dower. And I hope you’ll get a family of your own. So you’ll need to keep busy.’

The third time he spoke to me in this strain I said to him frankly,

‘Unless, sir, you make a will and state clearly that it is your wish for me to take charge of the business, all these plans will come to nothing. If you die intestate, Walter is your heir, and his mother, on the spot will be his regent. Before you are in your grave – God forgive me for mentioning such a thing – I shall have a month’s wage and my quittance.’

I spoke the more surely because, since Walter’s going, the relationship between Mistress Reed and myself had undergone a great change for the worse; and for a reason which no one would credit.

She had attempted to assuage her melancholy over the loss of her son in a way unusual to women; she took to drink. Openly, at the supper table, she would drink three or four cups of wine in place of her usual one; and secretly too. I’ve gone into the solar in an evening and found her there, her hands idle on a piece of embroidery or plain sewing, and the air reeking of brandewijn; I’ve seen the cup standing on the floor, half, but not quite, hidden by her skirts. I’ve passed her on the stairs, standing aside where they widened and turned to allow her to go by, and smelled the same pungent odour, and she just come from her bedroom, early in the day.

She was never noisy or truculent; indeed in her cups she became more agreeable; the lines of her face would lift and soften. One realized for the first time that, if she married young as most girls do and quickened soon after, she could still be just short of thirty. My Clemence was thirty-two. Mistress Reed had always seemed at least ten years older. But drunken, she lost something of her stiff, cool self-contained look.

One evening, when Walter had been gone a month, I came in late, from Minsham. I had no more reason for secrecy, for over the episode of the ring on that fatal birthday morning Master Reed had betrayed that he knew about my attachment. After that any errand of supervision of the Minsham sheep run, where the sheep from the Cotswolds still flourished and produced their over-weight in wool, would be undertaken in the afternoon; then I would have supper with Clemence, make love, and ride home.

It was now four months since Maude had gone back to Clevely without even a good-bye and my defences were building up. As I rode home I had thought to myself that if I could persuade Martin Reed to put me upon a sure footing, either now, or by will, which would take care of the future, I might do far worse than marry Clemence. She had much the same background as Mistress Reed and would be a match for her, I thought. And though the two boys were imps straight from hell – you could almost smell the brimstone on them – one thorough good beating apiece, which, as their stepfather I should have the right to administer, would improve their manners if not their characters. I toyed with this thought, not enthusiastically, but rather with the resignation of someone making the most he could of the second-best, all the way home, while on the warm night air the scent of honeysuckle and meadowsweet lay heavy.

I noticed as I came to the Old Vine that there was a light in the solar window. Mistress Reed, a bit drunken, had left the candles burning, I thought. When I’d stabled my horse I would go in and pinch them out.

When I re-entered the passage which ran clear through the house, the solar door was open and she was standing just inside. Her hair, which I had never before seen completely uncovered, hung loose to her shoulders, very curly and pretty, pale gold. She wore a blue velvet bed-chamber robe, so ungirded that I could see her breasts. And they were pretty too. She was very drunk.

I was reminded of my first visit to a house of ill fame. It stood in a narrow lane, just off Tombland, in Norwich; the girls had worn exactly that half-revealing, half-concealing garb, and that same air of deliberate welcome.