Green Darkness (62 page)

Melusine took the beads reverently in her hand, she bent and touched her deformed mouth to the cross. “
Je jure que si ton coeur est pure,
if you wish only good . . . to your husband . . . there’ll be no harm. Now repeat the word of power. ‘Ishtareth.’ It is old as Babylon . . . Ishtar was goddess of love.” She put the little vial in Celia’s reluctant hand.

“
Adieu,
” she said, “we shall nevaire meet again.
Quand vient la grande marie—
the great tide on All Hallow’s Eve—I go with it.”

“Melusine!” cried Celia, struck anew by pity, by a momentary yearning which was almost love.

But the woman pushed her through the door. “
Bonne chance. Adieu,
” she said inexorably.

Celia walked up the dune. When she turned at the top, she saw Melusine naked again in her doorway, and heard her calling softly to her seal, “
Odo . 
.
 . Odo, reviens, mon ami, je t’attends.
”

By the time Celia reached Skirby Hall the whole episode with the water-witch had become painful. She was ashamed of it. She started to throw away the little vial of brown powder, then dropped it in her coffer along with the crucifix. She blotted both from her mind.

During the next days before John returned, her servants were amazed at the bustle she instigated, a perfect rage of housekeeping; floor rushes renewed, though they were scarcely a month old; furniture polished with beeswax until brawny arms ached; the brewer and the baker harassed into making ale and loaves enough for a castle.

John came home and she welcomed him warmly. But she never gave him the water-witch’s powder.

I
N THE SUMMER OF THE
year of grace 1558, John Hutchinson died, and Celia returned to Cowdray. The letter which summoned her arrived in August, and was brought by an elegant young equerry named Edwin Ratcliffe, one of several gentlemen ushers now attached to Lord Montagu’s enormous household. Like Wat, nearly four years ago, Edwin had other commissions in Lincolnshire—to the Clintons, to the Cecils—and found this sidetrack amongst the eastern fens a bore. He was, moreover, upon arrival, startled to see that Skirby Hall was a house of mourning.

The windows were draped in black cloth; Sir John’s painted hatchment was nailed over the gate until it could be transferred to the parish church where his tomb was being prepared.

A shabby old gardener acted as porter, and when he gave Edwin the dolorous news, Edwin tried to leave the letter, supposing that the sorrowing widow must be in seclusion, and himself anxious to explore the pallid entertainments of Boston before continuing his journey. The gardener gainsaid him, and insisted on ushering Edwin toward the Hall, saying that her poor ladyship wanted company. There’d been only a handful at the funeral—scandalous few considering what Sir John’s position used to be—and
they’d
all gone home.

Edwin, a jaunty youth of twenty who had entered the powerful viscount’s service as a stopgap before assuming his majority, gave an irritated assent. He was thunderstruck when he entered the Hall and the widow rose gravely to meet him.

“Blessed
Jesu
!” said Edwin, staring.

Celia, in her cheap mourning robes, the plain black coif frilled with a touch of white, her wan cheeks, her great somber eyes, reminded him of a nun. There were now a few nuns to be seen in London since Queen Mary was reestablishing the convents. But never a nun so beautiful.

Edwin dropped to his knee, and silently extended the folded parchment with its red seal.

Celia took the letter and examined the buck-head signet. “From Lord Montagu?” she said in a quiet, considering voice. “’Tis long I’ve not seen that device. Kind of him to condole with my loss, though I wonder that he heard so soon . . .”

“I b-believe—’tis not
that,
Lady.” Edwin blushed to the roots of the curly brown hair on his forehead and the fringe of beard cut in the fashionable Spanish manner. “I think it is another matter, I have several missives to deliver.”

“Ah, to be sure,” said Celia. The last weeks to her were a shadowy haze. In truth, she thought, John died,
really
died, only ten days ago. He is in his coffin under the pall in the church. There are tapers burning. I bought them, though he didn’t want them. He said they were papist. The last day—was Saturday week, when he spoke to me a moment. For so long he didn’t speak. I thought of him as dead then. When was that? Yuletide? Nay, before that. Michaelmas? Nay, later. Must have been Martinmas because we slaughtered the ox, the mart ox, and I was stirring the blood puddings when we all heard him give that horrible cry. Even in the kitchen we heard the cry he gave. I thought he would die then, his face was purple as his pall is now. I hoped he would die. But he got better for a while. He fretted so over our new war with France, cursing the Spaniards—King Philip—and the Queen. It was February when he got the news of the fall of Calais. He wept, poor soul, he said Calais had been
ours
for two hundred years; he lost warehouses in Calais. He wept and ranted, and that night he gave another great cry in his sleep. When I rushed in I thought he’d turned to stone. He could not move, except to flick one eyelid. He never moved his limbs again.

