He was born to command and to teach, I suppose, and he seemed to take a special delight in instructing me. Sometimes I thought he looked upon me as a pupil—a beloved and cherished pupil but one, none the less, who needed a good deal of instruction.
I did not mind. I was happy, desperately wanting to please him. I had to remember that I would seem such a child to him. I was going to try to grow up, to enjoy the things that he enjoyed, to be able to plan my chess moves as far ahead as he could and to understand why the infantry should have gone forward instead of remaining where they were—or vice versa.
So this life went on for those two weeks. It was a sort of routine—a tender teacher with his pupil.
Then one day a messenger came. He was in the uniform of the King’s Guard and he had a letter for Richard.
This captain and Richard were closeted in the library for a long time and then Richard sent one of the servants for me.
I went down to the library and Richard smiled at me rather sternly, I thought.
He presented the captain to me and said:
‘I shall be leaving tomorrow, Angelet. It is necessary for me to go north for a brief spell. Trouble is expected on the border.’
I knew I must not show my disappointment. He had told me that a soldier’s wife must be prepared for sudden calls such as this, so I tried to be the wife he would have wished me to and said, ‘What would you like me to tell the servants to prepare?’ My voice was a little tremulous, but I was rewarded with a look of approval.
The next day he left Far Flamstead.
The house seemed different without him. I had the sudden odd feeling that it was secretly amused because I was now at its mercy. I had always been fanciful; I lacked that logical mind which Richard had cultivated. He had left in the afternoon and I went right up to the roof and watched him until I could see him no more. Then I descended the newel staircase, and as I came down I paused at the door of the Castle Room. My hand was on the latch but I hesitated. He had not wanted me to go into that room for some reason. What would he think of me if I went in within half an hour of his departure? Resolutely I went back to our bedroom.
I stood at the window and looked out. I could just see the pseudo battlements of the castle, and I wondered why he had looked so stern when he had told me I was not to go there. I turned my back on the view and, sitting on the window-seat, looked at the four-poster bed. I should sleep there alone tonight, and it was no use my telling myself I was not relieved, because my feelings were too strong to be denied.
I shall get used to that, I told myself. And I thought of the lessons of the trees and the laws of nature, and I fell to wondering if soon I would know that I was to have a child. There was no doubt of my feelings about that. I imagined the letters I would write home.
It was strange eating alone, but I felt that the attitude of the servants had changed and that I was not served with the same military precision. Another facet of Richard’s character was that he could not endure unpunctuality. He would arrive exactly at the appointed time, and on one or two occasions when I had been a few minutes late his expression had shown his disapproval, although he had said nothing.
After supper the evening seemed long. I went to the library. Most of the volumes dealt with military matters. I smiled wryly. ‘Well,’ I told myself, ‘you did marry a soldier.’
Then to bed.
How big the bed seemed—how luxurious and comforting. I slept soundly, and when I awoke in the morning I felt a sense of desolation because he was not there.
Life, I assured myself, was full of contrasts, light and shadow, pleasure and endurance. During the day I would miss him so much, but I had to admit I was relieved at night.
I spent the morning in the garden as I always did, ate a solitary dinner, and the afternoon stretched out long before me. Should I ride? If I went far I must take a groom with me just as we always had to at home, so I had no great desire to go.
I found myself climbing the newel staircase to look at the view from the roof, but as I came to the Castle Room the urge came to me to go in and it was so strong that I couldn’t resist it. Even as I stood on the threshold I felt uneasy, I suppose because I was doing something of which my husband would not approve.
It was an ordinary room. Table, chairs, little writing table and court cupboard. What was unusual about it? Only the fact that from it there was a good view of the castle.
The castle! This room! Forbidden territory. I wondered why. As the castle was unsafe, the stone was crumbling, why not remove it? It seemed to be of no use, but it had been put there by an ancestor. But why should this most logical man care about that? I could hear his voice as he bent over his toy soldiers. ‘The infantry here were useless … quite useless. If they had been here, now … they could have done very good work and that might have been another story.’
The site of the castle could be used for another building. Something useful. Or gardens perhaps.
I went to the window-seat and, kneeling there, looked out. It really was rather absurd. Just a modest little house, really, with grinning gargoyles on its turrets and tiny machicolations from which no boiling oil or hot tar had ever been thrown down on intruders.
I turned back to the room. ‘Homely,’ I murmured. Yes, it did look as though it had been lived in. I wondered by whom. I tried to open the doors of the court cupboard. They were locked, but one drawer opened and in it was a key. It was that to the cupboard, so I was able to open the doors. It was full of canvases.
I was interested. Richard had said that he wanted me to start a tapestry and I thought it was just what I needed to fill the hours while he was away, and here were the canvases. I took them out and examined them. They were of varying sizes. I opened another drawer and found a quantity of beautiful coloured embroidering silks.
I took out the canvases, spread them out on the table, and as I did so a small worked piece fell out. I picked it up. It was one of those samplers which most children were expected to make at some time as a lesson in patience and diligence. This one was neatly worked and the cross stitches were minute. I had worked one myself, but Bersaba had cobbled hers and had asked my mother what useful purpose it served to have to sit there making neat little stitches—though Bersaba’s were never neat—in the form of the alphabet, numbers one to nine, and a verse from the Bible—‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth’ or something like that—followed by one’s name and the date. My mother had seen Bersaba’s point and she did not have to pursue hers. I finished mine and my mother showed it to my father with great pride.
This was similar.
The letters of the alphabet, the numbers and:
‘My lips shall not speak wickedness neither shall my tongue utter deceit.’
‘The price of wisdom is above rubies.’
And underneath that ‘M. Herriot in the year of our Lord 1619’.
Magdalen, I thought. She lived here. This was her room. It was for that reason that Richard had not wished me to come here.
Now that Richard was not here, the servants’ attitude definitely changed towards me. Mrs Cherry liked to talk to me, and when I went to the kitchen my stays were longer than they had been.
Richard had wanted me to learn the duties of the mistress of the house and this was something in which I did not need a great deal of tuition, for my mother had always been a woman deeply concerned with domestic matters and she had brought us up to feel the same. It was one of the areas in which I did better than Bersaba, and I was often in our kitchen at Trystan when my mother gave the orders for the day.
So I had no difficulty with Mrs Cherry, who sensed this and respected me for it.