The Town House (47 page)

Thinking of them, which he seldom did nowadays, made him feel very old. Sixty-six this year. Forty long years had sped since the priest at Rede had told a stalwart young man of twenty that half his life was already sped. A long life, and superficially dull, work and work and work again. Two great sorrows, some success, several disappointments. And now, towards the end of it, here he was, riding alongside his granddaughter and feeling, under natural affection something more lively stir.

He broke the silence by saying abruptly,

‘You didn’t mean what you said the other day about going to live with the nuns, did you?’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, without any hesitation, ‘I meant it. I have to.’

‘What does that mean? Your mother? That was all some silly idea she got into her head when there was talk of sending Walter to school. She said it would be unfair to send him from home and keep you. But the nuns wouldn’t have you then. So she wheedled me into letting you go to Beauclaire. Against my will I may tell you. And now you’re home and if I have any say in the matter, there you’ll stay.’

‘I can’t go without your permission. They ask five pounds a year for my keep. And I must take a bed and blankets, linen. But I should cost as much at home.’

‘Cost!’ he said. ‘Cost. That is nothing to me. You stay home, Maude, and I’ll show how little cost matters. I’ll buy a grey mare. I know where to go – a fellow at Flaxham breeds them and trains them to paces that suit a lady. They have manes and tails like floss silk. You shall have a grey mare, Maude, and silk dresses, and a gold ring, a ring with a blue stone to match your eyes.’

She closed her eyes for a moment and prayed one of the simple, unorthodox prayers which had become almost a habit.

‘All this, God! You alone know how badly, at Beauclaire, I wanted a proper mount. The dresses too, and a ring with a sapphire. I’ll sacrifice them all for one hour of Melusine’s sojourn in Purgatory. Please take it, God. It is mine to give. I could have it, and I refuse it.’

She opened her eyes and said,

‘You are very kind. You help me more than you know. But I must go to Clevely.’

‘Why?’

It is his five pounds, she thought; his money pays for the bed, the blanket and the linen. He has the right to know.

‘It is all so sad. I’m afraid that if I speak of it, I shall cry.’

‘Your mother,’ he said, trying to be helpful. ‘You must mind this. Mothers tend to like their sons better than their daughters and when the pair are twins it shows more. You mustn’t mind her, Maude. Let her have Walter. You’re my girl.’

All this, God, too! Please count my grandfather’s favour which I am about to forgo, against one hour of Melusine’s torment.

She said, ‘It has nothing to do with Mother. I know how she feels about me; and it must be very hard for a woman not to like her own daughter.’

Dear God, that is tolerance. I learned that very hard, could that count too? Just a minute. Because it was
so
hard to learn. Please, of Thy mercy, just a minute.

‘Then
why
?’ Martin asked in a grating and impatient voice. ‘Why do you say you
must
go and shut yourself away there, when I want you home?’

A long and horrible story. Something which in its entirety she had never had to tell. The Chaplain had known the details.

‘When I first arrived at Beauclaire,’ she began, and Martin tilted his head sideways, the better to listen She told him everything. The story ran smoothly at first and then was broken, like a stream which in its course runs over rocks. When she came to the recountal of Melusine’s body being taken from the water she leaned forward over the pommel of her saddle and wept and Martin, speaking for the first time since the story started, said,

‘There, there, say no more, I understand.’ And he saw himself with his head pressed against the cold, smoke-blackened stone of the buttress of the Abbey wall, and then, falling prone, nursed in the lap of Old Agnes. To love hard, he thought, that is in our blood. For that reason I struck through the red mist and hit my master; for the same reason I cherished that mountebank, Pert Tom, and Old Agnes. I paid it tribute when I brushed aside, as though it were a cobweb, the almost certain proof that Magda had witchcraft in her; and years later I pandered to Richard over the matter of his love for Anne Blanchefleur.

‘But I must say more,’ Maude said, wiping her gloved hand across her face, ‘because how otherwise can you understand? The Chaplain…’

She told him of the interview with the Chaplain, of her restoration to life and hope, of the task which he had laid upon her.

Martin listened attentively, thinking at first, with deep irritation that this was all the result of her going to Beauclaire, but presently his mood changed. He realized that when she spoke of Melusine she did so as
one would speak of the living, that she had achieved what all Christians should, but rarely do do, the power to look upon death as an incident, not as the end. He compared this with his own feeling in similar circumstances. Kate, Stephen, Robin, and then Richard, all, to him, irrevocably dead. And God non-existent. Brought face to face with a faith so simple and unquestioning, so urgent that this child was plainly prepared to govern her whole life according to its requirements, he felt a thrill of almost superstitious awe. Not for him to oppose her decision. At the same time something in him rose in protest. When he spoke he did so slowly and carefully.

‘You don’t feel that you could pray, and be self-denying and all the rest of it, equally well at home? Nobody would interfere.’

She shook her head.

‘You see that would be doing what I want. All the end of time at Beauclaire I did want to go to Clevely. But since I have been back …. Days like this,’ she said, looking around at the fresh young green of trees and meadows, all a-glimmer in sunshine. ‘No, I know what I should do; and I hope that you will give me permission.’

‘I’m sorry you stumbled upon heart-break so young,’ he said. ‘I was older when the blow fell on me. And I had no faith. You have that comfort. And if you’re set on Clevely, you must go. Promise me one thing though. Don’t think that going there means that you must be a nun.’

‘Oh, I’m not nearly good enough for that.’

