The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

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СКАЧАТЬ knotted fingers together against her lace apron. Her eyes opened wide like a terrified rabbit. ‘How can you joke? He’ll have you arrested again. You have to get away! How could Harry bring him here? I told you he couldn’t be trusted any more …!’

      ‘Aunt!’ John laid his hand on her arm the way he would soothe a frightened dog or horse. ‘Malise may not recognize me.’

      ‘Then why is he here?’

      ‘That’s what I must learn.’

      ‘How can I serve him dinner? And sit there as if nothing’s wrong? And what if he does recognize you? How can you possibly …?’ Her right hand tried to pull the fingers off her left.

      ‘Darling aunt, listen to me!’ He took both of her hands in his. ‘Are you listening?’

      Mistress Margaret nodded distractedly.

      ‘You saved my life once before, when the soldiers came looking for me, eleven years ago. I need you to do it again. I need you to be just as calm and wily now as you were then. Pretend I really am John Graffham, an inconsequential by-blow nephew who washed up on your doorstep. Worry only about the sauces and the joint. Show Harry that he hasn’t inherited a lower circle of Hell. I need you to forget that you are a good, virtuous woman. You must lie your head off…deceive so well that you believe it yourself.’

      Mistress Margaret gave a quivery sigh. ‘These things get more difficult…Of course, I’ll try. But John …’

      ‘Our guests are waiting for your incomparable meat pies. To battle, my Boadicea of the pots! Distract the enemy with titbits. Feed him into harmless, full-bellied sleep.’ He took the keys, unlocked the door, and pushed his aunt towards the dining chamber.

      ‘Be seated,’ cried Harry to his guests.

      Mistress Hazelton frowned at a carved wooden pilaster set into the wall, from which a bare-breasted nymph offered passers-by an overflowing basket of fruit.

      Harry noted her frown. The little knife stabbed again just above his navel.

      The dining chamber at the back of the house, however, offered no excuse to purge Harry’s emotional wind. The diamond window panes glistened in the late afternoon sun. On every window ledge, John had set blue and white Turkish ceramic pots of late white tulips. Their faint, sweet, green scent twined itself into the smoke of apple logs and rosemary branches that burned in the great plastered brick fireplace to cover the smell of must and mice. One of Harry’s own London hounds snuffled and twitched before the fire as if it had always slept there. Harry quivered like dried grass and watched his guests for the direction of their breeze.

      At least, he thought, Hazelton seems so far to approve of Cousin John, in spite of my cousin’s odd humour. Can’t tell what Malise thinks. Please God, let it work. Let them see that I can offer something in my own right. That they must reckon with my advice in the future.

      Edward Malise looked out of one window. Samuel Hazelton gazed appraisingly out of another across the yard and outbuildings of the basse-court towards the swell of the orchard ridge beyond. The trees were carved in high relief by the slanting rays of the sun.

      ‘It’s a poor view now,’ said Harry. He winced at the row of churns airing outside the dairy room and at a hen balanced on one leg in the middle of the courtyard to scratch itself. ‘But I’ll soon put that right. You must imagine the sweep of a lawn where that jumble of a courtyard is now, and a lake beyond! Please do come sit down.’

      ‘It’s not a bad view,’ said Hazelton pleasantly. ‘A scene of good husbandry and industry. In your circumstances, Sir Harry, not to be dismissed.’

      All three Londoners gave John a quick look.

      John’s stomach tightened with renewed alarm. What was that about? he wondered. I feel the hunt is on but don’t know from which thicket the hounds will appear.

      Harry flushed.

      ‘But there’s nothing wrong either in wanting to put things right,’ said Hazelton, making peace again.

      Harry took John’s former chair in the centre of the table. He ached for a gilt Venetian candlestick and Italian glasses, but he could not fault his aunt’s muster of the resources she had.

      The long, heavy oak table, pulled out from the wall into the middle of the room, smelled sweetly of beeswax. The wood of the carved oak stools gleamed, and their faded red and green needlepoint cushions were brushed clean of dog and cat hair. (Harry pined for chairs but supposed that he was grateful to be spared the humiliation of benches.) The linen tablecloth was sunbleached to an irreproachable white. The pewter plates and cups shone like water on a bright day. Mistress Margaret had even found, somewhere, a silver spoon to set at each place.

      Soon, thought Harry, when cousin John has carried out his task for us…Then I will buy silver plates, Venetian glasses with spiral stems and lugs, and the French forks they are now using in Whitehall.

      Harry called for his knife case and that of his wife, which was a very expensive wedding gift from himself. He hoped that Malise, sitting across from her, would notice the fine Spanish workmanship of both leather and steel.

      ‘Welcome,’ said Harry. He raised his glass. ‘To the renewed life of Hawkridge House.’

      The food, though plain, was plentiful and appetizing: glazed meat pies, the troubling joint of mutton (not ruined by the delay at all), a ham, a platter of spit-roasted doves and woodcock, a deep brown, pungent fricassee of rabbit. There was an excellent chicken cullis served as soup, flavoured with ginger and rose water, and some not-bad wine that his cousin had managed to find.

      (‘Do we deny Sir Richard?’ Harry had whispered frantically to John in the parlour. ‘Or else risk offending the Puritanical conscience of the Hazeltons? Though I think I may once have seen Master H. take a glass of claret.’)

      Harry’s guests set to with appetite. The three housegrooms and two kitchen maids served without splashing gravy or stepping on toes. So, although his aunt’s spoon rattled against her plate with every bite, Harry had to turn his discomfort elsewhere for relief.

      His wife drew his nervous eye. She sat hunched and silent beside his cousin John, across the table from Edward Malise. Since arriving, she had spoken seven words. Harry had counted every one.

      He opened his mouth to force her to speak. Then he closed it again. Best not to call attention to her. For the first time since getting her in his sights at the boarding school in Hackney, he wondered whether the advantage of her money would make up for the hobble of her gaucherie.

      Zeal Beester was more content than she looked. After her parents died of the plague when she was eight, though her money kept her fed and housed, she had grown used to being dismissed as a social creature. It often seemed easier, if not more pleasant, to accept dismissal than to struggle for notice. Relegated to silence, she at least had time to think.

      She studied the company from under the washed pebble eyelids. What were the rules here? Who had to be flattered and who really held the power? Who might become a friend?

      She noted that Harry’s ease had slipped. On one hand, she was disappointed in her husband’s shaky grasp on his new role. On the other, that same look of anxious bewilderment on his handsome face had made her decide to marry him. It was as if, without meaning to, he had trusted her with a secret.

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