Green Darkness (58 page)

“Well, to be sure . . .” said John, “to be sure, if you wish—” He dispatched a servant.

Until the flagon of mead came, Celia said nothing at all, though John tried several topics. He spoke of his manor in Lincolnshire, and assured her that it was not damp. “The sea coals from Newcastle are landed at my jetty, and I’m not one to stint fuel—nor hospitality neither, I’ve a mort o’ friends in Boston, some wives as young as you. There’ll be dancings, fairs, strolling players, ye’ll not be dull, I swear it.”

Celia put her chin in her hand and gazed into the fire.

When the mead came she gulped down a cupful, then another. A flush tinged her cheekbones. She leaned back in the chair and began running her finger round and round a carved spiral on the armrest, but she refused the food John awkwardly pressed on her.

He had dismissed all the serving men. Suddenly she poured herself another noggin of mead, and John’s nervousness exploded into exasperation.

“God blast it, Celia, ye’ve drunk enough for a barrowman!”

“I wish to be sotted,” she said. “Better so.”

John swallowed. “Look, my dear, I must speak plain. Ye needn’t be bedded tonight, if that’s why ye act so odd, we’ve a lifetime ahead and I’m not so sure o’ my prowess as I used to be, ’tis a chancy thing at my age, but I want thee—I’ve proven how I want thee—and I wish for a son . . . I want thee, but by God, ye frighten me a bit.”

Celia finally turned and looked at him. She saw the square ruddy face, the imploring eyes beneath heavy brows, a face like Cowdray’s prize mastiff, Ajax. “I’m sorry,” she said. “You’re a good man, Sir John.”

“
Not
Sir John,” he cried, “I’m thy husband!”

“Aye . . .” she said, “but not in the sight of God.”

He flinched. Her speech was not thick, yet her intonation was strange. He glanced ruefully at the mead flagon. He thought of his other wedding night near forty years ago . . . how had
she
behaved, that scraggy bride he had married for her dowry and connections? He remembered her chicken-wing shoulders, and the token mouse squeaks of protest as he deflowered her. He remembered that she had a sour smell he disliked. But I was young then, and lusty as a ram, it didn’t matter, nor with the others—the female bodies which came later, now and again—after it became clear that Margaret had something wrong with her womb and would give him no heirs . . . 

“What are ye
doing,
Celia?”

She had suddenly risen, throwing off the cloak. She moved languorously to one of the vases of holly and Christmas roses. She picked out two of the thick petalled greenish flowers, and tossing back her hair, tucked a flower behind each ear. They gave her an exotic fairy look. Her eyes glittered behind the long dark lashes . . . 

“There should be music,” she said with a throaty laugh. “Music for the bride. Can’t you play the lute for me, Sir John? Can you not sing?”

He shook his head, watching her in fascination. There had been a ballad in his childhood, his nurse had sung it to him as they trudged through the misty fenlands—“’Ware the elf maiden, she’ll get thee in thrall; ’ware lest her honey-lips soon taste o’ gall . . .”

John shook his head again violently. “I know no songs, a pox on it, child, you’re overwrought, go to bed—’tis in there behind the arras.”

“Ah-h-h—” she breathed and smiled down at him tilting her head. “Then,
I’ll
sing one—‘Celia the wanton and fair.’ Wouldn’t you like
that,
Sir John?”

She moved near him, she raised her white arms and made a gesture of supplication, a wavering motion with her hands. Suddenly his fear left him. Beneath this mummery he saw the miserable despairing child, and he knew that though he might never gain her love, she yet had need of him.

“Hush—” he said, for she was still singing “Celia the wanton and fair” in a harsh cracked voice. He lifted her in his arms and carried her behind the arras. He lay down with her on the bed, and she went limp as he undressed her. He kissed the hollow of her neck. He drew her head against his shoulder where she nestled giving little whimpers like a puppy. She went to sleep at once, but he had no thoughts of sleep. Through the dark he stared up at the ceiling, savoring the closeness of her body, the faint herbal scent of her hair—no doubt she had washed it in camomile for the marriage. Yet this was not the wedding night he had imagined. His thoughts slid hither and yon. The meeting of the clothiers guild tomorrow, the new excise on Flemish cloth, an insubordinate factor in Boston—cozening and cheating—the Wyberton dyke must be mended at once before the spring floods.

The bells rang out for midnight and Celia stirred. She flung her right arm across his chest and whispered, “Stephen.”

