Edwin had a fat purse at his belt, and brushed aside her embarrassed demurs by saying that Lord Montagu was always generous, and would certainly not begrudge her travel expenses. Celia agreed; she knew that both Anthony and Maggie were generous, or had been, but it galled her to be once more dependent. She had been her own mistress in Lincolnshire; during Sir John’s last months, she had been in complete charge and found it sweet, although she had not known of the ruinous state of her husband’s affairs.
By the time Celia and Edwin reached Easebourne and could see Cowdray’s crenelated roof looming through the park trees, Edwin was thoroughly besotted. She had not kept him at a distance during the journey; she had given him smiles, sweet words. She had even allowed him to squeeze her waist as he helped her dismount, responding with a melting quiver against his chest. When they rode through Petworth, Edwin did not look down the road which led to his own home, and he had begun to make feverish plans for breaking his betrothal. The fury of his parents, and Anne’s, seemed unimportant. When he reached his majority, surely they could not stop his maternal inheritance. They might disown him, Anne’s parents might sue—what matter? Once they met Celia they would give in. Nobody could fail to find her irresistible. And, she loved him. He was sure she loved him, yet her so recent bereavement kept her shamefast. He should wait a little.
Edwin did not like to wait, and though the frenzy of his feelings had kept him tongue-tied so far, as they reached Cowdray’s avenue he realized how soon she would be swallowed up in the Castle, and suddenly burst out, “Lady! I love thee—I want thee, I must have thee!”
Celia reined in Juno and turned in mild astonishment. “What’s this, sir?” she said smiling. “You ask me to be your leman? I find you forward.”
“Nay, nay, Lady,” cried Edwin, yanking at his horse’s bridle so hard that it started and lunged. “I mean no dishonor. I wish thee for my wife!”
Celia bent her head and fingered Juno’s mane. Then she raised her eyes to Edwin’s reddened young face. “You are kind, sir,” she said softly. “I’m not ungrateful . . .” her voice trailed off.
“I did not mean to speak so soon,” Edwin gulped. “Celia . . . Celia, give me hope—love like mine
must
breed love.”
“Alack, not always,” Celia said beneath her breath, while she kept her face downcast, nearly hidden by the widow’s coif. She liked Edwin, but for all his seven months seniority, she knew him to be years younger than she in feeling and experience. Calf love, she thought, and yet . . . She had no plans for the future, no certainty of what awaited her in the beautiful tawny-gold palace at the end of the avenue. And was not any love better than none?
“I can not answer yea or nay,” she said, and touched his gloved hand at the stricken disappointment in his face. “And we will see one another, since my lord is in residence.” Until Edwin burst out with his declaration, she had been watching the buck-head banner fluttering from Cowdray’s flagpole.
He reached over and bent from his horse, taking her own gloved hand and kissing it. The glove was one of those Magdalen had sent for Celia’s wedding, the fine French leather was worn thin, the embroidery darkened and frayed, but Edwin noticed nothing except the whiff of rose petals from the sachet where Celia had stored her few treasures.
He
is
a gallant lad, she thought, moved by the silent kiss. Perhaps—then she forgot Edwin as they drew up to the porter’s lodge and her heart began to quake.
The porter did not know her—most of Anthony’s household had been changed through the years, but he was respectful to a widowed “Lady Hutchinson,” and greeted Edwin jovially. “Been quite a journey, eh, sir? Is’t true the natives in them parts swim e’en afore they suck?” He chorded and said to Celia, “Ye can wait in the presence room, Lady. Master Ratcliffe’ll show ye where, though ’tis like to be a while. M’lord an’ lady rode to Arundel three days agone, and not expected back ’til supper.”
“’Tis Lady
Ursula Southwell
I came to see,” said Celia evenly.
“Aye, indeed?” The porter looked puzzled. He had been at Cowdray only two months. “Is’t the old dame up i’ the south wing? I mind the new page was a-bringin’ ’er a posset last week. She’s bedrid.”
“Aye,” said Celia, “and I can find my way. Nay, sir,” she said to Edwin who was hovering, patently unwilling to leave her, “I must go alone.”
He submitted unhappily, and watched the slender black figure walk lithely across the side of the courtyard.
The porter chuckled again. “Smitten by Dan Cupid’s darts, eh?” He thumped his hand dramatically over his heart. “By St. Valentine, I don’t blame ye, sir, she’s a tasty morsel, and no doubt a good in’eritance from her late husband? I’m partial to widows m’self.”
