Saraband for Two Sisters (26 page)

‘The King’s manners are impeccable,’ said Richard. ‘He would always be charming, so you would need to have no fear if he did. But he is too concerned now with State matters to come visiting.’ Then he turned to me and drawing me to him, kissed my forehead tenderly. ‘You disturb yourself unnecessarily, Angelet,’ he told me. ‘You believe you will be inadequate. Let me tell you this … in a short while you will be asking yourself what there was to fear.’

I knew that he was telling me that everything would be well between us, and I was suddenly as happy as I had been when he first asked me to marry him and marriage seemed to me to be the most romantic adventure in the world.

I was almost blithe as I was conducted through the house. I was shown bedrooms so numerous that I lost count of them. Many of them were named after the colours predominating in them—the Scarlet Room, the Blue Room, the Gold Room, the Silver Room, the Grey Room, and so on. Then there were the Panelled Room and the Tapestry Room and the Pages’ Room, where china of all kinds was kept.

There was one door which Richard passed by and I asked what it was.

‘Oh, just like all the others,’ he said. ‘There is really nothing special about it.’

He opened the door and it seemed to me that he did so almost reluctantly, and because of that I felt a great urge to see what the room contained.

He was right, there was nothing special about it. It contained a table and a few chairs and a very large court cupboard with linen-fold sides.

‘What do you call this room?’ I asked.

‘I think it has been known as the Castle Room.’

‘Oh, I see why. You get a good view of the Folly here.’

I went to the window and stood there. He was beside me and I sensed his apprehension. I knew then that he had not been going to show me this room. The same sort of uneasiness which had enveloped me in the chapel returned to me. From the window there was a better view of the castle than I had seen anywhere else. The walls looked almost white in the sunshine. It was indeed a high wall which surrounded it, and of course this room would be called the Castle Room because it was high up and gave a good view of the miniature battlements.

‘It was a pity that high wall was built,’ I said. ‘It looks not so old as the castle.’

‘How observant you are. How can you tell?’

‘It just looks newer. When was it built?’

He hesitated. ‘Oh … er … about ten years ago.’

‘Then you built it!’

‘Yes, I ordered it to be built.’

‘Whatever for?’

‘Perhaps I wanted to shut out the Folly.’

‘Wouldn’t it have been easier to pull it down … particularly as it’s crumbling and you don’t like it.’

‘Did I say I didn’t like it?’

‘You implied it … calling it a folly and all that.’

‘It was not I who called it a folly. It was called that before I was born.’

‘I suppose you didn’t like to pull down what your ancestor had taken such pains to build, so you had the wall made to shut it out to a certain extent and prevent people’s going there as it might be dangerous.’

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s so.’ Then deliberately he turned me away from the window.

He had a rather curt way of conveying that he wished a subject closed and I was learning to take his hints. My husband was a man who expected unquestioning obedience. As a commanding soldier I supposed that was natural.

I began to examine the room. I said: ‘It has a lived-in look.’

‘A lived-in look! What do you mean by that? It’s rarely used.’

‘Then I’m wrong. What is kept in the court cupboard?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Shall we see?’

‘Oh come, there are more interesting things to look at. I want to take you up to the roof.’

‘The roof. That sounds exciting.’

He shut the door of the Castle Room firmly and led me to the newel stairs. The air was warm yet fresh. I stood up there, breathing it in with relish. I could see over the gardens to the wooded hills and beyond a house in the distance. I examined the detailed ornamentation of the turrets and looked for the Folly, but I could not see it from this side of the house.

On the way down we passed through the long gallery and I paused to examine the portraits. There was a fine one of Richard himself and next to him the portrait of a young woman. I knew without asking that she was his first wife, and I could not help a great curiosity. She was pretty and very young, even younger than I was. Her pretty fair hair was dressed high above her head which made her face look small; she had large appealing blue eyes. There was an expression in her face which fascinated me. It was almost as though she were pleading to be helped, as though she were afraid of something.

Richard said: ‘Yes, that’s Magdalen.’

‘Magdalen,’ I repeated.

‘My first wife.’

‘Was she very young when she died?’

‘Nineteen.’

I had the same uneasy feeling that had assailed me before. I suppose I couldn’t help imagining that girl with him and I knew I should go on doing so.

‘Was she very ill?’

‘She died in childbirth.’

‘So there was a child.’

‘It was a double tragedy.’

Again that secret command: We shall not talk of this.

Well, I thought, I understand that. After that he led me down to the outhouses and I saw what a fine stable he kept. He showed me the bolting-house, the washing-house and the winery, and I was aware that I had become mistress of a fine establishment.

I said: ‘I shall write and tell my sister and my mother all about my new home.’

‘You must do that,’ he said.

‘And when my sister is well they must come and visit me.’

‘Indeed they must,’ he answered warmly, and I was happy contemplating their arrival.

‘How proud I shall be to show them everything,’ I said.

He pressed my arm, well pleased.

That afternoon we went riding, for he wished to show me the countryside. He did not have a large estate, as the family land was in Cumberland and Far Flamstead was merely a soldier’s country house. The grounds were extensive enough, consisting of the gardens, the paddocks and the copse of fir trees.

We supped together as we had on the previous night and as before we shared the velvet-curtained bed.

For two weeks we lived to a sort of pattern. Each morning he worked in the library and I was left to myself, when I would wander through the gardens, which consisted of ten acres, so there was plenty for me to see. There was a walled rose garden and a pond garden, a kitchen garden and a herb garden. I wrote letters to my mother and to Bersaba—telling the former the details of the flowers we grew here and how the colder drier climate seemed to affect certain things. It was easy writing to her. It was less so writing to Bersaba. I used to think often of her lying in bed, where she still had to spend a certain amount of time, regaining her strength, my mother called it, so I was afraid to write too glowingly of my happiness, which was certainly there, but it is the nature of happiness to be elusive. I had discovered that it stayed usually for a few fleeting moments and if it remained for a day that was rare. The nights hung over me not exactly frightening but bewildering. I had never thought about this side to marriage, and it always seemed to me that the man I met behind the red curtains of the four-poster bed was a stranger—not the one who was so noble, dignified and commanding by day.

