Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (22 page)

“But you won’t give in at the last minute for a grand house and fine dresses?”

“No, I’ll run away first.” She pulled her arm from his grasp and ran up to her own room and flung herself on her bed, gripping the covers as if she would tear them to bits.

I only want to be loved and to love, she sobbed to herself. They are all using me for their own ends and see nothing at all wrong with that. I know I am wicked, but I loved Ursula and she loved me. I’m sure she did. I believe I could love a man too, if I could be rid of my cloud. But that I can never be, so how can I ever be loved for myself?

She was sobbing aloud now, her face buried in the pillow so that no sound would carry to the Hordens’ room. She dreaded tomorrow. Clifford Horden had been closeted with her father in his private room for two hours, but she was sure the outline of a marriage settlement had been drawn up already by lawyers and they were only discussing the details. After Christmas she would be fifteen and in her father’s eyes perfectly marriageable. William was nearly nineteen, but seemed much younger. Many young men were married by seventeen. But I can’t surely be dragged screaming to the altar. Truly, if they try to make me I’ll do what I said to Robert; I’ll run away.

Her dreams that night were full of foreboding.

Bel woke early the next day and saw a white mist against her window. Jumping up to look she was reminded of the day a year ago when she had escaped from her room to find Sam but had instead gone on to discover the body on the gallows. Sick at heart over all the intervening months of joys and disappointments and the ever present black cloud, she longed to disappear altogether under cover of the fog. But where would she go? Older now she knew that aimless running achieved nothing. As she watched, her great-grandfather’s statue began to loom through the whiteness. She was oppressed by the generations that had come and gone, the women endlessly bearing children so many of whom did not survive.

“Is this what I am doomed to?” she said out loud. There is a world out there but I am fixed in the lineage of Hordens and have no way out. She felt the Hall and its lands as a great load about her neck. Why must it be saved? It could be shared among the tenant farmers.

By the time breakfast, at which everyone was very quiet as if all sensed a crisis point approaching, was over, a brave sun had sucked up the mist and it promised to be a beautiful September day.

Robert said he must exercise Caesar and would William come riding with him? William declined.

His mother rushed in with, “He doesn’t know your mounts and we have only our carriage horses here. He rides well, though, does he not, Clifford?”

“Tolerably,” he said.

This naturally spurred Robert to go to the stables and come prancing round in front of them all on Caesar as they stood on the front steps. “You won’t see a better horse than this in the whole of London,” he called out to them and galloped off round the park.

Sir John, frowning at this bravado, invited Clifford to his study, presumably, Bel thought, to complete their deliberations.

“Will you walk, cousin,” she said to William, “as far as the fishpond?”

He nodded and his mother descended the steps and trotted after them. He hung back so she could join them and she immediately took Bel’s arm and became very confidential. “Sir John doesn’t look at all well. Has he seen a physician? We have the best in London, of course. What I would really like is for you and your father to come back with us. If you saw London you would never want to leave. All young people need to see life and have wholesome pleasures.”

“We have life in Northumberland and I know no pleasure greater than walking in the country.”

“But we have a fine house in the Strand, between Westminster and the City and we can stroll by the river or in St James’ and not much above a mile away is the splendid Hyde Park, which was opened to the public some five or six years ago. Our house is not as large as the Hall here, but the space is much better used and it is so much warmer. We have water piped in and such conveniences as you wouldn’t believe. Clifford would like of course to have a country estate. It is just unfortunate that this is so far north ...”

“So he would really rather not have a share in it, as my father suggests.”

“How you do jump in, Arabella! You are lacking a mother’s training of course. But no, you don’t understand the position. We are not seeking a share. It would be a purely business arrangement. I can’t see us ever wanting to travel so far again, but if we can help your father out at eight per cent we are happily in a position to do so. You two need to become better acquainted. William is rather quiet and you are just the opposite, so I should say you are well-matched.”

They had reached the fishpond where several branches and twigs were floating that had been torn from the ancient oak in this corner of the grounds by the recent gales. More were strewn about the grass and the place had a neglected look which would certainly upset her father. Bel reached down and drew out a branch, half expecting William to do the same but he just stood watching the fish slipping to and fro in the sunlight.

Bel fixed her eyes on him sternly. “Do you like fish?” she demanded, determined to make him speak.

“Oh,” he said, surprised, “to look at or to eat?”

It was at that moment that Robert galloped past and called out, “I spy an intruder – a beggar by her looks.” He was brandishing his whip.

Bel looked and could just make out a small, ragged figure venturing along the drive. For a few seconds she stared, unbelieving. There was no white bonnet but she knew only one person who had that peculiar scuttling run.

“It is!” she shrieked to an astonished William and his mother. Then she was running across the grass shouting “Ursula!”

But she was still a long way off and Ursula had now seen and heard the horse and was scrambling to the only shelter she might hide behind, the statue of Sir Ralph. Robert was upon her, thrashing out with his whip, circling the statue, yelling with the excitement of the chase as his quarry tried to escape.

Ursula was bobbing round on the plinth but Bel saw the whip catch her two or three times across the shoulders.

“Stop it, Robert,” she screeched in a fury.

The branch was still in her hand and she hurled it as soon as she was close enough at Caesar’s huge haunches. He reared up, forelegs flailing in the air, turning on her. Robert was hurled off backwards, his head cracking on the corner of the plinth. Bel dived out of Caesar’s path under the stone hooves of Sir Ralph’s horse and found herself clasping the small slight body of Ursula nestling under its belly. They looked into each others’ eyes.

