Plague Child (27 page)

Chapter 32

One of the strangest things about the war was that, although both the King and Parliament vowed they were fighting for God and the people, as soon as either side appeared, the people disappeared, taking their food and animals with them. So it was at Highpoint. When the soldiers were there, there was only Kate and Rose, looking after Mrs Morland. The morning Will’s unit left, in some mysterious way the news of their departure had reached every corner of the valley, from Earl Staynton in the west to the Grey Horse in the east.

I went into the kitchen to find some food. A stout woman was scolding a kitchen maid, as if she was responsible for the dirt and grease left by the soldiers on the spit. They were taken aback to see me. I apologised for the mess, but the woman, whom I learned later was Mrs Adams, the cook, turned her back on me.

Other servants disappeared as I approached. At first I took it as an understandable resentment of the unit leaving the house in such a state. But it was more than that. They knew who I was. Edward Stonehouse would be taking Mrs Morland’s funeral that morning. I heard someone ask if Richard would be there. I was a usurper.

When I smiled at Rose, who had at first given me such pretty curtseys, she gave me a frightened look and I saw she was being beckoned away by an old man dressed in rusty black. This, I guessed, was Mr Fawcett, the house steward. He had bulging, frog-like eyes which slid from side to side, checking Rose’s dress, and those of other servants. All were in black, filing out towards two carts which would take them to the funeral. I heard Fawcett mutter to a barrel-chested man, whom I thought I had seen somewhere before: ‘That whore’s bastard.’

The blood burned in my cheeks and I took a step towards Fawcett, before stopping myself. Had I learnt from Eaton how to channel rage into such cold bitterness? Or had I inherited it from my mother?

I watched them board the carts. My anger at her treatment mounted as I watched the carts pull away and I went to the stables. I would finish what my mother had begun.

Patch wanted to gallop but I kept her on a tight rein as I followed the carts through a ford, then travelled upward to bleaker country. An uncomfortable silence fell over the carts. Once I caught Mrs Adams’s black scarf as it blew off. I handed it to her with as much courtesy as I could muster. She took it without a glance or a word, and let it hang in the wind before wearing it, as if I had given it some contagion. The only person who would meet my eye was the barrel-chested, bearded man I was sure I had seen before somewhere, but could not think where.

Behind me, as we approached Shadwell, I could see a coach climbing the hill. I fell back from the carts and checked my pistol. The village was a huddle of cottages round the church, which was the only substantial building. Apart from a few smallholdings, people seemed to depend for their survival on sheep, which grazed right up to the graveyard. I did not dismount, but waited while the mourners filed into the church and the coach drew up.

First to emerge was Edward Stonehouse, dignified in his clerical robes, prayer book in hand, face solemnly prepared for the service. I stared down at him with interest. It was the closest I had been to him. He gazed up at me in astonishment, the heavy iron spectacles slipping down his nose. It was more than astonishment. His hands shook, almost dropping his prayer book, and his ruddy face lost colour, becoming pallid against his black robes, and he stopped abruptly. His wife, being helped out by the coachman, collided into the back of him.

‘Do be careful, Edward. You are in such a dream this morning!’ Her voice was sharp and impatient. She looked as if she had just swallowed a whole bottle of vinegar; her eyes were screwed up and her lips so thin they almost vanished into her face. If Edward had been Margaret Pearce’s lover he had had a bad bargain with his wife, I thought; except Luke had told me she had brought him a small fortune, which probably paid for the gleaming coach with the Stonehouse arms, and the coachman’s livery.

‘What is it? Who is it?’ Her eyes were slits as they peered up at me. I returned her gaze with interest while my horse peacefully cropped the grass. She gripped Edward’s arm. ‘Impertinence! Tell the coachman –’

Whether she intended him to tell the coachman to take his whip to me I never knew, for Edward gripped her arm and almost pulled her through the lych gate. Clearly unused to this treatment, she protested loudly until my identity must have dawned on her for, as she reached the porch, she said, ‘It’s not
him
, is it?’ and twisted round to stare at me. Meanwhile, a governess was ushering the children from the coach. There was one boy, about ten, resplendent in a black doublet who might have attracted Lord Stonehouse as a possible heir, but Phillip (again according to Luke) came from Edward’s wife’s first marriage. Her husband had been carried off in the same plague that had killed Edward’s first wife and the grandson Lord Stonehouse doted on. The other children, all girls, could be my half-sisters. All stared back at me, as children will do, without inhibition, and I gave them as interested a stare back until Phillip demanded of the harassed governess: ‘Who is that man?’

