John Saturnall's Feast (38 page)

‘You too, Motte!’ Mister Stone greeted the gardener. ‘In you come! And you, Quiller. All strangers in!’

The serving man advanced and his men crowded in behind. As Wendell Turpin led the kitchen boys in a rowdy circuit of the benches, a bonneted figure descended the stairs. A sharp cry cut through the noise.

‘You!’ Gemma stood poised for a disbelieving instant then flung herself on a blushing Philip. ‘You're back!’

As they embraced, Mrs Gardiner advanced to hug a reluctant Alf and Mrs Pole moved among the returned men, offering quick nods of greeting like a chicken pecking corn.

‘Henry dead?’ John heard Mister Bunce exclaim in dismay to Colin. ‘We heard about Underley, but Henry? That can't be true . . .’

‘A lot of things can't be true,’ Pandar said, looking around the bare shelves. ‘Don't mean they ain't happened.’

Their faces were thinner, John saw, and their livery was patched. But the ladle's metal shaft felt good in his hand, thrumming each time he beat the copper. Soon the kitchen heaved with bodies but he beat on, searching among the faces, letting the ladle's loud music roll beneath the vaulted roof. Meg approached then Ginny, her eyes widening as she caught sight of John. Then a third maid pushed her way through the throng.

She wore a faded dress and a thin cotton shawl. At her waist jangled a bunch of keys. Abruptly she snatched the ladle from his hand.

‘What in the Lord's name possesses you to wake my household at such an hour?’

Only then did John recognise Lucretia.

He had not set eyes on her since they had marched out three winters ago, the young woman waving her farewells with a handkerchief. But hers was the face he had seen as he tramped through the hollow lanes or crept along the edges of fields. Hers was the memory that had drawn him back to Buckland. Now her face was thinner and her cheekbones jutted.

He stood before her in his filthy clothes, his hair cut short, smelling of woodsmoke and sweat. Just as he had the first time.

‘We came back,’ John said simply.

In the Great Hall, the trestles and boards had all gone along with the dais built for the King. In their place, pallets were scattered over the floor. The broken windows were boarded and in place of the tapestry on the south wall, a crude cross had been daubed in white paint. Lucretia and Gemma's skirts swished ahead as they led John through the Manor. In the presence chamber, Lucretia took her place behind her father's walnut table, a businesslike expression upon her face.

‘Sir William is at Oxford and may not be moved,’ she told him. ‘You know of his injuries?’

John shook his head. Ben Martin had seen the man's horse fall beneath him in the final charge and Luke Hobhouse had heard from a sergeant that he had been injured. After that John knew only the rumours that had flown around the camp in Tuthill Fields.

‘One leg was crushed,’ Lucretia said. ‘His surgeons will decide the fate of the other. Now he fights for Buckland from his sickbed. The Committee of Sequestrations will soon hear our case.’

‘Sequestrations, your ladyship?’

‘Our enemies were not idle while you sat in your field.’

He stood before her, blistered feet burning in his boots. Abruptly Lucretia rose.

‘Come. I will show you their handiwork.’

He watched the quick sway of her hips, following the two young women through the quiet corridors. Even through his fatigue, he recalled her white ankles beneath the worn cloth of her dress. He felt the thin scar left by the musket ball tighten about his scalp. They came to a halt outside Mister Pouncey's door. Gemma knocked and entered.

A sour smell hung in the air. Grey light entered by the single window. Before a long bench covered with neat stacks of papers sat Mister Pouncey. His thin hair was long and unkempt. His face was gaunt. His silver chain still hung about his neck. As Lucretia, Gemma and John watched, the man lifted a weight on one of the heaps and examined the paper beneath it. But whatever he found there appeared not to satisfy him for he replaced the weight and reached for another.

‘Mister Pouncey.’ Gemma spoke gently. ‘Her ladyship is here.’

The steward shook his head. ‘Not ready,’ he muttered.

‘Colonel Marpot's men hauled him out,’ Lucretia said. ‘When he offered defiance . . .’

‘They cut switches,’ said John. ‘They made him dance a jig.’

‘Yes.’ Lucretia gave him a curious look. But mention of Mister Pouncey's tormentor seemed to agitate the steward. He banged his weight on the table.

‘That's it!’ he shouted. ‘Dance off your sins!’

‘Enough, sir,’ Gemma soothed the man, placing a hand on his arm. ‘Take some rest.’ She helped the steward rise from his chair and led him to the narrow bed. John and Lucretia retreated to the musty passage. It was the first time they had been alone since the steward had burst into her chamber.

