Natural Sympathies
Anna Austen Leigh
Published by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Anna Austen Leigh
Discover other titles by Anna Austen Leigh at Smashwords.com:
Emma
The Duel
The Netsuke
A Grand Tour
The Swing
and with other publishers:
The Diligence de Lyon
Pilgrim for Love
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Margot thought she knew what to expect on her wedding night. Bluestocking as she was, she not only had her mother's warnings and her maidservant's hints to go on, but the works of Aristotle - or at least, she thought wryly, someone signing himself Aristotle, though she'd have been surprised to find he knew a word of Greek.
That was the trouble with a good education. Most fathers didn't believe in bringing girls up to do more than read and write very badly, and do what they were told; but Sir Charles had always told her she had the brains of a boy, and he'd humoured her desire to learn. She knew how to use a library; she'd helped him research the history of the Ackerton estate; and so when her betrothal was announced, she decided to put an end to her ignorance, and searched for an appropriate text.
She'd sat through the bridal feast, stiff and uncomfortable in her finery. She'd have been happier if she could have got a word in edgeways, but her father had engaged the bridegroom in conversation, and between matters of the estate, and which was the best bloodline for an Arabian horse, Fairfax's Sultan or Place's White Turk (John said it was neither, but the Sheffield Barb, and he should know), she was forgotten, and sat there like a painted doll. She was grateful when John turned to her, and smiled, but that was all the attention he could spare.
And now she was sitting in her nightgown, brushing out her hair, having bundled her maid out of the room as soon as she could. John would be joining her, as soon as he could get away, and then would come the bedding.
Everyone said it was an odd marriage, an ageing Duke and a young hoyden; some said her father had sold her for a share in the Oldcastle estate, but she knew better. She'd chosen her bridegroom freely; not a thoughtless young man, but a scholar, a companion, and a guide. Ageing? - Not really, he was still a year short of forty, but his quiet, slightly dour character made him seem older. A thoughtful, considerate man; and he'd need to be, she thought. Even though she'd inspected the pictures with a magnifying glass, she couldn't work out quite what went where, or how; she hoped her inexperience would not irk him.
Her hair was always in tangles, but tonight more than ever; she gave up, throwing the brush down on the table. At the same time, the noise from the house outside suddenly rose in volume, and was, as suddenly, cut off again; the door had opened and closed without her seeing, and John was standing there, his dark velvet suit almost invisible in the dimness of the room, the light picking out only his white cuffs and collar, and the paleness of his thin face.
He stood there for a moment, watching her. He took a step towards her.
"I've never seen your hair down before."
She smiled uneasily. He came towards her, and put out a hand to touch her hair, stroking it.
"You're silent. Most unusual. You are usually so full of words."
She shook her head. Tonight the words would not come. Now, suddenly, nothing she had ever read or learned made sense, nothing would help her, or explain this unexpected apprehension. She let her head lean slightly, to feel his fingers against her cheek. If she could not tell him, at least let her movements explain to him her deep affection.
He, too, seemed lost for words for a moment. Then he turned away from her, and began to strip, placing his clothes neatly over a chair - not fussily, but simply folding them, so that like everything in his life, they were in good order. He stopped when he was standing only in his thin chemise.
"You've been watching me," he said, without accusation.
"I should not watch?"
He laughed. "My dear Margot, the convention is that you should be ashamed, and repulsed, and frightened, and shy."
"I should be repulsed?"
"That is the convention. As so often, when one considers it rationally, there is no reason to it. And as so often, you have chosen to ignore it. I am so glad I have married you."
"You are?"
"Of course I am. Come. It's cold." He turned back the covers of the bed, and patted the mattress.
She smiled again, rather uncertainly.
"And the bed is warm?"
"I should hope so. They wouldn't put me to bed in cold sheets. I don't have much temper, but my servants know better than that. Come, Margot; don't make me wait, my legs are getting cold."