John held himself very still. Stephen? And who was Stephen? Some stripling she had met? Some gallant who had caught her fancy? How little he knew of this girl he had wed. And how old he felt.

He withdrew his arm carefully from under her head. She turned away from him on the pillow, breathing deeply. Presently John slept, too. The inexorable bells awakened him at five.

It took him some moments to understand why there was a girl in his bed. Then he ran his hands over her body and felt a welcome flicker and throbbing in his loins. She did not stir, even as he began to kiss her. Except for her body warmth she lay limp as a new corpse. “Damn it, wake up!” he cried. “Ye must’ve been told your duty, e’en though ye’ve not the inclination!” As she still did not respond, he mounted her clumsily, uncertain, fumbling.

Suddenly, she spoke. “I know my duty, Sir John. I’m not hindering you.”

Her cool resigned little voice quenched him, though he gritted his teeth and proceeded as best he could until he was certain of failure. Then he flung himself to the other side of the bed with sounds of sobbing anger.

Celia raised herself on one elbow listening to the sounds. “Poor man . . .” she said in wonder. “Can all this mean so much to you?” She leaned over and patted his stout shaking shoulders. “No doubt ’twill come better later. You said so yourself.”

He gave a cry and heaved himself out of bed. She heard his heavy footsteps thudding across the fresh-strewn rushes as he pushed aside the arras and left the bedroom alcove. “I’ll see ye at breakfast,” he said, and she heard the hall door slam shut.

Thus passed Celia’s wedding night.

Four days later the Hutchinsons arrived at Sir John’s manor, Skirby Hall, a mile outside of Boston.

Though travel and new sights had worked their usual magic, and Celia’s misery lessened with each mile away from London, she found in the flat marshlands none of the exhilaration she had felt amongst the Cumberland mountains. The brown sedge, the water-threaded fens succeeded each other with a monotony which she accepted as a portent of her future life.

Her only positive pleasure was Juno, her mare. Sometimes she talked to the horse as they all rode single file along the interminable dykes—John, Celia, two men servants and a pack mule.

She dutifully responded whenever her husband turned around to show her some sight or landmark. “That’s the Wash, m’dear, part of the North Sea.”

“Oh, aye,” she said, but saw only a distant expanse of gray water merging with gray sky.

“Look ye—my fowlers are out early,” cried John, watching a group of rough-clad men carrying snares and guns. They had now entered his own demesne. “We’ll have snipe tomorrow, or would ye prefer a fat roast mallard?”

“Either one,” said Celia, and made an effort. “What’s that ahead? Like a big black stump in the sky?”

John chuckled. “Ye’ve said it right, ’tis Boston Stump, we
call
it! The church steeple. Ye can go there time and again,” he added smiling, “’twill save me paying the fine the papists’ve put on for staying away. I’ve no use m’self for churchgoing.”

“I know,” said Celia. “Nor have I . . .” she added softly to the horse. She looked down at the pouch which hung from her girdle. Stephen’s note was in there—a scrap of parchment folded into a wad under her ivory comb, her two handkerchiefs and the last of the gilded sugarplums Magdalen had sent her.

What use to keep the note? She had not looked at it since the Bishop of Winchester’s page delivered it at the priory, nor would she ever forget its wording:

“After you make your confession, as I shall—we will pray God to forget what happened, nor think on it ever again ourselves . . . S.”

“I shall think as I please,” said Celia to the horse, but her voice wavered. She had not gone to confession since the night Wyatt invaded the priory. On this point she had lied to Ursula. Celia’s knowledge of her religion, her entire interest in it had sprung from Stephen.

She thought of his cherished portrait of the Virgin. The Rival. “I hate her,” Celia whispered. She suddenly fished in her pouch, drew up the bit of parchment and flung it down into the muddy waters of a drain.

“Did ye drop something?” John asked, but before she need answer he said with quiet triumph, “Ah, we’re here! There’s Skirby Hall, they’ve the banner flying fur ye, sweet—and ye’ll find a goodly welcome as Sir John brings home his bride.”

Indeed the welcome was overwhelming. John’s tenants and servants were lined along the road, the women bobbed curtsies, the men pulled their forelocks. A trumpet blared above the shouted greetings. John’s bailiff, wizened like an elderly terrier, came forward and kissed Celia’s hand respectfully. “M’lady, m’lady,” she heard the new title whispered all around her. She heard the admiration, “Sa young, sa fair. Master’s the lucky one . . .”