I loved him dearly. I never had any doubt of that, and the fact that at times he seemed rather remote in his daytime personality made him more than ever attractive to me. I used to fancy I could hear my mother’s explaining: ‘You were very young to marry. Had you been at home I should have talked to you and warned you of what you must expect. You would have been prepared. But it happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly that you are groping in the dark a little. Have no fear. You love him and he loves you. You are a little in awe of him because he holds a high position in the country. Well, it is a good thing to respect your husband.’

I used to wonder if she had felt thus with my father.

I thought if Bersaba were here I could talk to her. But I could not bring myself to write my innermost thoughts even to her.

In the afternoons when Richard’s work was done we would ride together. He delighted in showing me the countryside. He had a great feeling for nature and he loved trees. He would point them out to me and tell me about them; and there were a great variety round Flamstead. It was like a lesson in botany to ride with Richard. He would pause by a stream where the willow trees grew. ‘See how they love the moist damp earth,’ he pointed out. ‘Look, their roots are almost in the water. This is a male tree, for the flowers of the male and female are on separate trees. You should see the furry silvery tufts breaking out in the spring and the males have golden-tipped stamens and the females green. When they’re in full seed they look as though they are covered in tufts of white wool.’

He would point out the Scots pines and the yews.

‘Look at that yew. It has been there for over a hundred years. Doesn’t that give you pause to think? Imagine what changes it has seen. It was there when Queen Elizabeth first came to the throne and before that when her father was dissolving the monasteries and cutting us off from Rome.’

‘There is something rather sinister about yews,’ I said.

‘Well, they are poisonous to cattle.’

‘There’s something witch-like about them. One could imagine their having secret knowledge. But the berries are not poisonous, are they? The birds eat them.’

‘My dear little Angelet, you see good everywhere. I hope you always will.’

He talked at length about the yews; how they grew very slowly and could live for over a thousand years, and the flowers were of distinct sexes and grew on different trees—the male flowers small round and yellow, their stamens producing a considerable amount of pollen, the female flowers small green ovoids which grew on the under part of the twigs.

I felt that he was explaining that there was a similarity between nature’s laws with flowers and with people. He knew that I was uneasy, and he was telling me that I would grow accustomed to what seemed a little strange and alarming to me at first. Hadn’t it been happening throughout the world since the creation because it was nature’s way of replenishing the earth?

I listened avidly and tried to convey to him that I understood and would in time accept life as it was.

He had interesting stories to tell of the trees and said that they were the most beautiful of all nature’s creations. There was no time of the year when a tree was not beautiful. In the spring it was a joy with its buds and promise, in the summer it was rich and full; in the autumn the turning colour of its leaves was an inspiration to the artist, and it was best of all in winter when its denuded branches could be seen against a winter sky.

‘I had not thought you could be so lyrical,’ I told him.

‘I am usually afraid of mockery,’ he said.

‘Not with me.’

‘Never with you.’

I felt happy then.

Then he showed me an aspen—the trembling poplar—and it was fascinating to watch how it quivered in the light breeze.

‘It is said that the cross of Christ was made from the wood of an aspen and that ever after it has been unable to rest.’

‘Do you believe that?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘The leaves tremble so much because their stems are so long and slender.’

‘Do you have a logical explanation for everything?’

‘I hope so.’

I was learning a great deal about him. In the evenings he liked to talk to me about his battles and I tried to learn about them. Oddly enough he had sets of soldiers—tin ones, infantry and cavalry such as children play with. I was astonished when I first saw them. To imagine Richard playing with soldiers was the last thing I would have thought possible. But it was scarcely playing with them. He showed how certain battles had been won or lost and he would take a large sheet of paper and draw out the battlefield and place his soldiers on them.

He would show a rare excitement as he moved the soldiers about. ‘You see, Angelet, the foot soldiers came along here, but what they didn’t know was that the cavalry was lying in wait behind this hill. You see, they were so strategically placed that they were hidden from sight. It was a mistake on the part of the foot commander. He should have sent out spies to assess the enemy’s position.’

I tried to follow because I was so anxious to please him and it moved me deeply to see him there with his miniature soldiers. It made him seem young and vulnerable in a way.

I wished that I could have been interested in the battles but I could only pretend to be. I had always hated talk of fighting. My mother used to say that wars were made by the folly of ambitious men, and although they brought temporary gain to one side it was rarely worth having. Of course they had still talked now and then of the defeat of the Armada, but that was a sea battle and we had been fighting for our lives and our freedom then.

So I would sit there in the evenings while he played out his battles and engaged me in a game of chess—a game at which I had never excelled. Bersaba and I used to play together and I so rarely defeated her that it was a red-letter day when I did.

After the game was over Richard would sit back and survey the board and tell me where I had gone wrong, and often he would put the pieces back and want us to start again at that point.

He was born to command and to teach, I suppose, and he seemed to take a special delight in instructing me. Sometimes I thought he looked upon me as a pupil—a beloved and cherished pupil but one, none the less, who needed a good deal of instruction.

I did not mind. I was happy, desperately wanting to please him. I had to remember that I would seem such a child to him. I was going to try to grow up, to enjoy the things that he enjoyed, to be able to plan my chess moves as far ahead as he could and to understand why the infantry should have gone forward instead of remaining where they were—or vice versa.

So this life went on for those two weeks. It was a sort of routine—a tender teacher with his pupil.