Читать книгу Mary of Carisbrooke - Margaret Campbell Barnes - Страница 3

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In the servants’ quarters at Carisbrooke Castle on the Isle of Wight the housekeeper’s niece, Mary Floyd, was tucking a frightened little chambermaid into a truckle bed. “I’ll send the slut packing!” Mistress Wheeler, the housekeeper, had declared as soon as it became evident that the hired wench was pregnant. But Sergeant Floyd, Mary’s father, had gone on imperturbably checking the morning’s supplies from Newport. “What can you expect, with Roundheads being brought into the garrison?” he had asked of no one in particular.

Mary herself, whose tender heart yearned over every sick dog on the island, had made no comment. She had picked up the pieces of a water pitcher the girl had dropped and quietly helped her up the backstairs and put a hot brick to her feet.

“Where shall I go if Mistress Wheeler turns me out?” sobbed the erring, orphaned Libby.

“Why not to your lover’s folk?” suggested Mary. “Where does he live?”

“Somewheres over on the mainland,” moaned Libby, retching over the bowl which her employer’s niece had produced. “He be one o’ the escort who came over from London with the new Governor and Captain Rolph.”

“An overner,” snorted Mary, very conscious that there had been Floyds and Wheelers on the Isle of Wight for generations. “When I give myself to a man I’ll make right sure he’s an islander!”

At seventeen it is so easy to be sure.

But Libby had lived two years longer, and with no solidly respected relatives to care for her. “Tom’s a right persuasive sort of man. And this love-making isn’t anything a girl decides about. It just happens,” she stated, out of her dearly bought experience.

Mary stood wondering about it. She recalled the slick-tongued Londoner whom the other soldiers called Tom Rudy, and involuntarily her mind made pictures. What secret trysts had these two kept, slipping out into the darkness from warm kitchen and rowdy guardroom? What ecstasies had bright-eyed Libby found out there in the shadows of some bastion or hayloft? And had the magic of those encounters been worth all this apprehension and shamed morning sickness? To a girl who had been strictly brought up by Sergeant Floyd’s widowed sister, such passionate moments were as yet but figments of occasional curiosity.

As if to dispel such unaccustomed thoughts Mary crossed to the small attic window, and, pushing open the lattice, let the sweet air of an autumnal morning sweep through the stuffiness of the room. “Aunt Druscilla’s roses are still out,” she remarked, looking down into the herb garden. But in the mild climate of an island nestling beneath the southern shires of England there was nothing remarkable about roses blooming in November, and Libby’s interest was focused upon immediate necessity.

“There’s the Governor’s bedroom to be done,” she muttered, struggling to get up; for although Colonel Hammond, the new Governor, might be quiet in manner, soldiers and servants alike were beginning to mind his quietness more than the hearty blustering of any of his predecessors.

“Lie still awhile. I will do them,” promised Mary, taking pity on her plight.

“And you’ll try to persuade your aunt to let me stay?”

“I will ask my father to,” promised Mary.

Libby slid gratefully back against the straw-filled pillow. Silas Floyd might be Sergeant of the Garrison, but she was far less afraid of him than of his sharp-tongued sister, Mistress Wheeler. “Tell them Tom Rudy says he’ll marry me if ever he has the money,” she urged, with small conviction.

On the floor below Mary knocked on the small service door between backstair passage and best bedroom. Having lived in the castle all her life she knew the room well, but now she would have preferred to find it empty. Light streamed through the five arched lights of the big west window. Facing it was a tapestry-covered wall and above it, set back over the backstair passage, a disused music gallery. In the far corner a larger door led into the long living-room. To Mary the big state bed looked very grand, and long familiarity blinded her to the fact that its hangings were faded. It was a lovely room, she thought, needing only the cheerfulness of a fire crackling in the fine fireplace. But Colonel Hammond was a man of austere taste. He sat at his writing desk dealing with official documents, a tall, plainly dressed man whose soldierly bearing was belied by a sensitive face. No book or picture betrayed some private facet of his mind, no trailing garment lent the place a homeliness. Only a pair of immaculately polished riding boots stood ready by the empty hearth.

As unobtrusively as possible Mary made the almost unrumpled bed, and swept the broad oak floorboards. While drawing the hangings again so that they should not show the place which she had darned so laboriously last winter, she recalled how the last Governor but one, Lord Portland, had been wont to pinch her cheek and call her “Floyd’s little wench”. She had been little more than a child then, of course. But this new Governor, sent by that all-powerful body of men called Parliament, had no merry quips for children—nor for women either, the maidservants said. Although he had married an important Parliamentarian’s daughter, he must have left her behind in London or be a widower like her own father, Mary supposed, for only his sweet-faced mother graced the foot of his table in hall.

