Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (22 page)

She was not surprised that her thoughts were occupied with that night’s disaster. She was making this visit to the vicarage by herself, something she couldn’t remember doing before. Nat spent many hours with his mother since his father Joseph’s death, and Bel sometimes went with him but today was a Saturday and Nat was preparing a Michaelmas sermon about angels.

“I will be an angel and take Dan’s letter to share with your mother as he asked us to do,” she said.

Nat had looked up with a smile. “Good. Tell me how she seems today. Dr Harlow is afraid her heart is weak but she will scarcely let him examine her.”

The church with its squat Saxon tower stood among trees just before the track reached the village but Bel turned aside into the gate of the ivy-strewn vicarage.

She hadn’t sent word that she was coming but the Turner’s daughter, Peggy, who opened the door said her mistress would be very happy to see her and took her into the parlour.

Anne had shrunk into a little old woman since Joseph’s death though she was still not seventy. Her promise not to outlive him had not been fulfilled. “I can’t help living,” she said often, “though I know not what good I am to anyone.”

Bel found her pacing the room with a pamphlet in her hand, trying to read though her eyes were not good and the evening light was partly blocked by the ivy outside.

Noticing Bel’s entrance she threw the paper on the floor. “It’s all nonsense.”

Bel picked it up. “What is it, Mother Anne?” This was how she liked to be addressed. Bel saw it was an issue of
Mercurius Politicus
from May 1655 and was open at an advertisement for the Countess of Kent’s Powder which was supposed to be a cordial for everything from colic to the plague.

“This was a Puritan pamphlet. I’m surprised you have it in the house.”

Her mother-in-law cackled. “Joseph had it off a pedlar selling pots of the powder. I remember his surprise that those republicans should let a noble woman’s name sully their pages. I was only reading it to make me cross. I’ll get Peggy to light the fire with it if it turns cold tonight and I’m still living.”

Bel put it in the log basket by the empty grate. It was useless to ask Anne why she wanted to be cross. Her moods were quite unpredictable.

Her mother-in-law sat down in the basket chair by the window where Joseph had always sat and motioned Bel to the stool by the small table.

“Well, it’s not often I see you on your own, daughter Bel,” was her greeting. She sounded breathless and Bel was surprised by the high colour in her cheeks.

“Have you been exerting yourself?” she asked.

“I’ve been to my Daniel’s grave and I hurried back.”

“You didn’t know I was coming?”

“No, but I was excited. I thought, I’ll meet him soon. He’ll be with his father and he’ll look up and say, ‘Here’s Mother come now.’ Feel how my heart’s racing at the thought.” And she beckoned Bel over to her and laid her hand against her flaccid bosom.

Bel could feel little but she smiled and nodded.

“I’ve brought you a letter from
my
Daniel. He asks me to share it with Grandmother Wilson.”

“Very well, you may read it to me. My eyes are blurred tonight.”

“He greets us as ‘
Honoured and much loved parents’”.

“Very proper.”

“And begins ‘
We have been harrying the Dutch merchant ships and taken many prizes so I have at last been paid.’”

“
That will please him. The young can never have too much money.”

“Ah but he says, ‘
One day I shall repay you for all you have done for me.’
He has good intentions, my Dan, even if he can’t always carry them out. He goes on, trying to reassure me.
‘They have not been very serious battles so you need not be anxious for me. It is much more dangerous in London we hear with this terrible plague. My friend Henry’s family have gone into the country and they let me know that Cousins Clifford and Celia have gone too although they didn’t know where. I hope they have not pestered you or William about a match between Eunice and me. It will never happen but I hope they took her with them to the country.’
He does care for her still whatever he says.” When Anne made no comment she went on reading.
“’Everyone says that the plague is much worse in those narrow little streets where she and her father live because people are so crowded together.

‘I know all about being crowded together in a ship but at least we have no plague here and are surrounded by the great salt sea and pure air. I have grown quite used to life aboard a ship of the line but believe me I do think much about home and especially I remember the Christmases we had at the Hall in Cromwell’s time when we were not supposed to celebrate it but all was done secretly yet with the knowledge and contrivance of the whole village.”

Bel broke off to say, “You remember those times, don’t you, Mother Anne?” But Anne’s face was passive. She seemed far away. Bel went on reading because she loved to speak Dan’s words though the longing for him was making it harder to keep her voice steady. “He says, ‘
I thought that was so exciting, wondering if a heavy knock would come on the doors which were all locked, but it never did and we had holly and ivy and mistletoe and even music and dancing and no one in the village ever betrayed us. It makes me homesick thinking about my very happy boyhood. Note, I say homesick for I have never been seasick yet.

‘Alas, I will not be at home this Christmas for though we will have leave there will not be leisure to go all that way and the muster could be called at any time since we know not what the Dutch will be up to next.’”

Bel stopped abruptly, her voice breaking.

“Is that it?” Anne looked up surprised.

“Not quite. But oh, sweet Mother Anne, I can’t bear him to be in danger. I can’t bear not to have him home for Christmas. He never missed while he was at university though we could ill afford the coach fare. And now I know not
when
we will see him. To be honest with you the pain of his absence is eating me up.”

“Ah! Eating you up!”

Anne’s face had become bright and eager. Her eyes glistened. The red spots glowed over her high cheekbones. With her sharp eagle nose she had the look of a bird of prey spotting a vole.

Bel was puzzled by this sudden animation. “What is it, Mother Anne?”

