The Lady's Slipper (12 page)

She felt a rage boil up inside her and the urge to slap the self-satisfied smile from his face. With tight lips she pushed the pot towards him.

‘I’ faith, Geoffrey–I hope you have not damaged the root.’

‘Nonsense, woman. It was just a small sample.’ He put the plant into her outstretched hand.

Alice glared at him. She scooped the earth back into the pot and carefully tucked it around the roots.

Geoffrey’s eyes glittered. ‘I can take it back to the manor and do some experiments with it, to see if it really is a cure-all. If it is, there could be much profit in it. But it will need to be tested first in exacting conditions.’ He seemed to have forgotten all about the crimson flower, and was oblivious to Alice’s stony stare. He wagged a finger at her. ‘What you will do is produce as many of these lady’s slipper plants as you can, as soon as possible.’ He paced around the room. ‘How long will it take until the new plants grow enough to yield flowers?’

‘My father always said it is very slow growing,’ she replied, ‘and may not flower for five or even ten years.’ She relished giving him this information, for she knew it was not what Geoffrey wanted to hear.

‘Ten years? I will be an old man by then. You never mentioned this before. Can it be done more quickly?’

Alice felt strangely satisfied. She paused as if weighing it in her mind. ‘It is complex. These orchids cannot be cultivated easily. It requires a specialist knowledge of their habits. But perhaps in the right conditions–’ she paused for emphasis–‘and looked after in the proper way, something might be done.’

‘It must be done, Mistress Ibbetson.’ His mouth had taken on a stubborn cast. ‘You promised me you would let me have more of these lady’s slipper plants.’

Alice moved away from his looming presence.

‘Beg pardon, Geoffrey, I promised no such thing. I merely said I thought it was possible.’

‘You said you had the skills from your father to breed orchids. I am willing to pay you for those skills.’

‘Do you think I am to be bought, Geoffrey?’ Alice’s voice was quiet. ‘I undertook to show you the orchid in the spirit of friendship, because you have always been interested in plants as I am. No contract between us was made. I showed you the orchid as a favour, but now I shall grow it on as I see fit.’

He frowned. She felt her cheeks redden. ‘Just because my circumstances are somewhat reduced, it does not mean you may treat me as a servant to do your bidding.’

‘I am relying on you, Mistress Ibbetson.’ He smiled slightly, and then trailed his fingers in the dirt on the table. ‘Though what my good friend, Justice Rawlinson, would make of me associating with a common thief, I do not know.’

It took a moment before she realized this was intended as a veiled threat. She should not have told him she had stolen the orchid, it had given him leverage over her–she knew too late she had made a mistake. Awkwardly, she gathered up the three watercolours and held them out to him.

‘Your commission, Sir Geoffrey.’

He turned away from her. ‘I do not remember commissioning anything.’

‘But you expressly asked me…’

‘Did I? I forget.’

He picked up his soft leather gloves with one hand and slapped them on his palm, pointedly ignoring Earl Shipley’s paintings. ‘You will keep me informed of your progress with the orchid. It could be a valuable commodity. But payment will naturally depend on how many plants it yields. You may concentrate on that, until we know if it is efficacious.’

She masked her anger with a toss of her hair, but he continued, coming up close to her. ‘Perhaps in the future you would be wise to stay on the right side of the law and conduct yourself with a little more restraint. After all, you would not want the thief’s brand on your pretty little thumb.’

After he had gone, she was so hot with anger she filled a cup from the water butt and let the draught of icy liquid cool her throat. When she returned she stared down at the three paintings on the table. She had spent many hours working on them, and now Geoffrey was denying he had even commissioned her to paint them. How on earth would she tell Thomas? There was no doubt that the money would be missed. Thomas’s health grew worse–he was breathless now even climbing the stairs to bed, but although she had heard he was a little slipshod at work, she knew he would never admit to her that his money-lending business was not going well. She could tell by his smiling reaction to her small offerings that her commissions were needed more and more.

She took the paintings off the table, blowing some specks of dirt from them, and stacked them away. Thomas seemed distant with her recently–he had snapped at her at breakfast, so his business must be worrying him. They had conversed as usual, but he had appeared to be preoccupied and restless, not his usual placid self. After Ella had brought in his mail he looked positively ill and seemed to be perspiring. She did not know how he would take it when she broke the news to him that Geoffrey had withdrawn his patronage.

The remains of her anger still fluttered in her chest and would give her no peace. She had always been cordial with Geoffrey; she had thought he admired her work and held her in some esteem. What a gull she was. She had been deluding herself. Things seemed out of kilter with her since she had brought home the orchid. Her shoes still had not been found; someone in the kitchen must know what had happened to them but said nothing of it. She could not imagine it to be April, the scullery maid, she was far too timid. Cook was honest as the day, always had been. No, Ella was the most likely, but what would she want with a pair of ruined shoes that were too tiny for her bulging toes? It was a mystery that had caused her a gnawing unease.

