Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (37 page)

He looked down at the tangled overgrown spot that hid his brother’s body and couldn’t help dropping on his knees and remembering the loving guileless soul that had been his hourly companion all his youth. He prayed and then, noticing some windflowers growing among the new green of the brambles, he picked a bunch and gathering up some of the moss from the stone he encased the stems in it, wrapped his pocket handkerchief loosely round and placed them carefully in his saddle-bag. Then he mounted Jed and rode as fast as he could back to Newcastle where the same guard remembered him and let him through.

He would not pause for refreshment in the town although he looked about in search of his Spring maiden as he called her in his heart, but of course she would be within doors weeping for her father. He had to leave by the bridge before the gates were closed and he feared his reception there. Fortunately the guard had been changed since the morning and knowing his College pass would be useless he was ready to produce the Squire’s letter.

As it happened the guard was willing to let him through for a shilling. “Every mouth outside the town is one less to feed if we’re besieged,” he chuckled. “And with hair that long I reckon you’re no Parliament spy.” Nat had not stopped to hide his hair but he would do so before he went much further.

As he rode he was yearning with all his heart to see his mother, the first time in his life that he had had such a longing on returning home. This surely marked a new beginning and happier times, if she could only survive till he came. But he was almost superstitiously afraid. It seemed to him a sinister omen that Bel Horden’s father had died while he was speaking with her. Again his thoughts settled on his Spring maiden and as he rode further south in the evening light he could not shake her out of his mind. He dreamt about her in the seedy inn where he finally stopped to spend that night, scarcely noticing the bed bugs and the snoring of a travelling medicine man who shared his bed.

It was very late evening the next night when having safely delivered a tired Jed to Sir Bertram, he walked the last two miles to Darrowswick. As he breasted the hill he discerned something white at the bedroom window. Someone had spied him and was waving a kerchief. Could it be his mother? Pray God she was still alive.

His father opened the door before he reached it. It must be his mother above. Clasped in his father’s arms he choked out, “She lives still. She waved to me.”

“Not merely lives but is much better. I don’t know how it is but it seemed that as some of the poison seeped from her mind so did the suppurating matter from her leg. As you know, much came away the night before you left and the doctor came and is greatly pleased with her condition. When you have had some refreshment you must come up to her.”

“I shall come at once. I will eat and drink freely when I have seen her.” Carefully he took out the windflowers and carried them upstairs. They were still recognisable.

His mother turned from the window and held out her arms to him. He laid the flowers on the bed and ran to her and knelt down and she embraced him. This was more than he had ever dreamt of and he had not even told her the outcome of his mission.

“I thank God you are back, son.”

“Oh Mother, Sir John and Robert Horden are dead, but I did not have to slay them. The Lord has taken them in His own way.”

She leant back on the window seat and gave a strange cackling laugh and clapped her hands. “Well, praise be to Him.”

Nat shrank a little from her but said nothing. He got to his feet and fetched the flowers. “I couldn’t bring Daniel but I picked these on his grave.”

She took them delicately onto her palm. “Ah wood anemone, the windflower. They are beautiful. We will press them in the family Bible, Joseph.”

Nat saw that his father too was gazing at them wonderingly. It was a joy to hear her speak of an activity jointly with her husband. She had always seemed so separate, so deliberately cut off.

Now he told them all he had learnt but left out any mention of the Horden daughter. He would tell his father alone, but not till he had written her a letter. He had no wish to be told it was unwise or worse, improper to do so. He was sure she was no slave to convention herself but she might well have an elderly relative who would warn her from corresponding with an unknown young man. I will be open with her and tell her who I am and how I found out her identity and I will offer her my heartfelt sympathy. Of course she may know nothing of one case among many that her father tried, but I must explain what my inquiries were about. If she never replies I will be very sad. She is a girl in a thousand. Then he laughed at himself because he had known so few.

For the rest of the vacation he was thankful to bask in a family life that had a harmony he had never known. Though his mother was very fragile she was, by the end of his vacation, able to limp about the house or sit outside in the spring sunshine and though she was quiet she seemed at peace and above all she showed Nat the affection that she had never done before.

“You are at last filling the gap that Daniel left,” his father said, “which I could never do. This is all I have prayed for. I only trust she will endure your going back to Cambridge without sinking into that former apathy. Before I have feared the effect of your return because you were not Daniel. Now I fear your going, because you are yourself and she has found she loves you. A sweet irony.”

“I will write often. And Father, if there should come any letter for me from Northumberland, pray forward it.” Then he told his father of the chance meeting but not all that was said at it. “She has not replied,” he added. “Of course she may not have received my letter. Did I do wrong to write?”

His father looked at him with a humorous raising of his eyebrows. “She has captivated you in that brief encounter, has she not? I can see it in your blushes. No, it was not wrong to express your sympathy, but it would have been forward to ask her to enter into a correspondence with you.”

“Oh, I did not do that, sir.”

“Then she may not see that a reply is called for or she may send a few words of formal acknowledgment, but remember that letters are not easily sent. Messengers must be found willing to take them and they demand extra payment in these troubled times. But do not fret for her, my boy. God will send you the right woman in due course. Not a baronet’s daughter and not a Horden. That would be a torment to your poor mother.”

Nat nodded and said nothing more. It wasn’t possible that he was in love with Bel Horden. He scarcely knew her. He was only curious and if he heard nothing from her he resolved to write to her again from Cambridge.

