Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (29 page)

Her father had his grey sunken look which always aged him. When Mary had served the vegetable broth with a few morsels of chicken in it and returned to the kitchen, he said, “Mr Dawson has brought sad news. Henrietta’s child is sickly and not likely to live. Your mother wanted him to make clear to us that she is not passing her time in idle luxury but supporting her sorrowing daughter. Of course I had never found fault with her remaining in France. She is safer there and we understand how much her presence is needed. I trust, sir, that when you return you will make clear to her that I wholly endorse her staying where she is.”

“I beg you will say that in your letters, Sir John, for it may be that I will not try to return to France. If I can make a living and see out this wretched war I may secure my future here in the North of England. In the south, especially in London, they are saying Northumberland is riddled with Papacy. Those are their words. Perhaps I can resume, secretly at first, my calling as a priest.”

Bel couldn’t hold back. “You told me once you should never have become a priest.” She had the satisfaction of seeing alarm in his eyes and high colour in his cheeks above his beard.

He murmured, “Much has happened since then.”

Her father chided her for impertinence and deftly turned the subject.“You call these outbreaks of hostility a
war
, sir. Is that what we are now afflicted with – a
civil
war
which may last months or even years, that you speak of seeing it out?”

“You may seem peaceful here, Sir John, but as I passed through Newcastle I saw it well fortified for the King, under the Earl of Newcastle, and as you must know Parliament took upon itself control of the armed forces with its Militia Ordinance. It can raise troops and command the Trained Bands, and for that the King has restored the old Commissions of Array where he can order landowners to muster men and pay towards
his
army. We have had all this news in France and there is no doubt there that King Charles is fighting his own Parliament.”

Bel looked at her father. She knew how he had tried for months to ignore what was happening in the wider country and think only of how he could keep his estate solvent by more and more stringent economies.

Now he answered Patrick Dawson with some asperity. “I
am
aware of all these developments. I have had to send several young men to the King’s muster who are badly needed on the farms. Without my poor son to put in charge of them, they are led by Sam Turner, the one young man, barely eighteen, who can read and write fluently. He is enthusiastic at the prospect of becoming at least a sergeant, but his betrothed, our maid Mary, is grieving. So our lives have indeed been touched by these great events. But I still hope that a compromise may be reached before it comes to a clash of whole armies.”

Patrick Dawson merely inclined his head.

Bel wondered what had passed between them in their first interview. Certainly her father was not delighted at his arrival.

Nevertheless after supper he ordered that a fire should be lit in Robert’s old room and heated bricks placed in the bed to air it. Bel was checking that all was ready for their guest when Patrick himself appeared at the open door. He came in and quickly closed it behind him, exactly as he had done at Cranmore House when he had caught her in Ursula’s room.

She set her jaw and glared at him. “You haven’t changed, have you, Patrick Dawson?”

He smiled, a smile which his beard made positively sinister. “If you mean do I still admire you, no, I haven’t changed. As I prophesied you have become a splendid young woman, strong of face and body, but I know you are betrothed to your cousin, William Horden. Your sister told me the wedding is to be in the spring and she is deeply saddened that she cannot be there for it. She truly wanted you there for hers, but you were a child then and behaved childishly. Now she is sure you are a mature young lady. Your father has written in his letters of your great help in managing the household.”

Bel’s spurt of delight at hearing this did not distract her from her inquisition. “So you are saying you have no hopes of me because I am betrothed and you will therefore continue as a priest, presumably till some other lady takes your fancy. Let me tell you I have no intention of marrying my cousin. Now what do you say?”

He took one step towards her and his eyes were greedy. “I say I would like to hold you, kiss you, caress you, but I may not. I have been an unworthy priest and have suffered much punishment on the way here which I have not described to your father. I have repented in jail cells and after beatings. I do not wish to sin any more against my calling.”

His vehemence amused her a little. If I encouraged him, she thought, he would have me on that bed in a trice. But she was also curious about what he had endured on his journey. “Why were you beaten? Why were you put in jail?”

“I was set upon and robbed of the money your mother had given me for my journey before I had even reached London. I walked into one of the Trained Bands and they said they had orders to arrest all vagrants or press them into their forces. When I refused, they beat me and I was thrown into jail for the night. There were too many prisoners there, so they told me I could go next day. But it happened again a few days later when a band of Royalist soldiers decided I was a Puritan spy. I only escaped from their custody by offering to draw a portrait of their commander. He was a fat German and very vain. He let me go and even gave me a little money for the portrait, which helped me further on my way. It has been a few weeks of hell, but I was determined to reach Horden Hall.”

“To see me?”

“To fulfil my mission. But yes, of course to see you, to see how two years had changed you. But you are not changed inside. You are as fierce and forthright as ever. And as admirable.” He took another step towards her. “And adorable.”

She laughed in his face. “Lust is one of the seven deadly sins, is it not, Sir Priest? I am sorry for your jail and your beatings but I do not like you and will not tempt you any further by my presence.”

She stepped up to him and gave him a push so that he tumbled onto the bed. She had her hand on the door latch when he scrambled to his feet and protested, “I am
not
tempted. I wouldn’t touch you. Stop one moment. I have to ask a favour of a very different sort.” She would have ignored this but he added, “For Ursula.”

“What then – for Ursula?”

“She has been deprived of the sacrament for a long time. Indeed she tells me she has had to attend the parish church and receive there so as to bring no discredit on your father. You know that rite is worth nothing to us, is worse than nothing. I can shrive her and say a Mass for her which would give her great joy.”

