I must work that canvas, for it solved the problem of the drawing, and when I found exactly the silks I needed I could not wait to begin, so I sat down there in the room, for it was an ideal spot and I could understand why she had used it so much. The light was exactly what one needed for such work.
As I sat there a strange feeling came over me. I felt at home and as though I were not alone.
‘I hope, Magdalen,’ I said aloud, ‘you don’t mind my using your canvas.’
The sound of my voice startled me and I laughed at myself, but at the same time it was almost as though I heard a murmur of contentment as I sat there selecting my silks. How I loved working with bright colours! The room was full of sunshine, and I thought: Could I make this my room? Richard wouldn’t like it. Or had I imagined that? Perhaps he had merely been eager to show me the rest of the house and that was why he had not wanted to linger.
I worked on for a while and then suddenly the room darkened. I turned sharply and went to the window. It was only a dark cloud passing across the face of the sun. There was a tetchy wind and quite a number of clouds had sprung up.
I watched them scurrying across the sky. Now the sun was completely hidden and darkness hung over the towers of the Folly. My mood had changed and I fancied there was a menace in the air. I turned away to look round the room. It was different now it was darker. My canvas lay on the table and the room had lost its homely atmosphere.
It seemed full of menacing warning, and I had the feeling that I wanted to get away.
As I went out I could almost hear Bersaba’s voice mocking me as she had when I had wakened sometimes from my nightmares.
‘You’re too easily afraid, Angelet. Why should you always be afraid? You should make other people afraid of you sometimes.’
I hurried down to the room I had shared with Richard.
Meg was there putting my clothes away.
‘It’s getting really dark, my lady,’ she said. ‘I reckon we’re in for a storm.’
The days began to speed past. A messenger arrived after three weeks with a letter from Richard, in which he said he was in the Midlands and would be going north shortly. He believed he might be away for as much as six weeks. ‘You can be sure that as soon as I can I shall return to you.’
That was as near as he could get to saying he loved me, but it was enough; and I knew he would be as good as his word.
In the meantime I would learn all I could about the management of his house and would surprise him. It was a lonely life because no one called. I suppose his friends knew that he was away and when he was home it would be quite different. They had left us alone for the weeks following our marriage because they would reason that would have been what we wanted; and now they would wait for his return.
I had several talks with Mrs Cherry and I was getting to know the girls Grace and Meg very well. I chose Meg as my special maid—well, it was not exactly that I chose her as that she seemed to fall naturally into the role. I learned that Jesson had been with the General as long as the Cherrys had, and that he had brought his wife and daughters with him to serve the household. I was glad they were there because without them and Mrs Cherry it would have been a household of men.
Meg was more talkative than Grace; the younger of the two, she was thirty-seven and told me proudly that she had been born in the January of the year the great Queen died. Grace could say she had actually lived during that glorious reign.
She remembered the previous lady of the house. ‘Very gentle, she was, and kind,’ she told me. ‘She’d sit up in that room with her stitching, just like you’re doing. Funny you should like sewing too. I used to dress her hair for her. She didn’t have one of them curly fringes, though. Beautiful hair, it was, and she was as pale as a lily. I used to love to hear her play on the spinet, and when she sang with it, that was lovely.’
‘Did she play and sing for the General?’
‘Oh yes, and when there was company she would too. But there was something sad about her. And then of course she was going to have the baby …’ Meg stopped short.
‘Yes,’ I said, ‘what was she like then?’
‘Oh, I wasn’t with her so much then,’ she said evasively.
‘But you used to do her hair.’
‘Yes … but it wasn’t the same.’
‘Was … the General very upset about what happened?’
‘Oh, very. He went away for a long time, and then it must have been a year after the poor lady had gone they started building that wall …’
‘The wall round the castle, you mean?’
‘It darkened the place a bit.’
‘It was put there because the castle is in a dangerous state, I believe.’
‘That’s right, my lady. We’re none of us to set foot there. I reckon one of these days one of them turrets will fall off.’
‘It ought to be removed.’
‘Well, that sort of thing’s best to be left to crumble on its own, don’t you think?’
‘No, I should have thought it could be demolished quite simply.’
‘Oh yes, but the story is this old ancestor built it and he might get nasty and start haunting the place. Not that that would be much worse. I reckon it’s haunted already.’
‘What makes you say that, Meg?’
‘Oh, nothing, my lady, only that that sort of place often is.’
‘But you said it was haunted. Have you seen anything?’
She hesitated and a little too long at that, and I saw her press her lips together as though she were determined to prevent words escaping which should not.
It was clear to me that there was some mystery about the castle and that someone—it must have been Richard—had given instructions that I was not to be frightened by gossip about it.
The days began to pass tranquilly enough. I worked for several hours on my canvas and felt my fingers itching to work on the castle, so I deserted the pond and stitched happily in the grey wool I had found and which was a fair match for its walls. Then I worked a little on the simples in the gardens and gathered them and made some of them into possets and potions as my mother had taught me, for there was a good stillroom at Far Flamstead. Mrs Cherry was very interested and told me that she was ‘a dab hand’ with the simples. She had recently cured Jesson of a pain he had which, between ourselves, she was sure was due to over-eating, and Meg swore by her cure for headaches. She was eager to add my mother’s recipes to her own. ‘You’re always learning something,’ she said.
I scarcely ever rode out because I found plenty to do in the house, and when I did I went round the paddock where I could be by myself.
Letters came from my mother and Bersaba. My mother’s were full of advice as to my housekeeping and telling me how she longed to see me. Bersaba’s were brief, so I suppose she was still easily tired. The intimate rapport between us seemed to have been lost. I suppose marriage had changed me, for I felt I had left the world of my childhood far behind me and had to start living a new life, but I was constantly thinking how wonderful it would be to see my mother and my sister.
I did not realize how I was thrown inwardly on my own resources and that I was becoming obsessed by the past, yet desperately as I wanted to please my husband I must understand him and learn all I could about him. I must therefore discover all that was possible of his life before he had known me and one of the most important events in that past must naturally have been his marriage.
Working on Magdalen’s canvas, sitting in her room, I felt I was getting to know her. She was one of the Herriots—a very well-known family. ‘High places at Court, they had,’ Mrs Cherry told me. ‘There were a lot of girls—six of them—and husbands had to be found for them. My lady was the youngest. She was always timid.’