Bel received her letter while she was hanging out the best Holland sheets. She and Ursula had washed them in the hope of selling them in the town. After her father’s funeral they had been going carefully through the whole house to assemble goods which could be sold. They were piled up on the table behind the screens in the great hall, a new use for this grim space.

Bel looked at the directions on the letter and didn’t recognise the hand. There had been various letters from creditors since her father’s death so she finished pegging out the sheets and took the basket inside. “I’ll read my letter on the bench, Urs,” she called. “Can you put the stew-pan on the fire so it’ll be ready for dinner?”

“Yes, my precious.”

The late April sun glinted on the seal as she broke it and unfolded the letter. The first thing that leapt out at her was her name BEL printed in capital letters. What was this!

‘May I presume to address you as BEL,’
she read,
‘not having been vouchsafed any other name? I do however now know who you are and will therefore reveal that my identity is also more than NAT.’

She sat back against the wall of the house with a huge smile of delighted surprise. She had thought often of that young student with his well-worn dark doublet and breeches, his hat comically pulled down over his mild, pleasing features, neither handsome nor plain but utterly open and transparent. He had been both devout and humorous which was a wonderfully refreshing mixture. So how had he found her out and why had he written? She returned avidly to the letter.

‘My name is Nathaniel Wilson of Darrowswick Parsonage, near Easingwold in Yorkshire and my business in Newcastle was to make inquiries about the Horden family.’

Easingwold! Cranmore House was near there. Could he have been sent by the Parliament people who closed it down? Surely he was no spy?

She read on.
‘I learnt later that day of the death of your father and this is the principle reason that I am writing to you, to express my great sympathy for you in your sorrow. I believe he might already have died when we were praying for him in the church.’

We
? thought Bel,
you
were praying.

‘I trust you have been able to find comfort among your friends and family.’

Only from Ursula. But what business could he have had with us?

‘I will be open with you about my purpose in seeking news of your family. It was your father who had occasion to put on trial my brother, Daniel, in September 1640.’

Bel clapped her hand over her mouth. Daniel Wilson, the hanging one-eyed body. No, oh, no. The black cloud fell about her in a storm of ice. That sweet youth an avenging angel! It must not be. She forced her eyes to return to the page.

‘All I sought was some information about his death and burial which we were not able to obtain by written representation through the since-disbanded Court of the North. Learning that your brother Robert had died some time ago and that Sir John too had just succumbed to a long illness, I went to look at the village where my brother died and discovered his burial place which gave me comfort.’

The body is somewhere there! I may have passed by it. But who spoke to him? Who knew where the body was? Mary told me there had been a stranger in the village the day Father died but everyone was fearful of him since the last strangers proved to be murderers. It was a mystery. She turned back to the letter.

‘As I believe I mentioned to you, my mother was ill and I was able to take her some wild flowers from his grave. She has since recovered although she is very frail. It was in Nether Horden that I learnt of you and realised I had had the great privilege of conversing with you that morning, unaware of your family connection.’

Mary didn’t say he spoke to anyone!

‘May I reassure you that though I have always been certain of my brother’s innocence I do not hold it against your father that he felt he had to convict him. My brother was simple and unable to give a clear account of himself. I am also aware that there was great anger and fear among the people at the time and that they took upon themselves to carry out the sentence against your father’s wishes. At the time I was given an account of the circumstances of Daniel’s death by a witness who urged me to flee lest I also be suspected. The one piece of evidence that might have saved Daniel remains mysterious to this day. That was the existence of a fat boy ...’

Oh no!

‘ ... whom Daniel himself told me he saw, who may have been the culprit in the rick-burning for which he was charged. I will never uncover that puzzle and I know you are unlikely to have any knowledge of the incident at all. I am not disclosing the name of the person in the village who helped me in my recent visit, because he might not want to be identified. As far as I am concerned the affair is past history. I rejoice that my visit has brought comfort to my mother and healed the rift that formerly lay between her and me. I regret that I told you she had not loved me as a child. You also spoke of your own unloved childhood. That still saddens me greatly but I believe you had found a new closeness with your father just before his death. That he should have been taken away so soon grieves me more than I can say. Let me repeat my condolences and also my gratitude for your kindness to me that morning when you helped me so readily in the recovery of my horse and guided me to the inn for his stabling. The memory of our time together is very precious to me and I beg to remain a little more than a passing friend and also your humble servant,

NAT

Nathaniel Wilson.’

Bel let the letter lie in her lap and clasped her head in her hands. The mystery of the fat boy! That will haunt me to my grave. And that he of all people should want the answer – the only man I have ever met that I believe I could have liked. My cloud will hang for ever between us. I can’t answer his letter, because I could never tell him my guilt, just as I can never tell Ursula. How could I tell a devout young man that I was his brother’s murderer, that I have a devil in me and am for ever damned?

She had a faint recollection of saying wild things at the house of Alderman Johnson, implying that it was unsafe to be near her for death stalked her everywhere. Certainly guilt clung about the deaths of her father and brother, even of Patrick Dawson for if he had not been drawn to her he would not have come. It was at least a blessing that Nat’s mother had recovered. No evil curse had been passed to her, but she still felt that if she had not spent time with Nat her father might have lived.

She sat long, rereading the letter and wondering about the sender. He was nothing to do with Cranmore House so his motives for writing were just what he had expressed – true sympathy and a genuine interest in herself. His honesty shone like a light. Can I not reply? But honesty must be met with honesty.