She slipped into the bed. He was right; the sheets were warm, under the piled quilts, except right down at the bottom of the bed, where her exploratory toes found a fringe of icy cold.
"You're not afraid?" She felt the mattress sag a little as he joined her in the bed.
"No. A little concerned, perhaps."
"Concerned? About what, Margot? About the ... process?"
"Not so much. You did teach me to take a scientific attitude."
He looked a little shocked for a moment. "Ah. I hope you have not also adopted the experimental method."
She flushed. "My research went no further than the library. And..."
"Mmm?"
"And watching the horses. But I suppose the human anatomy is somewhat different."
"You may be disappointed," he said with a smile, and reached out to take her chin in his hand. "In certain aspects of the human anatomy, anyway."
Then he kissed her, and it was very different from the simple brush of lips at the end of the marriage service. This time his lips pressed hard on hers, and his mouth opened slightly, and she felt the insistence not only of his desire but of her own, and opened to him. She could feel the heat of his breath; she could taste wine, dark and sweet, on his tongue. It was hot, it was wet, two tongues slippery and sliding against each other; something different from what she'd expected, which seemed dry and hard and mechanical. Nor had any of the books mentioned the sensation that was invading her body, a sort of restlessness, and a congestion, or tension, that made her flesh tingle, as if she were cold - but she was far from cold, rather, too hot...
She felt John's fingers at her breast, pulling at her shift to expose the flesh. That was something else the books hadn't mentioned; maybe, she worried in a moment of doubt, she hadn't read the right books, the most accurate ones. Nor had the books mentioned the pleasurable tightness that made her nipples stand, that made her push forwards against her husband's hands.
Still, she knew what came next; and she was glad of the sensations, as they would make it easier, she was sure. One of his hands had slipped down to her hips; he was pulling up her shift, stroking her legs; surely now she knew what was going to happen?
But, as it turned out, she did not.
With a sudden hiss of exasperation, John stopped his explorations, and threw himself on to his back.
"I'm sorry, my dear."
"Have I done something amiss?"
He leant on his elbow to look at her.
"No, not at all. It is my fault, all my fault. Well, I suppose I must be philosophical. I'm an old man, Margot; I must expect these small infirmities."
"Oh." She lay still for a moment, wondering what infirmity he meant. Surely he was not missing the appropriate member? No; had that been the case, he'd surely not have commenced proceedings. "I don't understand," she said, and her voice was strangely small and constricted, like a child confessing a fault.
"I thought you had read the books?"
She wondered for a moment if he was chiding her, but then she saw his smile, and the softness in his eyes.
"I had... but... well... do you not have a... membrum virilis, or..."
The Latin seemed to out a distance between her and the thing; it made it safe, or at least more so than using the English word. She was disconcerted when John laughed.
"So you do have one?"
"Of course."
"Then what is the problem?"
"Ah. I see your knowledge is only theoretical. Then I should explain, though it is to my shame. I find it... not in a state in which I can justice to your charms." He looked at her sharply. "I thought you had watched the horses?"
"My father keeps one of the biggest studs in Yorkshire. I could hardly avoid it."
"Then you will have noticed how the stallion's member, normally so demure, is greatly increased in size before the mating can occur?"
"Ah. I had wondered about that."
"In what regard?"
"I had noticed, once, a naked boy playing in the river. He was, perhaps, three or four years of age. And it was very small, just the size of a walnut."
John laughed again. She was getting a little tired of his good humour; his greater knowledge didn't justify his mocking her. And besides, he had roused her body to a fiery need that she would have to satisfy, somehow.
"In a boy of that age it would indeed be small. I can see we need to proceed from theory to practice, so you will forgive me..."
His language was elaborately polite, but his gesture was uncompromising, taking her hand in his and setting her hand firmly on what she did not dare, as yet, to name in good English - a package undeniably larger than that little boy's, and heavy in her hand when she pushed it to one side.
