The Forest (81 page)

Arriving at Albion House, he found Mr Albion sunk in a profound sleep and, tempted yet again, sent up a secret plea to God that the old man’s sleep might be eternal. Fanny, however, proved more of a problem. It was not so much the fear of leaving her father that worried her, but the prospect of encountering Mr Martell after what she felt had been her humiliation the day before.

‘My dear child,’ the vicar assured her, ‘there was no humiliation whatsoever. Although quite unjustified, I gather that for a man of his age, your father put up rather a fine display.’

‘But that Mr Martell should meet such a reception in our house …’

‘My dear Fanny,’ remarked Gilpin shrewdly, ‘Mr Martell has people fawning upon him wherever he goes. He will have relished the change. Besides,’ he added, ‘I don’t even know for certain that your cousins will have carried out their intention of going to Beaulieu at all. So you may have only me and young Furzey for company. Pray come along, for I have a letter to deliver up at Lyndhurst on the way.’

He insisted, now, upon walking beside the two Tottons, leaving Fanny and Mr Martell to follow.

If Fanny felt a sense of embarrassment after yesterday’s events, Mr Martell was able to dispel it. Indeed, he made a great joke of the business, said that he’d never been thrown out of a house before but no doubt would be many times in future. ‘Indeed, Miss Albion, your father reminded me very much of my own although, if we could set the two of them to fight each other, like two old knights in a tournament, I think your father might prevail.’

‘You are kind, Sir, for I do confess’, she owned, ‘that I felt mortified.’

Martell considered. It was not her mortification that he remembered from the day before. It was her pale form advancing across the hall, her air of inner sadness, even tragedy, his own desire, perhaps scarcely realized at the time, to protect her. Yet here she was, flushed with the ride in the morning air, warm flesh and blood, very much so. Two images in a single person, two aspects of a soul: interesting. He would see if he could not keep the tragic shade at bay.

‘Ah,’ he continued cheerfully, ‘if only we could all control our parents. But when they flash, you know, your father’s eyes are very fine.’ He glanced down at her, somewhat searchingly. ‘As indeed are yours, Miss Albion. You have your family’s wonderful blue eyes.’

What could she say, or do, but blush? He smiled. She had never seen him so warm.

‘I believe your family is very ancient in the Forest,’ he went on.

‘We say we are Saxon, Mr Martell, and that we had estates in the Forest before the Normans came.’

‘Dear heaven, Miss Albion, and we Normans came and stole from you? No wonder you throw us out of your houses!’

‘I think, Mr Martell’ – she laughed – ‘that you came and conquered us.’ And without especially meaning to, as she said the words ‘conquered us’, she looked up into his eyes.

‘Ah.’ He gazed straight back, as though the thought of conquest had suddenly struck him too, and their eyes remained looking into each other’s for several moments before he looked thoughtfully away. ‘We old families’, he said with a hint of intimacy that seemed like a comforting cloak around her shoulders, ‘perhaps dwell upon the past too much. And yet …’ He glanced in the direction of the Tottons in a way that suggested that, although fine enough people, there were things that a Martell or an Albion could never quite share with them. ‘I think we belong to the land in ways that others do not.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly. It was how she felt too.

‘So.’ He turned to her with such easy playfulness that it was as if he had already put his arm round her. ‘Are we ruins, or are we merely picturesque, you and I?’

‘I am picturesque, Sir,’ she replied firmly. ‘But pray don’t tell me you’re a ruin.’

‘I promise you’, he said gently, ‘that I am not.’

The Beaulieu River being tidal, the tide was out as they crossed the bridge to the old gatehouse and the big pond on their left was almost empty of water, the reeds around the edge of this muddy expanse greeting them with a soothing rustle as they approached.

Although the abbey was long since ruined, it still preserved remarkably its ancient character. Nor was it all destroyed. The gatehouse and much of the inclosure wall was still there. The abbot’s residence had been restored and somewhat enlarged into a modest manor house. The cloister inclosure also remained, with the huge lay brothers’
domus
still taking up one of its four sides. And while the great monastic church had been almost all dismantled, the monks’ refectory opposite had been converted into a handsome parish church. The present Montagu heiress was seldom there, having made another of the family’s brilliant marriages, this time to the descendant of Monmouth – for although Charles II’s unlucky natural son had lost his head when he rebelled in 1685, he had still, thanks to his wife, passed down huge estates to his descendants. And these were now united with those of Montagu. The family kept a kindly eye upon the place, however, and its grey stones retained their air of ancient peace.

