The Town House (28 page)

‘Not in the same way. Besides, why should they be told? Except when one of us is being foisted off on them they forget that we exist. We might starve to death for all they care. They’re afraid to visit us for fear their hearts should be wrung. Aunt Astallon went to Walsingham, missing us by four miles, did she turn aside? No, she rode on and lodged at Sudbury. Uncle Bowdegrave visits Rushbrooke every year, when did he ever give a sign of being within riding distance?’

These were truths, facts, which my parents had steadily refused to recognize. Now, confronted with them, Mother seemed to shrink a little.

‘Anne,’ she said, ‘you’re very hard.’

But it wasn’t true. Seeing my point pierce her last defence I was filled with pity and weakness. I really longed to cry out that I had not meant what I said, that I would go to my Aunt Astallon and try once more. But something held back the words. I was sick of pretending.

‘I shall tell your father that you are set in your mind,’ Mother said.

Father, always three-quarters in favour of the match, rode off to Baildon to tell Master Reed his offer was being considered, but that before any conclusion was reached, Mother wished to inspect the young man. Master Reed invited them both to supper. So the hem of the green and crimson gown had to be stitched back into the place and the seams let out instead of taken in. Wearing it, and a very wide wired headveil, she went off to Baildon and came back in a very curious state of mind.

I asked her the one question which troubled me most.

‘Is he surly, like his father?’

Mother lifted off the head-dress and ran her hands through her hair.

‘He’s not in the least like his father.’ To me that was pleasant news, but she said it regretfully.

My father fumbled in his pouch and brought out a little lump of pink, under-cooked meat and offered it to Jess on her stand.

‘If you married that boy you’d have a very comfortable home,’ he said.

‘If?’ I asked.

Mother said sharply, ‘My mind is not yet decided. And when it is I shall take my time telling them so.
I’m
not one to fall on my face at the sight of a few silver cups, a glass window and a great tapestry that still smells of the loom.’

‘It was well meant,’ Father said. “They wanted us to see that.…’ He cast a look about our comfortless hall and grinned. ‘Four main dishes, then gooseberries in a glazed coffer and a syllabub that you could have turned upside down without spilling, it was so well whipped.’

‘I was ashamed of
you
,’ said Mother, ‘pocketing a piece as though you feared to be hungry on the way home!’

‘I told the boy – what’s his name, Richard – that it was for my hawk. He was knowledgeable, though he has never handled a bird. Said he had read a book.’

‘What did
you
think of him, Father?’

‘A modest, amiable young man. And if he was some poor knight’s son that had gone into the wine trade, your mother would think so too.’

I suspected that they had argued all the way home.

‘There’s a difference between trading in wine and handling dirty old fleeces,’ Mother said.

‘But the man was at pains to point out that the boy never soiled his hands.….’

‘That I can well believe!’ It was plain to me that something had happened to upset her and bring her to the brink of deciding against the match after all.

Presently Father went outside and I signed to Isabel to go to bed, which she did reluctantly. As soon as we were alone Mother got up and went over to the livery cupboard and began banging about in it. Our livery cupboard was never well-provided at any time, and she couldn’t be hungry having come straight from a supper of four main courses, pie and syllabub so I could only guess that she wanted to keep her back to me. But why? After a minute I could bear it no more.

‘You didn’t like Richard Reed?’

‘There’s nothing about him to like or dislike. Truly, Anne, I’d be more at ease if you were… if it was a question of marrying the father, old as he is.’

‘Why?’

‘He’s a man. There’s something about him. You could see that he was being civil, for the boy’s sake; he wanted us to take to the idea and know you’d be… well looked after. But in his heart, he didn’t care; he thinks he’s doing
us
a favour!’ This, which she should have mentioned with irritated scorn, she brought out as though it were admirable. ‘The boy’s grown up in his shadow, pampered, made much of, never had to shift for himself. You’d have the upper hand of him in no time.’

I thought what an astonishing thing to say – in that
complaining
manner!

‘Would that be so bad?’

She flung something into the cupboard and turned round.

