The Chevalier Read online

  ‘What are you doing? Grinning like an old dog,' Davey said. Davey was older than him, and went to school at St Edward's because he was clever and his mother hoped he would be a steward or a bailey when he grew. Davey's father was in Ireland too, with the Master and Davey's oldest brother.

  ‘I was looking at the sky through the water on my eyelashes. It's funny. You try it.’

  But Davey was dragging his shirt towards him. 'I want a plum,' he said. He had been carrying them in the front of his shirt, and it was now streaked a beautiful crimson colour. 'Most of them are all right. There's three burst ones.'

  ‘That was when you fell down,' Matt said. 'Clumsy.' But Davey was not to be taunted. He did not want to wrestle, he wanted to lounge and eat.

  ‘Here —' and he threw across some fat, purple plums that they had rifled from the farm on their way. Matt caught them and put them down in the grass, all but one, which he held to his lips and rubbed it back and forth, to feel the warm, silky, full feeling of its skin. It smelled wonderful; all the children were gorged on windfall plums this year, but Matt felt he could not get enough of them.

  ‘I love plums,' he said, postponing the moment of biting it.

  Davey rolled on to his front to inspect his before biting, and said, 'Remember the wasp?' He began to giggle, and Matt tried not to join in, because it was disloyal; but it had been funny, the time his cousin, Arthur, Lord Ballincrea, had snatched the plum that Matt was about to eat, and had bitten into it; only to be soundly bitten back, for there had been a wasp in it, unknown to any of them. Arthur's face had swollen up horribly.

  ‘He looked like a pumpkin by evening,' Matt said with guilty pleasure. Arthur was eight, two years older than Matt, and had always lorded it over him. He was a big, heavily built boy, and bullied Matt, demanding by force of fist a homage from Matt, because Arthur had a title and he didn't.

  ‘You must call me "my lord",' he would say, sitting on Matt and pummelling him; but pummelled or not, Matt wouldn't.

  ‘Cousin Arthur,' he would say. 'Ouch! Leave me alone! Cousin Arthur, cousin Arthur, cousin Arthur!’

  Snatching the plum from Matt had been typical of Arthur, but that time God had paid him back, for Matt didn't know the wasp was there, and if Arthur hadn't taken p it he would have been stung instead. Matt believed firmly in God. Birch had told him when he was very little that God saw everything he did, even in the dark, and for a long time he had had bad dreams about huge eyes just outside the ring of firelight or candlelight. He was older now, and more sensible, and not afraid of the dark at all — well, not much, anyway. Once he had been out by moonlight, and he had looked up at the great silver circle floating free above the black tree-line, and thought that God's eye must look like that, brilliant and beautiful.

  It was very peaceful, with the chuckling of the beck the only sound in the stillness of a hot afternoon. A dragonfly came along, hovering above Matt's face to smell him in case he was worth investigating. Through half-closed eyes Matt watched the brilliant, jewel-bright thing, and imagined that it was as big as it seemed through his eyelashes, as big as a horse; he imagined himself climbing on to that green-blue, sapphire back and riding away, soaring above the trees into the blue sky, flying to Ireland where his father was -

  ‘Come on, don't fall asleep,' Davey said, startling Matt from his half-doze. 'I'm hungry. Let's go and see my grandfather. He's with the sheep on Popple Height. I expect he'll have something to eat about him.' Instantly, Matt was hungry too. They jumped up, pulled on their clothes, and ran out across the fields; soon they were scrambling up Popple Height to where Old Conn sat watching his flock.

  ‘He looks like a lump of granite himself,' Davey giggled.

  ‘I wonder if there's moss growing on him?’

  Matt thought Conn looked not like a rock, though he was so still, but like a growing thing, brown and weathered, a tree perhaps, his no-coloured clothes not like man-made things at all, but like the foliage of some strange but belonging plant.

  When they got close, they saw that he was not immobile after all. His bright eyes, half hidden in the wrinkled brown folds about them, were watching them, and his hands were busy with something in his lap. His crook lay nearby; and his two dogs panted and waved their tails in greeting, the young one running to the boys to sniff their hands, the old one merely grinning at them from the scrap of shade he had found beside the rock, his teeth very white and his frilled tongue very pink against his black muzzle.