She could feel her cheeks flaming, though she was no longer quite sure that it was only with shame. Shame that she knew, logically, she did not need to feel; this was natural, after all, and John was her husband, and yet still... it was something different than seeing an animalcule through the microscope, or understanding the courtship rites of the birds.
"It's quite large," she said, "and very heavy. And soft to the touch. I hadn't expected that. I thought a man's skin would be rough..."
"Not there. But you can feel how it lies, quite inert. And that is where the problem lies."
"I still don't understand. Is it not large enough?"
"Yes," he said, "you could not complain on that score. But it is not hard enough."
That was a new difficulty; she knit her brow, trying to think how something so soft could become hard. It didn't make sense; you could harden iron, for instance, by tempering it, but she couldn't imagine how that would work with a human body. And clay became hard when it dried out, but again, that didn't seem to be a useful thought. But he did have the correct equipment, so the problem must be purely a temporary one; so, she suggested, he should tell her at once if there was anything useful she could do.
He looked at her rather strangely then, but after a few moments, he spoke; sternly, which surprised her, but with immense gentleness in his eyes.
"You understand that none of this must be repeated outside our bedchamber? Most people are driven by prejudice; what they don't understand, they fear, or hate, or laugh at. But if you can keep your own counsel, and if you don't find it repugnant, then I dare say there is something you could do."
"How could I find it repugnant?"
"How indeed..." he smiled ruefully. "But some people do."
Then he instructed her to push back the sheets, so that she could see how he was made. The candle was guttering, but there was still enough light for her to see the dark hair on his belly, the long shaft and heavy head of his member.
"Take it in your hand again."
She did, and weighed it in her hand, feeling its denseness, and feeling at the same time a stirring between her legs. She began almost unconsciously to move her hand along it, cupping it in her palm; a curious thing, and so warm. She looked at John; his head was thrown back, his eyes closed. It was easier when she knew he was not looking at her, somehow. She encircled the shaft with her fingers, and squeezed gently.
It was thicker where it sprang from his body, and then it tapered, till just before the end, where it mushroomed out, bulbous, in a broad, flattish conical head on which the skin was looser. She moved the skin backwards and forwards; it flopped and slid over the ridge of skin behind it.
"Is this right?" she asked. John opened his eyes.
"Very much so," he said. "But..."
"Futile?"
"Not entirely. Come, lie down again," and he pulled her down against him, hugging her closely to him. His body was warm, his arms a comfort; she moved to fit her body to his, and kissed him gently on the mouth, and saw, before she slept, a single tear on his cheek.
***
It was not an ordinary marriage; far from it. Though these were days when many girls were married young, not seldom to old men - sometimes stepmothers to several children before they had even put their dolls away themselves - there were few matches as surprising as that of the Duke of Oldcastle to Margot Hemsworth.
John Oldcastle had fought in Germany as a young man, gaining respect but little money; he'd come back to an inheritance that, though diminished, was still enough to finance a life at Court, and perhaps a good marriage could have been arranged in due course, refilling his coffers. But to everyone's surprise, he'd married a local girl for love, not money, a yeoman's daughter he'd met out hunting. That had ended badly, whichever story you heard; he'd locked her up and starved her, some said, while others said she'd run off with a Dutch painter.
Whatever happened, something changed in the Duke; his carefree wit had gone, and he'd become more sober, even a little dour. He kept up his interest in horses - he'd been a daring cavalry leader, and traded a little horseflesh from time to time, when he was in funds - but he no longer led the hunt. Instead, he'd begun breeding Arabians, spending his time plotting genealogies, trying to breed the best of both mare's and stallion's lines together. And from this interest, he'd developed others, becoming something of a naturalist, and eventually, through mixing so much with scholars, a dilettante in most branches of the sciences. He seemed older than his years; at only thirty-five, already a somewhat distant and withdrawn figure.
