A Traveller in Time (18 page)

Tabitha flounced off, half angry at Francis, half delighted that he had asked me to go to the Fair with him. It was an honour for a kitchen-girl she thought, and she made a romance out of it.

“Her's come back, growed bigger and a lovely maid,” I heard her shout as she ran back to the kitchen. “Her's been in Lunnon, among her kin, but her says nowt, and is mystery itself. Her's the same dream-filled wench, but I loves her like my own sister, and so does Master Francis, and better I warrant.”

Then out ran Dame Cicely and kissed me standing tiptoes, and cosseted me, and asked innumerable questions which I couldn't answer.

Anthony rode out of the yard on his grey mare on secret business to one of his manors, and Dame Cicely retreated and watched him go with deeply anxious eyes, forgetful of me. I mounted with the help of a groom and sat on a hard uncomfortable saddle, thankful that I could ride and should not disgrace myself unless my long skirts caught somewhere. We trotted along the lanes by the brook-side, curving round the steeply wooded hills, past hamlet and village to the ford. In front of us was a yeoman farmer and his wife riding pillion behind him. One hand clutched her husband's coat and another held the panniers of eggs from jolting. Francis nodded to them and spoke a few words, for they lived on the estate. They drew aside into the bushes to let us pass, and the stout red-faced woman who wore a little white ruff round her neck, smaller than the one I wore, gave me a warm smile as if she knew me for Dame Cicely's niece. They paid toll to the surly fellow who kept the ford, for the toll-collector took from all who came to sell goods at the market.

We spurred our horses and galloped along the road to the hill which led to the old market-town. Men were quarrying on a bare hill-side, and others were working at the lead-mines which honeycombed the district. We rode along a side track through fields and commons glowing with foxgloves and sweet little pink roses and yellow pansies.

It was an important Fair and the streets and market-place were thronged with jostling people who pushed one another with no apologies, elbowing rudely but good-humouredly, hailing acquaintances, using strange oaths, with many rough jokes and much laughter. We dismounted for a few minutes and went into the church to see the ancient carvings of cat and deer, and the stone angels. There was a miner, too, carved like one of the dwarfs which the countrymen said haunted the old lead-mines, working day and night tap-tapping to lure men to follow. Francis seemed particularly interested in this carving I noticed. We knelt down before the altar, and said a prayer, along with many a countryman who had come to the Fair. Then we went out into the sunshine where a man waited with our horses.

Cows and horses stood in the market-place and street, with men holding their halters. Some had come from Thackers, Francis said, and he rode among them to see that they were properly displayed by the cowmen and groom. Thin pigs snuffled in the ruts among the dirt, each tied by a string to its hind leg. They squealed as people prodded them and the more they shrieked the more mischievous boys poked them till there was a noise like Bedlam, which Francis thought very amusing.

We rode slowly among the crowd to see a juggler in the open square playing with eight balls at once, then turning rapid somersaults, and stealing like a cat after a small boy dressed in brown velvet as a bedraggled mouse with a long tail. The child was thin and wretched, and he ran this way and that, but the cat always caught him, to the crowd's delight.

Then came a couple of pedlars, and Francis beckoned to them and bought me a bunch of ribbons and a silver pin to fasten my “partelet” which was really my neck handkerchief. I felt proud and happy and I looked across at the little old timbered houses among the trees with the sharp hills surrounding the town like a rampart. Anthony was a man of importance there, for he owned most of the land and men doffed their hats and bowed to Francis. Francis bought a ballad printed on a long strip of paper with a woodcut at the head. “The Children of the Wood” it was called, and he read the first line aloud, so that people stopped to listen.

The pedlar then brought forth another ballad, written on the hanging of Edmund Campion, the priest who was a friend of Anthony's but Francis thrust it aside, turning pale with horror, and chose a ballad on the earthquake of 1580, which he read to me. Even as he paid the ballad-monger with pence from his fringed purse a drove of cattle with frightened eyes and tossing horns came along, splashing through the mud and rushing among the crowd, scattering them. We rode away to get from the pressing mob. The wooden shops were open booths with dropped shutters in the front, and ledges upon which goods were displayed. In one were dolls, hobby-horses with carved heads and painted nostrils, balls and ninepins. In another crockery, brown jars and bowls with a small device.

