The Forest (84 page)

Louisa had a talent for mimicry – her imitation of Mr Grockleton was beyond praise – but she was not malicious. She read books, as much as she wanted to; she spoke enough French to amuse the French officers in Lymington. With her lovely eyes and dark-haired good looks, Louisa had long ago concluded that her role as a pretty daughter of Lymington’s richest merchant suited her ambitions very well. And if she could have been cleverer or more hard-working if she wished, then she must have concluded that it was not in her self-interest. ‘What do I think of Mr Martell, Fanny? Why that he is a great catch and he knows it.’

This was clearly true.

‘But what of his character and his opinions?’

‘Why, Fanny, I hardly know. It was you who spoke to him.’ Fanny had not thought of it, but she realized now that, unusually, Louisa had kept almost silent through their walk with Mr Martell. ‘I did observe one thing, Fanny,’ her pretty cousin continued with a smile.

‘Tell me what, Louisa?’

‘That you liked him.’ And now Louisa burst into a laugh.

‘I? Oh, no, Louisa. I do not think so. Why do you think such a thing?’

But Louisa refused to discuss the matter further and instead went and sat in a chair by the window and, taking up
a book, started to make a little drawing for herself upon the flyleaf. She busied herself in this way, refusing all conversation for some time, while Fanny began to prepare herself for bed, until finally she called Fanny over and, quietly handing her the book, let her look at the drawing by the fading light.

It was of a rutting stag: a great red deer, on the twilit forest heath, his head with its magnificent antlers thrown back about to emit his roar. It really was a very good likeness of the creature and well observed. With this one alteration: the face was that of Mr Martell.

‘It is as well we are not to see him tomorrow,’ said Fanny, ‘as I should be afraid of laughing.’

They did not see Mr Martell, or even think of him, the next day, which passed delightfully. But the following morning he was at the door of the inn, wearing a brown coat and riding breeches, and a tall brown hat to match. While they rode in the carriage, he mounted a magnificent bay, explaining that, as the day was fine and his horse had now been stabled for two days, he thought it best to give it some exercise. While this made perfect sense, Fanny could not help but reflect that it also meant that he was spared the need of talking to them on the journey.

With Mr Martell riding easily beside the carriage, the journey nonetheless passed very pleasantly. Of the Oxfordshire countryside Mr Gilpin had a poor opinion. ‘It is too flat. I can describe it’, he told them, ‘only as a cultivated dreariness.’ But if the landscape was sadly wanting in the picturesque, its history was more encouraging. At Woodstock, the vicar reminded them, a medieval English king had kept his lady love, the fair Rosamund. So jealous of this lady was the queen that she wanted to poison her. And so, it was said, the king built a maze around her house, and only he knew the way in. ‘A pleasant story, even if untrue,’ as the vicar remarked. With these and other tales he
regaled them until they reached the park gates of the great palace of Blenheim.

John Churchill had been a genial fellow, with only a poor squire’s fortune at the court of the merry monarch, with whom he had shared a mistress. But he was also a formidable soldier. Having won a string of brilliant victories for Queen Anne, he was made Duke of Marlborough and rewarded, as successful generals were, with a great estate. As their carriage rolled along the drive this sunny morning, Fanny looked out eagerly to see the mansion. And soon enough, looking across a great sweep, she did.

It came as a shock. She felt a little intake of breath, a sense of cold fear. She was familiar with the mansions of the New Forest; she had visited the great house of Wilton up at Sarum; but she had never seen anything like this before.

The vast classical palace of Blenheim, named after the duke’s most famous victory over King Louis XIV of France, did not sit in the landscape: it spread across it like a cavalry charge in stone. Its baroque magnificence utterly dwarfed even the largest of England’s manor-mansions. It was not an English country house. It was a European palace, of a kind with the Louvre, or Versailles, or one of the great Austrian palaces that stretch across the horizon at Vienna – behind whose classical façades one may sense a spirit of almost oriental power, like that of the Russian tsars, or the Turkic khans of the endless steppe.