Local children were told to 'Hush, or the Duke will take you for his experiments', and there were tales of a human skull that sat on his desk, and a stuffed mermaid he'd bought from a sailor at Whitby. He invited men of learning to Oldcastle Hall sometimes; in the winter, he was often in London, where he spent as much time in the Royal Society as at court; and he travelled widely in the county, often visiting other gentry who were interested in improving the Arabian horse. Among the latter was Tom Hemsworth, squire of Gullthorpe, Margot's father.
While the Duke was used as a bogey-man to frighten local children, Margot was just as notable; her father's only child, ferociously clever, and competely untamed. Her mother's early death left her bereft of maternal guidance, and Tom soon transferred the affections his wife had possessed to his spirited, dark-eyed daughter. Tutor after tutor was hired, taught her a little Latin, some history, or the principles of chemistry, and then left, hurriedly, often at night, and once without his luggage, which had to be sent on after.
The Duke had first seen her when she was twelve or thirteen years of age, a sliver of a girl with unkempt hair and a wild look in her eyes. "Don't look so sour," she'd said to him; "you'll curdle the milk!" and she ran off, laughing. (When, years later, he mentioned it to her, she had completely forgotten it.)
But she was capable of great concentration, when her interest was engaged. Next time he came to the house, she was reading, elbows on the table, head in her hands, as if protecting her concentration from the noise of the household around her. He looked over her shoulder; it was a work on astronomy, far beyond what he'd have thought most children that age could read.
"You can read Latin?" he asked, and she looked up, crossly.
"Of course I can read Latin," she said, with a tone that told him how incorrigibly stupid he was not to have realised that fact already. "And Greek, and French, and Italian."
"Well then, if you want to borrow some of my books on astronomy, I have quite a collection." (He wouldn't let himself be rattled by this girl, he thought, before he realised that that very thought meant he had been rattled.)
"Do you have Galileo?"
"Of course."
"And is it true? Jupiter really has moons?"
"Indeed it does."
She smiled suddenly; it was a revelation, her face transformed just as a landscape is when a ray of sun lights it up just towards sunset, in a golden glow.
'"Then there are other worlds like this! And if they have moons, then it must be possible that they have seas, and tides... and living beings."
He laughed. Her enthusiasm was delightful; and she wasn't the first person to have thought of that possibility, though he wondered what the vicar would think of the idea that God created more than one world.
She scowled at him. "Why are you laughing?"
He'd obviously offended her dignity. You needed to be careful with this one, he thought; she was spiky, proud, difficult. Yet he'd already started to like her; so different from her heavy-set, prosaic father.
"I was wondering... if on Jupiter, a girl has been reading that the Earth has a moon, and made the hypothesis that living beings might exist on this planet."
"You think so?"
"Maybe. Of course, we cannot know. But it's a thought."
She hugged herself with delight. "A girl just like me?"
"Perhaps. Or Jupiter might be populated by people infinitely small. Or so large that the highest mountain on earth would hardly come up to their knees."
She rested her chin on one hand and looked up at him.
"So how would you go about proving it?"
"Do I have to prove it? Is it not an interesting enough idea, just as an idea?"
"Yes, I suppose so. But..."
***
Margot's father had brought her to Oldcastle a few weeks later, and she returned home with a pile of books from the Duke's library. Some were finely bound in calf, tooled in gold, with crisp white paper bearing the deep impression of the type, pages that cracked every time she turned one over; others were grubby, dog-eared, roughly stitched between card covers already starting to fall apart. There were books on astronomy, there was Harvey's Circulation of the Blood, there were works on optics, and there was a single copy of a French romance, slipped in between two large scholarly works as if to avoid notice.
After that, John was often found at the Hemsworth's, rather more often than was necessary for the business of trading horses; and since Margot seemed somewhat more calm in his presence than his absence, he was soon invited by Tom Hemsworth to consider himself an unofficial tutor. The sombre figure of the Duke became a regular sight on the estate, as he made his slow peregrination of a morning, accompanied by the skittish Margot, who would dance around him, or stride ahead, then run back quickly to show him some interesting fungus, or hidden bird's nest.