‘Yes. No woman can be happy with a man she can master.’

I suppose what I thought showed plain on my face.

‘Ah, but we weren’t always this way,’ she cried. ‘Not this way at all. Why, I’ve sat amongst the other women and looked down as Blanchefleur rode by and he’d look up and I’d go hot and cold and almost choke with pride because I belonged to him and he was the strongest, boldest….’ She gave a little shiver and hugged herself with her arms. ‘You were nearly born on the road. We were at Rivington and he said, “I’m off to Beauclaire in the morning”. Just like that, and I knew I’d be in the straw next day or the one after, and I knew that if I let him go alone there were plenty at Beauclaire that would be glad to see him ride in by himself. So I said, “I’m coming
too”. And he said, “D’you think you’ll hold together so far?” And I said, “I shall hold together so long as I have to”. And I did. And he liked me the better for it. That was the time Lady Warwick threw him her glove – but he wore mine for all to see.’

There was something, even after all those years – so triumphant in her voice that it made me feel as I sometimes did when trumpets blew. She spoke of what I understood; I had so often sat in the humble back seats of the Ladies’ Gallery and watched the knights ride by saluting the ladies who threw them favours. I’d dreamed of one day having a knight of my own…

I put that thought away.

‘Richard has been under his father’s thumb,’ I said. ‘You shouldn’t judge from one visit.’

‘It isn’t in any way what I want for you, or what you should have. Anne, if you’ll try once more, I’ll persuade your father to sell Jess and you shall have a brand new gown.’

‘I will marry Richard Reed and have two new gowns.’

How long these arguments and this indecision would have lasted I do not know. My Uncle Bowdegrave, staying at Rushbrooke, helped to clinch the matter by, for once, remembering his poor relatives and sending us a haunch of venison.

Mother looked at it calculatingly and said,

‘Now, if we were proceeding with this business, we could ask the Reeds to supper. It won’t keep, so we must make up our minds.’

‘You know mine,’ I said.

‘And mine.’ That was Father, speaking quite firmly.

‘Well, only theVirgin knows when next I shall have meat in the house for five people. I think you’re being a stubborn, hasty, foolish girl and I only hope you won’t live to regret it.’

So she capitulated and Richard and I met.

Within a few minutes of our meeting I was certain that Mother’s slighting remarks about Richard were due to prejudice, and, perhaps a little to jealousy. He was such a very handsome young man, and so elegant, with a charming smile and the nicest manners in the world. I think my heart went out to him at once, just as I thought that if only he’d had breeding
how
Mother would have praised him, and said I was lucky. And what is breeding after all? Largely a matter of money and land and staying in one place long enough to establish a name and a family; or pleasing the King and getting some honour conferred on you. I’ll warrant that if Richard could have gone to Westminster, calling himself by some Norman French name and played his lute he would have pleased the King so much that he would have been knighted straight away.

Old Master Reed was lame of one leg and had grown crooked as well as solid with the years; his face was weathered and deeply lined, he looked as though he had been too busy all his life to take much pleasure in anything. Beside his father Richard looked like a young larch side by side with a gnarled old oak.

The supper party was much easier and merrier than I had expected, largely, I think, because Father, when Mother was worrying about having only the one dish, had said,

‘There are times when wine counts for more than food.’

‘This is one of them – and we have no wine.’

‘I’ll ride over to Ockley and borrow some.’

‘Don’t say for what reason. Nothing is settled yet.’

Sir Stephen Fennel, bless his heart, gave Father some good Rhenish, which made everyone cheerful and un-embarrassed; even Mother so far relented as to behave as if Richard were a very eligible suitor who must be charmed. After supper she bade me fetch my lute and play a little. A little is what I played, just as I danced a little, played Nobbin a little, embroidered a little. I had no ear and no talent, but I had mastered four or five pleasing little tunes.