She was glad enough to climb the stairs again to tidy the housekeeper’s room, which was immediately above. And glad to find her aunt deep in conversation with Mistress Trattle from the “Rose and Crown”, since a friend’s gossip might distract her from noticing that it was her niece, and not Libby, who did the work.

“And what is the new Governor really like?” Mistress Trattle was asking, as everybody did who came in from the near-by town of Newport.

The high-backed settle before the fire hid all but the two women’s laps from Mary’s view, but she could imagine the judicious pursing of Aunt Druscilla’s lips. “A quiet-living man,” was the verdict. “Keeps a good table, but none of the roystering supper parties milord Portland used to have. This one is all for discipline and seeing that the bolts and portcullises work smoothly, my brother says.”

“His father was one of the royal chaplains,” recalled the hostess of the “Rose and Crown”.

“So he may have been. But Parliament appointed him, and father and son often take different sides now.”

“But surely the Colonel’s sympathy must be with the poor King, dictated to by a lot of traitors and separated from all his children. He’s kept almost a prisoner at Hampton Court now, my relatives on the mainland say, and the Queen fled back home to France to have her last baby——”

“I heard she had it in Exeter before she sailed.”

It was evidently going to be one of those long discussions about the civil war over on the mainland, and someone called Oliver Cromwell who had usurped the power of King Charles. The bitter arguments which had caused so much bloodshed were beyond Mary’s ken. Edgehill, Marston Moor, Nazeby, and Hampton were no more than names to her. All she knew was that the King stood firm for the Church of England and that Parliament refused to grant him enough money. The Puritan’s side of the matter she had scarcely heard. She stood by the window looking out upon her simpler and more immediate world. Down in the courtyard her father’s spaniel, Patters, lay scratching herself in the sunshine, and the horse upon which Mistress Trattle had ridden pillion behind her servant was tethered to the gate of the herb garden. Soldiers came and went unhurriedly between guardroom and stables, or sat in the shadow of the arched gateway whistling as they cleaned their accoutrements. The great iron-studded doors stood wide, and from the top storey of the Governor’s lodgings which butted out into the courtyard she could catch an enchanting glimpse of green fields beyond the drawbridge. Within the wide girdle of the battlements the familiar scene was leisurely and sun-washed. Even the gilded weathervane above the chapel scarcely stirred.

Coming out of her reverie she realized that the voices of the two women on the settle were murmuring on. “Safer to keep one’s real sympathies to oneself these days,” Mistress Trattle was saying.

“Or suffer for it like poor Sir John Oglander,” agreed Aunt Druscilla. “The best Deputy Governor we ever had. And imprisoned twice and almost ruined by those Roundhead traitors in London!”

“Well, at least he came back to Nunwell House alive.”

“But the strain of it killed his poor wife, Bess Oglander says.”

Because Agnes Trattle was the daughter of a knight impoverished in the wars and Druscilla Wheeler was the widow of one, they liked it to be known that they were on visiting terms with Sir John’s cousin, who kept house for him. There was a creak of the settle as buxom Mistress Trattle leaned forward to admire her friend’s collar. “A treat to see such lovely lace after the hideous plain collars of these sour-faced Puritans!” she said. “And how beautifully laundered!”

“I never allow anyone but Mary to launder my caps and collars.”

“I had no idea she was so clever.”

“Oh, she is clever enough with her hands.”

Mary heard the faint disparagement in her aunt’s voice. She knew without envy that she was not quick and gay like pretty Frances, the Trattles’ daughter, who met so many interesting people in her father’s inn.

“But your Mary is so kind,” defended Frances’s mother, with her usual generosity.

“Too kind—to any mangy cur or lazy good-for-nothing with a likely story! Why, only this morning when that brazen strumpet Libby began swooning and vomiting——” The clatter of a falling warming-pan reminded her that someone was tidying the room, so that she looked round the corner of the settle and added in vexation, “Why, Mary, surely you are not foolish enough to be doing the drone’s work for her! At least I hope you have not been making the Colonel’s bed?”

“Libby was sick, and I have nothing special else to do,” said Mary. She spoke with deference, but her aunt recognized the same steady voice and level gaze which had won the day when the foolish girl had insisted upon setting free a lamed doe the men had been baiting. For one so gentle, she could be amazingly persistent, and her aunt thought it deplorable the way her father allowed her to roam about the place talking to the soldiers and servants. Mistress Wheeler rose angrily. “Do you suppose I like a niece of mine performing such menial tasks for a mere Parliamentarian? I, whose husband was killed fighting for the King at Nazeby?” she scolded.

Warming-pan in hand, Mary stood silently rebuked, and was grateful when Mistress Trattle intervened good-naturedly. “If Colonel Hammond is as diligent as you say, I wager he did not notice which wench it was,” she laughed, gathering up her cloak. “And since Mary says she has no special duties this morning why not let her ride back with me and spend the day with Frances? I think she has some outing in mind. You have not been down into Newport all this week, Mary, and Frances counts you her best friend.”