Bel shrugged her shoulders. “Do so, if it makes her happy, though how it can do her good from one such as you I know not.”

“Ah, it is not the man but the office that is sacred. Only I have no pyx with me. I dare not carry anything so dangerous. I can improvise with vessels from the kitchen if I bless them first and she can bake a little unleavened bread. But I know she would want your permission.”

Bel waved her hand at him. “Do what you want.” She didn’t like to think of Ursula having secret needs that set her apart. I should be all in all to her as she is to me, she thought, bitterly. “Do it,” she said again, “but privately.”

“I am well used to that,” he said, “but I thank you, Arabella.”

He gave a little bow and she slipped out, feeling uncomfortable and with an unpleasant taste in her mouth.

When Patrick Dawson had been at Horden Hall three days, Sir John asked him straight out at dinner on the Saturday, “What are your plans, Mr Dawson? If you hope to teach drawing for your living you should be in Newcastle demonstrating your skills in the schools or to private patrons.”

Bel was delighted with her father’s bluntness. He had never had a great store of patience and he was not prepared to house and feed an uninvited guest any longer.

“You are right, Sir John,” Patrick said. “Now that I and my poor horse are rested, I must trespass on your kindness no longer. Tomorrow is Sunday and I will take my leave on Monday morning. I trust I can find at least a small attic room in Newcastle suitable for a poor artist.”

Bel saw her father frown uncomfortably. He would hate to be made to feel churlish and inhospitable and they all knew that with the Royalist garrison billeted there the town was overflowing.

“Of course you must come back here for a bed if you are unsuccessful,” he said. He was stroking his own neat triangle of beard and eying Patrick’s shaggy dark outcrop. “I suppose that is your disguise. The Puritans of course are very sparse on hair. You feel that is necessary?” He had already in an uncharacteristically intimate comment told Bel, “I can’t bear to see all that unkempt vegetation opposite me at table.”

Patrick only smiled, “Yes, sir. I know it is a little odd, but artists are forgiven a degree of eccentricity. I found it uncomfortable at first but have grown used to it. It is very generous of you to offer further hospitality, but I will endeavour not to trouble you again.”

In this state of mutual but cool politeness they arrived at Sunday morning, Patrick keeping to his room when they all walked to the village church. Ursula followed her usual practice of accompanying them and Bel didn’t ask whether she had received Mass first.

Bel noticed four Puritanically-dressed strangers apparently strolling casually about the village but she was sure they were noting the people going into church. The vicar had long since stopped wearing vestments and the communion table stood in the centre of the aisle. What could they be spying on? she wondered.

Settled in the Horden pew she closed her eyes. She felt that Ursula beside her was praying, though she made no sound. Nurse was the other side of Ursula. Father had wanted them both in the pew because he said it was too big for him and his daughter alone. Bel knew it was the time when he felt most keenly the absence of her mother, Robert and Henrietta. The closest he had come to confessing this was the previous Christmas when he had said, “I little thought to be without Robert too, but he is no more dead than they are when I know not if I will ever see them again.”

Tom had a sister in the village and sat with her and Mary joined her widowed mother. The village was there Sunday by Sunday but now there were gaps where the young men had sat. The Turner family were the other side of the aisle and Bel remembered how she had watched them through much of her childhood and gradually looked only at young Sam as he grew tall and handsome.

What a child I was then to suppose I was in love, she thought to herself. I wonder what it would be like to be truly in love, not looking at the outside but at the inner man. When I first saw Patrick Dawson I marvelled at his angelic features, but I soon found the man beneath was flawed. I can’t make him out. Perhaps if he had not become a priest he would have loved a woman and kept only to her but he has become obsessed with the thing he cannot have. Poor man. I was sorry for him at Cranmore House among all those girls, but I hated him when he touched me and since he reappeared I have treated him with scorn and laughter. I am older but I am not a good person. I have tried with father and he has had to love me a little, because he has no one else, but the years of rebelliousness and disapproval lie between us and neither of us dares to mention this impending marriage. I’m afraid I only truly love Ursula, but even with her there are things I cannot speak of. She sees only the good in people and I see only the bad. I shouldn’t be here in the house of God.

The words of the epistle edged into her brain at this point. Why she had begun to listen she didn’t know, but they were telling her that they that partook of the Lord’s supper unworthily, brought condemnation upon themselves. Weary of herself, she mentally shrugged her shoulders. I am a murderer. I am condemned already.

When the time came, she ate the bread and sipped the wine and went back to her place, wondering what Ursula felt performing this ritual if she had already received the real thing from Father Patrick, perhaps daily since he came. And what effect did this so-called sacrament have on all the other participants? Nurse repeated the responses in a clear voice, but her corns and stiff joints had more influence on her temper than the services of the church. Father seemed to draw some comfort these days. He was always quiet on a Sunday and gentler of speech, so maybe his soul was moved. If we
have
souls, Bel mused. But he is a hard man to get to know because he is so reserved. He is afraid of his own emotions.

They were standing up to sing the closing hymn. Soon they would be walking back, not her woodland shortcut but along the track, Bel keeping her eyes averted from Gallows Hill as she always did when she was in the village. They would find Patrick at the Hall. I’m glad he’s going tomorrow, Bel thought. I’m uncomfortable while he’s in the house. His eyes; I don’t like his eyes but perhaps they are those of a troubled, frightened man. He’s afraid of himself and afraid of the persecution he has suffered for his calling.

“I’m sorry for Patrick Dawson,” she said aloud to Ursula as they walked.

Father was a few paces behind with Nurse so she could speak freely.