‘So, Mr Martell.’ Louisa turned back to them as soon as they had passed the gatehouse. ‘Have we lost you to Fanny?’ She gave Martell a curious little look when she said this, as if there were something slightly odd about Fanny, but Martell smiled and took no notice.

‘I have been enjoying her conversation as much as I enjoy yours,’ he replied amiably. ‘Will you not join us?’ And so, with one young lady upon each arm, he proceeded into the precincts. They had not gone far before he suddenly remarked: ‘This abbey hath a pleasant seat; the air …’ He paused. Louisa looked blank.

Fanny laughed. ‘Nimbly and sweetly recommends itself,’ she continued. And, seeing Louisa still looking confused, she cried: ‘Why, Louisa, ’tis from Shakespeare’s
Macbeth
. We read it together with Mrs Grockleton. Only it is a castle, not an abbey, in the original.’

‘I had forgotten.’ Louisa flushed and frowned irritably.

‘But Mr Martell, you surely remember that after the king makes that remark he meets his death,’ Fanny reminded him. ‘Perhaps you had better be careful.’

‘Well, Miss Albion.’ Martell looked from Fanny to Louisa. ‘I believe I am safe, for neither of you looks to me like the fearsome Lady Macbeth.’

‘You haven’t seen me with a dagger,’ said Louisa with mock fierceness, trying to recover her position. It seemed to Fanny that it was perhaps herself, rather than Mr Martell, into whom Louisa might plunge a dagger just then and she decided to make sure there were no more embarrassments for her cousin.

She was on her guard, therefore, when, as they reached the abbot’s house, Martell casually enquired of Louisa what order of monks had inhabited the place in former times.

‘Order?’ Louisa shrugged. ‘They were just monks, I suppose.’ Hardly wishing to do so, she glanced towards Fanny.

‘I’m really not sure,’ said Fanny carefully, although in fact she knew perfectly well. ‘Didn’t they keep many sheep, Louisa? I should think they might have been Cistercian.’

‘So in that case’, said Martell, who had not been deceived by this protection of her cousin for a moment, ‘there would have been lay brothers and granges?’

‘Yes,’ Fanny confirmed. ‘Some of the big barns out at the granges still remain.’ And she indicated in the direction of St Leonards Grange. Martell nodded, interested.

Ahead of them Mr Gilpin had just paused to take note of some trees the Montagus had planted in straight lines, of which he was expressing his strong disapproval to Edward and the Furzey boy; and they were waiting for him to finish, when over the gatehouse, from the south quite unexpectedly, a redshank swept across the sky. It was such a lovely sight that they all paused to watch. And what, Fanny wondered, could have possessed Louisa to point to the slim, elegant wader and cry out: ‘Oh, look, a seagull.’

For a second Martell and Fanny assumed she must be joking, but at the same moment they both realized that she wasn’t. Fanny opened her mouth to say something, then thought better of it. She and Martell looked at each other. And then – they didn’t mean to, they couldn’t help it – they both burst out laughing. Worse, scarcely thinking what he was doing, as he leaned away from Louisa towards her and she towards him, he took Fanny’s arm and squeezed it affectionately. So there they were, while Louisa looked on – there was no disguising it – sharing a joke like a pair of lovers and at her expense. Louisa’s face darkened.

‘Mr Gilpin!’ It was, no doubt, a providence that they should have been interrupted by a cry, at this moment, from the direction of the cloisters as a figure came hurrying forward. ‘We are honoured indeed.’ Mr Adams, the curate of Beaulieu – the resident clergyman, actually, since the man who nominally held that benefice never came there – was the eldest son of old Mr Adams who ran the shipyard at Buckler’s Hard. While his brothers had gone into the business, he had been educated at Oxford and then taken holy orders. After Gilpin had greeted him warmly and introduced everyone the friendly curate offered to conduct them round and took them at once into the abbot’s quarters – ‘For reasons which remain unclear, we nowadays call it the Palace House,’ he explained – and they admired its handsome vaulted rooms. Martell, ever polite, was giving his full attention to the clergyman, while Fanny was entirely content to fall a little behind with young Nathaniel Furzey, who so evidently considered her his personal friend.