  ‘God's day to you, young master,' old Conn said when they got near enough.

  ‘God's day, Conn,' Matt said, with the formal politeness he had been taught to use towards the people who would one day be his people. 'I hope you are well.'

  ‘The heat suits me, young master, and so I thank you.

  Now then, Davey, what hasta been about? No good, I'll be bound.’

  Davey, who had been trying to tease the old dog into playing came and flopped down on the short, sheep-bitten grass near his grandfather's feet and said, 'We were hungry, and we thought you might have something to eat.' ‘You're always hungry. I've clap-bread, and ewemilk cheese, if that's dainty enough fare for you.' He reached down beside him for his pouch.

  Matt felt Davey had been too abrupt, that it seemed like rudeness to come to a man to steal his dinner, so he said, ‘But we do not want to leave you hungry, sir. Please don't trouble -'

  ‘Na, master, what I have is yours. Old folk don't get so hungry as young ones.' He pulled out a flat, golden cake of oaten bread and broke it in half, giving half each to the boys; and a piece of white, crumbling ewe-cheese, wrapped in a cabbage leaf. 'Help yourself, young master. You'll find it all the sweeter, for the ewes have been grazing on wild thyme and clover and bergamot and all the herbs the bees love.'

  ‘Does it really make a difference?' Matt asked, putting a crumb of the cheese into his mouth.

  ‘Why, of course. What you eat is what you are; what the ewes eat goes straight to their milk.’

  The boys were silent awhile as they fed their hunger, and then they had time to slow down and look about them. Matt watched the shepherd's brown hands, stiff and gnarled like tree-roots though they appeared, moving nimbly about the piece of carving in his lap.

  ‘What is it you make, Conn?'

  ‘A yolk for a sheep-bell, master. See? When I've smoothed it off, I'll make a notch here, and here, for to tie the thong of leather. Wooden yokes are better, though the folk down south use bones. A hip-bone from a sheep they use.' He made a sound of disgust in his throat. 'How would you like to have a man's hip-bone around your neck?’

  Matt had no answer for that. He said, 'Have you been down south, Conn?'

  ‘When I was young, about the same age as you. I fought for good King Charles, against Old Noll, God rot him.

  Marched all the way south, past Nottingham. When I was a lad of fourteen.’

  Matt didn't think fourteen was at all the same as six. Fourteen was grown up. But it seemed rude to contradict, so he said, 'What's the south like?'

  ‘Down south is the same as here mostly. It's the folk that are different. Here, young master, come here and look about you. Look round, all around.' Matt scrambled up and obeyed, gazing out over the peacefully grazing sheep, over the open fields, some already ploughed up into strips, the folds curving with the folds of the land; others under stubble, fenced off with hurdles, being grazed by the fattening cattle; the silvery silent glint of the river Ouse and the twinkle of the becks; the white walls of York, fencing in its spires and chimneys; and everywhere around the walls the windmills, their great sails barely turning in the faintest of breezes. The sheep-bells made a sweet, deep clonking sound as they moved, and bees were busy amongst the short-growing herbs, and here and there a skylark shot up, climbing vertically to hover and shrill. And far off, farthest of all, were the lilac-blue smudges of the hills, the Hambleton Hills to the north-east, and the Pennines to the west. All familiar, safe, and beautiful. He looked at Conn enquiringly.

  ‘
I remember the time when it was all open fields, young master, no enclosed fields at all, no growing hedges, only hurdles. Well, times change. Up here they change slowly, down south they change fast. Down south they close off fields, each man for himself. They care nothing for each other, nor for their King, nor for God. 'Tis all profit with them, and if a man fall sick or get himself into trouble, they turn their backs, for fear it may cost them profit to give aid. They don't work together, share their fields and their harvests and their joys and their troubles. That's why the south is different.’

  He turned his eyes, disconcertingly bright, to Matt's face. 'Remember what I say, one day when you are Master of all this. A man is nothing alone.’

  Matt struggled for understanding. There were things he had thought only half in words, things he had been told and only half understood. He said, gropingly, 'Birch says that the Protestants think they can choose their King instead of letting God choose him . . . ?’