John heard them, too. He laughed and sweeping Celia up in his arms, mounted the steps like a lad and carried her over the threshold while he whispered in her ear. “We’ll make a son yet, dearling. Ye’ll see—we’ll forget London an’ all the world but our own homeland!”

She smiled a little and kissed his cheek, while his tenantry cheered. Yet, much later beneath the crimson velvet tester over John’s great bed, that which he so desired became impossible when she nestled compliantly against him and whispered, “Ah . . . this is sweet . . . to be held close like a father . . . I remember him a bit . . . he was hearty and strong like you . . . would that you
were
my father, sir, ’twould make me so happy.”

His arms stiffened around her, then fell away. He sighed heavily.

“Have I said wrong?” she asked. “I didn’t mean to—you’re so good to me. I’m grateful—I ne’er dreamed to be ‘my lady’—you’ll find me grateful . . .”

“Hush—” he said. “No more talking. Sleep now, I’ve much to do on the morrow. I’ve been away too long.”

After that night John ordered a different chamber readied for himself. He left Celia to occupy the sumptuous bed in the great chamber alone.

He treated her with kindness in private, with the respect due to his wife in public, but beyond a kiss on the cheek night and morning, he did not touch her again. Celia, though aware that she had somehow failed him, was deeply relieved. She very soon learned her duties as lady of the manor, and found that her apprenticeship under Ursula had given her ample capability.

Once she understood the Lincolnshire dialect, she had no trouble in directing her serving maids, whether in the house, the laundry, the dairy or the stillroom, and they obeyed her with grudging respect.

By the time the days brightened and flowed to summer Celia had grown accustomed to the watery wastes around the knoll where the small brick manor stood amongst its guardian willows; she could look from her window and watch their tenantry walking on stilts through the marshes to catch the highly profitable geese, plucked several times yearly for their feathers and quills. The former were exported as far as London, where they softened the slumber of countless citizens. The quills made pens for the learned. Goose eggs, too, were sold at Boston mart, along with the warm little corpses of duck, teal, snipe, and even the rare great bustard, when a fowler’s arrow managed to bring one down.

Celia often gazed out at the windmills—she had never seen so many—while the barley, peas and bean crops grew tall on their arable land. She listened for the distant lowing of their cattle, below the shrilling of curlews. At least there would not be another year of famine in Lincolnshire.

As the marshes turned green and leaden skies over the Wash often blazed crimson and gold in the sunrises, she began to feel the still and hazy beauty of the fenlands, though she would never have mentioned this to John, who did not share her quietude of spirit.

He rode daily to his counting house in Boston where he and his colleagues held gloomy discussions. Boston Haven was silting up fast; a hundred years ago Boston had been the second busiest port in England. Now, as he had found in London, financial or mercantile interest no longer included Lincolnshire. Moreover, foreign markets were being glutted with the clothiers’ exports. In order to open up new markets he had joined the Merchant Adventurers and eagerly awaited news of the exploratory ships sent out towards Muscovy and the unknown East. Not one of those ships had been heard from yet, while his own last cargo to Calais had fetched distressingly low prices. And he was having trouble with his weavers—a succession of mishaps to that portion of the cottage industry which he controlled.

It seemed to him that with the essential failure of his marriage he had lost all the verve and optimism which had hitherto made him successful.

Then he had another attack of gout, during which he shut himself in his room for days, allowing nobody near him but his manservant.

Celia was sorry, she made possets for him and sent them up to his chamber. She continued to take pride in her housewifery but there was plenty of time for riding out on Juno and gingerly exploring the mysterious fens. She even wheedled one of the fowlers into teaching her how to paddle the narrow cockboats constantly used by the amphibious population.

Nobody bothered her. The fen-dwellers all knew her to be Lady Hutchinson and a foreigner, who despite her obvious youth and comeliness, kept herself to herself—as was fitting.

Often on a northerly breeze she heard the bells ring out from Boston Stump—St. Botolph’s lofty lantern spire—summoning worshippers to Mass, but she never went, nor did her husband question her. He slowly recovered from the gout and reappeared in the hall for meals. He regained interest in his manor and his business affairs, he even invited some of his Hutchinson relations from Alford to the Michaelmas Feast at Skirby, but his joviality had vanished, he had grown peevish; complaining that the ale was brewed too thin, or the meat was underdone. He often beat off the pedigreed hounds beneath the table when they begged for their usual bones.