For even in England, in that age – when portraits of aristocrats depicted them in the poses of classical gods – the founder of the Churchill family was not to be housed like a mortal. It was a quarter of a mile from the kitchens to the dining room.

They toured the house first. The Duke of Marlborough’s marbled halls and galleries had a haughty grandeur she had never encountered before. This, she realized, was an aristocratic world quite outside and beyond her own. She
felt a little overawed. She noticed that Mr Martell looked quite at home, though.

‘There is a connection between Blenheim and the New Forest,’ Mr Gilpin reminded them. ‘The last Duke of Montagu, whose family owns Beaulieu, married Marlborough’s daughter. So the lords of Beaulieu now are partly Churchills too.’

They admired the Rubens paintings. ‘The first family picture in England,’ announced Gilpin of one. Although of the picture of the Holy Family he roundly declared: ‘It is flat. It possesses little of the master’s fire. Except, Fanny, you may agree, in the old woman’s head.’ But despite all the wonders of the palace, Fanny was not sorry when Mr Gilpin finally led them out to survey the park.

The park at Blenheim was very large, one of the greatest that Capability Brown had ever undertaken. There were no small comforts like those favoured by Repton: no modest walks or flower beds, but great sweeps across which all Marlborough’s armies might have marched. God, it seemed to say, in framing nature, had only presumed to make a rough preparation, to be ordered and given meaning by the authority of an English duke. So it was that the park at Blenheim, with its broad arrangement of stream and lake, belts of woodland and endless open vistas, rolled away towards a conquered horizon.

‘Every advantage has been taken, which could add variety to grandeur,’ declared Gilpin as they began their promenade.

They all chatted together quite easily by now. As she walked with Mr Gilpin behind the other three, she saw that even Louisa was saying a few words to Mr Martell, about the scenery or the weather no doubt; and if Mr Martell did not say much, he seemed to be replying, at least. One could not deny, whatever one’s opinion of him, that Mr Martell looked very handsome in this setting.

At one point, when a particularly fine vista, cunningly
contrived by the genius of Brown, opened out before them, Gilpin cried out: ‘There. As grand a
burst
, I should term it, as art ever displayed. Picturesque. A scene, Fanny, for you to sketch. You would do it admirably.’

Mr Martell turned. ‘You draw, Miss Albion?’

‘A little.’ Fanny replied.

‘Do you draw, Mr Martell?’ Louisa asked; but he did not turn back to her.

‘Badly, I fear. But I have the highest admiration for those who do.’ And looking, now, straight at Fanny, he smiled.

‘My cousin Louisa draws quite as well as I do, Mr Martell,’ said Fanny with a slight blush.

‘I do not doubt it,’ he said politely and faced round again to resume his conversation.

Having walked some distance, they turned to look back at the palace of the Churchills and, by way of making conversation, she asked what was the origin of the family.

‘Royalists in the Civil War, certainly,’ said Gilpin. ‘A West Country family. Not one of the oldest or noblest, though, I think.’

‘Not like you, Martell,’ Edward laughed. ‘He’s a Norman. The Martells came with William the Conqueror, didn’t they?’

‘So’, replied Martell with a slight smile, ‘I have always been told.’

‘There you are,’ said Edward cheerfully. ‘No drop of lowly blood pollutes his veins; no contact with trade has ever blotted his escutcheon. Confess it, Martell. It’s very good of you to talk to us.’

Martell greeted this with an amused shake of the head.

Fanny was a little surprised to hear Edward raise the subject in this way when, as a Totton and undoubtedly still in trade, it might have seemed to place him at a disadvantage. But watching Martell’s amused reaction, she realized there was an element of calculation in her cousin’s boyish candour. With his own mother, she realized,
belonging to a minor gentry family, his links to the Burrards – his close relationship, come to that, with herself, an Albion – young Edward Totton was already within the circle of relationship of the gentry. His oblique reference to his own family being in trade was therefore a subtle invitation to the aristocrat to tell him it didn’t matter.