Edwin gave him a cold look and headed for the noisy Hall which was, as usual, crowded with Anthony’s retainers, some dicing, some playing primero and all drinking.
Celia went into the south wing through a turret and up the old winding stone staircase. She found the familiar room. She knocked twice before there was any answer within. A feeble sound. Celia entered.
The woman lying propped on pillows in the bed was so altered that Celia stopped dead, clenching her hands. Ursula was wizened, her determined rugged face had shrunk to a pale wedge from which the hollow eyes looked out sadly, with resignation. Her lips were bluish, the only color in the transparent whiteness. Her grizzled hair hung down over the coverlet in a thin plait which gave her a ghastly air of youth—marred.
She stared at Celia, breathing fast, then held out a fleshless hand. “So you came, my darling, my child,” she whispered. “I’ve made six novenas to St. Anthony. You must reward him for me tomorrow.”
Celia ran across the room and knelt by the bed. She put her forehead silently on Ursula’s quivering hand which moved to caress the girl’s face.
“In black?” said Ursula in a wondering voice as her fingers touched Celia’s coif. “Not Sir John?”
Celia’s slight motion gave assent, and she gulped—it was half a sob. “Oh,
why
did you send me away? Why did you never come? I thought I hated you.”
“I know . . .” Ursula whispered. Through her rapture of relief a gray mist swirled, the faintness she had come to know so well. She gestured to the tabouret beside the bed and a glass vial of liquid. “The drops, sweetheart—the cordial! I must gain strength enough to talk.”
Celia poured a few drops into the cordial and held the cup to Ursula’s mouth. She waited, tears brimming, until she saw a tinge of color on the pallid cheekbones and heard the gasping breaths grow softer. The chamber smelt sour; there were cobwebs in the corner; fleas jumped amongst the moldy straw on the floor; the bed linen was stained and damp. None of this was unaccustomed—Celia had slept in many a worse room, but here there was an aura of neglect and loneliness that smote her.
“Who cares for you, Aunt?” she cried, using indignation as a shield against the crowding sorrow. “Have you no chamber woman?”
“Why, they come . . . now and again . . . the servants.” Ursula shook her head with a touch of the old impatience at so trivial a question. “There used to be Agnes Snoth, d’you remember her, dear? At the priory? She was good to me.”
Celia remembered the neat country maid with the clubfoot who had made sacrilegious statements about the Mass and the sacraments, one wintry morning long ago. “Aye, what happened to her?”
“She was burned for heresy,” said Ursula sighing. “So many burnings, they sickened me, but Sir Anthony—I mean, his lordship, always agrees with the Queen’s Grace. Heretics must burn. I went back once to the priory whilst I could still travel. The stench of charring flesh from Smithfield reached even across the river. When I ventured into Cheapside I could hear their screams.”
Celia winced. “Don’t,” she said. “My Lady Aunt, forget!”
I can’t forget,” said Ursula petulantly. “Don’t you
see
. . . ’tis the reason—the very meaning of—my silence?”
Celia frowned, shaking her head. “Pray don’t excite yourself, dear Aunt,” for Ursula had begun to shiver, her sunken eyes grew intense, the effort she was making obviously exhausted her. She gestured again towards the cordial.
In a few minutes she spoke more quietly and from what she said, assisted by Celia’s pitying, then appalled, efforts to understand, the girl perceived a situation she had had no inkling of during the isolated years at Skirby Hall.
The Queen had thought herself with child. Her courses stopped, she swelled up like a keg, but in the end no babe came forth, naught but a bladderful of wind and putrid matter. King Philip had contemptuously returned to Spain, and the Queen saw this as punishment upon her, as clear evidence of Divine Wrath that she had been too lax with heretics. So the burnings began. Not only were the great folk burned, the Bishops Latimer and Ridley, the Archbishop Cranmer, but much smaller fry in all the southerly counties. Not age, blindness, sickness, nor humble station saved anyone so misguided as to utter a word of doubt against any tenet of the Holy Catholic Faith.
At Cowdray, Agnes Snoth had been caught reading her Bible, and when brought for questioning before Hawkes, the horrified steward, she had gushed forth a stream of heresy. The steward had locked her in the old cell off the latrines until Lord Montagu should deal with this viper in his nest. Anthony, who was about to embark for Picardy as a general in the new French war, had wanted no such sordid and dangerous annoyance on his estate. He sent Agnes under armed guard back to her original home at Smarden in Kent, where he alerted the authorities. Agnes, Protestant to the end, had been burned with others at Canterbury.