Mary Floyd flushed with pleasure. Although she and Frances had played and gossiped together since childhood, she had always been filled with shy admiration for the innkeeper’s daughter whose graceful vivacity made her feel uncouth and whose dark, carefully tended hair seemed a reproach every time she remembered to brush out her own mop of tawny curls. And her aunt, she knew, approved the friendship, inventing small errands so that the girls should meet at least once a week. For was not Edward Trattle a member of the Corporation of Newport, with its busy wharves along the Medina river whence laden ships sailed out to sea at Cowes?

Down in the stables one of the men-at-arms stopped grooming his horse to saddle her white pony. Any one of them would have done the same for her. To them, as to the previous Governor, she was “Floyd’s little wench” who always asked after their wives and cared for their sick children. Although now she had grown into the slender girl who smiled at them all impartially as she gentled her mount through the gloom of the guardroom gatehouse.

So large a part of Mary’s life was confined to the twenty acres within the castle walls that setting forth into the outside world never failed to seem something of an adventure. Down the steep lane close under the fortifications she went, following Mistress Trattle and the manservant, until their mounts splashed through the clear, brown brook at the bottom. Through Carisbrooke village and along a mile of country road, and then into the bustle and excitement of the island’s principal town. Cattle were being driven in to market, and boys, newly released from their books, came running and shouting from the doors of Newport Grammar School. About the doors of the “Bull Inn” and the “George” clustered farmers and drovers, and in the Square beside the church stood the “Rose and Crown”, a comfortable-looking hostelry with dormers projecting from the sloping roof, and the greenery of a climbing rose softening the grey stone of its walls.

Outside in the sunshine Edward Trattle was superintending a delivery of casks from his brewhouse in Lugley Street, Frances was already mounted, and a tall, mettlesome-looking black horse was being walked up and down by Jem, the red-headed ostler. Trattle helped his wife down from the saddle, and called a cheery greeting to Mary.

“I am so glad you have come,” said Frances. “Captain Burley is going up to Brighstone Down to inspect the look-out post and help plan out this month’s manœuvres for the militia, and he says he will take us with him.”

“He seems to think all our defences will fall to pieces now he has retired,” laughed the innkeeper indulgently.

“Time hangs heavy for him after being in charge of Yarmouth castle, I expect,” said Agnes Trattle. “What with a Governor sent by Parliament and the ranting kind of Mayor we’ve got, it’s good to see so loyal a servant of the King! Ah, here he comes, all booted and spurred at seventy.”

With a pleasant mixture of affection and anxiety she turned to berate a stocky, naval-looking man who was emerging from the inn door and whose weather-beaten face looked all the ruddier because of his crisply curling white hair. “You know very well that Dr. Bagnell says you should rest and not excite yourself with such things, Captain Burley. Where’s the good of my letting you my quietest room and giving you the most comfortable bed in the house if you can’t leave someone younger to look over the militia?”

Being an obstinate old man, he only patted his hostess’s plump white hands as she fastened his cloak. “You’d spoil me, all the lot of you,” he chuckled. “But if those Parliamentary fools who retired me think I’m too old to do things myself, at least I know how they ought to be done. Which is more than you can say of some of those landlubbers they’ve put in charge of our lookouts.”

“Well, if you must go sweltering up on to the hills——”

“And this pretty poppet of yours has been plaguing me to let her and Mary come along too, though no doubt ’tis only to make eyes at the young militia officers.”

Because of increasing puritanical prejudices, Agnes Trattle thought often of the youthful fun she had enjoyed in her father’s palmier days. “I think you had better both go along if only to see that the Captain remembers to eat some of those pasties you have packed,” she agreed indulgently.

So the two girls set off on their ponies, one on either side of the Captain on his big black horse, climbing up and up along the chalky hill paths, exclaiming with admiration at the gold and russet of the wooded slopes and listening to Burley’s hair-raising stories about sea battles with the Spaniards. When they reached the summit of Brighstone Down they let their tired beasts crop the short, sweet turf, while Mary unpacked the saddle bags and saw to it that the vigorous old man really ate something before inspecting the look-out station. From where they sat he could point out to them several others strategically placed on the highest points of the island from which approaching enemy ships could be sighted, and from which messages could be sent to raise a militia two thousand men strong. He took delight in explaining the whole system of defence which had served the island so well in the past, and outlined the mock battle which was to take place when all the companies, each under the command of its local squire, were to meet upon Brighstone Down for their next exercise.

“But what is the use of it all when we are not at war?” asked Frances, biting into a succulent pasty.

To Mary, a soldier’s daughter, the whole scheme was familiar. “All successful attacks come suddenly,” she said, quoting words she had often heard her father growl at some slack sentry. “When the French landed unexpectedly and pillaged Newport the whole island might have been taken if the castle’s garrison hadn’t been prepared. They ambushed scores of them in Noddies Lane.”

