Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (38 page)

Ursula called her to dinner. They ate together in the kitchen now and Bel had usually no hesitation in showing Ursula every letter that had come. But this one was different. She hid it away in her closet and Ursula was too sensitive to ask about it. There had been nothing yet from France. How could she tell if hers reporting her father’s death had even reached them? She had described the funeral which the village had not allowed to pass quietly. The procession to the churchyard contained every inhabitant, only excepting Nurse, though this Bel did not write to her mother.

Nurse had come to her the night before the funeral in a passion of tears and begged her to take a handful of silver she brought in her apron.

“Oh, Bella, forgive me,” she had said. “I took their money – those murderers. I haven’t spent a penny. It’s blood money.”

“And what am I to do with it?” Bel cried, horrified at the confession.

“Give it in at The Crossed Swords for the tenants after the funeral.”

There would be some irony in them getting drunk on Puritan money but Bel couldn’t bring herself to take it. Nevertheless there was money there for the wake and she supposed Nurse must have handed it in herself as coming from the Hall. She had since taken to her bed with a cold and not been seen about. I have to forgive her, Bel thought. She didn’t know their ill-intents and the temptation was too much for a poor old woman.

Life fell back into the pattern she had established since the funeral but she thought every day about Nat’s letter and took it out often to read again, studying his handwriting which was very fine and flowing, pondering on his choice of words, wondering what he was doing, what his home, his father and his mother were like and how much he still grieved for his brother and in his heart loathed the name of Horden.

In the mornings after the basic duties which Mary and Tom helped with, the fires, the chopping wood, the hens, Bel and Ursula would turn out the next chest or closet on their list and select items which would not be useful to them and could be sold and they added them to the collection behind the screen. Bel would write to the provision merchants whose bills had not been paid and invite them to come and take goods in payment.

“We are going back to a barter system because we have no money,” she said openly. “Our tenants cannot pay their rents because their farms have been raided by the army, but I am determined to free Horden of debt.”

In May she received a letter from the Parliamentary Commission for Sequestrations, addressed to her father, and telling him that officers would come to seize the assets and arrange for all income to be paid to Parliament funds for the army. A clause said that a fifth might be permitted to be retained for his wife and children. It was the standard letter sent to all on the lists and she was about to throw it on the fire when she remembered Alderman Johnson and decided to walk to Newcastle and show it to him. He had been keen for her to leave and her father’s body to be removed as soon as possible but she thought he might be willing to help if it was his influence that was sought rather than his domestic convenience hazarded.

She took Tom as escort. Tom with no horses to care for had all the jobs about the Hall that a man might be expected to do.

“What we need,” Bel told the Alderman, “is a troop of soldiers to guard us night and day from Parliamentary forces.”

He was a florid gentleman and he turned a brighter shade of red at her words. “We are not even sure of the loyalty of our Trained Bands and with a siege of the town constantly threatened we have no one to spare for homes beyond the walls.”

Bel flashed back, “I said what we
need.
I never thought you could produce it.”

“What then, my young lady? I am a busy man.”

“My father believed in justice and the power of the law. This paper from Parliament is unjust. I have never been a Papist, nor was my father. We never willingly harboured a Catholic Priest except when my mother lived at home. Why should our land be sequestered as they call it? And now that my father is dead and
my
name is not on the list and the Hall is my only home, how can Parliament have the power to take it from me?”

Alderman Johnson scratched his head. “Many things are being done all over the country that are unjust because Parliament needs money for its forces. But as to their power, until they have forces enough in the north, I do not believe they could send men to seize the Hall. I advise you to sit quietly and do nothing. Surely your mother will return from France now you are alone.”

“I have had no reply yet to my letters. But she and my sister are staunchly Catholic and fear imprisonment or worse if they come to England.”

“And could you not go to join them?”

“Abandon our property? No. I will fight this, whoever wins this mad war.”

“You are a young lady of great spirit. Reply to them that your father is dead and hence the sequestration order must lapse. I wager if the King wins the next battle all laws made without his signature will be null and void. Now, my wife will insist on your taking dinner with us before you return.”

Bel did write the letter and heard no more from the Committee of Sequestration. In June the Earl of Newcastle took most of Yorkshire for the King and Bel, knowing Darrowswick lay near Easingwold, wondered how Nat’s family were faring. The news also reported that the Queen with three thousand infantry, thirty companies of horse and six cannon was heading from York to join the King at Oxford. Perhaps the war
was
turning against Parliament. Bel was thankful that Nat was at Cambridge. She knew because he had written to her again from there, delicately suggesting that his first letter or her reply might have gone astray. Knowing how she would have loved to be a student, he trusted it would not make her too envious if he described College life which went on despite the war. He was to be allowed to sit for the Bachelor examination and his tutor wanted him to stay and study for a Masters’ Degree, but he felt he should be earning his living soon to help his parents. How was she faring since the sad loss of her father?

Bel ached to write back. He would find her silence so churlish and at last she asked the vicar to pen a brief note saying Arabella Horden thanked him for his letters but was unable to reply. She didn’t divulge to the vicar who her correspondent was.

At last she heard from her mother who said she was heart-broken at the news but she knew how brave and resourceful dear Bel was and with Nurse and all the servants she would not lack company. Bel smiled at this. Henrietta was again with child, so of course there was no possibility of them travelling and England was still in turmoil. Could Bel not come to them? On the way she could stay with the London Hordens who, although they had behaved badly over the betrothal, would not refuse her hospitality. Once in France they could find her a French husband and the revenues from Horden could be sent there.

