Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (20 page)

“Hold off there. What has the man done?” His attackers ran and a constable was helping him to his feet.

He was bruised and shaken but exultant that he was alive and had not given way. Miraculously the square was now full of people proclaiming that the attack was completely unprovoked, that these men had been bullying everyone into signing and even if Cranmore House was a nest of Papists, it was no way for folks to treat freeborn Englishmen.

“They are not from the town,” one man said. “They rode in from York this morning.”

As there was no sign of them and the constable was obviously on his own it seemed sensible for him to remark, “They’ll be riding out again then, I warrant. They are under orders not to flout the law. Are you in need of medical help, sir?”

Nat shook his head. There was a sharp pain when he took a deep breath but he could stand and walk. What he feared now was that the men might turn aside on their way back and pay Darrowswick a visit. “I am not hurt. I must make my purchases.” He pointed to the printer’s sign and the Constable let him go and ordered the crowd to disperse.

The printer, a small wizened man, acted as though he had seen nothing. “Well, it’s Master Wilson. You’ll be providing for your next Cambridge term, no doubt.”

Nat escaped from him as quickly as he could and began to walk the painful two miles home. Freeborn Englishmen, indeed! The population was cowed and fearful.

He was much relieved to see no horses tied up outside the church or the vicarage. His father was weeding the vegetable patch which had always been their mother’s interest with the enthusiastic help of Daniel. She had had to instruct Daniel anew each season, but she took delight in watching him and checking him with laughter if he was uprooting young lettuces instead of weeds. Seeing her drooping on the garden bench and staring unseeing at his father Nat was moved with pity at the change in her from those happy days.

His father looked up. “Nat, are you all right? Your cheek?”

Nat touched it. “Nothing. A scrape.” He sat down on the bench and put his hand to his side. “I think I have a broken rib.”

His mother made no sign that she had heard. He remembered all the times Dan had had tumbles as a boy. Every tiny bruise was lovingly rubbed with ointment. She cradled him and crooned over him. When he was too big for that, she would put him to bed and make him her special herbal brew.

His father of course wanted to know what had happened. Nat told him and finished, “I wish I had not mentioned you. These Puritans take note. They have lists of names. Ben Hutton told me they aim to purge the realm of all wrong thinkers, Church of England men as well as Papists. Even the poor old Archbishop is still languishing in the Tower.”

His father laid down his trowel. “But I am of no importance. Let us go in and see if this rib should be bound up.”

Nat stood stiffly and they went inside. His mother never moved.

“Father, was I foolish? Should I have signed their paper to save trouble? If the constable had not appeared they might have killed me.”

“I trust others would have intervened. No, we should not encourage their vindictiveness. Even if the place did have Catholic leanings, that is no reason to close it down. You had the courage to do right. I am proud of you. I only hope I would have been brave enough to do the same.”

Nat absorbed this praise greedily. It soothed the painful memory of throwing his pike and Dan’s into the ditch.

In the kitchen his father unbuttoned his shirt for him and exclaimed, “Eh, you will have a colourful bruise here.” He ran his fingers with tenderness along the rib. “I think it is cracked. I will bandage it with wet cloths but you must take care how you move your arm.” Again he said, “I am proud of you, Nat. When you left the army you were saving yourself and Daniel from taking life in an unworthy cause. That took courage of a different kind. In these dreadful days, when strife in the name of God is breaking out all over, we will need both courage and wisdom to know when and how to take our stand.”

“What ails him?” came a voice from the doorway. His mother stood there blinking from the sunlight. “If he has been fighting why could he not fight the men who took his brother? He has courage to defend
himself
but not Daniel. Where is your brother? That is what you have never told me.” She watched her husband bind a pad of wet cloth about their son’s chest. “Oh you may coddle and cosset him ,but until he brings Daniel home to me and tells me those Hordens are dead he is no son of mine.” And she stalked out of the room.

Nat looked into his father’s grieved eyes. “That is the first time she has spoken directly to me since I came home.”

“At least she spoke. I have days when she is as silent as a ghost. Pray for her, son. We can do no other.”

CHAPTER 12

Late September 1641

Bel was polishing the big silver fruit dish with the Horden crest to be ready for the coming of the London Hordens.

“They’ll not believe the bride did the polishing herself,” Nurse chuckled as she carefully washed and dried the few rarely used pieces of porcelain, similarly adorned.

“Don’t call me a bride,” Bel snapped at her. “Whatever William is like, I am not marrying him. Father knows this, yet he persists with the charade of entertaining them. What needs the ridiculous expense of sending for ‘exotic fruits freshly landed at the port of Newcastle’ as the billboard said?” She held the dish to the sunlight and then laid it on the kitchen table. “I can see my ugly face in it, but who will notice how shiny it is when it’s covered with fruit. All Father is doing is getting deeper into debt.”

“Nay, you’ll come round to the idea when you see the lad. You’ve had no experience of young men, that’s all it is. You don’t know what it is to be courted.”

“Who says so?” Bel flashed back. “A man courted me at Cranmore House.” As soon as the words were out she wished them unsaid.

Nurse laid down the plate she was drying and stared at her open-mouthed. “A man? At Cranmore House! What men were there? Some outside workman teasing you I warrant!”

“Well, it wasn’t. It was our precious Father Patrick, so there!” She was too far in now to hold back.

“A priest propose marriage! You must have misheard him. Come, get on with the work. Those tankards are still to be polished.”

Bel took one up. Unused for so long it was badly tarnished. Like Patrick, she thought. Why should I care for his reputation? He is in France still, I suppose. She began work on the tankard and grinned sideways at Nurse. “He was ready to cast off his priesthood and come for me when I was older. But it matters little now. He is abroad and not likely to come back.”

“No he won’t, for Cranmore House is shut up now.”