She was sitting bolt upright with an air of triumph. ““Now, Bel Horden, you have hit it. You are sharing not just his letter with me but my pain. Eating me up. Those are the very words. That’s what my pain did and still does. I just wish it would hurry up and devour the last remains of life. But it will not kill
you.
You have hope your boy will come back. Mine never did. You know your Dan has seized on the dream he craved. My Daniel was seized by cruel hands and led where he would not. Yours will receive praise and honour for what he does, mine received death and dishonour for what another did.”

Bel sank to her knees beside Anne’s chair. “Oh don’t go on, Mother Anne. I have been thoughtless in speaking of my puny longings. My suffering is but any mother’s anxiety. Yours has been a hundred times greater and I am still guilty.”

“Forget your guilt.” In her excitement Anne rose up, her hands gesturing in a wild dismissive motion. “Your guilt was a little cloud and I blew it away myself years ago when I called you an innocent child. But I have been eaten away ever since with anger at the injustice to that poor boy. I looked again today at the stone we put up in the wood at his poor little burial place. ‘Daniel Wilson done to death in his innocence, mourned for ever by his sorrowing parents.’ I should only have put
mother
for I felt Joseph got over it and I am sure Nathaniel did.”

Bel stood up too and looked down on the fiery little figure. “Oh you’re wrong there. Nat and his father grieved inwardly. Nat still does but his love for God gives him peace. He can thank God for his brother’s life and sweet innocence.”

“Ah well that is what I haven’t been able to do. I have never thanked God. I have berated Him in my heart for letting it happen.” Anne was panting now and Bel became alarmed.

“Pray sit down,” she urged her.

“No. This is what I wanted. This is why I ran home from his grave after one last look. This is why I looked about for something foolish to read. To excite me, provoke me. I am so glad you came. I have had an ache in my arm for a while and I so wanted it to get worse. Now it is a knife here.” She pressed her hand on her side. “Tell your Dan how much his letter helped me. It was all I needed. Ah!”

She seized Bel’s hands in a ferocious grip, falling against her so suddenly that Bel, calling out for Peggy, could hardly stand.

Peggy came running in and together they lowered her into the chair. There was one more convulsive movement and then her grip relaxed. A little sigh came and a smile spread over her face, so beatific on those sharp features that Bel looked at the terrified Peggy and smiled even as the girl broke into sobs.

“Oh no! Is she dead? Oh poor soul. As quick as that!” She stared at the face as if expecting it to come to life. Then she looked anxiously at Bel. “I should have told you, my lady, how odd she’s been today. She was so tired this morning she could hardly eat her dinner but afterwards she said she was going to walk to Master Daniel’s grave and
run
back. I thought it was said in jest. She says strange things sometimes. I begged to go with her but she wouldn’t let me. You know how determined she is.”

“I do indeed. It would have made no difference. Will you run to the Hall and tell the reverend? I’d like to stay by her till he comes. And we must tell Doctor Harlow who has been treating her.”

“When she’d let him, my lady. He came but mostly she sent him packing.”

Peggy ran. Bel knelt down on the floor again and looked in bewilderment on the dead body. She had seen many deaths, more grisly and horrible than this, but she had never been conversing with someone the moment before they were struck down and the suddenness was a fearful shock.

“Where are you, Anne Wilson?” she said aloud to the inanimate parchment face. She looked about the room as if she expected to see her standing there, ready with a harsh laugh and one of her barbed replies.

It was a struggle to repeat a prayer and as she did so she couldn’t help reflecting on the way her mother-in-law had gone. The injustice her Daniel had suffered had corroded her mind all these years and left her believing that no one had mourned him as she had done.

But was it not cruel, Bel thought, to dismiss my cloud of guilt so lightly? She never knew how it dominated my life until she ‘blew it away’ as she put it. I married her son and was happy and she and Joseph came to help us with our little school and we were all in harmony, I believed. Poor soul to let herself brood so long.

She stood up and went to fetch a sheet from the bed in the adjoining room. This was where the old woman had slept after her husband’s death. She wouldn’t stay in the marital bed upstairs. She said she couldn’t bear the empty space beside her. I would be like that if I lost Nat, Bel thought, as she drew the sheet over her. And what will I be if I lose my Daniel? Oh God, you must, you must protect him! Death can come so easily. The heart fails or a bullet smashes into it and life has gone in a moment.” She turned and ran from the room.

She was sitting on a stool in the kitchen with her elbows on the table and her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably when she heard Nat arrive with Doctor Harlow and Peggy. They went first to the parlour and she could hear Nat telling Peggy to wait in the hallway for any orders the doctor might give her.

Then very quickly he came to find her and clasped his arms about her and murmured, “My darling, what a shock for you. Don’t grieve. Mother wished to go when Father died. She would have wanted it swift like that following her final goodbye to her Daniel. Peggy told me about that as we came along. Don’t weep, my precious.”

Bel was too honest to pretend. “I’m not crying for her. I’m crying for Dan.”

Nat pulled up a stool and sat down by her. “Dan? But he was fit and well when he wrote his letter.”

“Yes,
then
. But what may have happened since? Your mother sent off her Daniel and he never came back. Why should the same not happen to us?”

Nat had taken hold of her hands but he released them now and stood up. “Bel, this is an odd time to be obsessed with such worries. I have just lost my mother, my remaining parent –”

She stood up too and gave him a brief hug. “I know. I’m sorry, but the first day I met you you told me she hadn’t loved you as a child.” He was about to protest but she put her hand over his mouth. “All I can think of is that she let her Daniel go to war against her husband’s wishes. And now you have let our Dan go to war against mine! She was punished by his death and now we will be punished by our Dan’s.”

She sank down again and broke into renewed sobs. The doctor, a small, round man with an air of his own importance, came into the room.

“I was going to ask my lady about Mistress Wilson’s last moments but it can wait.”