She looked at the flower. It looked pure and innocent, almost shy, next to the larger more showy plant. Yet it was surrounded by this strife. She let her eyes trace its delicate outline until her anger at Geoffrey’s attitude was replaced by cold determination.

After Ella had shown Sir Geoffrey to the summerhouse she hurried back, for Master had not yet left for the counting house and was still at the table with the news sheet and his folios of figures. Today was Friday, and Cook had gone to the fishmonger. Cook always had a good gossip with the other women and wouldn’t be back just yet. Ella was going to make the most of this opportunity. She took a dish towel from the kitchen and tied it tightly round her bare ribs, under her bust. This pushed her breasts up like two mounds. Then she unbuttoned her chemise a little more and pushed it down low so the fabric just covered her nipples. She had recently taken to rouging her nipples with some of the madder ‘borrowed’ from Mistress’s paintbox. She picked up an empty tray and went into the dining room.

Thomas was sitting at the far end of the long oak table and looked up from his papers as she came in. She saw him take in the bare flesh in one unwitting glance. She sauntered to the near end of the table, taking her time, and bent low opposite him to pick up Alice’s platter and put it on the tray. She could feel his eyes on her, but he didn’t speak. She moved even more languorously towards him to fetch his plate. She glanced out of the window, to see if the mistress might be returning, but there was no one there.

She moved behind his chair and then leaned over close to him to put the tray down on the table, turning slightly so that her breasts jutted up right in front of his eyes. As she paused there, she felt his hand slide around her bottom and his fingers squeeze tight into her flesh. At the same time his other hand reached for the inside of her blouse. She swung easily over so that she was almost sitting on his lap facing him, with her thigh between his legs. His breeches bulged under her thigh, and she rubbed slowly up and down.

His face was expressionless, but his breathing was shallow through his open mouth and his hands were kneading her flesh rhythmically in time with her movements. She saw his tongue slide from side to side to moisten his lips. When she felt his breath quicken, she pulled herself away suddenly and, taking hold of his platter, whisked the tray from the table. Without looking back she went out through the door to the kitchen. He was easy, that one. She’d have him soft as butter in no time.

‘After he returned from the Ibbetsons’, Geoffrey paced the drawing room still wearing his coat and fallback leather boots, unable to settle. He chastised himself, for he had handled Alice Ibbetson badly. He knew he had been a little high-handed with her. Keeping her goodwill would make for smoother business if he wanted to have her help in producing more of these interesting orchids. But women made him impatient. He could not assume obedience as he could with the servants, and he found dealings with the weaker sex hard.

Next time, he would try to make more of an effort. He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and unwrapped the piece of root, turning it over in his hands. The odd leathery smell assailed his nostrils again. What an unexpected boon that the plant might be a remedy.

He bounded up the stairs to his chambers and rifled through his mahogany cupboards to fetch out the equipment for grinding, slaking and sieving the root. If the plant was really as potent as Mistress Ibbetson seemed to think, then he was going to be the first to test its properties, judiciously of course, and the first to take full financial advantage. The method of preserving it would be crucial. He set immediately to dissecting the root. He did not dare hope that the plant may have some salving effect on his skin, no, he doggedly put that thought to the back of his mind. The root was quite unexceptional in appearance–it could have been any dandelion, or other common species.

Taking care not to waste any of the sample, he grated and pressed some of the root with rapeseed oil, and pickled a portion in alcohol. Some of it he ground finely in a mortar and set to bake dry in a billy tin. He worked with speed, for he knew his experimentations would be cut short by the evening meeting with the newly re-established Westmorland Committee.

Although he knew it was his duty to try to stamp out the trouble with the Quakers up at the Hall, he wished he did not have to go out again to the Rawlinsons’. He was engrossed in his blending of the plant with the different carrier oils, and in mixing differing strengths of the resulting elixir, and he wanted to write up the preparations he had produced. When the hall clock chimed five o’clock, he reluctantly curtailed his activities, but not without first sampling a small amount of the ground-up root.

Alice Ibbetson had said it drew blemishes out of the skin, so he mixed a little less than an eighth of an ounce in a glass phial with a measure of brandy. To make sure it was all in suspension and none left in the glass, he swirled the brown liquid around before swallowing it. Despite its foul smell, it tasted bland–only the brandy burnt on his tongue, its afterglow hot in his throat.

He was even more irritated when he went down for dinner to find that Emilia had organized some sort of entertainment and dancing for the weekend without consulting him. She wanted to give him some of the invitation cards to deliver when he went to the committee. When he remonstrated with her, and said that he was not prepared to feed the entire county from his coffers, she fell into a sulk.

‘But, Geoffrey, dearest, we are quite the poor relation! What will people think of us if we dine in their houses and sup their wine and never return a single favour?’