‘A man on a horse,’ she replied.

‘I can see that,’ he said, with withering scorn. ‘Why is he staring at me?’

‘Mama said he was impertinent,’ the eldest girl whispered to him, simpering.

‘Did she! Did she now!’ He broke free from the governess’s grip and strode up to my horse, which began to back restlessly until I quietened her and made her hold her ground. ‘Here – you, sir! Clear off! Unless you want a good thrashing!’

Mrs Stonehouse reappeared at the porch. ‘Phillip! Come here! You are at a funeral!’

Phillip looked as arrogant and hot-tempered as his step-uncle Richard, but – giving me a final ‘This is a private family funeral, sir, and strangers are not welcome!’ – reluctantly joined his sisters trooping into the church. So far I had gained an unexpected enjoyment from this, but now began to feel increasingly uneasy. There was no sign of Richard, or of an approaching coach. He might be in the church, but it was unlikely he would go in before the servants. I had never believed Will’s story that Richard had gone to join the King, but was less concerned to question it while his soldiers were there. If Richard and Mrs Morland were as close as she said, I would have expected him to be at her funeral. I hesitated, gazing as if for inspiration at the only elaborate feature of that simple church: a doorway carved with man tempted by fruit from the Tree of Life. I wondered if my mother had gone through that porch to marry. And to whom.

I found a copse where I tethered my horse as best I could from prying eyes. As I returned, I glimpsed a man running from the back of the church towards the village. Edward’s reed-like voice was magnified by the bare stone and echoed round me as I pushed open the church door: ‘We brought nothing into this world . . .’ He stopped as the old, swollen wood grated against the stone flags. Illuminated in the doorway, I felt like a player on a stage as every head swivelled. I had to endure the door’s protesting groan again before the cold, musty dimness closed round me.

Heads jerked back as Edward continued, his eyes following me as I stumbled down the aisle, trying to find a place: ‘And it is certain we can carry nothing out . . .’

There were places further along the benches, but people would not move, remaining in the aisle seats as still as the stone effigies, staring rigidly ahead, or with bowed heads and hands clasped in prayer. I tripped over a protruding flagstone and would have fallen if I had not grabbed the meaty shoulder of Mrs Adams. I muttered an apology, but she acted as if nothing had happened, apparently too deep in her devotions. Finally, someone did move, albeit grudgingly, leaving me the end of a bench on which I could precariously balance one buttock. It was Henry, the coachman. I nodded my thanks, but he too remained stolidly unaware of me.

Edward might have chosen the psalm deliberately for me. The candle flames in the sconce above his pulpit bent with his movements as he stared accusingly at me: ‘Lord, take thy plague away from me!’

‘Amen,’ said Mrs Stonehouse, from her pew in the front, her children, then the whole congregation echoing her.

Edward gripped the pulpit, his voice carrying an avenging strength. ‘Hear my prayer! . . . For I am a stranger with thee: a sojourner, as all my fathers were . . . spare me a little, before I go hence, and be no more seen.’

I shuddered, for although the words were addressed to the coffin below him, they seemed to be directed at me. I felt I had committed a blasphemy, like a thief in the night stealing memories which I had never shared. While the congregation prayed fervently for the soul of Mrs Morland on its final journey, I struggled to join in but the words stuck in my throat. I could feel her presence. She was reluctant to start on that journey while I was there. A malevolence clung round the coffin, as tangible as the damp, cloying scent of rosemary on its lid. Panic rose in me and I was on the verge of running from the church when I remembered I
did
have memories, Kate’s memories, as real to me as if I held them myself. I could picture Mrs Morland snatching up my mother’s dress as if drawing back a curtain, as I came out into the world.

I covered my face with my hands and prayed, not for Mrs Morland, but for my mother, who was buried in this place, probably quietly and secretly. I wept, standing clumsily, awkwardly as the coffin was lifted, and borne down the aisle, the children briefly scampering to pick up drifting rose petals until they were stopped by their mother.

