Saraband for Two Sisters (51 page)

I kept saying: ‘You are going to get well. How could life be the same for me without you? Haven’t there always been two of us?’

‘It’s better for there to be one sometimes. I’m happy that we are together now … in understanding. I have been so foolish. When I knew about you and Richard I thought you were trying to kill me. I deserve to die for that.’

‘I never heard such nonsense—Richard loves you. I am going away … I am going to leave you to be happy. You have your beautiful son. And I have my children.’

‘We both have his children, Bersaba. It seems that was meant. Of course we both loved the same man. We were as one person. I can be happy, Bersaba, if I think you are going to be and there is some purpose in my going.’

I tried to reason with her, for I could not bear to hear her talk like that. I blamed myself for so much that had happened and there was small comfort in the knowledge that she did not blame me.

I sat by her bed through the night, and in the early hours of the morning, she died.

I had never felt so alone in all my life.

I
STAYED AT FAR
Flamstead for three months until I considered young Richard was old enough to travel; then I set out for Trystan Priory with my children, Angelet’s son and Phoebe and her child.

Travelling at such times was hazardous; but it seemed hardly likely that either side would attack two women and a band of children. We took two of the young boys from the stable who were too young to be in either army, and we set out.

It took us many weeks to travel, for we had to make so many detours. Many of the inns we had known were no longer there. Sometimes we would sleep in the shell of a building to protect us from the night air. But it was by that time May and the weather was good. There was spring in the air and my spirits rose a little as I listened to the sound of the sedge-warblers in the reeds and the call of the peewits and white-throats. The hawthorns were weighed down with bud and blossom as I smelt their scent on the air, and it was like a promise that life was ready to burst into flower again.

We had not been able to warn my parents of our coming, and I shall never forget the moment when we rode into the courtyard. There was shouting and tumult throughout the house. There were my mother and father embracing first me and then the children; and that agonizing moment when they looked round for Angelet.

It was terrible to have to tell them. I feared my mother would never get over it. Secretly I believed that the balance of her affection had always tipped in Angelet’s favour, but that was because she was the complete mother and her concern went to the one she instinctively knew was in greater need of her protection.

I signed to Phoebe and she came forward and put young Dickon into my mother’s arms; and I believe then that some- thing happened to soothe the pain.

The child was hers from that moment. She was going to rear him, nurture him, make him strong and healthy, and she declared that he had a look of her beloved Angelet.

So I returned to Trystan Priory.

What happened is common knowledge.

There was the defeat at Naseby when the King lost half his army.

The news came slowly to Cornwall, but we knew in spite of our loyalty the Royalist cause was lost. The Parliament was demanding the control of the militia and the establishment of Presbyterianism throughout England, and when this was refused the King became a fugitive and took refuge in the Isle of Wight. He was seized at Carisbrooke and brought to London.

There came that sad January day in the year 1649 when our King was executed on the scaffold in front of the Banqueting House in Whitehall.

‘Nothing will ever be the same again,’ said my father.

Indeed everything was different. We must dress with sombre propriety; we must go regularly to church; we must all conform to the standard set to us.

Grandfather Casvellyn, who was a very old man, had shouted his wrath with such vehemence that he had been seized with apoplexy and died. So life at Castle Paling was very different too. The girls had married, but Bastian had not.

As soon as he had known that I was home he had come riding to Trystan. Since then he has asked me to marry him on three occasions. On each one I have refused, but I have a notion that one day I might accept.

My mother wished me to. The children needed a father, she believed. It was becoming a new, rather drab world, and a family could be a great comfort. I knew that Trystan was home for as long as I wanted, but I believe she secretly hoped I would become mistress of Castle Paling.

She would miss me. We used to sit in the evenings and talk about the days when Angelet and I were children. ‘You are so like her,’ she said, ‘that sometimes I feel that she lives on in you.’

Phoebe was courted by Jim Stallick who looked after the Priory horses; she married him but still continued to work for me, and I was glad to see her happy again.

It was a year after the death of the King. The war was not completely over for the new King, Charles II, had come from the Continent to Scotland and was trying to raise his standard. But Cromwell was too strong and the Royalists had little hope.

I was in the garden one day when a traveller came to the Priory.

He had asked for me, and one of the servants brought him out to the garden. I took one look at him and knew.

Richard!

He had aged. How many years was it since I had seen him? Six … seven … seven hard years of hiding, secret planning … escaping from his enemies.

He took my hands and looked at me.

He said, ‘I went to Flamstead. They told me you were here.’

‘Are you well? You look exhausted.’

‘I have ridden far,’ he said.

‘Then you must come into the house.’

‘It is not safe for you to entertain a fugitive from the King’s army.’

‘You would always find refuge here.’

He shook his head. ‘I could not allow you to endanger yourself and your family. The news is bad. The King has been defeated and forced to flee the country. We must all go … and plan from some place other than England. We shall not rest until Charles II is on the throne. I am going across the sea to plan for that day.’

‘You must come in. You need food … and rest.’

He said: ‘What I need is a boat that will take me to France.’

‘So you have come only to go away again.’

‘I came to see you.’

‘They told you what had happened at Flamstead?’

He nodded.

‘Your beautiful house …’ I said.

‘But you were safe. I have come to ask you something. Perhaps it is too much. It could be dangerous.’

I said, ‘Life is dull here. I hate the Puritan rule. I have realized that I am an ardent Royalist.’