‘I amaze myself sometimes,’ Martell finally remarked, rising very creditably to the occasion, ‘that I talk to anyone at all.’

At which Edward grinned and Louisa laughed; and Fanny, if the truth were told, could not help being secretly pleased that she was an Albion.

They walked back to their carriage after that, the two girls together with Mr Gilpin, Edward and his friend talking to each other. Everyone seemed in high spirits, except for Mr Gilpin, who had fallen rather silent.

Before they got into their carriage, however, it was time to bid farewell to Mr Martell, who had to ride on to another house in the neighbourhood.

‘But we are not parting for very long,’ Edward announced, ‘for Martell has agreed to come and stay with us, in Lymington. Quite soon, he says. It’s all agreed.’

This was a surprise indeed: yet not, Fanny had to confess, entirely unwelcome. After all, if he were at the Tottons’ house, she should not be obliged to see him more than she wished.

So they all said goodbye and watched him ride off, and then returned to Oxford for their final dinner before their departure with Mr Gilpin, whom they did not forget, at dinner, all to thank.

Fanny found as, with the help of the inn’s maid, she packed her clothes, that she was in a very cheerful mood.

She was somewhat taken aback, therefore, when Louisa suddenly declared: ‘Are you sure, Fanny, that you do not like Mr Martell.’

‘I? I do not think so Louisa. Not really.’

‘Oh,’ returned Louisa, giving her a strange little look. ‘Well, I do.’

Puckle set out soon after dawn. Nobody took any special notice. You didn’t ask where Puckle was going. He was a man of secrets.

Only a handful of the men who worked at Buckler’s Hard actually lived there; and although there was a village just outside the gateway to Beaulieu Abbey, not many of the labourers and carpenters lodged there either, since neither the owners of Beaulieu nor the villagers wanted them.

The reason was simple. If a labourer lived in Beaulieu parish and fell sick or grew old, he might become a charge on the Poor Rate, which meant that the parish, by law, would have to support him, his widow, possibly even his children. Naturally, therefore, all over England, parishes did their best to unload their poor upon their neighbours, sometimes going to great trouble to discover the distant birthplace of some poor person, for instance, in order that the charges could be levied there.

The solution for the Buckler’s Hard workers had consisted of a new settlement. Down the western boundary of the Beaulieu estate, along the edge of the open heath, a straggle of cottages had sprung up. Technically they had no right to be there, for each plot was actually an encroachment upon the king’s forest, but although there had been some talk of their removal, nothing had been done. As the settlement lay along the estate’s boundary, it was known as Beaulieu Rails, although sometimes called East Boldre. It was only two miles or so from the shipyard, so the workers had no further to walk than if they’d lived at Beaulieu village.

But they were off the parish.

Puckle had lived at Beaulieu Rails for many years, but would still go over to the western side of the Forest once in a while, where most of his relations lived, so when he set out
across the heath that Sunday morning his neighbours assumed he was going there. They might have been surprised, therefore, when, across the heath, he instead made his way northwards through the woods, past Lyndhurst and even Minstead. It was mid-morning when he came along the edge of the trees to the meeting place, which he had selected both for its distance from his home and because, from there, it would be easy to retire into the deeper seclusion of the woods nearby. As he drew close, he noted with satisfaction that the place was deserted.

The Rufus tree was gone. Its hollowed old hulk had finally rotted down into a stump which had disintegrated half a century earlier. In its place, however, a stone had been erected to commemorate the historic site. For although its miraculous winter greening was still remembered by some, it was the tree’s false reputation, as the site of King William Rufus’s death, that was now enshrined in stone. Nor was this all: even Purkiss and his cart had now become a matter of historical record.

At the stone, Puckle stopped and looked around. A short distance away stood the old tree’s two sons. One had been pollarded, the other had not. Puckle’s expert eye took in both at once. The pollard oak would not make good ship’s timber, for the pollarding process made for weaker joints; but the other, he noticed, had been marked for felling any time. And it was from behind this tree that a figure now emerged, to whom he nodded.