“Lady . . .” said Edwin, “will you open my lord’s letter?”

She started. She smiled faintly. She looked at him with deliberate effort, and became aware that this was a comely young man whose sword, slashed satin doublet and tall plumed hat betokened a gentleman; that there was a kindling in his round blue eyes—an expression she had not seen for so long.

“But, you must have drink!” she cried. “I’ve made you no welcome. Forgive me. There’s plenty of ale, bread at least . . .” She moved suddenly to the bellrope and jerked it, listening for the distant jangle. “There’re only two servants now. I can pay no wages. You see, there was nothing left. Naught but debts. Sir John’s heir, ’tis the nephew from Alford—he leaves me here on sufferance a while, but he is angry.”

“How
could
he be—the wretch!” Edwin cried, shaken by a surge of feeling so unaccustomed that he did not recognize it as chivalric. He was no bookish man. He had heard nursery tales about King Arthur and his knights rescuing beauty in distress and thought them dull. Hawking, hunting, archery, tennis, a few scuffling romps with willing wenches, these contented him. He had been betrothed since he was thirteen to the daughter of a neighboring squire at Petworth. Anne would be fifteen and marriageable by the time he reached his majority in November and came into his dead mother’s inheritance. There would be a dual celebration, and at the wedding Anne’s manor would be joined to his. He had known the girl all his life, and thought her pleasing—when he thought of her at all. She inspired none of the odd sensations evoked by the lovely widow.

He was silent as Kate shuffled in with a flagon of ale, and glanced at him incuriously.

“Yaw rung fur this, Lady,” Kate said glumly. “Nigh bottom o’ keg. Yaw’ll hove ter wait fur th’ bread, not riz yet—butter’s gawn tew.”

Celia bit her lips, then said with a gallantry which Edwin thought adorable, “Lackaday, and such it be. As Job said, We are born to trouble as the sparks fly upward.’”

She did not continue the quotation, “I would seek unto God, and unto God commit my cause,” because the whole passage reminded her painfully of John who had often read it to her. Since he preferred the Old Testament, and often read Job, she had come to view God as a fearsome unpredictable deity, alternately warring with Satan or enlisting him as a superior correction officer. Yet John seemed to find increasing comfort in his readings, and during the endless evenings before his final seizure, while she stitched and listened, she had gradually absorbed most of the Bible.

Edwin, of a Catholic family, had no idea who this Job could be, nor cared. He gazed at Celia, moonstruck.

She poured him a flagon of ale. “Wassail—God give you grace,” she said, sitting on the bench and motioning him beside her. “I know not your name, sir.”

“Edwin Ratcliffe, my lady,” he said thickly.

Her skin was luminous, like a golden pearl. She smelled of beramot and lavender water. He wondered what her slender body was like under all that swathing black, then blushed again to have had such a thought. He did not touch his drink.

She slowly broke the seal on Lord Montagu’s letter and gazed at the elaborate Italianate flourishes which had been made by Anthony’s new secretary.

“I can not read this, it is too hard,” she pushed it ruefully towards him. “Can
you,
sir?”

Edwin could have, since he had suffered through some years of tutoring and an unsatisfactory year at Oxford, but he knew the contents.

“It is addressed to Sir John Hutchinson,” he said, crossing himself, “may God rest his soul. And to
you,
Lady, it announces the marriage of my lord the Viscount Montagu and Lady Magdalen Dacre at the Chapel Royal on the fifteenth of July. The Queen’s Grace was present, and as her health is so poor, the wedding was exceeding small, and hurried. My lord and lady present their apologies to all their friends who were on their country estates.”

“Ah-h,” said Celia. She rose from the bench and stooped to pick up Taggle who was making imploring whines. So Anthony and Maggie were married. Those two who had meant so much to her once, and who had receded into the void of the past four years.

“I’m pleased that I—that
we
were remembered,” she said.

