The Lady Tree. Christie Dickason

sixty-year-old in Puritan black with a complexion like tree bark. He shook and brushed himself with a great rustling of silks and travelling wool. ‘We left Edward mired down just outside Windsor. He took a horse and went to dine with a friend in Eton while his men dig his coach out…How can so much mud get inside?’ He beat with his hand at the end of a black silk jacket sleeve. ‘Mistress …’ He turned back to reel in beside him the square-cornered woman, also wearing black silk, who had just descended from the coach. She waved aside a posy offered by one of the weeding women.

      ‘Samuel Hazelton, my wife’s uncle and former guardian,’ explained Harry, sotto voce. ‘And his wife, Mistress Hazelton.’

      ‘All the way from Rome,’ murmured John. He dropped back as Harry moved forward in welcome.

      Even as he bowed stiffly to Sir Harry, Hazelton’s eyes moved swiftly, taking stock of house and men. He already knew Harry’s worth as a husband to his niece. He had still to determine the soundness of his own social and political investment in letting the young cockerel marry her.

      Mistress Hazelton’s eyes were glazed. She had been sick from the motion of the coach.

      ‘Mistress Hazelton, Master Hazelton, my cousin Mister John Graffham.’ Harry pushed John forward with the air of offering a plate of sweetmeats.

      ‘Mr Graffham! I have looked forward most eagerly to meeting you,’ said Hazelton. The stock-taking eyes examined John.

      A sharp-eyed pirate’s face coupled to a forced mildness of manner, thought Hazelton with interest and surprise. A pirate pretending to be a monk. A broken nose and woman’s brows…it’s the face of a licentious Corinthian, not a simple country Corin. Not over-eager to please like his cousin. He’s assessing me. Looks good for what needs doing.

      John stiffened under Hazelton’s open appraisal. There’s more here than mere manners. What has Harry told these strangers?

      Don’t panic, man, he then told himself. The man called you Graffham, not Nightingale.

      ‘Your reputation as a botanical enthusiast spreads farther than you may realize,’ said Hazelton.

      John achieved a social smile. John Graffham, enthusiast of Botany and student of Agriculture, had nothing to hide.

      ‘A good friend, Sir George Tupper, is an enthusiast like yourself,’ said Hazelton. ‘He tells me that you have written excellent advice on replicating certain bushes, or some such thing…I don’t know a fig myself about the domain of Flora …’

      ‘I am flattered to be so much talked about,’ said John. He was, in fact, shocked. ‘But I’m merely a countryman who observes what lies around him.’

      ‘More than that, coz!’ exclaimed Harry, pinkly eager and delighted that his introduction was going so well.

      ‘A man in tune with the preoccupations of his time,’ said Hazelton. ‘A fortunate thing to be. We must speak further.’

      Mistress Hazelton looked past John into the house.

      Two large muddy carts pulled by equally muddy oxen heaved into the forecourt. Behind the carts trudged Harry’s hunter, ridden by yet another groom. Two dogs and five boys bounded alongside.

      ‘If you will excuse me,’ said John, ‘I’ll see them into the stable yard.’

      ‘Until later, then,’ said Hazelton.

      Thoughtfully, John watched Harry lead his new family into his new domain, heralded by the fourth repeat of the vicar’s march.

      There’s probably nothing to fear from Hazelton, he decided. If the dear friend who carries weight at court is no more danger than that Puritan guardian of the little wife, I can leave the past alone after all. Do what needs doing now, and learn what Harry plans for my future.

      Harry had brought seven waiting men and two pages. Hazelton five men and one page. Lady Beester and Mrs Hazelton had two women each. The carters made four more. Even without the servants who accompanied the ‘dear friend’s’ coach which was yet to arrive from its mud puddle outside Windsor, they were already four over the expected number.

      ‘We’ll have to use the Lower Gallery as a dormitory for the men servants,’ John told Aunt Margaret under his breath. ‘Lay them out like flitches of bacon.’

      ‘I’ll wring his knightly neck!’ she said. ‘I’m happy to say that Agatha has agreed to let Mrs Hazelton’s waiting woman share her bed.’

      ‘Oy! Another coach!’ shouted one of the cottager boys from his perch in the beech avenue. ‘A coach! A coach!’ The cry passed down the drive.

      The bell began to clang again.

      John was on his way back to the house after seeing to the supply carts and settling the eight visiting coach horses. ‘Go fetch Sir Harry,’ he ordered a groom. ‘And Mistress Margaret.’

      ‘Where is everyone?’ asked Harry a moment later. ‘Damn! Have all the cottagers left? Where’s Bowler? I don’t pay him just to sit there and drink my ale and debate whether or not we have the right to impose the Book of Common Prayer on the stiff-necked Scots.’ He searched the forecourt with anxious eyes. ‘Don’t we even have the bloody pipes?’

      Aunt Margaret’s pale damp face arrived in the door, framed in limp white curls. ‘If you want your guests to dine, you must really let me get on with things,’ she announced in despair. ‘… Sir Harry,’ she added in quick afterthought.

      ‘Does it matter so much if you welcome your dear friend without your armies behind you?’ asked John.

      Harry pulled his lips back in a nervous grimace. He straightened the front of his flower-garden doublet and bent to flick at the ruffled garters that decorated his shapely knees. ‘This is one with influence, John. The one I must woo. The one in the Queen’s eye. The one I really wanted all this for!’ His voice was plaintive as a disappointed child’s.

      John counted another five serving men as the last invading coach rolled into the forecourt. Four more coach horses and two mounts.

      ‘I must alert the stable boys,’ he said, ‘or we’ll have a shambles in the yard.’

      Harry clutched John’s sleeve. ‘Don’t leave me now, cousin!’

      The footman leaped down and opened the door. The circular top of a feathered hat appeared, followed by the shoulders of a red coat. The man straightened and stepped to the ground.

      ‘I hope, Sir Harry, that your cellar and kitchen can make up for that appalling journey.’ Edward Malise removed his hat and ran his fingers through his heavy straight black hair. The falcon-nosed face was sulky and tired. ‘I’m bruised from nape to heel and dusty as a church.’

      Harry’s hand pushed on John’s elbow. John did not move. As he stared at the newcomer, the hair lifted on the back of his neck and on his arms under the sleeves of his new shirt.

      ‘It will be a pleasure to try to console you, Edward,’ said Harry uncertainly. He glanced at his cousin in covert bewilderment. What on earth was wrong with him?

      John’s lips tightened across his teeth. His breath shortened, and his muscles coiled themselves like springs on his bones. His fingers became knives.

      ‘My dear Edward, this is the cousin we discussed.’ Harry’s distant voice was nearly drowned by the pounding in John’s ears. ‘John Graffham…Master Edward Malise.’

      John braced himself for Malise’s gasp of recognition. His hands felt themselves already closing around Malise’s throat.

      But the dark eyes passed over him. ‘Delighted,’ Malise said wearily. ‘Our botanist. Sir Harry has sung your praises, sir. We shall talk more later when I have recovered.’

      Confused and unbelieving, John licked dry lips. He bowed curtly, sucked in a deep breath. Made the thick dry lump of his tongue shape words. Malise seemed not to know him, but