The Tenth Gift (5 page)

C
ATHERINE

June 1625

C
AT SMOOTHED A HAND ACROSS
T
HE NEEDLE
-Woman’s Glorie.
Dawn light slanted through the window, illuminating her intent expression and making a bright halo of her red-gold hair. She had woken with an image twining through her mind like a skein of ivy, at once obdurate and fragile: She felt that if she so much as blinked, it might disperse into the air, and she was determined that that should not happen. For even as she surfaced from sleep, she had recognized the image for what it must surely be: the design for the altar cloth, come to her like a divine visitation.

It had been weighing heavy upon her these many weeks, the responsibility for this commission, not just for its aesthetic challenges, but also for the chance of advancement and escape it might represent. Secretly, Cat harbored a dream: that if she created an altar frontal that pleased the Countess of Salisbury sufficiently, then that august personage might decide that Catherine Tregenna was a necessary ornament to her life and home and bear her away to her grand London house. Given such a possibility, Cat knew that she would leave her position at Kenegie, leave Penwith; leave Cornwall and everyone and everything in it with barely a backward glance. She would gladly exchange the southerly winds and sparkling seas, the gorse-grown hills and lichen-rosetted granite of her homeland for life in a properly aristocratic house. The small talk and backbiting of Kenegie stifled her; her duties for Lady Harris—no matter how
pleasant her mistress might be—bored her; and the likelihood that her cousin Robert might be the best husband she could aspire to made her fair weep with frustration. She was born for greater things: Her mother had always told her so, and she believed it with every bone in her body.

She had gone to sleep pondering the altar cloth, its theme, its design, the materials she would use, and a strange alchemy appeared to have taken place during the night, drawing desire and inspiration together into visual form. The vision shimmered in her head, but could she capture that form and set it down before it escaped her? Her whole future might depend on her ability to do so, and the thought of that set her hand to trembling.

She took a deep breath, firmed her resolve, and swept the writing stick in a light, curving line from top to bottom of the page. The first mark on the virgin surface broke the spell, and suddenly she was free. The outline of the tree’s trunk was quickly achieved, her hand moving swiftly and decisively, marking in a branch here and there, twining in graceful counterpoint to one another; a flourish of leaves, a spray of berries, buds, flowers. The design unfurled itself like a young bracken frond—elegant, curvilinear, iconic—its symmetries both powerful and reassuring. From a base of twisted roots out of which peered tiny creatures—a hare, a frog, a snail—the Tree of Knowledge stretched heavenward. Adam stood on one side, Eve on the other; the apple hung above them. In the branches above Eve’s head, the serpent writhed and smiled.

“Cat, Cat!” came a voice through the crack of the door. “Why have you not come down? Are you sick?”

Sighing, Cat shut the book and pushed it out of sight underneath the bedclothes. The other girls already thought she had ideas above her station; it would not help the ease of her day to have them sniggering about her unnatural aspirations. “I am coming,” she called back. “I will be down directly.”

“Cook won’t have you in the kitchen if you don’t go now. She’s
got dinner to prepare for the master’s guests. You’ll have naught to break your fast, and we’ve already been told there’ll be no noon meat today, that we must take now what bread and cheese we need to get us through till supper.” Matty sounded aghast at the idea: Being a chubby girl, she found missing a meal close to being the worst thing she could imagine.

“What guests are those?” Cat asked, her interest piqued.

There was a moment of puzzled silence from the corridor, then: “Don’t rightly know. Just some men come to see the governor. Do hurry up, or there’ll be nothing left.”

Cat rolled her eyes. Trust Matty not even to inquire. “In truth, I am not hungry,” she said, pulling on a clean chemise, then hesitating. If Sir Arthur had guests, perhaps she should make a greater effort. She tossed her plain work-dress aside, and out of her oak chest drew a dress of scarlet wool that had belonged to her mother. “Come, help me with my corset.” It would do no harm to have two pairs of hands narrow her already small waist.

Matty pushed the door open gingerly. “You are sure you are not ill?” she said again, looking the older girl over as if searching for signs of pox or plague.

Cat caught her too-obvious scrutiny. “No, you goose. Now hurry, or I will be late waiting on our mistress, and you know how she frets.”

L
ADY
H
ARRIS WAS
indeed in a fretful mood, but it had nothing to do with the tardiness of her maidservant that morning.

“I do wish my good husband would give me a little more warning before inviting important guests to the manor,” she declared as Cat took up the poke-stick and began the complex business of plaiting her mistress’s ruff. “I already had my day planned out, and now I must oversee Cook and set the dining room to rights, and the best linen is all packed up and is no doubt the breeding ground of a thousand moths, and Polly is suffering with a cruel cold and cannot serve,
and I must dress in a manner befitting my husband’s post. Oh, and the box must be trimmed; the garden is in a state of disarray ever since we lost poor Davey, and what will Sir Richard think of us, coming from Lanhydrock to our poor house?”

Out of her mistress’s sight, Cat raised an eyebrow. Sir Richard Robartes lived the best part of a day’s ride to the east from tucked-away Kenegie, just outside the county town of Bodmin. She wondered what had brought him so far. She took a keen interest in knowing all she could of the gentry, and she knew that this gentleman had a few years back acquired the run-down estate of Lanhydrock and had at once set about redesigning its extensive grounds with an army of gardeners, spending so much money on the project that it had everyone talking and shaking their heads the length of the county. Cat had heard her mother on the subject, her face twisted into the characteristic sneer she adopted when speaking of anyone of whom she did not approve. “A self-professed Puritan, and there he is spending his fortune trying to improve on what the Lord has provided in all its rough simplicity! They are hypocrites, the lot of them, with their canting talk and their own private vanities. Give me an honest rogue any day than one of his mealy-mouthed kind.”