“And before that the Frenchies had slipped into the creeks along the north shore and occupied Shalfleet for months,” corroborated Captain Burley. “They sacked Yarmouth harbour in the west and burned down the church. Out in the Channel you can hear our Yarmouth bells ringing out from some church steeple in Cherbourg.”

“But that was a hundred years ago and more,” yawned Frances, for whom life was mostly glittering daydreams of the future. “Nothing exciting ever happens here now.” The old Captain had stumped off to greet a little group of militia captains, and she was disappointed because Sir Henry Worsley’s good-looking son was not among them.

“There are fairs and summer days down on the beaches, and the big ships coming in at Cowes, and sometimes the militia march through Newport with their band,” enumerated Mary, feeding Blanche, her pony, with an apple. “And days when all the gentry come up to dine at the castle,” she added, hearing her friend sniff at such rustic pleasures.

“My father says they don’t go as often as they used. Doesn’t the new Governor invite them?”

“Yes, I think so,” answered Mary, gathering up the remains of their meal. “But so many of them seem to make excuses.”

“One could scarcely blame the Oglanders!” said Frances, whose mother was an outspoken Royalist. Since all the militia captains had moved away, and were interested only in field-pieces and demi-culverins anyway, she pulled off her new plumed hat and lay sulkily watching a little brig tack out of the mouth of the Medina river towards Southampton. “I wish I were going over to the Main.”

“Not to live!” protested Mary, scarcely less surprised than if her friend had proposed crossing the Atlantic to Virginia.

“Why not? My mother lived there before she was married and a right good time she had. There was music and dancing at my grandfather’s manor, and sometimes fashionably dressed young men came who could pay a pretty compliment and who had been to Court. I should like to meet some men who had really been to Court.”

“But, Frances, there is Mr. Newland. I thought it was all arranged that you and he——”

“Just because he is one of the wealthiest merchants in Newport! But he is old—forty at least—and thinks only about his trade on the Medina and his money.”

Mary often saw John Newland up at the castle, of course, when he came to discuss supplies of corn and coal for the garrison and the Governor’s household. Both there and at the inn he always spoke to her pleasantly. But certainly he was neither young nor fashionably dressed—not the exciting sort of lover she would have wished for her friend. Mary could scarcely imagine a sober-looking merchant like Master Newland being passionate. From him her thoughts shifted involuntarily to Tom Rudy, the plausible young Londoner with the persuasive smile. “Our Libby is going to have a baby,” she said, with apparent irrelevance.

Frances sat up at once, displaying mild interest. “Will they send her away?” she asked.

“The poor thing’s father was drowned at sea and her mother was a drab.”

“And so I suppose your silly tender heart will drive you to champion her?”

“I promised her I would do what I could. You see, she has absolutely nowhere to go.”

“She should have thought of that before,” said Frances, with a toss of her sleek dark head.

Mary tugged thoughtfully at a tuft of grass. “Do people stop to think? Would we, do you suppose?” she asked with shyly averted eyes, remembering what Libby had said. “Supposing, I mean, the man was young—and very persuasive——”

Frances, who met so many personable young men coming and going at the inn, leant forward impulsively to kiss the serious fair-skinned face so near her own. “Oh, Mary Floyd, what a dear innocent you are!” she laughed, between affection and exasperation.

To hide her embarrassment Mary got up and stood watching the group of men gathered about the little stone look-out station. The afternoon sun was warm upon her bare head and a fresh sea breeze was tugging at her skirts. From the top of Brighstone Down the whole lozenge-shape outline of the Wight was visible. Eastward stood the imposing mound of the castle, below steep cliffs to the south stretched the Channel in a blue expanse of white-capped waves towards France, while westward the long spine of hills tapered to the thin peninsula of the treacherous Needles’ rocks. Down in the valley the Medina flowed like a silver streak from Newport out to Cowes and beyond the smooth waters of the Solent lay the southern coast of England, so clear and close some days that Mary could see the houses at Portsmouth and shipping coming out from Southampton Water. One hand shading her eyes, she stood and gazed, all smaller issues forgotten. Strange to think that over there civil war had been raging, with the King detained in one of his palaces, and people hating and killing each other because of their politics or their religion. Whereas here, as Frances said, nothing ever happened. Here the farms were folded peacefully into the sheltered hollows of the downland, only the cloud shadows chased each other across the green slopes of the hills and the white gulls screamed overhead or swooped hungrily upon the rich, red earth of newly furrowed fields. Here was beauty, security and home. The only known land, the place that held a beloved father and good friends. Unlike Frances, she had no desire to be anywhere else.

To-day, she thought, rousing herself at the sound of the returning Captain’s blustering voice, has been another ordinary, happy day.