Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (44 page)

The smells were just as overpowering. While he laughed at the attack on his sight and hearing he held his nose against the stench of the river and the sweat of the crowd. He turned to look down from his six-foot-two-inches at his father and mother standing on tiptoe beside him.

“The Thames stinks worse than the Tyne. And can you see from down there that there are houses on the bridge just like Newcastle’s? How will he get through? The people have been allowed to crowd on.”

“Who could stop them?” His mother was laughing too at the fantastic madness of it all. She struggled to cover her ears when the guns bellowed, but one hand was pinned to her sides by the vast hips of a washerwoman.

“Tell us,” said his father, “the moment that you see him. As he rides by I have vowed to pray rather than cheer. I will thank God for his restoration but pray above all things for peace and freedom of worship under his rule.”

Daniel nodded and turned back, sensing a shiver of excitement stirring the sea of people. There was a leaning forward, a craning upward like a wave, as soldiers, glittering with cloth of silver sleeves, tried to make a passage on the bridge. Horsemen in scarlet cloaks appeared and clattered by.

Then there came a universal in-drawing of breath. He was coming – only one among many riders clad in doublets of silver, but unmistakeable, a towering figure of majesty.

Daniel nudged his father whose lips at once began moving silently.

“He’s bareheaded,” Daniel hissed and snatched off his own hat. I am in the presence of my King, he told himself, scarce believing it.

As the principal three shimmering figures drew nearer he could see the central one graciously waving his large feathered hat in a gesture of love to his people. A great deep-throated roar of cheering rose from the thousands crushed around them.

Daniel felt a lump rise in his throat. He hadn’t lived till this moment. To be here in his own body in London, gazing upon his restored King and all the world rejoicing at the opening of a new age – it was a miracle.

He swallowed hard as the slow-treading horses came alongside. His eyes were riveted on the benign eyes, the dark brows, the curled moustache, the full, smiling lips, and as the procession moved past he burst into a yell with all the rest, “Hurray, hurray! God save the King!”

He felt the royal eyes turn and look upon him. He was unaware how he stood out from the crowd, flourishing his hat far above the massed heads, his long flaxen hair catching the sunlight, but he received a smile and a wave all for himself and his tears spurted up and overflowed.

“He looked at me. He waved to me.”

His mother managed to free her arms to clutch him round the waist.

“Remember this, Dan,” she murmured. “Oh, Dan, we will all remember this.”

“It came upon me what they did to his father,” he choked out.

“A different age,” she said. “We must believe that.”

I will, he told himself. The new King is a great man and he looked full at me. I am truly alive. On a high peak in the history of England.

Again there was a mass movement as heads turned to stare after the glinting procession till the very last velvet-clad page-boy had disappeared.

Then a great clamour of talk broke out as he heard neighbour telling neighbour how the King had looked. Was he not noble? Was he not head and shoulders above the rest? Who was that by him? Why it was the two dukes, his brothers, don’t you know? And those in the red cloaks were the Sheriff’s men and did you ever see so much silver lace on ordinary soldiers?

Daniel and his parents gazed at each other, Daniel still on his mountain top of ecstasy. He saw his mother looking about at the people beginning to shake themselves and take reluctant steps – where? he wondered. Home or the ale houses or their work places in this vast city? Surely little work would be done on this momentous day. He heard his mother fetch a deep sigh and grin ruefully at his father.

“That’s over then, Nat. We didn’t expect to see that. Well, there will be no hackney carriages to be had even if we could afford the fare. My legs are one great ache from three hours’ standing. But I wager we can find our way to the Strand on foot. My relations – all your new relations, you men of mine – are expecting us.”

Daniel plummeted from his moment of glory. The dread of the encounter to come was back with a vengeance.

“Oh Mother, can we not put it off? Tomorrow perhaps?”

She laughed aloud, reached up her hands to his face and pulled him down and planted a kiss on his nose. “And where would we sleep tonight with scarce the price of a hired bed between us?”

He straightened, glancing about shame-faced. She can smell my fear. Curse her for always knowing. What did my ignorance and inexperience matter just now while I was caught up in great events? Now she knows I am to be painfully exposed before unknown cousins, a fearsome mix of wealthy London merchants and French nobility and me in grubby old clothes.

“Come, come,” she chuckled, “you go to them as Sir Daniel Wilson Horden of Horden Hall in the county of Northumberland. Hold your head high. And if it’s of any comfort to you the three girls will certainly be hoping to marry you.”

“Oh Bel, you should not say that,” cried his father.

“Why not? It will give him confidence.”

Daniel stared at her. He was used to his mother saying outrageous things that shocked his steady, quiet father. That was Mother Bel – she scorned Arabella – blunt, unconventional, a wild taker of risks, her own woman. She stood there looking up at him, her green eyes mischievous, her square jaw jutted forward. The shawl she had drawn over her head to protect her from the hot sun had slipped to her shoulders. Her cheeks were bronzed from the outdoor life she had led all his childhood riding about the Horden land trying to restore the war-ravaged fields. He loved her with a passion. Yet he must break away soon or she would dominate him and Horden for ever. But marriage! Not yet. Not for a long time. He had to live first.

“You’ve 
frightened
 him,” his father said with a twinkle in his eye. “I would rather encourage him with the thought of his superior learning. Theology, Greek, Latin, mathematics. I doubt if any of these girls can do more than sing a little and play on the virginals and for all we know they may have many suitors already.”