He hadn't set out to teach her anything, but in the end he taught her more than any of her tutors had; the use of logarithms, how the telescope worked, the discoveries in America (though he did not tell her about tobacco, which he had discovered for himself in his youth, and still used, guiltily, from time to time); how to make a horse perform the airs above the ground, springing up and lashing out with its forelegs, while she remained poised, elegant in her seat (an impression she spoiled, when she finally executed the movement correctly, by leaping down from the saddle and running to hug him tightly).
By sixteen, she'd become beautiful. John couldn't remember when it had happened, but over time her gawkish clumsiness had gone, and she'd grown tall and straight as a sapling, and acquired both grace and spirit. The raw energy was still there, but held on a tight rein, so that her anger was rarely seen. Even so, she was still a strange mixture of childishness and maturity, wit and lack of wisdom - as one might have expected from a girl with her education, a girl lacking a mother.
"Tell me," she said one day, "why do people get married?"
"Why indeed?" He wasn't inclined to think back to his own marriage, but she failed to take the hint in his voice that this was a question best avoided.
"Father says it is because they must."
"And why must they?"
"To have children. Only I think he means that the maid will have the child, whether she marries or not, and so she must. And as for the men..."
"Well, that is one reason." Typical of her to have noticed her father's equivocation. "Still, it's not the only reason. Others do so for love. And some for companionship. Though a marriage is not an equation. You put two variables into it, but you can never predict the result."
"So why only one?"
"Only one child?"
"No, silly." She was beyond sticking her tongue out now, but her face looked impish. "One husband."
"That is the way we do it." Strange, he'd never wondered about that before. She had an uncanny way of spotting the assumptions behind an argument, cutting ruthlessly to the heart of the matter. "But it is true, in the Bible there are marriages of a man with two wives. And some of the savages in America practise polygamy, so I'm told."
"And why should a woman not have two husbands?"
He shook his head. There was no arguing with her.
"Why not indeed? Polyandry might suit you. But I think you would find it difficult to arrange."
"Am I not pretty enough?" A familiar tightening at the corners of her mouth warned him that he'd misspoken.
"I was thinking, rather, that the law might be against it. And your father might have something to say about it, too."
"He does whatever I want him to do," she said, quite plainly, without bragging. It was true, after all. Even so, John thought, on this particular question she might find her father unexpectedly obdurate.
***
The day after her marriage, she woke to a sense of unease, which she could not quite pin down, till she opened her eyes and realised she was not in her own room at home, but in a much larger bed, in a larger room. She looked for a few moments at the ceiling, with its plaster garlands and medallions, until her wits caught up with her and she remembered where she was.
Her husband, as she must now think of him, had turned away from her in his sleep, his arms thrown out as if to protect his head from an attack, or perhaps to hug the pillow. The pillow which, she thought bitterly, might afford him more comfort than she had been able to. She had not expected to wake the morning after her wedding, and find herself still a virgin.
The sun was already up; she could hear people beginning to stir, footsteps echoing far and sadly as they always did in the early morning. She should get up, she thought laxily; but the bed was soft; under the covers, she lay in a pocket of warmth, while she felt a cold draught on her face. She closed her eyes again, sighed quietly, and turned on her side, pulling the covers over her head.
"Margot?"
John had woken; but she stayed immobile, hoping he would think she was still sleeping. He reached for her, putting his arms around her; she felt more sensitive than she ever had, her heart beating fast, yet she lay as still as she could, hoping he would get up without her. She wondered; if they had consummated their marriage, would she be lying here trying to put off meeting her husband's eyes? And she admitted to herself, perhaps she would; for however much she might despise the shame with which this wholly natural function was attended, it was difficult to move from the calm distance of their friendship to this excessive closeness, from an exchange of intellects to the physical plane. She felt she knew too much of him, and he had seen too much of her; and she was in no mood to be cajoled or flattered into a good humour. She regretted her solitude, her narrow bed in which she could lie alone, and cry if she wanted to.