Cat drew the folds of the ruff together with an expert flick, secured the ties, and tucked them out of sight inside the rich Italian brocade. “I truly do not think Sir Richard will be riding all the way over from Bodmin to inspect the state of the knot garden, my lady,” she said gently. “Nor to pay great attention to the linen, moths or no moths.”

Margaret Harris gave her a quick, nervous smile. “Of course, you are right, Catherine. Be that as it may, we should not shame ourselves. My home may not be the richest in the district, but these men are influential and well-traveled. Even if they do not remark these details consciously, you may be sure an impression will be formed, and I firmly think they are more likely to hear Sir Arthur out and lend him their support if they see him to be a solid man with a well-run
estate.” She wrung her hands and stepped away to survey the results in the long Venetian glass. “Do I look well enough, Catherine?”

Cat surveyed her mistress silently. There was no denying that Lady Harris looked most proper, but the style of her dress was dull and hideously outmoded to one who set great store by following the latest turns of fashion. The fabric of the mandeville was rich enough, and the bodice was trimmed with seed pearls, but the neck was too high and the skirt was too full. No one was wearing such a stiff, formal style nowadays, let alone an old cartwheel ruff, which was such a blessed nuisance to clean and starch, a task she was not looking forward to at all. But she kept these thoughts to herself and nodded approvingly. “You look very well indeed, my lady. Sir Arthur will be proud of you.”

And that was undoubtedly the case: Despite the fact that his duties as Governor of St. Michael’s Mount took Sir Arthur from home more often than not, he remained devoted to his family and whenever in the presence of his wife regarded her out of his hooded blue eyes with far more warmth than such a staid and mousy woman might expect. It must be true, Cat conjectured, what Polly said of the marriage: that it had not lasted as long as it had, nor produced eight healthy children, nor six poor dead ones, out of chilly duty alone.

Margaret Harris crossed to the window and gazed out across the grounds. Through the trees she had a clear view of St. Michael’s Mount, rising like legendary Avalon out of the still sea, the close waters of the bay gleaming turquoise as the sun struck through to the pale sands beneath. She sighed. “I wish I had never laid eyes upon that place,” she said with sudden venom.

Cat stared at her, for a moment lost for words. She knew that it had been Margaret Harris’s decision to maintain her household here at Kenegie rather than moving into the castle on the Mount, a decision that Cat simply could not understand. Kenegie was well enough in its way—foursquare and granite gray, high on the Gulval hills in
its sheltering nest of trees—but had she been the wife of such a man, she would have demanded that they leave the family estate at once and take up residence in the castle, holding court there in fine style in its spacious halls, hanging its walls with fabulous tapestries, and lading its long table with linen and crystal and silver. Taking ship across Mount’s Bay to ascend to the castle in its majestic position atop the isle would surely impress any visitor, no matter how worldly-wise he might be.

She had once been foolish enough as to say so much to her mistress and been sternly admonished. “My dear, in my eyes it is hard to make any castle a home, and the Mount is a particular case, being rocky, inaccessible, and exceedingly drafty. Moreover, the Mount is visible for miles around from land and sea, which renders it a natural target for foreign enemies, and as my husband keeps complaining, it is most insufficiently garrisoned and armed.” At this, she had shivered. “Believe me, Catherine, I would not trade my small comforts here for all the grandeur of such a castle.”

Lady Harris now turned away from that view, her mouth set in a hard, straight line. “That place is slowly destroying my husband’s health,” she declared. “It is a burden and a worry, when he should be taking his ease in the late afternoon of his life. He has been a most loyal and faithful servant to the Crown for thirty years, but it has repaid him not one whit. Fine words butter no parsnips, and pretty flags may proclaim a king, but they will never save his kingdom.”

King James had sent his royal union flag to the governor in reward for his “good and dutiful service,” instructing him to fly it always from the highest point of the Mount as a sign of his sovereign’s favor. Cat regarded her mistress in surprise, not just for the unwonted vehemence of her outburst, but for its substance. The arrival of the flag had surely been a mark of honor: Such words were surely close to treason. It was as well they were not overheard.

“I could take Polly’s place serving at table,” she said, filling the awkward silence that followed, “if it would ease your ladyship’s
concerns. I am not as practiced as she, but I am sure I would not disgrace you.”

Lady Harris shook her head. “I would not ask it of you, Catherine. It will be long, dull work, and you might spoil your pretty dress.” There was a glint in her eye. For all her apparent mousiness, Margaret Harris was no one’s fool, and she had quickly remarked the coincidence of her servant wearing her best red gown with the imminent arrival of wealthy visitors. “But you may help me set the dining room to rights.”

Thus Cat found herself for the next two hours swathed in a most unbecoming linen apron running around at the mistress’s beck and call sweeping the flagstones, beating the rugs, polishing the chairs, the glasses, the knives; changing the flowers, shaking the inevitable moths out of the linen despite the vile-smelling herbs interleaving the pieces, and then sitting in the brightest light she could find with a fine needle and white silk thread patching and darning the myriad little holes they had left in the best Dutch tablecloth. Matty ran in and out of the kitchen with cloths and brooms and a pressing iron full of hot coals. Margaret Harris took up residence in the parlor so that she could oversee Cook and Nell Chigwine in the roasting of the sheep slaughtered that morning, the making of pastries and fish soup, the preparation of fruits and cheeses. To a huge bread-and-butter pudding studded with candied berries she set her own hand. “Run to the dairy and ask Grace for a skim of cream,” she called to Nell, who duly wiped her floury hands on her apron and took a short cut through the dining room to the courtyard beyond which lay the farm buildings.