“After that,” said Ursula, “
I
was shunned. They could not openly doubt my piety”—she turned her weary eyes towards the crucifix in her alcove—“but Agnes had been dear to me, and there were suspicions—suspicions,” she repeated. Her head went limp against the pillow.
Celia’s mouth tightened as she wiped Ursula’s damp forehead with a corner of the sheet. So Anthony abetted these burnings, he had virtually sent a crippled serving maid to the stake.
“How Lord Montagu must have altered,” said Celia, “and to think he gave me in marriage to a Protestant, even
entertained
them at his table!”
“Aye . . .” Ursula found breath again. “Much altered, but remember, that was all before the Queen’s wedding, before King Philip became his master and England was received back by His Holiness the Pope, before the
Queen
grew fanatic. Celia, at the beginning, when you went to Lincolnshire I did not write to you because I felt you didn’t wish it. When Wat brought back your message, Montagu forbade me the slightest communication with you—I was still in charge of the twins—and since the discovery of Agnes’s heresy, I’ve been almost a prisoner.
Now
do you forgive me?”
“With all my heart,” the girl said.
“And for your marriage?” asked Ursula wistfully. “I’ve been often addle-pated, blundering, rash—I meant for your best, but I was so affrighted by—by—the night that Wyatt came.”
Celia turned her head away. “That night is long past, buried,” she said. “Aunt, how was it that you might send me word
now,
at last?”
“Maggie,” Ursula answered, “Lady Magdalen. When she came here as a bride last month, she found me like this, and took pity. She sent the new chaplain to me, and a leech who bled me—it did no good. They all know I won’t see the summer out—nor need to, now.”
Celia made soothing hopeful sounds which they both disbelieved. Death shadowed the comfortless chamber as surely as the sunlight outside gilded the haymakers whose lusty, merry shouts could be heard coming across the bowling green and pleasaunce.
“I’ve a stain on my soul,” said Ursula suddenly. “I’ve not confessed it to our new chaplain, Dr. Langdale, a busy, impatient man who has come to me but once, when Lady Maggie sent him. He scarce listened anyway, teetering on tiptoe, sniffing his pomander ball—no doubt he thought me plague-struck.”
“You’ve a stain on your soul?” interrupted Celia, smiling. “By the Mass, it can’t be very black . . .”
“I think it
is,
” said Ursula gravely. “I’ve got Agnes Snoth’s Bible, and whilst I could still get from my bed,
read
in it, a little.”
“How is this possible?” cried Celia astounded. “How did this happen?”
Ursula mistook her niece’s cry for horror. “You see . . .” she whispered sadly, “they were right to doubt my probity, may the Blessed Virgin forgive me.”
“But how?” repeated Celia.
“During the short time after the spiteful housemaid discovered her, Agnes took refuge in my chamber. She hid the Book under that floorboard near the window. It’s been there since.”
Celia stared at the shrunken figure on the bed; she looked at the door, then bolted it. She went to the little hidey-hole beside the window where Ursula had used to let her store the pennies and groats she earned during her service at the Spread Eagle. She brushed away the moldering sticky rushes, lifted the loose piece of planking. There was a large book beneath.
The vellum cover was mold-stained, mice had nibbled off its corners, but Celia recognized the shape, and saw familiar lettering on the spine. She lifted the book slowly; it fell open at the start of the New Testament, which showed an intricate engraving of God’s plan for man’s salvation, Adam and Eve, the Tree of Life, the Crucifixion.
“’Tis Matthew’s Bible . . .” Celia said, half whispering. “Like the one Sir John would read from. I know the pictures.”
“Holy Virgin!” Ursula’s voice shook with fear. “Aye, to be expected, alack, but, Celia—that Bible was translated, printed, and the notes made by Master John Rogers; he really
was
the Matthew who first wrote it.
He
gave it to Agnes, himself, when she was in his household for a time. Hide it quick!”
Celia hesitated. This dank-smelling, damaged volume held a reminiscent pathos, an appeal she had not felt during the years when she was permitted no other entertainment. She scraped a patch of blue mold from the title page. “Can it be so great a sin to read this?” she said in a musing voice. “In here is the story of our Lord Jesus.”