She felt his hands on her shoulders, not rubbing or exploring her, but simply resting there, quiet and warm.
"Never fear that you have failed me, Margot. The failure is mine. The fault is mine."
She was touched by the tenderness in his voice. Sleepily, she reached up and touched his hands with hers.
"I wish I could have made you a woman. Maybe in time... when we become more used to one another..."
She laced her fingers between his. "Maybe."
"There are various remedies, besides."
"Perhaps I should research them for you."
To her surprise she heard him laugh. "Yes, perhaps you should do that. It would be better than visiting a physician... I have no great desire to let anyone else know my infirmity."
He moved his hands from her shoulders, putting his arms around her, reaching to kiss her on the cheek. They lay like that for a little while, listening to the clamour of the rooks in the tall beeches, and the noises that heralded the start of a new day in the house; the splash of water being brought up from the well, footsteps in the courtyard, the dull blows of an axe chopping wood.
"John?"
"Hmm?"
"Do you regret marrying me?"
She felt his arms tighten around her.
"No. No, not at all."
"You're sure?"
"I love you, Margot. I think I have done for a long time. How could I regret marrying you? Just to lie here with you in my arms; that's enough."
It might have been, though she suspected he was putting a brave face on for her sake. But for her, it would never be enough.
She let herself be folded in his arms, but she was left feeling in some way guilty, as if she had been found wanting. And for all that she'd expected the act of love itself to be clumsy and mechanical, she was disappointed, and felt herself incomplete.
***
She thought she had known Oldcastle, but she had hardly seen anything of the house - only John's study, with its shelves of powders and herbs, the collection of skulls, and the great armillary sphere, that showed the circles of the heavens modelled in brass; the library, silent and redolent of beeswax; and the little room where she had been put to bed on her first visit, and stayed every night she had spent in Oldcastle thereafter, until last night. Now she was no longer a guest, but the mistress of Oldcastle; and though John continued, for the time being, to give daily orders to the upper servants, she knew that he would in time give that duty over to her. She observed, now, things she had never found of interest before; how many logs were needed for the fire in their small dining room, how the pantry was stocked, how two of the maidservants had taken against the third, a stocky, slow-witted girl with a gap-toothed smile.
It was strange; everything was strange, from the great hall that was kept shuttered and unheated, once the wedding banquet and the wedding breakfast had been cleared away, to waking in a bed warm with another's presence. But most strange perhaps was her shyness in front of her husband. When they talked about history, or the differences between the species of owl, or how to calculate the orbits of the planets, she was quite at ease; but when she looked into his eyes, she found herself feeling confused and hesitant. It was as if there were two of him; the man she had always known, and then this new, naked man, who had aroused feelings in her she did not want to recognise.
They rose late, as was expected of them; many of their guests had stayed the night before departing, so it was not until late in the afternoon that they were left alone with each other again, in the study, the one room in the house that was properly warm. She picked up one of the skulls - a shrew, the long snout making up two-thirds of the head; she'd found that one herself, and John had showed her how to clean it, putting it in a tight box full of beetles. Their collection had grown gradually, as they found dead creatures on their walks, and sometimes the tenant farmers brought them in; a crow's skull with its sharp stabbing grey beak, the vole with its yellowing front teeth protruding, the mice and rats and paper-thin skull of a blackbird, her favourite. She turned the shrew skull in her fingers idly.
"That's the shrew, isn't it?"
"Yes." She stopped turning it over, and set it down on the shelf again.
"Do you remember the day we found it?"
"It was our first one."
"I thought at the time you were a bloodthirsty little thing. You carried the dead shrew home like a girl with a doll; I couldn't get it off you."
"I never realised I was such a nasty child."
"I found out later you were just as interested in them alive. And it was good to see you squirm when I showed you the beetles. Just like any other girl."