Bel set down the tankard. “Cranmore House shut up? When did you hear that?”

“Lately. A commission came from Parliament, so the master told me. You couldn’t have gone back there, for all the fuss you made when you first came home.”

“But what will happen to the teachers and ... everyone?” Bel had suppressed all summer her longing for Ursula, hoping that if she rebelled over William Horden she might be sent back there.

“I daresay they’ll have families to go home to.” Nurse was musing with her hands caressing the porcelain she had now finished. “Maybe some parent complained Father Patrick had a roving eye to the girls. He must have looked at many beside you, such a contrary little thing that
you
are.”

“But he went away long ago. At Christmas. Oh he did look. He looked at them all but I was different, he said.” She didn’t know whether her father had told Nurse of the threatened attack. It didn’t seem so. But her mind was now only engrossed with the fate of Ursula. Where could she go? She had no family. The thought that she might never see her again was agony. Mechanically she picked up the tankard again and resumed her polishing. Nurse was talking away to herself, digesting what she had heard about Father Patrick.

Bel caught her sister’s name and realised Nurse had said, “Ay, well, he did cast an eye at Henrietta but I dismissed it at the time for everyone looked at
her
. She was a beauty.”

When the tankards were finished and the silver spoons too, Bel went back to her own room to escape any further interrogation. She had after all been allowed to keep the former chapel room and now that the London Hordens were expected the parents, Clifford and Celia, were to have Henrietta’s old room as the smartest of the bedrooms, while William would share Robert’s. This would keep down the number of fires that must be lit and conceal the fact that furnishings from other rooms had been sold months before to help pay the levy that had been laid on all landowners for the upkeep of the Scots army.

Bel sat on her bed and yearned for Ursula’s bright eyes and spontaneous hugs. That summer had been desperately frustrating. The visit of the London Hordens had been planned and postponed several times, sometimes because of riots in London, when Clifford Horden was reluctant to leave his home and business and then because the Scots army was still in the north and he thought it dangerous to be on the roads. Once the King had safely travelled north, actually stopping in Newcastle and hosting a dinner for the Scots General Leslie, Clifford must have realised the north was not as barbarous as he had supposed. Then at last, a treaty was concluded and all but four thousand of the Scots troops departed and Parliament went into recess. Clifford decided all was quiet, they had set off and were expected next day.

If only I had Ursula! Bel moaned to herself. We could laugh about William afterwards! She would giggle and tell me I did well to refuse him. I can hear her funny, blurred galloping voice. ‘My Bel has a lot more chiming to do before she’s hitched up.’ It was impossibly cruel to think she would never see her again, not even know what had happened to her! The hope that had sustained her all these months died inside her and life was as dust.

She lay on her bed choking with dry sobs till she heard Robert bounding up the stairs calling for her. Surely the Hordens hadn’t arrived already. He banged on her door and called, “Are you in there? Can I come in?”

This was unheard of. “If you must. What’s happened? Have they come?”

He stalked in. It was a dull day and the room was dim enough for him not to notice anything amiss about her. “No, no, but I wanted a word with you about them. Nurse seems to think you’ll have to agree to young William after all. It’s been talked about so long, but now it’s almost here so it’s really pretty urgent for me to see you do the right thing.” He sat down on her clothes chest and placed his hands on his thin knees and glared at her.

If she had not been so desolate about Ursula she would have been curious. It seemed to be the first time in her life that he had ever taken any interest in her future. It was unprecedented even to have him in her room. She curled her legs under her on the bed and decided to be very wary of him. “And what do you call the right thing, brother?”

He lifted his shoulders to his ears. “Refuse him, naturally. Send him packing.”

Now he had astonished her. She untucked her legs and perched on the edge of the bed, shaking her head. “You don’t
want
me to marry him?”

“Of course not. Father will have to raise money on the estate to pay your dowry. Hang it, Bella. It’s
my
estate. I know the old man’s been much better in the summer months but he may not live through another winter ...”

“Oh I see. It’s
your
future you’re concerned about. But if you are so sure Father is dying, don’t forget
you’ll
have to find me a dowry ... if I ever marry.”

“Oh you’ll marry. Girls do. I’ll find you a rich widower looking for comfort in his old age and by then I’ll have this place out of debt through my own marriage. No, what I don’t want to see is Clifford Horden getting a foothold in here and thinking he can take charge.
I’m
the heir. Father talks about keeping the Hall in the family, but he’s not going to do it this way. Cousins they may be, but we hardly know them and I don’t see why he should be giving away my inheritance to them when they’ve money of their own. So mind you stick to your guns, and say no to young Will.”

But then she thought, what if William is nice-looking and well-mannered, as Father keeps saying he is, and there is no legitimate reason in anyone’s eyes for me to refuse him? They won’t believe that I never intend to marry. I have that within me that makes marriage unthinkable. How can I explain that to them? Of course I can be utterly obnoxious to him, which will bitterly anger both my father and his parents who are making this tremendous journey to seize me into their family.

“I intend to say no,” she told Robert. But in her heart she was dreading her father’s distress. She had tried to get closer to him in the summer. She had made him take short walks on sunny days. She had tried to cheer him about the state of the country.

It had been hard to lift his gloom. “We were to be one happy land,” he said often, “when King James succeeded Queen Elizabeth. I was only a little lad but I remember when he rode south with his courtiers and we cheered him on his way. And now his son has stirred up strife with his burdensome taxes and trying to force the prayer book on Scotland. But he is still the King and I do not trust these Parliament men.” He usually finished his musings by saying, “It is all the more urgent, Bella, that your future should be secured in these troublesome times.” He had been more cheerful since the King had gone to Scotland to deal with the grievances there but she knew how he longed to see her ‘settled’ as he put it.