  But old Conn had seen something amiss with the flock, and spoke sharply and in his incomprehensible dialect to his young dog, and she jumped up and raced off to fetch back a ewe that was wandering into trouble. When the crisis was over and the dog was back, jabbing her muzzle for praise into Conn's brown hand, the old shepherd said cheerfully,

  ‘When men choose for themselves, they always choose wrong. Remember that too, Master Matt. Wives or Kings, they always choose amiss.’

  *

  The shadows were long and violet across grass yellow as fools' gold when Matt, having parted from Davey at Ten Thorn Gap, came trotting home at an easy, ground-consuming huntsman's lope. Morland Place was golden too in the late sun, the grey stones honey-gold, the lichen on the roof gorse-yellow, the west-facing panes of windows like square gold coins. The men released from the harvest early had been repairing the remaining damage from the cannon two years ago, and the house was almost as good as new. Young Matt was savagely hungry, Conn's bread and cheese a distant memory, and he wondered what there might be for supper. Pigeon pie, he hoped, for Uncle Clovis had been intending to go shooting that day. Pigeon pie with leeks, or rabbit stuffed with little brown onions! His mouth ran water in anticipation as he trotted over the bridge and into the yard.

  He knew at once that something had happened; he could smell trouble in the air, even before one of the old women came hurrying out of the house scolding shrilly.

  ‘Where have you been all day, young master? They've been looking for you. You'd better come in at once. ‘But! What a state you're in, all dusty and dirty.’

  Old women always scolded, that was nothing; but there was something in her eyes, something in the set of her mouth that frightened him.

  ‘What is it, Meg? What's happened?’

  But she didn't answer him. 'Go you in, young master, right away. You're wanted,' she said, brushing at his hair ineffectually with the flat of her hand. He ran in through the great door into the hall, and stopped. Clovis was there, standing with Clement and Father St Maur, discussing something. He held a letter in his hand, and he was waving it as if giving instructions to Clement. Aunt Caroline, Arthur's mother, was sitting on one of the little hard hall chairs and crying. Now they had seen him: their eyes all rested on him, solemn and grave and warning.

  ‘James Matthias,' Clovis said, and his formality was a further warning. 'There you are. Come here, child. I have some news for you.’

  News, of course, could be good news, but Matt walked forward reluctantly, knowing it was not. The great hall was cool after the heat of the day, and his bare feet flinched at the coldness of the marble floor. Outside the sunlight poured down golden and perfect, and Matt longed to run out again, away, back to Conn and the sheep. The blue and gold day he had spent lingered in his mind like lovely music as his feet carried him inexorably towards the news they had for him, and he knew, without knowing why he knew, that there would never be another day like the one he had just had; that he would remember it all his life as the last day of his childhood.

  *

  The news came to St Germain. A terrible defeat, a battle by a river called the Boyne, tragic loss amongst the Irish-French forces of the King. A decisive defeat, coming as it did after a long and disastrous campaign; the King in flight, already on his way back to France with Berwick; Lauzun, the Queen's special friend, staying behind to gather what was left of the army. The women waited, sick with fear. For days Annunciata walked the rooftop terraces, waiting for the first glimpse of the returning warriors, for news of life or death. From time to time Chloris would come to her and beg her to rest, or take food, or sit with the baby, or listen to Maurice play, but she only shook her head without speaking. A superstitious dread was on her that she must see the horsemen at the first possible moment.

  At last the outriders came into view, galloping ahead, and straining her eyes she saw the distant, moving dot of the main party, like a many-legged insect, multicoloured. Now and then she saw a flash as the sunlight glanced off a helmet or breastplate or horse-ornament. For a long time it seemed to come no nearer, and then all of a sudden it was close enough to distinguish men and horses. It moved along the great avenue, disappearing from time to time under the trees. It was easy to distinguish the King. Soon she could pick out Berwick by his great height and his fair hair; then, her heart turning over with relief, she saw close behind him the silvery hair of Karellie. But so many of the others were small and dark-haired, that though she scanned them eagerly, she could not tell one from another. Then they were under the trees close to the walls and out of her sight.

  Annunciata left her post at the parapet's edge and almost knocked Chloris over in her haste as she ran towards the stair.

  ‘My lady!' Chloris called warningly, but Annunciata did not heed her.