"I can stand the sight of blood. But beetles make my flesh creep. It's the dry rustle of their chitinous bodies, I think; they have no blood in them."
"There you're wrong. They have a substance similar to blood."
"Scientifically you're right. Still, I can't suppress a distaste for them."
"You're quite illogical there. You like butterflies, which are very like the beetles in many ways."
"Well, then, I'm illogical."
He sighed. "I'm sorry. We could have had such a nice collection of beetles."
She looked at the shrew skull again. He'd thought her bloodthirsty? She hadn't remembered that at all; though she remembered the earth bank by the copse where the rooks roosted, and the velvet fur of the little body. It was as if they had two different memories; as if there had been two of her there, herself and a savage double.
And in those days, she'd considered John an old man - as old as her father, she'd thought; but now she was twenty, she had a different perspective, and saw a man in his prime, his face hardly lined nor soured by his experience. A man whose enthusiasm had always inspired her; a man whose thoughts had, occasionally, surprised her. So when she thought back, was she seeing John as she knew him now, or the old gentleman that her twelve-year-old self had seen? The doubleness of perspective dazzled her, like a mirage.
How things had changed! Gradually she'd grown fond of him, as he had of her; unlike her father, John was never besotted with her, but always drily observant. She could never get away with intellectual laziness; he was not a tyrant, never showed his temper, or shouted, but he would ask question after question until she had thought her way through the problem. Her selfishness, too, he never opposed directly, but simply found ways around it, sending her with gifts for his old nurse, or giving her a motherless kitten to bring up. (Her father told her she would never see it a grown cat; but though she was usually lazy in the mornings, she never complained about the sleepless nights she had, getting up to feed the beast every couple of hours. And The Beast, which had somehow acquired that as its name since no one could decide what to call it, was now undisputed master of the stables, a sleek and fat Beast which had purred like thunder when she made her farewell to it, last and dearest of all her friends at Gullthorpe, two days before her wedding.)
She couldn't remember when her idea of John had changed; when did she start seeing him as a friend, rather than a tutor? Even now she wondered if she really knew him; she had never seen his temper, never seen him angry, never seen him sad - he maintained a certain reserve, implacable if unobtrusive, in dealing with his emotions. And yet she had married him, which still surprised her.
When she'd reached twenty, she had attracted two suitors; both eligible as far as their wealth was concerned, but one empty-headed and frivolous, the other a grindingly dull youth whose thoughts seemed reserved for the facile arithmetic of interest on loans and reversions of mortgages. Both were young; both handsome; one charming, one charmless, but neither a person she could envisage sharing her life with, on any but the most superficial level. But for once, her father was obdurate; it was time that she married, and one of the two must be chosen. He had, for once, been unkind; she was difficult, he said, and had interests unseemly in a maiden; she would not have a better choice, and if she waited longer, might never have a husband.
So, she'd decided she would ask John what she should do, the next time she was at Oldcastle. He might make the choice for her; or he might - she hardly dared articulate the hope - plead with her father on her behalf. She had not expected the answer she received.
She'd tried to lay the matter before him in an even-handed way, though it had been difficult; her indignation at her father's ultimatum threatened to break through her poise. Still, she set out her position rationally, coolly, as if nothing were at stake. Perhaps, she thought now, that had been a mistake; perhaps John had believed she was really that cold, that unconcerned in the decision.
"So you understand," she had said, "the first is a hard-headed, cold-hearted usurer. He'll treat me as a good bargain, or a bad one, depending on how much my father gives him and how quickly he expects to inherit. And the other has charm, he's witty, he might even love me for a while; but he takes nothing in earnest, everything for him is a game, and I fear after a year or two the game will have become stale. What can I do? What should I do?"
He said, simply, "Marry me."
She was beginning to laugh when she realised he was serious. For a moment she was furious; then she thought, why not? He was, at least, a friend, who shared her interests, and that was a start; and he had earned her respect, in a way that neither of her other suitors had much chance of doing.