From there they passed into the cloister and the curate led them towards the old monks’ refectory, which now served as his parish church. As Fanny knew it well, however, and young Nathaniel was getting a little restless, she told them she would wait outside with him while they went in. And so, as they disappeared, she found herself alone with him in the cloister.

If, in the abbey’s heyday, the cloisters had always been a pleasant place, in their ruin they had acquired a new and special charm. The north wall with its arched recesses was more or less intact. The other walls, clad with ivy, were in various states of crumbled ruin, with, here and there, a little arcade of empty arches remaining like a screen beyond which the foundations of former buildings, all grassed over, provided an intimate vista. Wisely, therefore, having no need to build themselves a ruin, the Montagus, laying out a lawn and placing small beds of plants by crumbling walls and broken pillars, had created a delightful garden where one could walk and enjoy the friendly company of the old Cistercian shades.

She let Nathaniel run about and, having taken a turn around the garden, looked for a place to sit. The sheltered arches of the monks’ carrels in the north wall looked inviting, screened from the breeze and catching the sun’s warm rays. She selected one near the centre, sitting on the stone seat and resting her back on the wall behind. It really was quite delightful. In front of her across the cloister the big end wall of the former refectory made a stone triangle in the blue sky. The others were all inside it. No sound issued. Nathaniel, too, had vanished somewhere. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the sun on her face.

Why did she feel so happy? She thought she understood. She was not so foolish, she told herself, as to believe that Mr Martell’s liking her – for she was sure he did – would necessarily lead to anything more than that. Mr Martell had, there was no question, the pick of almost any young lady in England. But it was very pleasant, all the same, to feel that he admired the things she had to offer: her family, her intelligence, her gentle humour. She had had no dealings with men before. Yet the first she had met, and one of the most eligible, clearly valued her and was attracted to her. It gave her a sense of confidence that was most agreeable. That, she thought, was why she was so happy and relaxed.

But even this was not quite all. No, the contentment she felt derived from something even simpler. Something she had just felt when she was walking and laughing with Mr Martell and it took her a few minutes to realize what it was.

She had felt so easy in his presence. That was the answer. She had never been so comfortable in her life. It gave her a strange feeling of lightness. It really seemed to her, just then, as if she had entered a world in which there was no more pain.

She smiled to herself and, for no particular reason, pulled out the wooden cross she often wore and felt the faint lines of its ancient carving. She sat there for some minutes, enjoying the peace of her surroundings.

After a little time Nathaniel came back and sat down contentedly beside her. ‘What is that?’ he asked, noticing the little cedarwood crucifix.

‘A cross. My grandmother gave it to me. It’s very old, I believe.’

He inspected it and nodded solemnly. ‘It looks old,’ he agreed and leaned back, testing the seat for comfort. Having satisfied himself, he let his eyes wander round the cloisters. ‘Do you like it here?’ he asked and, when she said she did: ‘I like it here too.’

They had sat together for another minute or two before Nathaniel pointed to a place on the wall just behind Fanny, causing her to turn and look. For a second she did not know what he had seen, but then she noticed it: a letter ‘A’ that someone had scratched in the stone. It was quite small, very neat and the script looked Gothic, as if it might have been carved long ago by some monk’s hand. She smiled. A letter ‘A’ left in the stone, a tiny record of a life, vanished, deep beneath the ground.

‘How surprised the monk who carved that would be – if monk it was – to see the two of us sitting in his cloister now,’ she remarked. ‘And not at all pleased, we may be sure,’ she added with a smile.

It was a pity, therefore, that Brother Adam could not have appeared to tell his descendants that, on the contrary, he was very pleased indeed.

A minute later Mr Gilpin emerged to tell them they were going to inspect the rope works and then go down to the shipbuilding yard at Buckler’s Hard.

Slowly, slowly, the great tree moved forward. Slowly the six mighty carthorses, harnessed one behind another, hauled on the chains, and the huge cart behind them creaked and lurched under its load. They were bringing a forest oak tree to the sea.