  Dorcas was hurrying up the stair as Annunciata reached it, and said breathlessly, 'My lady, my lady, they're here.'

  ‘Yes, yes, I know. I saw them. Out of my way!'

  ‘They are to be received in the Queen's gallery, my lady. I came to tell you,' Dorcas said.

  Chloris caught up with them, and said firmly, 'You cannot go down to the courtyard, my lady. This is not Morland Place.’

  Annunciata paused, looking from one to the other, and then nodded painfully. 'Of course, etiquette must be observed.'

  ‘Yes, my lady,' Chloris said, not without sympathy. 'It will be only a few moments longer.’

  It seemed like days, weeks. She stood with the other ladies of the bedchamber behind the Queen on the dais in the gallery, watching the door for the moment when it would be flung open. And there was the King, looking bowed and grey and suddenly much older. In silence he crossed the floor, took his wife's hand to raise her from her curtsey, and stood looking down at her for a moment before taking her into his arms in a hard embrace. Annunciata was close enough to see that the King was crying, and it touched her unbearably. Over the King's shoulder she caught the eye of grim-faced Berwick, and he made a strange grimace at her whose meaning she could not interpret. But the King's informal gesture towards the Queen had released the flood-tide, and the courtiers were rushing forward to greet the returning soldiers who crowded through the doors behind the King and Berwick.

  There to the fore was another tall, blond soldier, his dark eyes ringed with lack of sleep, his nose raw with a bad sunburn. Nothing more could restrain Annunciata; in a second she was across the floor and had her tall son in her arms, and he was holding her, and saying, 'Mother, oh Mother,' and she could feel his tears wet on her cheeks.

  ‘Oh my darling,' Annunciata said, between tears and joy, 'you are safe. Thank God. You are not wounded? Oh God, you smell abominable. Are you all right, Karellie?’

  Karellie could not speak, only held her tight and gulped like a child at his tears, and over her shoulder tried to return Maurice's smile of greeting. At last his grip loosened, and Annunciata put him back from her a little to look at him.

  ‘I know I should not be so glad to have you back, since it means you have been defeated, but my heart can o
nly hold one thing at a time — the rest is beyond me. But where is Martin? Was he one of those who stayed behind?' Her eyes left his face to scan the rest of the party, but only briefly. If he had been there she would have known it. Then they came back to Karellie's face. 'Where is he?’

  Karellie's dark eyes held her still. 'No,' she whispered. He shook his head, keeping his hands on her arms. The noise of the room receded, and she was held in a silence in which she could hear her own heart beating, each beat like a blow of pain. 'No, Karellie, no.'

  ‘It was at the Boyne, Mother. In the thick of the fighting. I did not see, but one of my men told me.'

  ‘No,' she said again. She was shaking her head, and the blood seemed to be rushing through it with a sound like the sea, like the sea at Aldbrough where they had said goodbye — but not for ever, not for ever!

  ‘He was very brave, fighting on foot after his horse was killed under him,' Karellie was saying. She shook her head again, not wanting to hear any more. She had not believed that she could feel such pain. Voices boomed and faded about her; the pain in her throat was so terrible that she could not speak, and she seemed locked in a strange silence where she could see only Martin's face, his lips curving, his eyes smiling into hers. Darkness came welling from the corners of the room; they were speaking to her, trying to gain her attention, but she did not want to heed them, she wanted to go into that darkness and silence where Martin was, away from this pain that was all there was for her now. She wanted to die, there and then, so that the pain would stop.

  *

  A windy day in March 1691; a day of cold, gritty wind, though the sky, the pale blue of a robin's egg, spoke of spring being not far away. In Annunciata's memory winter was a mixture of twilight and fireglow. Like an invalid she had not strayed far from her fire, and her servants had treated her like an invalid, wrapping her warmly against the icy draughts from the windows, moving softly about her, coaxing her to eat. She spoke little to them, hardly seemed to notice their presence; she moved like a ghost through her world, closed in with her pain, her eyes blank with uncomprehending misery. After the shock of Martin's death had come the gradual realization and then the terrible, bewildering loneliness. It rolled like a boulder on to her chest every morning when she woke, and she carried it with her all day until sleep finally released her.