‘Emilia, you tire me with the constant comings and goings in this house. I come home for rest, and it is never quiet. Quite apart from the expense of such lavish arrangements–what did you say? Seven musicians
and
some players?’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘Why can’t you be content with a simple dinner and a little agreeable conversation, like other men’s wives?’

Emilia pouted and pulled at her hair. ‘I like a little gaiety in the house. We were so long without it, during the king’s absence.’ She turned to face him. ‘And Lord knows, you are miserable enough. Other people’s wives don’t have to put up with a husband whose face is as long as a horse!’

‘You must watch your lip, wife.’

His tone was icy. Realizing she had overstepped the mark and would need to make him an apology, she bustled over to him, a contrite look on her face.

‘I beg pardon, Geoffrey. I am not fully myself today.’ She raised her eyes under her eyelashes in appeal. ‘I am concerned about Stephen, and it is making me ill-tempered and sharp.’

‘Hmm.’ Geoffrey was not convinced. He had endured several such incidences of rudeness from his wife recently, and was inclined to punish her. But then his head had begun to throb; it must be the strain of the day. It hurt too much for him to be troubled asserting his authority. Next time, he told himself.

‘I should not have spoken to you in that way, please forgive me. I am upset because a letter came this morning from Stephen–there are rumours of the death pox in London. He is as yet undecided whether to leave his lodgings and return home. Of course I shall send to him to tell him he must come home.’

‘Where is this letter?’

‘I have left it on the stand in the hall, so that you may look it over before I pen a reply.’

‘Stephen must remove himself immediately. If he were to breathe in the infection, then it would be too late for him to come home and he would have to take his chances.’

‘You would deny him his home?’

‘If he were to breathe in the death, yes. I have a responsibility to my estate and my business, and to the County of Westmorland.’

‘You would turn away our son?’

When there was no reply, Emilia pressed her lips together and walked over to take a pile of cards from the side table.

‘Here are the cards, for your friends on the committee.’

The cards were in his hand before he registered it.

She turned on her heels and went out through the doors into the dining room. Geoffrey watched her stiff back as she walked away–it was unbending, like a plank, as if she was holding onto herself too tightly.

Geoffrey looked down at the square cards written in Emilia’s distinctive ornate hand. All the capitals were frilled and curled like a woman’s hair. Emilia had no taste, he thought. He slipped them into his pocket and sighed, resigned to deliver them as requested, for with annoyance he realized Emilia had managed to get her own way again.

After dinner Geoffrey rode out to Justice Robert Rawlinson’s house. It was a wet and windy night and he needed his surcoat and heavy leather gloves for the reins were slippery in this weather. He enjoyed the feeling of the rain on his face, even if his eyes stung, and he usually liked the sound of the steady rhythm of hoofbeats as a background to his thoughts. Today, though, the jolting trot only served to worsen the pain that had begun behind his eyes. Fortunately the house was not too distant. It was an edifice a little like Robert himself, squat and heavy, built of stone in the latest style with great chimneys on the outside walls reaching past the slated roof. It also had two separate withdrawing rooms away from the main hall. It was to one of these that he was shown when he arrived.

The group of men that made up the newly re-formed Westmorland Committee were already assembled in a fug of smoke, seated near a fire that was almost bursting out of its grate. A servant drew the curtain across the door where Geoffrey had been admitted, and he realized with distress that the room was already very warm. He looked around for the coolest place to sit, and took the chair furthest from the fire. Heated rooms made his skin itch and made it difficult to concentrate. At home, his rooms were always cool–Emilia called them draughty and said her hands were turned blue because of it, but then she would wear those flimsy dresses with no shawl or gloves.

The men introduced themselves to each other, whilst a servant dispensed Madeira wine. The conversation was informal but the atmosphere one of watchful assessment, each of the men weighing the character and outward appearance of the others. Geoffrey knew them all except Lord Esham. Ralph, Lord Hetherington, he had known for years through the county hunt. They had been friends since they were boys. Ralph had been the younger by five years, but was always first in the field on his big grey mare, even as a boy. Now a small, wiry man with sinewy arms, he was renowned for galloping up next to the Master, or sometimes acting as Whipper-in. He did not look strong, but Geoffrey had seen him pull a horse up out of a bog single-handed, and then shoot it dead with a musket when he realized its legs were broken.

‘Geoffrey! Good Lord above, you look soaked!’ said Ralph. ‘Come and sit here near the fire.’ He tapped the seat next to him.

Geoffrey smiled. ‘I’ll just help myself to some of that excellent wine first.’ He refilled his glass with a generous measure from the cask, then sat down again in his chosen chair away from the fire.

