Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (16 page)

“I’m too cold and hungry,” Ben said, suddenly sounding like a little boy.

Nat laughed. “Put some of your ideas on the fire and make a blaze. Here!” He opened his desk and threw him a hunk of bread he had had been saving for later. “Chew that and hold your peace for a while.”

“Thanks, Nat. That will be remembered in your favour on the day of judgment.”

Nat bowed his head over his book to hide his mirth.

December began as cold and wet in Yorkshire as it was in Cambridge. Bel began to long for the comforts of Horden Hall. In winter there fires were lit in all the bedrooms. The Christmas table would be laden with the fattened pig and probably a goose and some pigeons. Here, meat of any sort was meagrely dispensed and as she had heard that the Mistress would be returning to her own family home in the holiday and the grim Madame Buchon left in charge, she feared the festivities would be kept to a minimum. Why did I write to Robert to excuse him from coming for me? she thought. Why hasn’t Father written again? She had just sat down at the table to pen a letter home when a bundle of letters was brought in and there was one for her from Father himself. She opened it eagerly.

‘
My dear Arabella
,’ he wrote, ‘
Robert has shown me your last letter and I am pleased to see your readiness to consider others before yourself. You understand the expense and inconvenience of sending Robert for you on the very bad winter roads and indeed such travel is not at all advisable for the health of a young girl.
’

Oh what a fool she had been! Anger seethed up from the pit of her stomach against herself and against the coldness of his words. He was ‘pleased’ with her compliance, but still glad to be rid of her. She was inclined to tear up the letter and read no more but she had seen that it filled the page so she read on out of curiosity.

‘As you can be accommodated at Cranmore House without further expense, we will accede to this arrangement and trust that you will continue to give satisfaction by your diligence in study and in acts of helpfulness about the school. I have received a letter from your Mistress hinting that you have shown exemplary behaviour on an unspecified occasion and I am very gratified by that.’

That irritated her. The Mistress had written to him but managed not to describe what had really happened. She felt cheated of approbation on all sides. Without much interest she looked at the next paragraph and found to her surprise that her very reserved father was writing about his own health.

‘I have not been well myself with a troublesome cough and have been obliged to commit many of my estate duties to Robert. These cold wet days I have stayed within doors and have written to resign my office of magistrate, which I feel no longer able to undertake. With the Scots forces still quartered here and no immediate prospect of their withdrawal, I feel keenly that our traditional and settled system for the administration of the law has been disrupted.’

Oh yes, she thought, he always treasured the sanctity of the laws of England. He was distressed about that sham trial he conducted. I am older now and I see him from afar as a man, not just an inadequate father. Fancy him confiding all this to
me
. She began to feel a little sorry for him and turned to the last paragraph.

‘It is sad and lonely here without your mother and sister, now of course a Vicomtesse, but I shall hope for a visit from them in the Spring and also from you, my dear little one.

Meanwhile I remain,

Your affectionate father,

John Horden.’

Bel covered her face with her hands. She could feel tears welling up from deep inside her. The words ‘my dear little one’ were so new and strange. Her shoulders shook. She couldn’t fight it. An uncontrollable paroxysm of weeping broke from her, shocking and shaming her.

Jane Wyndham came over to her. “Have you had bad news?”

Bel shook her head.

“But you’re crying?”

Another girl called out, “Some of you said she’s a witch but witches can’t cry.”

“Maybe they can, for nothing,” Jane giggled. “Truly, Bella, what’s up?”

Bel squirmed off the bench clutching her letter. “Just leave me alone.” She scurried out of the dormitory and went to seek Ursula but before she reached the kitchen door she managed to choke back her sobs and ask herself the question; why should I cry because my father might after all love me a little? Is it because Spring is so very far away and suddenly I want to be with him now? She stood still, struggling against another outburst, and the stone passage above, below and all round her struck icy cold into her bones. Then she heard scampering feet and Ursula appeared round the corner from the kitchen.

“I was sure it was you, my Bel.” Ursula had the sharpest hearing. “Something must be wrong to upset you so.”

Bel tried to laugh. “After all this time, I feel homesick.” She held out the letter.

“Oh Bel, I can’t read writing like that. I can read big print but that’s just spiders crawling across the page.”

Bel read it to her, though she felt she was laying herself bare as she did so. Ursula will know why I cried. I mustn’t do that again. Even she must not get too far inside me.

Ursula just hugged her tight. “Maybe it needed that waterfall to empty the grey cloud. We’ll be very jolly here and you shall go home for Easter. Your father calls you his little one, but by then you’ll be quite the young lady. You are already slimmer and taller than you were when I first saw you sitting on your trunk, such a lonesome soul. Can you be happy now?”

She was so comical, the way she poked her head on one side in her absurd bonnet, that Bel managed a laugh to please her. But she was thinking, Ursula couldn’t ever have really seen a cloud over my head, or she would know it’s still there and always will be. She sniffed and drew a shuddering sigh and countered Ursula’s question with her own. “Would you not think that my mother and sister might also write?”

“Oh I feel sure they will.” Ursula’s lopsided smile and twinkling eyes seemed to suggest a secret confidence and the very next day a packet of letters arrived from France.

“You are a soothsayer,” Bel challenged her. “How did you know this was coming?”

“I was sure it would come before Christmas. And now you can answer it too. Then there will be happiness everywhere.” She gave a little skip of glee and ran back to the mincemeat she was making.