Through my blurred vision I saw, beyond the swaying coffin, the list of incumbents, beginning with Hugh Bertrand in 1112. I wiped my eyes on my cuff. The incumbent from 1622 to 1625 was Mark Stevens. Then there was a gap until 1627, when Edward Stonehouse gained the benefice, together with Highpoint. Abruptly, I realised I was holding up the people on my bench. All brushed hurriedly past me, as if I had the plague Edward had obliquely suggested, except Henry, who dropped his hat. By the time he picked it up, most people had filed out of the church, following the coffin.

‘Upper Vale,’ Henry said. Henry’s eyes met mine, and I realised he must be the coachman who had helped Kate build a fire for my mother after he had driven them to that remote farmhouse. ‘Mark Stevens is at Upper Vale.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, but he had already gone.

The church had been left open, presumably for the recording of the death. On a small table in the vestry was a bound book ready for signing, a quill and a horn of ink. The book was open, the breeze tugging at the pages, which were weighted down by a seal. I jumped as there was a clattering sound in the church. A pewter bowl used in baptism had fallen from the font and was rolling on the flags. Through the doorway, I could glimpse the coffin being lowered into the grave.

The book contained the parish records of births, marriages and deaths going back to 1604, when the Church tried to tighten its grip on marriage. Before then people might be married (or believed they were) by agreement between parents, spousals before witnesses or even, with poor people in remote areas, a ‘handfast’ without the blessing of the Church.

I turned back the pages to 1625. They were stuck together. No wonder my hands trembled. Ever since this business began, I had struggled with the stain of illegitimacy. Only now, when it might be disproved, did I fully realise what a weight it had been on my soul, however much I tried to rationalise it away, or shrug it off with bravado. I was in such a haste I tore one page. I struggled to control myself. There was nothing in 1626, which I could understand, for there had been a gap between Mark Stevens leaving and Edward Stonehouse taking the benefice. But, to my acute disappointment, there was nothing in 1625 either. I fumbled wildly with the page, convinced a pair must be stuck together, but it remained firmly, stubbornly, one page. There had been no marriage, and I must remain a bastard forever. It had either never taken place, or been a fantasy in my mother’s mind.

Then, as I returned the book to its previous page, I noticed something only someone as zealously trained as I had been by Mr Black would have done: a little flake of paper with a bound edge, caught in a globule of glue, like a fly in amber. I turned the book on its end, towards the light and squinted down the binding. Yes. There was no doubt about it. The page for 1625 had been removed, and the binding re-glued. I was so taken by my own cleverness at this discovery I was unaware someone had crept into the room until the pistol was snatched from my belt. I fell against the table, dropping the book, sending splashes of ink from the horn and the quill spinning to the floor.

The pistol was levelled straight at me by Edward’s son Phillip, a triumphant expression on his face.

‘Stand away, sir, or I shall fire!’

‘Let me have that.’

‘No, sir! Stay there or I will shoot you!’ The pistol was not cocked, but he must have watched a gamekeeper or perhaps even have been taught to shoot, for he was fumbling to cock it. He backed away. The pistol with its long barrel was too heavy for him, wavering this way and that but, by dint of trial and error, he found the dog lock and at any moment would fire. I dived at him, grabbing at the pistol, jamming the cock with my fingers. He jerked backwards, hitting his head against the door jamb and falling stunned. In an instant he went from being a little man to a boy again, looking about to cry. As I moved to help him, he scrambled away from me and cried that if I shot him – and in church too – I would certainly go to hell. I assured him I had no intention of shooting him, although he would have done the same to me, and would that not have sent him to the same place?

‘No, sir!’ He got up, with a sullen glare, his courage flooding back to him. ‘For I am good and noble, and you are bad and base. You are a
thief
, sir, and I shall tell my father and he shall have you
hung!
’

I squatted down so I was on the same level as him. ‘I am no thief, Phillip. I am trying to catch one.’

He scowled at me unbelievingly. ‘Who? What did he steal?’

‘Me,’ I said softly. ‘Who I am.’ For the first time he looked at me uncertainly, understanding my manner, if not what I said. I pointed to the parish book. ‘Perhaps you could ask your father who tore out the page of marriages in 1625.’