Peculiar Ground. Lucy Hughes-Hallett

      ‘My mother too. They call the two of them weird sisters.’

      I am a man of reason. I live in a nation that has been riven by doctrinal disputes for more than a century. I have listened to temperate, kindly disposed people swear that they will never again feel any affection for a brother, or a friend, because that other holds an opinion they cannot share as to what precisely takes place when the priest mumbles over the wafer of a Sunday morning. I am not an atheist. I marvel, as any natural philosopher must, at the intricate and ingenious thing the world is. But I am sure that, whatever the Creator may be, no human conception of him can be incontrovertibly right. Bigotry is abhorrent to me. But worse even than the intolerance of churches (and chapels, and conventicles) is the frenzy of the weak when fear drives them to blame their fellow beings for the catastrophes which lie in wait for us all.

      ‘I had thought that that madness was passed by.’

      Cecily seemed to be holding herself upright with a great effort. ‘Meg’s teacher was called a witch, and ducked, and died of it.’

      ‘Before the wars, surely.’

      ‘There are many who remember it.’

      ‘But your mother. No one would presume. Lady Harriet is not the kind to be suspected of witchcraft.’

      Cecily gestured irritably, a mere twitch of her hand. ‘Witchcraft is a meaningless word. A mere pretext. This is because my mother and Meg both worship in the forest.’

      I had no idea what she meant. She didn’t deign to help me.

      ‘We cannot wait. Go to my cousin and tell him what is being said. Say that my mother is in danger. Here is Mr Richardson. Go quickly.’

      In her nature playful gentleness and a tendency to be dictatorial are most oddly combined. I bowed myself out quite sulkily, as the apothecary was ushered quickly into the little room from which I had just been summarily expelled.

      My Lord received me calmly, albeit his face looked blurred, as though he had been roughly handled in the night. I delivered my condolences, to which he made only perfunctory answer, and my message, which he seemed to understand more clearly than I did. There ensued much galloping about. A carriage was sent. Lady Harriet, complaining feebly, was brought back with her daughter and ensconced in one of the recently vacated guest-chambers. Her maid came after on a cart. Meg was carried in, still as in a dead faint, with Mr Richardson attending, and laid among cushions on a settle in my Lord’s study.

      Lord Woldingham gave orders that all the estate workers should be called together on the grass patch before the house. Once a sizeable crowd had gathered, he took his hat and went out to them, I following along with the people of the household. All in black, he looked oddly reduced.

      ‘You know that I have suffered a great loss. I speak now to all of you, to those who knew me when I was an infant in this place, and to those who have shared my exile. I have been away a long time. But do not suppose that Wychwood was ever left behind me.

      ‘We have all observed, from conversing with our grandparents and other elders, that the very first impressions are the most deeply inscribed. Even one who can scarce remember whether it be time to rise or to go to bed will marvel at a butterfly seen half a century ago. Another asks fondly after a dog who died before our King’s father came to the throne, even if he cannot recollect the latter end of that unhappy monarch.

      ‘I am not yet in my decline, but I assure you that many of the dreary days of exile have been erased from my mind, while pictures from my first three years, passed in this very house, have comforted me in my absence. Yesterday morning my boys were playing with a wooden ark they found in their nursery. I have gone so far, and my homeward course has meandered so unconscionably, it seemed a miracle to see the little dents in the rump of the wooden elephant. It is a marvel that the mind can sling a bridge across so sad a gulf of time, and yet I tell you all that as I handled the toy I could feel again the pleasure with which, as a child, I bit down on that piece of painted wood.

      ‘The milk-teeth that made those little wounds are shed, but the jaw in which those teeth grew is here’ (at this he tossed back the curled tresses of his long wig as though presenting his throat to be cut). ‘You have yet to know me, but I am one of you. One of the men of Wychwood.’

      This was not at all what the assembled listeners had come to hear. A man loses his child, and then alludes to the boy only in passing, as an unnamed player in a scene with an inanimate toy. It seemed as though my Lord had no heart. What did they care about the vagaries of memory? They had expected him to display his mourning to them. The women, especially, appeared downright offended.

      This opening, though, was but the overture. Having tuned his instrument, Lord Woldingham launched abruptly into a lament as ardent as the divine Orpheus’s. ‘I have lost a child. Not for the first time. My firstborn left this life, when he himself had barely glimpsed it, before I could ever see him, ever touch him. I was so far away. But my Charles who died yesterday was near to me. My wife brought him to me in Holland, and from thenceforward it was as though I, who had been homeless, had a home. Father and mother can build a house, but it is no more than a shelter from bad weather until a child runs through it. I used to walk by a pond near to my lodging at The Hague, and I thought it dreary. Then this boy came, and chuckled to see the geese come splashing down on the muddy water, and the unlovely mere became delightful. I am thankful that I have two babes yet. But just as a parent’s love is big enough to embrace every child that comes, so it will never shrink to cover over the wound left where one of those precious ones is missing.’

      People were glancing up at the windows of my Lady’s apartments on the first floor, but there was nothing to see there.

      ‘I have been a child in this place, and so have many of you. I have lost a child here. Many of you will have had private cause to grieve over the clashes of our country’s unhappy recent history. You will know, as I do, how it is to mourn. Some of you have already offered me your sympathy. I thank you. Others have held back discreetly. I thank you too.’

      He was speaking very smoothly and soberly. I noticed Mr Goodyear looking at him with an appraising air, but not unkindly. I have heard that Goodyear is a bard, whose storytelling has made him a known man in this region.

      My Lord proceeded. ‘Some among you have said most generously that they would do anything possible to alleviate the sadness of this time. There is something I would ask of you.

      ‘A woman has been brought to this house today grievously ill. She has been so frightened and harassed that her mind has become a blank. I do not know whether she will ever revive from this strange vacancy. She is Meg Leafield. She has been a faithful servant of this family, and I would have had her treated with respect as one of my own. Some of you may have imagined you were performing my secret wish in troubling her. I declare most roundly that that belief was mistaken.

      ‘I am no sectarian. It is my wish, as it is His Majesty the King’s – and he is wise in this – that we should put aside our quarrels and strive to make this a peaceful nation, whose people are united in their desire to see their country prosper.’

      The peacock was crossing the elevated lawn behind the assembled listeners. Its attention caught by the gathering beneath it, it interrupted its gawky pavane and turned in our direction. Very slowly, with a loud dry rattling of quill upon quill, it elevated its showy panoply of tail-feathers – green, bronze, purple, black and tawny, all metallic and glinting, a sumptuous medley setting off the blue of the creature’s throat as an immense brocaded skirt shows off the jewel-coloured satin of a stomacher.

      Lord Woldingham has longed to see this. I have observed him with Mr Armstrong, one whole afternoon, following the bird around, attempting to interest it in its mate, or in some tidbit or other, in a vain attempt to persuade it to perform the trick for which it had been purchased. Now, as it turned itself this way and that, as though set upon compelling admiration, I wondered whether it would cheer him, or throw him from his intent.

      He ignored it. He was saying, ‘I do not enquire into the niceties of your relationships with our Maker. Worship in church or chapel, with vicar or presbyter, or with a wayside