While I played Richard watched me, and I could see that he loved me. I remembered something I had forgotten – Father saying some words about Richard having seen me and would look at no other girl. That had a smack of romance to it, like a minstrel’s tales, and as I played I looked back at him under my lashes. Presently he rose and crossed the hall and sat down by my feet, and at the end of my last tune took the lute from me and said,

‘Allow me now to play for you, Mistress Anne.’

I had never, anywhere, heard anyone play like that. It wasn’t just music, it was something more, like being under a spell, so that when it ended you sighed and your spirit settled back into your body again, a little painfully. You could have loved him just for the way he played the lute.

He ended his special music and gave us back our souls and then said,

‘Now the tune that everyone knows. Will you sing?’

He struck up ‘The Pleasant Month of May’ and we all began to sing. Under cover of it, Richard said to me,

‘I saw you once. I thought you were the most lovely lady in the world. Will they let you marry me?’

‘They must. They shall. Or I will be a nun.’

Afterwards, when more of the wine was being served with some little saffron cakes, Mother came to me and said,

‘Well. Are you still of the same mind? The old man is pestering your father for an answer.’

I could hardly speak for the fullness of my heart. I had made my choice in a blind rage against the way the world had used me, and I had picked this jewel.

After that it was settled, and Mother began seizing every opportunity to send messages to every branch of the family. I could imagine, in all those distant places, relatives of all degrees putting their heads together and agreeing that at last my parents had come to their senses and done something suitable to their estate. In their relief they all sent me gifts of great generosity. Ironically, Mother’s remark about my Aunt Astallon giving me a new gown, proved to be prophecy for she sent me enough of the best French velvet for a wedding dress; that inclined me to think that she had been dreading my next visit almost as much as I did. With the gifts came excuses for not making the journeys to bring the families to the wedding, and that was just as well; but the Fortescue cousin in whose household my brother Godfrey languished, gave him permission to ride home – hoping no doubt that the wool-chandler had a daughter. When Godfrey did arrive he was leading a pretty grey palfrey, my present from that branch of the family.

The Reeds had no relatives at all, and Master Reed, talking over the wedding with Mother, said that he wanted nobody from Baildon at his son’s wedding. But he professed himself willing to provide a feast, so the few guests we had – mainly friends of Father’s, who came to see what the poor fellow could find to spread on his board, were vastly and pleasantly surprised.

Martin wore mulberry-coloured velvet, the tunic edged with fur, and the one thing that marred my day was to hear two old men, hawking friends of Father’s, muttering about it.

‘In my young days nobody less than a knight could wear miniver; and if he tried to it was ripped off and sold for the benefit of the poor.’

‘Times change.’

‘So they do, and not for the better.’

I hated them for thinking the old days, when someone like Richard mustn’t wear miniver fur even if he could afford it, were better than these more enlightened times.

After the feasting was done, Richard, his father and I rode to Baildon. I was thankful that owing to our circumstances there could be no public bedding. During my various visits to my relatives I had assisted at these grossly indecent rites, and I knew that I should find them agonizingly embarrassing. Yet, when we reached the house which I had never yet seen, and stood uneasily in a small solar, most elegantly furnished, and drank a last stoup of wine from the silver cups which Mother had mentioned, I realized that the public bedding ceremony does serve a purpose. The lewd talk, the thrusting of fertility emblems upon the bride, all the jokes and the laughter and the ducking away from those who try to undress the newly married couple, help to break down the reserve between them, and once they are in bed, with the curtains closed, half the work is done.

If even Master Reed had been a little drunken and hearty and slapped Richard on the back and said, as I have heard fathers say, ‘Well boy – to your work!’ that would have helped. But he only looked at us, rather sadly, I thought, and raised his cup and said,

‘I wish you happy.’ And when he had drunk his wine he went away; and we were two strangers, left alone. Then Richard said, as though I were a visitor who had come a great distance,

‘I expect you are tired. Come.’

He did take my hand, however, as we climbed the stairs and still holding it he led me into a room far more comfortable than any I had ever slept in, for even at Beauclaire, being young and a poor relation I had always shared one of the worst rooms. He pulled on my hand a little, so that we stood close, and he put his face to mine. We were cheek to cheek.