“Nay, I could swear my sister Henrietta wants the baronetcy of Horden for one of her girls. I know her, Nat, though it is twenty years since I set eyes on her. As for the London Hordens they were for Parliament but I am sure old Clifford Horden would like to wed his granddaughter to a baronet. He wanted 
me
 to marry his boy William when I was Dan’s age but backed out quick enough when misfortune fell on us – so stand your ground, Dan. 
I
 did and picked your father 
myself
 on a happy day.” She gave his father a public hug as she said it. Then laughed aloud again. “Mind, I won’t deny we could make good use of the London Hordens’ wealth – but I wouldn’t have Dan marry for it without love.”

She shook out her crushed skirt. “Enough. Let us move. At least we are sure the Strand is west of London Bridge and we only have to keep the river in sight to find it.”

It was not so easy to move at all with the crowds still milling about. Boys were already piling up sticks and debris to make bonfires at the corners of every street. The maypoles newly erected since Cromwell’s ban were being hung with bunting. The bells were still ringing, the people cheering, sellers of nose-gays, sweetmeats, oranges were shouting their wares and blocking the way. Daniel, his long legs accustomed to taking great strides along country lanes or over the Horden land, was reduced to stuttering along.

His thoughts, though, were at a canter. There was some shame at his father’s estimation of his learning. What he knew was due less to his own application than his father’s extreme patience. Two of the cousins would be fluent in French and though his mother had tried to improve his, he would be halting sadly if they babbled to him in their native language. And what would they care for his Greek and Latin?

There would be Aunt Henrietta too, married to a vicomte, but thank heaven 
he
 was not coming. And his grandmother, Lady Maria Horden, exiled all these years for her Roman faith. He peered at his mother’s face. Was she longing to greet her mother and sister again? He wanted to ask but suspected she was holding back her deepest emotions. This was a day for new experiences joyfully embraced.

She had spoken lightly of the old merchant Clifford Horden, a cousin of her father. It seemed she disliked him for the episode with his son William. And William must be the father of the English girl cousin. What a tangle!

Now his terror of the young ladies was back a hundredfold. When his mother had first mentioned – so casually – that she would be meeting two nieces for the first time, he had been startled. Were they just little girls? No, they were around his age, one older, one younger if she remembered rightly. And there would also be an English cousin whom she had never met. “She may be grown into a young woman too. So at last, Dan, you will have some elegant female companionship. Just what you need.” Of course she was laughing when she said it. And now to throw out, so lightly again, that they would all be expecting to marry him! Did that make it easier for him or a thousand times worse?

What they would be like? He repeated their names in his head as he had done ceaselessly on the sea passage. Madeline and Diana Rombeau, dark French beauties perhaps, and Eunice Horden, a lovely English rose? But how did you begin to talk to such females? What subjects would excite them? He guessed they had not ventured into the thronged streets today so he could speak of that – but, no, that moment when the King smiled upon him was too special, sacred almost. It was not to be the stuff of social chatter.

“I think I will be very cold and aloof,” he said now out loud, breaking into his parents’ comments on the mass of craft on the river.

His father looked startled. “Nay, Daniel, be courteous above all things.”

His mother said, “Just show them your own pleasant nature.” But what, he wondered, at the raw, unshaped age of fifteen and a half years, did that amount to?

They had followed Thames Street and here many warehouses obscured the view of the river. Now they had to go inland a little to cross the Fleet, a dirty, stinking stream running down into the Thames. Daniel with his extra height could look above the thronging people and glimpsed up one of the lanes a massive building on the rising ground above them.

“What is that?” he asked his father, the only one of them who had visited London before.

“Ah yes, St Paul’s Cathedral. Look, Bel, the biggest church in London.” As they emerged onto Ludgate Hill they could see it in all its splendour.

His mother said, “We must visit it while we are here but we had better not stop now. I am parched and weary and this is taking longer than I thought.”

Daniel could see that his father’s excitement was growing. “We are not far away. We should pass the Branford’s place where a friend from my days at Queen’s College lives. I must certainly call upon him. He has inherited the title now.”

Daniel had heard this friend mentioned. He was an earl now. Father has moved in exalted company, he remembered. Why should I be so diffident before these French connections?

They had made their way from Fleet Street into the Strand at last.

“There,” cried his father, “that is the Branford’s town house.” It had no land in front but was set back with a paved area and stone steps and a pillared entrance and heavy polished oak door.

“Very grand,” Bel said, “but it looks as if they are from home. The shutters are all closed. Oh come, let us get on. I long to sit down.”

Nathaniel mumbled something about it being odd if a loyal nobleman was away on such a day as this but he followed Bel. Daniel lingered a moment looking up at the house. Horden Hall was larger and with acres of land about it but of course, he remembered, the Branfords have an estate in Hertfordshire. We are pretty small beer after all.

He soon caught up his father and mother. There were more big houses, some set so far back they were partly screened by the blossom in their gardens. His mother was now looking up at more modest ones whose front doors were visible from the road. They were elegant dwellings of three storeys with attics. In gaps between Daniel could glimpse the river which here looked bluer than the grimy current next to London Bridge.

“Celia, Clifford’s wife, wrote that their house has CC with an H below carved above the door frame,” his mother was saying, “Dan, your young eyes will pick it out if the house is set far back from the road. There is a walnut tree in front too, she wrote.”

They must be getting close. Daniel’s heart was pounding now. He brushed vainly at his soiled breeches. His buff cloak with the merest wisp of lace at the neck was too short to cover the stain and the cloak too was marked where he had tumbled against the slime-covered wall of the jetty. The tide had been low and the boatman – curse him! – had not thought a lad like him needed the steadying arm he had given to his parents.

“Is not that a walnut tree?” his father said suddenly. “What grand gates and gravelled carriage-way!”