Alchemy. Maureen Duffy

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ it isn’t now. And no one seems to be going in and out. No students I mean.’

      ‘They wouldn’t be.’

      ‘Why not?’

      ‘Term hasn’t begun. Not until next week.’

      I feel a complete Wally. Why didn’t I check my facts, instead of zooming off into the sunrise?

      ‘Maybe I’ll just ring the bell and see what happens.’

      ‘There won’t be anyone there, except maintenance staff, porters and so on.’

      I’ve just put myself at a disadvantage with Gilbert, given him the chance to feel superior. Somehow I have to reclaim the high ground.

      ‘Can’t you think of anyone who supported you, who might help? I need to get inside, to get the feel of things, when the place is back in business of course. I need to see someone, talk to them, sniff out the background. You’re going to want help. There must be someone who at least knows the entry code.’

      ‘You must realise they would be putting their own job at risk. These new security arrangements aren’t for general safety purposes, keeping out voyeurs or even would-be rapists. They are designed to keep me out and the students in. Their comings and goings will be monitored by closed-circuit video.’

      ‘Then we have to find someone now, before term begins, before they’re banged up inside.’

      He’s gone. I peer through the bars again and think I see a blue-overalled figure moving about among the far trees with a wheelbarrow. Is Gilbert telling the truth or lying to me in spite of my warning? Did he know about the new security? Suddenly all the excitement that rode behind me on the way down like a following wind has gone out of the case and I’m stranded, gasping for air, with only an empty ride back ahead of me.

      

      That Christmas was the first that I went to the great house but still in my guise of Amyntas, for my lady said that I was too known already in that form to pass now as another. She must have her ladies about her at Wilton which should include Mistress Griffiths who could not be sworn to secrecy. To tell truth I was glad of this for I had become so used to see myself as Amyntas as green summer turned to autumn and thence to foul winter, when all the ways were muddied to the axle and fever ran through our company at Ramsbury and the ladies took to their beds with streaming eyes and noses, and vomiting. The countess and I were kept busy with cordials and balms, boiling pimpernel in wine for healing draughts, hot and cold, and then mixing onion and honey mustard hot for unguents against sores and blains, and for purging the head. I felt a little jealousy stir in me to see how our lady tended them, holding their heads while they drew up the smell of the honey mustard to cleanse the rheum or sitting them up with an arm about their shoulders to drink down the vinum pimpernel.

      For ourselves as a prophylactic, the countess and I drank every morning a draught of rosemary-flower wine. Whether that strengthened our bodies to resist the infection or drove it out once in I cannot say, only that we ourselves stayed free of rheum and fever. Then she commended me for this was a receipt of my father’s that I learned of him, and served him well for many years until that death that no man can escape.

      In December came a week of sharp frosts. Suddenly all were well again and busy with preparations to remove to the great house. There was laughter and bustle and talk of who might come to Wilton. Mistress Griffiths was disappointed that the young earl would not come, being still in disgrace, but would keep the feast with his uncle Sidney, if her majesty would let my lady’s brother home to Penshurst from his employment in Flushing as governor there, or if not Earl William would pass the season with other friends, for the countess would not receive him, he showing no sign of remorse now that his lover had been delivered of a dead child, but was gone to London to attend at the Parliament and petition her majesty to let him travel abroad to wipe out his disgrace in her service.

      ‘Perhaps,’ I said, ‘the other young lord, Mr Philip, will come.’ But she would have none of that saying he was but a schoolboy still.

      ‘Many are married younger than seventeen,’ said the duenna, and she began to sing in a low cracked voice:

      O daughter, o daughter I’ve done to you no wrong, I’ve married you to a bonny boy, his age it is but young, And a lady he will make you, that’s if you will be made Saying your bonny boy is young but a-growing.

      So we took our journey from Ramsbury to Wilton, my lady in her coach with Mistress Griffiths and the duenna, and the other ladies following in their coach, and the rest of the household train behind them. I rode with the steward and other gentlemen through Marlborough where we stayed only for dinner at the Bear Inn and thence to Upavon, a pretty village by the river where we were received for the night at the manor house to lie there as the countess was accustomed to do to break her journey, though some of the household were obliged to lie at the Antelope, it being but a small house for such a company. Often my lady would rest there two or more nights but this time she was eager to be at Wilton. So we resumed our way early in the morning as soon as it was light which being December and St Lucy’s Day was late enough if we were to reach the great house before nightfall.

      ‘Dearest Wilton, where I first came as a bride, how soon shall we be sundered,’ the countess said as the great gateway and the lofty walls came towards us out of the down-setting sun that turned all the sky behind to a furnace of red and gold where the clouds were puffs of pink smoke as from a giant bellows. Beside its walls runs the river whose name of ‘Nadder’ signified in the British language ‘birds’, as my father told me, and to this day the waterfowl swim there in great numbers, in especial the painted mallards in blue and green livery with their dun wives and the silver swans who sing only at their dying.

      When the gate was flung open we saw the whole household assembled in the courtyard to greet their lady, all bowing deep, with music playing and the children from the cathedral to sing one of her own psalms in greeting.

      When long absent from lovely Zion By the lord’s conduct home we returned We our senses scarcely believing Thought mere visions moved our fancy.

      

      Then in our merry mouths laughter abounded Tongues with gladness loudly resounded While thus wond’ring nations whispered, ‘God with them most royally dealeth.’

      My lady took up her own chamber again where she used always to lie. The steward would have had me lie with one of the grooms of the late earl’s chamber but I said I was accustomed to lie near my lady to fetch and carry, and he let me put a pallet in an alcove of the passage that led from her anteroom, where Mistress Griffiths lay, to the great staircase. Then I saw that my sex might be the more hard of concealing among such a press of people for we were like a little town in ourselves or a country echo of the queen her court.

      Every day more company resorted to us, as all the nobility and gentry of the county bringing rich presents and petitions for my lady’s word in high places, for the earl being but a minor, and besides out of favour, the world still made suit to the countess though but the dowager. There came too some of her people out of Wales from her castle of Cardiff and other her properties so that Mistress Griffiths spoke with many in her own tongue which seemed to me truly like the language of the adepts or necromancers.

      She made great play to tease me with my ignorance of it, laughing and nodding towards me as the words poured from her to one of her kinswomen. ‘Ah,’ she said in English, ‘if you had been bred up by the old earl you would understand us for our language came easier to his tongue than the English.’ And indeed I have heard it said that the old earl writ English but poorly.

СКАЧАТЬ