‘It will not be easy in France.’

‘No?’ I said excitedly. ‘But there would be a cause … something to fight for … I should have to bring the children … Arabella and Lucas. Dickon must stay with my mother. She would never let him go.’

‘Bersaba,’ he said, ‘you are the one thing in this world that hasn’t changed.’

I took his hands and looked into his face.

‘I always knew what I wanted,’ I said. ‘It is as though the world has started to turn again.’

‘Then,’ he said, ‘you will come with me?’

‘I’m surprised that you ask questions to which you know the answer. That’s not like you.’

‘I couldn’t believe it. I thought you might have changed.’

‘Never,’ I said. ‘Never.’

We were married in the church yesterday. My father was able to provide us with a boat. We are going to sail tomorrow with the tide. I, Arabella, Lucas and Richard. This is my last night in Trystan Priory, and I write here in the room I once shared with Angelet, and as I write I feel she is standing over me and that she is content.

I look out across the scene so familiar to me during my childhood. Somewhere beyond is the sea, and tomorrow before it is light I, with my husband and children, will cross to France and there we will build a new future.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Daughters of England series

A
LTHOUGH I DID NOT REALIZE IT AT
the time, the day Harriet Main came into our household was one of the most significant of my life. That Harriet was a woman to be reckoned with, that she had an outstanding and very forceful personality, was obvious from the first, and that she should take on the post of governess—though briefly—was altogether incongruous, for governesses are usually subdued in manner, eager to please and so much aware of the precarious nature of their employment that they suffer acute apprehension, which they cannot help betraying to those who are in a position to take advantage of it.

Of course the times were extraordinary and since the Great Rebellion had brought about such change in England, everything, as people about us constantly said, was topsy-turvy. Here we were, exiles from our native land, living on the hospitality of any foreign friends who would help us; and although it was a comfort to remember that the King of England shared our exile, that did not help us materially.

Being seventeen in this year 1658 and having fled with my parents when I was ten years old, I should be accustomed to the life by this time—and I suppose I was; but vivid memories lingered with me and I liked to talk to my brothers and sister of the old days, which made me appear wise and knowledgeable in their eyes.

There was so much talk of that past and so much speculation as to when it would return that it was constantly in our minds, and as no one ever expressed a doubt that it would, even the little ones were ready to hear the same stories of past splendours in the Old Country over and over again, for in recording them one was not only talking of the past but of the future.

Bersaba Tolworthy, my mother, was a woman of strong character. She was in her late thirties but looked like a much younger woman. She was not exactly beautiful but she had a vitality which attracted people. My father adored her. She represented something to him and so did I, for of all the children I was his favourite.

My mother kept a journal. She told me that her mother, whom I remembered, for we had stayed with her in Cornwall before we fled from England, had presented her and her sister Angelet with journals on their seventeenth birthdays and told them that it was a tradition in the family that the women should keep account of what happened to them and that these were preserved together in a locked box. She hoped I would carry on the custom, and the idea appealed to me. Particularly as there were journals going right back to my great-great-great-grandmother Damask Farland who had lived at the time of Henry VIII.

“These journals cover not only the lives of your ancestors but tell you something about the events which were of importance to our country,” said my mother. “They will make you understand why your ancestors acted in the way they did.”

Because there was something rather odd about my birth and she thought I should understand the position better if I knew exactly how it happened, she gave me her journals to read when I was sixteen.

She said: “You are like me, Arabella. You have grown up quickly. You know that you have not the same father as Lucas, but share him with the little ones. That could be puzzling and I would not have you think that you did not belong to your father. Read the journals and you will understand how it came about.”

So I read of my maternal ancestors, of gentle Dulce, Linnet and Tamsyn, of wild Catharine and my mother Bersaba, and as I progressed I realized why my mother had given me these diaries. It was because she thought there was something of Catharine and herself in me. Had I been like the others and her own sister, my Aunt Angelet who was now dead and whose life was so entwined with that of my mother, she might have hesitated.

So I learned of the stormy love of my mother and father, which they secretly consummated while he was married to Angelet, and of how because I was about to be born, my mother had married Luke Longridge and from that marriage came my half brother, Lucas, who was less than two years my junior. Luke Longridge had been killed at Marston Moor, and Angelet had died when her baby was born, but it was years after when my father and mother found each other. By that time the Royalist cause for which my soldier father had been fighting was lost, Charles I beheaded and Charles II had made a desperate and unsuccessful attempt to gain the throne. He had escaped from England, and my father and mother with Lucas and me joined the exiles in France.

Since then they had had three children, Richard named after my father, so always called Dick to distinguish them; Angelique, named with my mother’s twin sister in mind although she had been Angelet, and Fenn—Fennimore—after my mother’s father and brother.

That was our family living the strange lives of exiles in a strange land, every day waiting to hear from England that the people were tired of Puritan rule and wanted the King back; when he went, we as staunch Royalists would go with him.

My mother used to say: “A plague on these wars. I could be for the side which would let the other live in peace.” I knew from her diary that she had been married to a Roundhead as well as a Cavalier, and that Lucas must remind her sometimes of his father. But the love of her life was my father—and she was his—and I knew she would be on his side whichever that was. When they were together in our company—and that was not often, for he was a great general and must follow the King to be ready if ever it was decided to make a bid for the throne—their feeling for each other was obvious.