She has had something to do with it, Bel thought, wandering back to the dormitory. She has told Patrick Dawson to write to France. Well, let us see if Mother and Hen can also become human beings like Father.

The first missive she read was from Henrietta, a long account of the wedding with every detail of her gown and its trimmings down to the last flower in gold leaf that adorned her silk gloves. This was followed by a description of the family home of the Vicomte, where they had their own suite of rooms in one wing of the chateau. ‘Mother will stay with us till the Spring,’ she concluded, ‘and then we may both make a visit to England when we hope to see you at Horden.’

There was no inquiry about Bel’s life, no plea for reconciliation, not a mention of
scissors
.

Bel turned to her mother’s letters. Again they had been written over several weeks and covered much of the same ground as Henrietta’s, though she also became lyrical about how beautiful Henrietta had looked as a bride. It was this that led her on to a more personal note.

‘I look forward to seeing you too as a bride, Arabella, perhaps next year. Though you cannot aspire to beauty you can, with care and good deportment, make a very presentable young lady. I had hoped and Henrietta hoped too that we could have made a loving parting from you if you had shown yourself truly sorry for the upset you caused, but now I wish us to put that behind us as I believe you are become quite a different person under the benign influence of Cranmore House. You were a petulant child and now you are a young woman of courage. I always felt when you were born that you were meant to be a boy and would have been happier as a boy but you must accept your lot in life and learn feminine ways. These are not incompatible with bravery and resourcefulness. Indeed with grace and modesty they become a young woman. I look forward to seeing you in the Spring and finding you a dutiful companion as a daughter should be to her mother. Although life here is so charming and civilised compared with the bleak north of England I intend to stay by your dear father’s side at least for the summer to see him well again. Perhaps I can persuade him to return with me to France for his health’s sake during the harsh winter months. Pray give my greetings to your Mistress and the other teachers, including the drawing master, and may the blessings of Christmastide rest upon you.

Your affectionate mother,

Maria Horden.’

Bel folded up all this paper without any tears and stuffed it in her trunk. The only thing that moved her was the allusion to her father’s health. Perhaps he was more ill than she had imagined. I suppose I must write back to Mother and Hen, like a dutiful daughter and sister, she thought, though how do they think I can pay for a letter to France?

But when she gave her mother’s message the Mistress handed her writing materials and told her, “Master Dawson will be going to France, Arabella. You may bring me your letters and I will see that he takes them.”

So Bel took care that her reply was beautifully phrased and spelt, expressing her gratitude for the long account of the wedding and telling them of the excellent teaching she was receiving and what pleasant companions all the young ladies were. They will not believe any of that but they will be pleased to see that I have at last entered an adult world of courtly hypocrisy, she thought, as she folded the letter small and sealed it down.

But she felt a little guilty when Ursula danced her joyously round the kitchen on hearing that their letters and her reply had been all friendliness.

“My Bel is chiming pure and true now with no muffling cloud. Now we can indeed sing God rest you merry to one and all this Christmas.”

The girls were saddened though at the news that the drawing master would be away. They all declared they were violently in love with him, but Bel could conjure up no reverence for him as a priest and little respect for him as a drawing master. Since the few moments when under threat of death he had managed to show her how to improve her picture he had not inspired his pupils. He seemed always distracted and nervous, eying their figures rather than their drawings and glancing anxiously at the schoolroom door in case death came stalking in again.

It was the day of his departure and Bel was helping Ursula change the linen on the beds of the girls who had already gone home when they found among the pile of fresh linen a pair of coarse sheets, grey with age.

“Oh bless me, those are mine,” Ursula exclaimed. “Can you run with them to my little cell and just leave them there? I’ll see to them later.”

Bel strode off with the manly walk she always assumed in defiance of the ‘elegant young lady’ she was supposed to be and cannoned into Patrick Dawson, carrying a travelling bag towards the front door.

“Arabella! I beg your pardon,” he exclaimed.

“And I yours,” she laughed. She loved to look at his perfect features but felt almost nothing for this man whose life she had saved. She grinned at him with most unladylike ease, till she noticed a strange yearning expression in his grey eyes.

“Where were you going with those?” he asked looking at the sheets.

“To Ursula’s room.”

“I’ll walk along with you. I wanted to speak to you before I left.”

“But you are coming back after Christmas?”

“No, no, I really can’t stay here now.” He was breathless. They reached the door of Ursula’s cell and he came in after her and pushed the door to behind him. Bel laid the sheets on the bed and stood very straight and stared him in the eye.

He was between her and the door and she didn’t trust him an inch.

“Yes, you see,” he rushed on, “you know better than anyone that I am a danger to this place. It has been very good of the Mistress to let me stay, but I feel I must leave the country and if I go I may never be able to come back. All is changing here. The King has had to dismiss the Queen’s people. We are never going to be safe here while this Parliament ...”

Bel broke in, “Why are you telling
me
this? It’s nothing to me what you do or where you go.”

“I hoped it was. No, I mean, I am going to France. I will visit your mother and sister. I wrote to them what you did, that you were my saviour. Oh, if I could come back ... if I could renounce my office ... I should never have become a priest. Why do you think your mother brought on so swiftly your sister’s marriage? Henrietta had a passion for me and I for her. She was so beautiful. I had to leave, but here it is all young women and you ... you stand out from the crowd. You are young but you have such character. You never mingle with the others. You carry yourself proudly. You are aloof. At the same time you have a look of her ...”

“Her! You can’t mean Henrietta!”

“But I do. I know she is beautiful ...”