There was a play performed on a wooden platform of “The Raising of Lazarus” which made the crowd shiver with terror as they saw the shrouded figure rise from his grave and come gliding towards them. While we were watching this there came a ragged vagabond, a most ill-favoured dirty scoundrel, with his legs wrapped in filthy bandages and horrible sores exposed. His evil face was bound in a blood-stained cloth, and Francis told me he had dipped it in a cock's blood to make it worse, and the sores were all painted on him. He begged loudly, and held out a bag for money and scraps, compelling people to give to him. He seized my foot and held it tightly as he pushed his vile-smelling bag under my nose, and uttered outlandish cries. Francis beat him off with his whip, and threw him some pence. He seemed to think nothing of it, but I was filled with alarm. Gipsies and rogues had their habitation in the Peak hills among the rocky caverns, Francis said, and they started from there to travel the roads of England, speaking their own thieves' language, stealing from country folk as they travelled to London. They missed the sheltered hamlets, and Thackers never saw them.

He pointed out an old man with a long tangled beard, and poor worn hands trembling so much I was filled with sorrow for him. He was a labourer without work, but his hands were skilled and he was getting a small living by peddling his wares. He carried a tray of toy lambs with painted faces and ribbons round their necks and gilded horns. He sang a wailing little song as he offered his goods:

“Oh, give me two,” I cried, and Francis bought a couple. I tucked them in my bodice, with the tin horns caught in the laces, and the soft wool warm against my neck.

We sampled gilt gingerbread, in the shapes of men and women in ruffs and wide dresses and trunk hose. We bought flat cakes, spiced and honeyed, and sugar-breads for Mistress Babington who had a sweet tooth.

Francis looked at a leather-shop filled with whips and saddles and he ordered a pair of long boots of undressed brown hide. Next to it was another toy booth with people crowding round, and I stood by, holding my mare, while Francis talked to the boot-maker and had his measurements taken. There were brightly coloured wooden peg-tops, green and scarlet, and wooden whips with leather lashes, which children in long stiff clothes bought. There were skittles carved out of wood, like those I had seen in the skittle-alley, for the men's games. But in the centre was a fine wooden doll, dressed like one which I had seen at Thackers in the wardrobe chamber. It wore a white ruff, small and stiffly pleated, and a kirtle of embroidery with beads stitched upon the bodice. Its hair was piled under a white, lace-edged coif, and on its shoulders was a cloak of velvet. It was a grand lady of a doll, and not for poor people. The crowd edged round admiring it, calling to their friends to come and see, so I drew my little mare away, glad she was so docile among strangers.

More riders pressed through the market, and stopped to buy at the booths and to see the painted doll. Among them I saw the lovely red-haired girl who had walked in the garden at Bramble Hall. She rode swiftly up to us, calling to Francis, above the people's heads.

“Cousin Francis! Coz! Here you are! I have been seeking you. Who is this with you? I thought it was your sister, Alice, and I see it is the kitchen wench, dressed in Alice's weeds, a sparrow aping a hawk.”

She spoke with strident harshness and those around laughed and nudged each other, staring at me and at the girl's mocking face, and they clustered close, scenting a quarrel, eager to take sides.

“This is Mistress Penelope Taberner, my friend, from London,” said Francis, doffing his hat in a low bow. “You have made a mistake, Cousin Arabella. Good day to you.”

He swept off his hat again with an imperious gesture, and beckoned to me, and we rode away down the steep hill-side, leaving Arabella with a frowning face, scowling after us.

Although I knew the great rounded hills which curved against the sky with contours unchanged for immemorial years, the villages nestling in their folds were smaller, with only a few cottages thatched with straw and rough huts where children peered. There were wild uncultivated stretches of moorland and wood where once I had seen cornfield and meadow. We stayed for a moment looking across the heavily forested slopes where hills were blue as speedwell against a violet distance, and down in the hollow basin lay the market-town with its little stone houses jumbled together and wreathed in a smoky mist. Then we climbed higher, avoiding the rocks which jutted from the path, following a road as old as the hills themselves, the way taken by many a traveller journeying from the north of England to the south.