The men were conversing about the king’s plans for a new observatory, which was going to be built at great expense. Sir John Fairfax, a large stooped old gentleman who looked as if his spine had been bent out of shape over an anvil, had apparently seen the drawings and pronounced it to be an architectural blight. And too far away from the centre of the city, he said, to be of any use to the gentlemen of Oxford, who, after all, would be its patrons.

Lord Kendall said it was an utter waste of money when it could be spent on more research into the circulation of the blood, or how the organs of the body work. Look close to home first, was his view, before looking at the sky. Geoffrey remembered that when they had been students Lord Kendall had been involved with experiments in anatomy. Kendall was always sickening for something and was quite obsessed with his own health. His dour face and greyish skin belied what seemed to be a rock-like constitution. Geoffrey had always avoided him at Oxford because his conversations about his imaginary ailments, when his own were a constant bane, made him want to throttle him.

Lord Esham remained silent through the conversation about the king’s proposed building plans. Geoffrey looked him over with interest–this was the man who was reputed to have had some dealings with the Rump Parliament. Dressed entirely in black, Esham sat back in his chair, hooded eyes observing quietly. His hands looked soft and flabby–white, with perfectly shaped nails–and something about the way they lay so still on the arms of the chair reminded Geoffrey of a corpse. Wearing black was usually associated with Cromwellian sympathies–it looked odd in this room with the blazing fire and the others with their fine embroidered waistcoats and fancy hose in damson or fawn or shades of green. Esham’s black made him feel as if they were all slightly overdressed. When Esham finally spoke, his voice was low and smooth.

‘Shall we proceed to business, gentlemen?’ His voice undercut the conversation.

Whilst they took stools at the refectory table, Robert spoke first. ‘Gentlemen, you remember Henry Swainson, of Lingfell Hall.’

The men nodded, and Fairfax said, ‘He was a good man. I was shocked when I heard how he died–Clitheroe Castle, cut down from his horse by a common foot soldier. It was a ghastly ending for such a fine man, less than he deserved.’

‘Yes, and he served this committee well over the years. I shall miss his presence at these meetings. But his widow by all accounts has lost her senses and joined the dissenters against the king,’ Robert said.

‘I had heard as much,’ said Ralph. ‘Some of my tenants have taken up with her ideas and are refusing to pay their tithes. They will not worship in the churches and I fear are gathering people together with a view to some sort of unholy rebellion.’

‘Lord Kendall had to get the army to suppress an incident in the church only last week and it was Felicia Darby who started the trouble.’

‘It upset me mightily,’ Lord Kendall said. ‘It brought on the most prodigious stomach ache which lasted for days.’

‘Dorothy Swainson and Felicia Darby keep company together—’

‘Like man and wife?’ Fairfax interrupted with a snigger, and there was a round of laughter before Robert continued.

‘And between them, they own most of the land west of the river. Now that there are no men in their households to keep them in order they are able to have free rein with their Quaker foolishness.’

Fairfax added, ‘According to their Mister George Fox, each person has his own God within. It’s immanence gone mad! It is the worst sort of blasphemy. Can you imagine where that idea would lead us? Every kitchen maid and ale woman could get into the pulpit and impart to us her wisdom.’ There was more laughter from the group.

‘Isaac Fuller, the town clerk, is part of their faction, though, and Richard Wheeler, so they’re not all servants and farmhands,’ Ralph said.

Here was a moment’s silence.

‘I think Wheeler is dangerous,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I knew him personally before he turned traitor and became one of Cromwell’s men.’

Lord Esham, who had been listening intently, leaned forward.

‘Is this the Richard Wheeler who went north with Lilburn, and led Cromwell’s men to victory at Cartington Castle?’

‘Yes, the same. But now he is up to something. He sold up his estate, and bought a small farm near the Hall. He is a well-known anti-royalist. He has joined Lady Swainson and Lady Darby in this Quaker group. Lingfell Hall has turned into a place of safety for any ranter, raver or revolutionary who wants to turn away from the church. I think Wheeler is gathering a force together again to overthrow the king. The number of meetings has increased, and now half the village goes up to the Hall for their so-called worship. Only last week Wheeler was in Kendal marketplace stirring up dissent. I was set upon by a mob and barely escaped a lynching.’

Lord Esham looked thoughtful. ‘So what do we suggest should be done?’

‘Well,’ said Robert Rawlinson, ‘we could gather a list of the names of these Quakers and find a way to divide or split the group. That way Wheeler will have no one to lead in his planned rebellion. Lady Darby is already in jail, but we can’t hold her much longer without a proper charge. Let us hope her new lodgings will make her see sense. But be warned, she sent an appeal to the king last week, and her husband was well known at court before his death. The king has shown leniency since his return from France and she may never reach the assizes.’

‘The opinion of his majesty is that he would like to return to a settled kingdom. There are to be no harsh retributions against parliamentarian sympathizers. Cromwell failed. We are to put it behind us.’