‘I saw your face when we marched.’

Her shoulders stiffened beneath the cotton of her shawl.

‘You must banish such thoughts,’ she answered.

‘I cannot,’ he said. ‘No more can you.’

He remembered the sweet scent of apples drifting up in her chamber. Her lips parting before his. No steward would burst in on them now. But as he stepped towards her, she held up a hand.

‘I am betrothed, Master Saturnall. Have you forgotten?’

‘Betrothed to Piers,’ John said dismissively.

Two dots of colour grew in her cheeks. ‘Master Piers fought bravely,’ she retorted.

‘Bravely?’

‘He was commended. The story was told in the news-sheets. How his horse was killed beneath him. How he captured another.’

‘Captured?’

‘I will have you know that Master Piers scaled a tree and dropped from its branches to overpower one of their cuirassiers. Callock's Leap they have dubbed it. And all this with a wound to the thigh . . .’

‘Thigh?’ John burst out. ‘It was a knife in the arse! And his own father gave it him! Piers ran like a rabbit!’

Lucretia folded her arms, her face stony. ‘I will not hear such insolence.’

John took a step towards her but Lucretia turned her head away. He stopped, baffled by her refusal.

‘He does not care for you,’ John said softly. ‘Nor you for him.’

‘We may exchange our desires,’ Lucretia answered. ‘I told you that once. We may exchange our antipathies too.’

‘Marpot's footpads took what they wanted,’ Mister Bunce told John.

‘What they couldn't steal they spoiled. God's bounty, they called it.’

The dry larder held oats, four sacks of dried beans, strings of dried apples and a solitary half-loaf of Madeira sugar wrapped in sacking-cloth which had been hidden behind a rafter. In the pantry a few hard loaves sat on the shelves above three sacks of meal. Melichert Roos's spice room was deserted but for a few dusty jars set on top of the rack and nothing emanated from Underley's jointing room but a faint foul smell.

John, Philip, Mister Bunce and Mister Stone walked the passageways behind the main kitchen. Some splintered planks hanging from a hinge were all that remained of the door to Scovell's chamber. Inside, books and papers lay scattered over the floor. The table and chair had been overturned. John smelled soot, the musty smell of damp cloth and paper.

‘They came down here first,’ said Bunce. ‘Then they went up-stairs and got their hands on Pouncey. They'd hardly finished with him when they hauled Yapp out on a rope. Had him clamped to their block. Said he owed a hand to God for all his Papist preaching. They would've lopped him if it weren't for Lady Lucretia.’

‘She stopped them?’ John asked.

‘Took Marpot off to the chapel. Was in there more'n an hour. Praying, one of their men said. Up there on the tower. She had the key fetched from Mister Pouncey's rooms. Anyroad, when she came out, they let Yapp go.’

Why, John wondered, would Lucretia take Marpot up the tower? But after their last encounter, none of her acts made sense to him.

‘Melichert packed his chest the next day,’ said Mister Stone. ‘Took a berth from Stollport. At least he bade his farewells. Vanian just vanished.’

Like Scovell, thought John, looking around the wrecked chamber. The gallipots still sat on their shelf.

‘Just Marpot's name was enough to empty the yard,’ Bunce went on. ‘He camped half his Militia in Callock Marwood. It got so as you couldn't wear livery in the village. After that the hands started leaving. Now they won't take our notes in Carrboro Market. People reckon we won't be here to pay ‘em back.’

‘No one's had a penny since last Michaelmas,’ added Fanshawe. ‘Mister Pouncey knew what was due. Wages, rents, levies. Every hide of land from Flitwick all the way down to Stollport. It was all in his head. Now he don't know what day it is.’

Through the gateway to the yard, the barracks built for the King's visit leaned drunkenly. In the stables, two palfreys snorted beside an elderly draught horse. In Motte's kitchen garden weeds flourished and bean frames sagged. Beyond its wall the choked drain-culvert led down to water-meadows rank with weeds. Across the river, Home Farm appeared to have cultivated no more than half a field of kale and the same of rye. Standing on the bank, John eyed the jetty and the glossy green waters. Now the planking was split. The banks were choked with crack willow and alder. Upstream, the blades of the millwheel scooped skeins of riverweed from the sluggish water.

Walking back up the meadows, the carp ponds alone appeared as they always had, cleared of weed and birds by the Heron Boy. John raised an arm and the ragged figure flapped his wings in greeting.

‘Still talking in your sleep?’