He ignored that. ‘It’ll be some time before you have to make such a decision; I may be dead by that time, so I’ll say my say now. It means having no husband, Maude. That may not matter; in most cases I think wanting a husband is something that wears off after a time. But it means no child and that’s a different thing. Women, unless there’s something very queer about them’ – he remembered Magda – ‘need children, live through them. I’ve seen a woman, aye and she was hungry too, give her share of a poor meal to a child who had gobbled down his own. There’s all kinds of love, my dear, but none to touch that. I wouldn’t wish you to forgo it. That poor drowned girl was friend to you, and if you feel she’s in Purgatory and your praying and fasting for a couple of years’ll help, I’ve nothing against that. You mustn’t make a life job of it.’

I’m a clumsy old fool, he told himself. Maybe I’ve gone and put the idea into her head. With a return to his gruff manner he said,

‘There’s Minsham Old Hall. You want to see your Grandfather Blanchefleur?’

‘Not today,’ she said, averting her eyes, so that she should not see the place about which she and Melusine had held those long, happy conversations, made so many plans. The memory revived her revulsion for money, money and the greed for it which had brought about the whole tragedy. And even her grandfather’s kind offer of a grey mare with a mane like silk, of fine dresses and a gold ring – all to do with money. I will have none of it, she thought. Once again she thought kindly of Clevely, where she would be free of it all.

PART FIVE

When Maude Reed came home to her grandfather’s house in the April of 1447, she was just twelve years old, and I was twenty-three: a full quarter century too young, one would have supposed, to be attracted by a girl of her age. And age was not my only safeguard; I am by nature unsentimental and cynical; I was at the time happily provided with a mistress who suited me; and I had already, in the most practical and cold-blooded manner, made up my mind to marry Maude in about four years’ time whatever she was like, even if she were the spitting image of her mother, whom I disliked.

Martin Reed himself put the idea into my mind. He was one of the least communicative people I ever had to do with, but even he, when in particularly low spirits, or provoked, would seek some relief in talk. Several times, when Walter had annoyed him, he would speak of Maude, saying that twins were tricky things and the girl had been born with all the sense: saying that since Walter refused to have anything to do with the business, the one hope for it was for Maude to marry some decent steady man, capable of running it.

Why should not I be that man? I was already, in addition to teaching Walter all he would consent to learn, keeping the accounts, and being trusted, day by day, with more of the practical side. As far as Master Reed could know I was as steady as Baildon Tower; decent, too, for I had learned by experience; my new mistress lived some distance away, and was safely married. Her husband was a game warden whose duties, most conveniently, took him abroad at a time when I was free of mine. In four years’ time, I thought, I should be twenty-seven and ready to settle down; Maude
would be sixteen, and unless her grandfather and her mother changed their ways, she would have had little contact with men. The Reeds were singularly friendless people. In Baildon indeed Master Reed was hated, though farther afield he was held in respect as an honest man and just.

Not being a fool, I realized that my plan to marry my master’s granddaughter was very vague and vulnerable. When I joined the household at the Old Vine the child was placed with one of Mistress Reed’s noble relatives. Mistress Reed was highly connected, and had married the woolmaster’s son for money – by the cast of countenance she usually wore I judged that it had been a bad bargain, she had a very discontented look. She was mightily devoted to her son, and, I thought, to her daughter; she was always stitching away on some fine article of clothing to send to the girl at Beauclaire. And from a few words dropped here and there by Master Reed I gathered that the mother’s ambition was that her daughter should marry back into the class to which she herself belonged. But there the matter of dower was paramount and the old man was obstinate.

‘I’m not laying out my good money as bait for some young popinjay,’ he told me, once. ‘It wasn’t by my wish that the girl ever left home. She was a merry little thing and I missed her sore.’

I thought over that statement; Mistress Reed had had her way once; she might succeed again.

There was very little that I could do to influence events, so I did not worry. I made myself as indispensable to my master as I could, was civil to Mistress Reed and patient with Walter and lived comfortably for three years.

Then Maude Reed came home and I fell in love.

At the time it seemed unaccountable, even to me. Now that I am middle-aged and accustomed to wealth and power I understand my young self better. I am a lover of, a collector of beautiful things, and to me for a thing to be beautiful it must have a touch of the exotic. Anything that is lovely and unusual either in workmanship or material is to me irresistible; the moment I see it it makes an immediate impact and appeal and I am not easy until it is mine.

Maude was Walter’s twin and I had expected her to be like him; it was hardly necessary to make allowance for the difference in sex, for Walter’s looks were girlish; he had a slim, seemingly boneless body, soft dark hair and large dark eyes with long lashes.

My first sight of Maude, therefore, gave me a surprise. I looked, looked again, found myself unable to look away from her. And even now,
after many years, I find it impossible to say exactly what it was that so charmed me. It was a face that
meant
something. Not pretty. Not young even. Already, at the age of twelve, her beauty was the beauty of the ageless, undamageable skull. It showed in her brow, in her cheek-bones and jaw. Her eyes, which were very blue, were set back in hollows and below the cheek-bones her face was scooped out, too. Her nose was low between the eyes, and then jutted out, blunt-tipped and wide-nostrilled. The lips of her mouth were long and both flat and full, and on either side lines had already formed, lines of fortitude, or perhaps of humour, a little on the wry side. The hair which was revealed when she threw back her hood was a warm reddish brown, crisp and springy.