Bel showed Ursula this letter.

“Do you want to go to them?” she asked. “They are your family.”

“You are my family,” was all Bel said to that.

And so the summer rolled away and crops were harvested. Somehow the population survived and the tenants paid some of the arrears of rent.

Nat wrote again to Bel, delighted that his letters pleased her and to say that he had taken his degree and returned to Darrowswick to seek preferment to a parish not too far away, but that this was doubtful since the Scottish Covenant was proposed for England too. In the autumn he wrote that he was glad he had left Cambridge, because many of the Fellows had resigned or been dismissed because they would not sign the Covenant. He trusted that the sad disputes over matters of religion would not drive her further from a faith in God.

Bel was overjoyed that he persisted in so one-sided a correspondence, but each letter renewed her conviction that she must remain cut off from him.

His love for his brother shines out when he writes of his childhood and yet I can tell he is holding back with delicacy because he knows the guilt of my family. He is a good man. I could love him but if I write he will fall from his horse, or his frail mother or the noble father he speaks of with such love will die. If I can get through another year without my curse touching anyone around me, I will feel easier. Ursula’s goodness keeps her safe and me with her. And now that I no longer hate Henrietta, her new baby girl may live and flourish. I have found a yearning love for my father but too late. And I am learning to love Nat Wilson, which can never be. My own cloud will stay with me, but if I am at last capable of love and if our tiny household remains untouched by this evil war, then that is as much as I can hope for day by day.

CHAPTER 19

January 1644

Bel woke late and felt there was something different about the morning. She ran to her window and looked out. Although the sun was not yet up it was light enough to see that the sky was clear. Why had Ursula not wakened her to tell her the snow had stopped? Day after day there had been heavy falls from unremitting cloud. The ugly old baronet was still blessedly shrouded and the early morning light bounced off the unbroken white of the land, but the bitter chill of the air was gone.

Bel ran down and found only a small fire in the kitchen hearth to conserve fuel and Ursula already pounding the washing.

“You should have woken me.”

“Young bones need sleep,” Ursula replied.

“But the snow’s stopped and it feels warmer.”

“And we’ve just had Tom in saying a thaw will bring the Scots army down. They’ve been held up in Berwick by the snow.”

“Oh, Tom is a merchant of gloom. But I know why the Scots are coming. They want us to abolish Bishops and become Presbyterians. The last war it was because
we
wanted to impose Bishops on
them
. Is the world mad? Ursula, you care about your religion but you have never tried to turn me Catholic and you have meekly attended our services because the law says you must.”

Ursula smiled up at her. “That proves
I’m
not mad even if I look it”

“It proves you are a saint.”

Ursula dabbed Bel’s nose with some soap suds.

Perhaps it was because they had grown used to the last Scots occupation that they treated the news lightly, but three days later when the thaw was well underway news reached the village that the Scots army was marching through Northumberland, heading for Newcastle.

There were frantic moves to hide valuables, but what could one do with the stores of grain and the sheep and cows?

“
We
have so little left to take,” Bel said, looking into the larder. “Our stocks went down during the long snow. I suppose the soldiers will kill and eat the last of our hens. I am afraid I am going to be very angry with them. If we hadn’t sold Robert’s good French pistol he was so fond of, I might have shot a few of them.”

“No, no, my Bel, you are not a killer.”

Ah, but I am, Bel moaned inwardly.

“Come,” Ursula urged her, “we will take the flour sack to the attic and hide it under my bed and that sack of carrots and turnips.”

They were half way across the great hall lugging these to the foot of the stairs when Mary came running in, red-faced, from the stables. “They are here. At the back door. One of them asked me where our horses were. When I said we had none he seemed pleased there would be stabling for theirs. The way he spoke, I think they mean to stay.”

She had hardly got the words out when an officer walked boldly in through the kitchen passage and seeing the sacks said courteously, “Och, that is heavy work for women. Pray leave them where they are. Where are your menfolk? We have seen an ancient groom outside. Where are the rest?”

Bel marched up and stuck out her chin at him. “There are no rest and who are you that you walk into people’s houses without their leave?”

“Ay, well, I am sorry, lassie.” He was looking about him at the size of the hall and gazing up the stairs as if estimating what rooms there were up there. “But this place is now requisitioned by the army. It will make excellent officers’ billets so close to Newcastle. Collect what you need and make your way to whatever friends and family you have there. I will give you a safe-conduct pass, though you will not find many of our men on the roads there yet. We are an advance party. Of course I should warn you that if the town does not yield it may well be bombarded. It will be given fair terms if it surrenders without delay and you may tell them that when you get there.” He finished with a light laugh.

Bel clenched her jaw. They could take the Hall – just like that! Of course she had heard of other places seized by Parliament’s forces but this sudden onslaught from the north; how complacent she had been that they would escape!

She glared up at the smiling officer. “How dare you presume to take our home from us? I know not where
you
live but would you like an English army to walk in and throw out your wife and children?”

“English armies have been doing worse than that to Scotland throughout the centuries. This is war, young madam. I will give you half an hour to leave while I give my orders.” He strode out again and Bel could see through the open doors that the stable yard was full of soldiers.