The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

A housegroom leaped forward to open the door at the same time as Harry’s own footman. The assembled house staff cheered on cue. A tossed posy hit the groom. More cheers from the top of the drive signalled the approach of a second coach.

      As Sir Harry bent forward through the coach door and stepped to the ground, Dr Bowler switched to a march. Sir Harry raised his arms in greeting to the assembled crowd, provoking a second cheer from the housemaids and grooms. Sir Harry, the new master of Hawkridge House, had arrived at last and he was magnificent.

      Caesar to the hilt, thought John. He had grown tall, long-legged and wide-shouldered. No longer the scrappy young cousin. The jolt of surprise was a little unpleasant.

      ‘Oh, isn’t he fine!’ cried a maid.

      Harry’s blond hair curled to his ivory ear lobes, his horizontal moustache gleamed with pomade. His cleft chin was clean-shaven. A lace collar as large as a shawl set off his pink, square-cornered handsome face with soft dark-pink mouth and long-lashed blue eyes. His nose was a little short to have been Caesar’s, but it was straight, with nostrils which seemed permanently flared in eager questioning of a rose, a lady’s nape or a new soup.

      Wide butterfly leathers flapped on his boots. An embroidered silk garden grew on his pea-green doublet, which also boasted slashed sleeves with satin linings, triple cuffs and enough lace to have bloodied the fingers of all the grandmothers of Bruges. He was like nothing they had ever seen before at Hawkridge House, and he was theirs. His staff cheered one last time with even more fervour than before. John quivered with a spasm of betrayal.

      Then he stepped forward.

      ‘My dearest cousin!’ cried Harry with determination.

      ‘Welcome …’ John swallowed. ‘Welcome, Sir Harry.’ He bowed.

      There! I said it, he thought. A little stiffly, but it’s out.

      ‘Thank you, John,’ said Harry. ‘It’s good to be home.’ His eyes flicked away from John’s.

      John wondered if he had seen fear in Harry’s eyes.

      Then Harry took a deep breath and with a rush of his usual boisterous enthusiasm flung his arms around John, and squeezed him hard.

      ‘Can you believe it, cousin?’ He breathed a hot, happy gust into John’s ear. ‘Sir Bloody Harry? Me?’

      Washed by suddenly remembered warmth, John pounded his cousin on the shoulders, relieved that the words now came easily. ‘Who better, coz? Who better? And you look every inch a conqueror!’

      ‘And you, John. And you. Quite splendid! Almost a courtier. Though the waist could be a little higher…Not at all like the rustic pose of your letters.’

      If Harry also felt a twinge of unpleasant surprise, thought John, he hid it graciously.

      They parted. Sir Harry moved on to Aunt Margaret’s curtsey.

      ‘You’ve grown, Harry,’ she said, dry-mouthed and too flustered for protocol.

      ‘Older, wiser and much richer, Mistress Margaret.’ Harry grinned wickedly.

      A crowd of estate workers jostled at the forecourt gate, pushing each other aside for a better view of the new master.

      The cooper rattled a finale; the music died. John presented the vicar, who had once been tutor to them both.

      ‘Doctor Bowler!’ cried Harry. ‘Enchanted to see you again. All the more so now that I’ve escaped your rod at last. A charming country tune, that was!’ He clasped the hand that still held the bow.

      As John opened his mouth to introduce the maids and grooms of the house family, something moved in the door of Harry’s coach.

      A thin child leaned out, pale with chalk powder, a smear of red across her small mouth. Her wiry red-gold hair curled around her face and was caught up in a knot at the back of her head in the latest London fashion. Below the stylish frizz and a pair of pearl and diamond ear-drops, her neck glowed bright purple, right up to the edge of the rouge and powder mask. She hauled at her green silk skirts, levered them through the door and jumped to the ground, spurning the hand of the groom.

      John saw a flash of two thin ankles in knitted silk stockings. The ties and swags of her dress jounced and settled around two mouse-sized slippers of embroidered dark green kidskin. She twitched her stiffened stomacher back into place. In the startled silence that followed her sudden descent, she stood by the coach glaring at the ground, stiff-armed, with fists pressed against the front of her green silk skirt.

      What is Harry doing with that sulky child?

      Instantly, John answered himself. He was startled and appalled. Distracted by meeting Harry, he had forgotten the new wife.

      The crowd at the gate edged into the forecourt.

      Harry looked as startled as John felt. He extended a hasty hand. ‘Mistress, come meet my cousin, John…Graffham…who has tended things here so well for me, as I can already see.’

      Obediently, she scraped her skirts across the gravel to stand beside Harry with eyes lowered under eyelids as smooth as washed pebbles. The red smear remained set in an unfriendly pinch.

      ‘This is Mistress Zeal…Lady Beester…my wife.’ Though Harry met John’s eyes squarely, his lashes beat a tattoo against the tops of his pink cheeks.

      ‘Welcome, my lady,’ said John. He bowed, then took the small, uncertainly extended, barely unclenched hand. It felt no more substantial than a dove’s foot and was ice cold. ‘Hawkridge House has been in a lather these last weeks, trying to make itself worthy to be your new home.’

      The sulky eyelids lifted briefly. John saw grey-green eyes filled with panic. Then the lids dropped again. John released the cold hand and stared down at the top of her red-blond hair. Coppery tendrils at her temples clashed with the violent purple colouring her neck and small flat ears. Her white-painted face was still marked by the fierce dash of compressed, red lips. The nails of the hand were chewed short.

      She’s no more than twelve, thought John. And young for that. Too young to change nests yet. He knew all about nest-changing. He felt a rush of pity toward a young animal harnessed too soon.

      ‘Madam!’ said Harry sharply. ‘Come meet your new household. Mistress Margaret Beester, my aunt …’

      The panic flashed at John again. The girl let out a shaky sigh, picked up her skirt, and moved forward up onto the porch into the icy blast of Mistress Margaret’s basilisk gaze and crocodile smile.

      ‘How was your journey, my lady?’ asked Margaret. Her eyes took inventory as fiercely as a bailiff. Her upper lip glistened unwiped, and her remaining earring trembled with her emotion.

      The new Lady Beester inhaled, looked at the twenty or so faces, including Harry’s, that attended her reply and closed her mouth again.

      John was distracted by the arrival into the forecourt of a second carriage as muddy as the first.

      ‘I hope, my lady, that you will approve of my efforts,’ he heard Aunt Margaret say as she took the new mistress in charge. ‘This is Agatha Stookey, the chief housemaid…Roger Corry, housegroom …’

      John turned his back on the stammering curtseys and blushing bows.

      The second coach stopped behind Harry’s, drawing twelve estate workers and eight goggling boys in its wake.

      ‘Sir Harry! Is this your stern Roman senator?’ called John.

      ‘Oh, Lord!’ cried Harry in dismay. He reappeared on the porch. ‘Where’s Doctor Bowler! Why isn’t there music? Where is everyone?’

      The parson leaped back to his stool and snatched up his viol. The pipers dived for their pipes. The cooper, however, stayed where he was, bent over a wheel on the offside of Harry’s coach.

      ‘Where’s Aunt Margaret?’ begged Harry. ‘And the house staff…They were just here!’