The Heron Boy threw his head back in a silent laugh.

John and Mister Fanshawe continued up past the Rose Garden wall and the steps to the Great Hall. Beyond the East Garden wall, the chapel was locked.

‘Marpot's pastor took the key,’ Fanshawe told John with a grimace.

‘Pastor?’

‘Didn't her ladyship tell you?’ Fanshawe said. ‘Marpot left him behind. Pastor Ephraim Clough.’ The clerk looked curiously at John. ‘Master Saturnall? You look like you've seen a ghost.’

‘You wrap these around your knees,’ Mister Bunce told John that Sunday, handing him a pair of rags. ‘Tie them like this and hide ‘em under your breeches. That way our pastor reckons we're all in agonies, kneeling on that floor. Best to let folks believe what they will, I reckon.’ The stout man grinned.

‘And don't do nothing but kneel,’ Tam Yallop warned. ‘They beat one of the hands for fastening his button. Working on the Sabbath, Pastor Clough said.’

At Ephraim's name, John's dull foreboding returned. It had been growing all week. All around him, the others were binding up their knees and covering up the bandages. Soon a familiar ringing sounded. A hand-bell, John realised. Harsh shouts echoed in the servants’ yard then the nearest cooks shuffled aside. A man garbed in black breeches, a plain black smock, black jacket and short black cloak entered. In one hand he carried a Bible. The other held the bell. The heavy-browed face looked about at the men of the Kitchen.

‘So our congregation grows,’ Ephraim Clough declared. Then his gaze found John. A flash of surprise showed in his face. Then a slow smile creased his heavy features.

‘Let us give thanks to the Lord,’ he declared. ‘He has sent us another errant soul. Let us pray together for his correction.’

All that remained of the altar was a rectangular scar on the floor. The glass had been smashed from the windows and the bare walls whitewashed. The pulpit, the altar rail and the pews had gone along with Lady Anne's balcony. Its disappearance uncovered a rough wall broken by a small heavy-timbered door. Buckland's new pastor cast his eyes over the Household, threw his arms wide and sent his short cloak flapping like the wings of a monstrous crow.

‘Kneel,’ Ephraim ordered. ‘We shall hearken unto the words of the Lord.’

All around John, the Household sank to the hard stone floor. At the front, flanked by Gardiner and Pole, John picked out the plain dress and bonnet worn by Lucretia. Gemma, Ginny and Meg knelt alongside her. Behind the congregation, lining the back wall of the chapel, a dozen Militiamen set down their muskets and swords. Two score of them were garrisoned in Callock Marwood, Mister Bunce had told John.

‘The Lord spake unto Moses,’ Ephraim recited. ‘And Moses spake unto the people saying, Arm yourselves unto war and go against the Midianites. So there were delivered out of Israel a thousand of every tribe and Moses sent them to war and they slew all the males. And they slew the kings of Midian, namely Zur and Hur . . .’

Even through the rags, the stone floor seemed to harden as Clough droned on. Along the row, John saw Philip then Alf, Adam, Colin and Luke. Jed Scantlebury was at the end. Clough paused and looked around the sea of heads.

‘The Lord told Moses all that,’ Ephraim declared to the silent faces. ‘And Moses told the Children of Israel. The Midianites deserved no mercy. Eschew pity therefore . . .’

John remembered Father Hole's stories about date palms and fruits and deluges of rain. They seemed to belong to another world to this one. Ephraim's voice bored into his brain, describing God's vengeances and violences.

‘Only for the Chosen does God reserve the fruits of his garden. The grapes from his vines and the honey from his hives. For them he loads the tables with sweetmeats and dainties. For those who follow the true path, he serves feasts as he did in Eden . . .’

It seemed an age before the droning voice fell silent.

‘All rise!’ the Captain commanded at last. Slowly, pulling each other up, the Household rose. Ephraim waited by the door, a self-satisfied smile upon his face. As John approached, he held up his hand.

‘One moment, Master Saturnall.’

Philip paused beside him but a Militiaman pushed him forward. John eyed his former antagonist.

‘Perhaps you imagine I seek revenge,’ Ephraim said. ‘Or that I harbour ill-will towards you for your offences against me. For your malice and violence. But I do not. I serve a higher Authority. Colonel Marpot purged me of such thoughts as keep me from God. Thus do I purge this household of its luxuries and vanities. The low and high alike.’

Ephraim glanced back. Alone in the chapel, Lucretia still knelt on the floor. A smirk creased Clough's features.