“There’s an enclosure,” said Edwin. “’Tis in a different hand, and signed ‘Ursula Southwell.’”

Celia swallowed. Bittersweet pain, resentment, even anger caused her eyes to narrow. “Let me see it,” and she pulled the piece of vellum towards her. The handwriting was so shaky that though the words were few, she could read it no better than the official missive. “Can you read
this?
” she demanded. “’Tis from my aunt.”

Aunt? thought Edwin. How extraordinary. He did not know that Lady Hutchinson had any relations at Cowdray. He squinted at the note. “I believe it says, ‘Celia, I implore you, come to me. I pray Sir John will permit. So I may die in peace.’”

“She is dying?” Celia whispered.

“I know naught, Lady, I’ve ne’er seen her. She keeps to her chamber at Cowdray. She was not in London for the wedding.”

Celia was silent so long that he saw she had forgotten him.

She leaned against the embrasure of the window. The murky latticed panes permitted flickering sunlight to shine on her face through a split in the black curtains. She pushed a curtain aside and looked out over the fens. She had shut Ursula from her heart, long ago, as her aunt had seemed to shut hers. Ursula had not come that Yuletide when she was invited to Skirby Hall. Instead there had been a curt note, casually sent via common carrier to Boston so that it had not reached the Hutchinsons by Christmas. The note said only that the Lady Southwell could not be spared from Cowdray, and was signed by an unknown name, as Lord Montagu’s secretary.

John had been both resentful and relieved, she remembered.

“So much for your great kin and connections, m’ girl,” he cried. “Can’t be bothered wi’ us. Ye’re well rid o’ them—two-faced, black-hearted papist lot. Forget that false aunt. You cleave to your husband like the Book says!”

Aye, she had thought—cleave to the husband who is no husband, and who was forced on me by an aunt who pretended to love me—for thus, by then, did she see her marriage. It became a relief to hate Ursula.

Edwin walked timidly up behind Celia, and said, “Lady . . .?”

She let her hand fall from the curtain, the brilliant sea-blue eyes met his imploring look. “Aye . . .?”

“You’ll want to go to her—Lady Southwell—’tis a piteous plea and I—I can escort you. Back to Cowdray. It would—would pleasure me. And, in truth,” added Edwin who was fundamentally sensible, “wi’ matters here as they are, what else can you do?”

Celia hesitated only a moment, then she gave him the dimpled smile, though her eyes remained sober. “You are courteous, sir. I thank you, and I will go with you.”

Celia left Skirby Hall forever, five days later. Edwin came back for her after delivering his other announcements. The heir from Alford did not conceal his relief as he speeded them from the gatehouse.

Celia rode Juno, and carried Taggle in a little basket behind the cantle. Her only other possessions, the contents of her coffer, made a bundle so small that Edwin was able to lash them to his own horse.

Sir John had not meant it so. In his will written immediately after the marriage he had left her the manor, all his chattels, an interest in his ships, and property in Calais. These were gone; how completely vanished even his heir-at-law did not know until the death.

On that Saturday when he died, John had suddenly grown lucid, had looked up at Celia and said thickly, “Dearling . . . I’ve done wrong by ye, by God I didn’t mean to. If ’twas in my power, I’d make thee rich.
Money
—” he cried in a strong voice. “I’d gi’e thee gold enough to glut a hundred o’ those damned Spanish ships! . . . Kiss me, child—forgive my lacks—stupidities.”

She had kissed him tenderly on the pain-wrinkled forehead. His eyelid fell, his breathing grew stertorous, but he spoke once more. “Yea, the Almighty shall be my defense, and I shall have plenty of
silver.
”

Celia had shed tears for him, but she left Skirby Hall dry-eyed. At last she let joy come through. She was going home to Midhurst. She was only twenty, and she knew again that she was desirable. Edwin’s every glance told her so.

As they passed through straggling Frampton Village she looked away from the cot where Dickon had lived with his grandmother. She did not know if they were still there, but beyond the marshes on the rocky dune she knew that the water-witch was not. Melusine and her hut had been washed away on the Hallowe’en tide that year, exactly as Melusine had predicted. It had been a tremendous tide blown higher by an easterly gale. Celia had heard the servants whispering about it. Better so, Celia thought, and kicked Juno into a trot, eager to reach Peterborough where they would stop for the night.