“Oh my sweet Bel,” Ursula squeaked, “are you hurt?”

“You, you ... what has he done to you?” cried Bel.

“Nothing, nothing. I have covers enough on me.” She was in fact in rags but they were bits of old blankets, thick and coarse. “But the horseman? Is he hurt? I am so sorry to have caused such a rumpus.”

“
You
cause it! He is a brute, a ...”

She got to her feet and seeing Robert’s inert legs protruding from the other side of the plinth she muttered, “If he has knocked himself out it is all he deserves.” She stepped round and looked at him. She stared. The life seemed to go cold within her and drain out at her toes.

His neck was broken.

That much was instantly obvious from the angle of his head and his staring astonished eyes. Then he must be dead, her brain told her, but she still crouched down and lifted his head and called his name.

“Oh my Bel!” Ursula was beside her. “Who is he?”

“My brother.”

She had never seen Ursula’s face twisted with such shock and horror. She had never seen her whole head before, her pale ears and sparse grey hair. She had no bonnet and the shawl that had covered her as she scurried along had slid off. Her poor distorted features were all too plainly exposed to view and now as others came hurrying up Bel wanted to hide her from their sight just as much as she wanted to hide the sight of Robert.

All she could think was no, no, no, this hasn’t happened. This can’t be real. Time must go back.

But now all the Horden cousins were there and her father.

Celia Horden was crying, “Sir John, Sir John, where is your man to ride for a surgeon?”

Bel thought her father now truly looked an old man, white and haggard.

“But he is dead,” he said hopelessly. He looked about. “How did it happen?” And then his eyes lighted on Ursula and he shrank away. “What is that?”

“Oh the Lord!” Celia Horden screamed. “It frightened the horse. It’s a witch.”

William was just staring in utter terror, unable to move.

Clifford at last spoke. “She must be locked up before she can do more mischief. Have you a cellar?”

“Don’t look at her, William,” his mother cried. “She can put a curse on you.”

Bel surrounded her with her arms. “Father, don’t you dare lock her up. She is my friend. My only friend in the world. How she came here I know not, but Robert was whipping her and now he has fallen off Caesar and he’s dead.”

“You hit the horse,” William said. “I saw you.”

Bel stared at him. So
he
had come to life, had he? “Yes,” she shouted at him. “I hit the horse. I’d have hit Robert if I could have reached him. So call me my brother’s murderer if you will. At least you won’t want to marry me now.” She glared at them all, her arms still round Ursula. “It is not this lovely one who has a devil. It is I.”

Her father was moving his hands about as if to brush all this away. “We must carry him in. He’s my son. I’ve lost my son, my only son.” He bowed himself down then and took Robert in his arms and sobbed. The head lolled horribly and he moaned as he closed the eyes and tried to support the head against his shoulder.

Now at last other figures were emerging from the house and stables. Old Tom and young Adam, with the visiting footman and coachman, Nurse and Mary trailing behind them. Bel knew Sam had been running home between his footman duties to help his father so he was not there. If I have to run away to save Ursula from them all, she thought, that’s where I’ll run; to the Turner’s farm.

Ursula had now wrapped herself up in her pieces of blanket with as little as possible of her face showing. Bel was clutching her tightly round the waist, aware how skinny she was and just beginning to realise that she was almost fainting from shock and exhaustion.

Still she could lift her head and murmur, “Let me just creep away, my Bel. I only came because the sweet Lord seemed to be telling me my girl needed me; but
this
you did not need. Maybe I mistook His word, for I have caused a disaster for you and your whole family. Let me go.”

The servants were lifting the body onto a blanket and taking the corners. No one, for the moment, was looking at Bel or her companion.

“If you go, I go with you,” Bel said. “
Need
you? I have been dead without you.
I
am the witch. I am the bringer of disaster.”

“You just saved me as you saved Father Patrick. The Lord took your poor brother. If he had fallen on the grass he would be alive now. I am wretched for you, Bel, but you are not a murderer and though my coming was the cause of this, I do not believe I am either. But I should go while they have for the moment forgotten me. Let me slip away.”

“You will come inside and have some refreshment. How did you come here?”

“I have walked, begging my way or working so it has taken a long time. I only knew Horden Hall was somewhere near to Newcastle.”

Bel was walking her round the house to the courtyard where the stables were and the back door to the kitchen. Caesar had prowled about, pawing the ground, lost without his master, but now he followed them, seeing figures heading for where he knew hay would await him. Young Adam took his bridle. He peered at the strange being Bel was clutching, but Ursula held her blanket shawl close about her face and he asked no questions.

Bel could see he was bewildered with shock like them all and glad to seize upon something he could do that had any sort of normality. She told herself that her immediate task was to find food and drink for Ursula. Yet all the time there was a shout in her head. “You have killed Robert. Robert is dead.”

A few minutes ago, she realised, he was laughing on Caesar’s back and now he is a corpse, like that hanged man. No wonder he looked surprised. His soul flew off, ping, just like that; if he had a soul. Do any of us have souls?

She was looking in the larder and saw the pewter milk jug on the stone shelf. She took it out and cut a hunk of bread and spread it with butter.

How could his soul go anywhere but hell, she asked herself, when he was lashing out at a helpless woman when he died? I hated him. I wished him dead when I saw what he was doing. Please God, let there not be a hell or a heaven. Let there not be judgment or I am lost. But I
am
lost. That preacher said ‘no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him.’ What have I done but make my black cloud blacker still?

She sat Ursula on a stool and set before her the food and drink, telling herself, just keep caring for Ursula and never let her out of your sight again.