Below in the valley was the river, running through willow and alder thickets, and as I watched the winding stream I remembered riding to the station in the milk-cart along a white road by its side, but only a grassy path was there, with anglers fishing in the Darrand.

We drew rein and gazed at the scene, at the peaceful beauty of the sun-drenched landscape, and the flecked and shadowed silver stream which sparkled as it broke over the rocks. Francis was intent on the fishermen who stood in the water with their rods and nets gathering a harvest of trout; I strove to bring to the surface of my mind the glimmering thoughts which swam like fish evading me.

“It is now,” I mused. “All the past and the future are there, but we only see one part of it, the other is hidden in mists.”

Francis started and turned quickly to me.

“Tell me more, Penelope,” he implored. “How did you come here? How can I go there and see the future?”

I shook my head. “I wish I knew, I wish I could remember more and see more. My visits must be outside time, for when I return I find I have been away for only a fraction of a second, no measurable period, not a heart-beat, but in that span I feel life more intensely and all my senses are more acute. The grass is greener, the sky more translucent, as I step light-foot and silent across the border.

“I spend a whole day with you, and the fingers of my watch haven't moved. The time I left is the time I return. See,” I showed him my wrist-watch. “It was late in the afternoon when I came from...from...I forget what I was doing or where I was, but it was a sweet-smelling place, for I can smell it now. Then I talked with you, and we rode, and here we are, but the clock has not moved on.”

“It's like a dream, Penelope,” Francis mused.

“One makes visits like that in dreams. The philosophers say that a dream journey takes but a flash of time, that we may travel to the ends of the earth in a heart-beat, and that if we overstay in that mysterious world of dreams, we die.”

“That's what I fear,” I said very low, scarcely breathing. “If I stay too long in this world of dreams, I shall die,” and I looked round at the brilliant green of the landscape and the dark rocks and the waving trees. For a moment they seemed unreal, like the painted scenery of a play with the footlights casting no shadows.

Francis did not hear me, and perhaps I never said my thought aloud, for he went on, heedlessly. “Once I was awakened by Anthony knocking at my door. He knocked twice, he told me afterwards, with scarce a second between, but I went through a thousand adventures in that time, dreaming of a voyage to the Spanish Main with Captain Drake, fighting savages and eating strange tropical fruits, then taking ship again and seeking for the gold ships. The knock on my door was the banging of our guns at the galleons. Do you have wars, Penelope? Or is your future that Utopia about which Thomas More wrote?”

“We have wars, and there isn't Utopia yet,” I laughed ruefully.

“Tell me more about yourself, Penelope,” he added, and I remembered little things and spoke of them to him, unimportant incidents which must have been etched in my brain, and now appeared flashing across my consciousness with the incongruity of a dream sequence. As I recalled these memories they seemed to be fairy-tales read in an old book, and I saw the pages turned, each with its picture which hung clear as light for a moment and then faded and was lost as I tried to catch it and bring it before the boy by my side. Like a dream within a dream my other life appeared before me, clearer now than when I first entered the Elizabethan times, but always ebbing and flowing in a manner I could not control.

I spoke of Chelsea and the river, of Westminster and Greenwich, but Francis asked questions which I couldn't answer, about the grandeurs and beauties of palaces, which had disappeared, and the retinue and liveries of famous men, who were only names to me.

Then Francis began to talk about Babington House, which he had lately visited to see his mother.

“You must go there, Penelope,” he said. “In the great hall is the carved shield with our motto ‘Foy est Tout', splendid to see. There is a library with many books belonging to my father, and silver and tapestries. There is a square garden with a fountain, a high spout of water most diverting, not a tiny pretty trickle like the one at Thackers, for a conduit runs near. And we have flowers from foreign lands, and a tree of purple blossoms from Italy, and a cage of coloured birds.”