"I apologise," he said, taking her silence for a refusal; "I should not have spoken. Of course it is quite impossible."
"No!" she said, and then "Yes!" and then, seeing he still did not understand her, "though it is not what I expected..." Then he seemed to understand, and very quietly reached out and took her hand in his, and held it.
"You know we must have no false modesty between us. There are lies, and half-truths, and there is concealment of the truth, and those are things that destroy friendship."
She murmured her assent, though perhaps she was not listening as intently as she might have been.
"You know I am a widower, you know my marriage ended badly. And I have not lived a chaste life. There was a woman in Germany, during the wars; I found her destitute, in a small village on the edge of the Prussian swamps, and I took her with me, though I still wonder whether her affections were true, or only purchased. When I came back to England, I set her up in the baking trade in Pomerania, and I have not heard from her from that day to this."
He was silent for a moment, and then he said, quietly; "I have a son."
He let her hand go then, and continued.
"I was married three years. I married for love, but the love failed before the marriage. And then after my wife died, I was troubled, and there was a woman in London, my housekeeper there. And once, a whore in Southwark. I was lucky enough to come away from that encounter unscathed. Your father would not tell you these things, but I think you should know them; we should have no secrets."
True, she thought; though I have no secrets, at least of the kind he means.
"But I am a healthy man for my age," he continued. "I have no pox, no deformity, no debility, or I would not have made the proposal. You know my character."
"And you know mine," she said; "you know my temper. You know I will sulk, and shout, and do everything contrary to your desires that I can, because I can."
He laughed. "I said we should be honest. I'm not sure I believe you."
"You know I'm hot-blooded. And your house will never be quiet again."
"Ah," he said, and nodded his head sagely. "And who told you that I wanted my house to be quiet?"
She couldn't resist smiling at that, but she went on. "You know I would rather be in the study with you and your experiments than looking after children, or managing a kitchen."
"I do indeed," he laughed; "and as for children, it is rather soon for you to be thinking of them, since we are not even betrothed yet. And I must certainly ask your father for his blessing on the arrangement."
"He'll do what I tell him!" she said, though she knew that on this single point, her father had already proven immovable.
"I fear he may not. I am an old friend of his, but he knows I am rather impoverished. Both the young men you mention have considerable means; I on the other hand came back from the wars to find the estate deep in debt.
"I have been trying to revive the estate. You have seen the work my tenant farmers are doing; we have reclaimed some of the arable land, and improved the breed of sheep, but it is slow work. Every year, we do a little better, but there is still the interest on the mortgages to pay, and I put a little aside to pay off the debts when I can; but the end of it all is, I'm still in debt, and I keep a frugal household, nothing like what you're used to.
"There's one hope. I'm trying to find minerals on my land; if I do, I'll be able to pay off the debt. Two of the neighbouring landowners have copper, and I've heard of gold being found, though I've never seen it. So I have surveyed the land, and set men on to digging where I expect copper to be; I'll show you the workings one day. But unless I find metal, then it will be long, slow work making this house fit for a new mistress."
That had been true. She'd never noticed before, but half the house was shuttered and unused, several rooms even without furniture, which he'd sold to his own tenants. And he kept only a few servants, so that though all the household work that needed doing was done, there was none of the good-humoured chatter or familiar busy noise that was part of life at Gullthorpe.
"A penny for them?"
She looked up. She must have been lost in her thoughts for a while; the room seemed darker, the fire blazing in the grate stronger now than the pale remains of the sunlight. She hardly knew what she had been thinking of; then her eyes lighted on the shrew's skull which she still held in one hand, and she remembered how she'd begun to drift away into her thoughts, remembering that day so long ago when she'd found the little dead thing lying by the path.
"Was I really such a savage as a child?" she asked, hoping he would deny it.
He smiled. "Yes, and I loved you for it. Savage and strong and unruly, and you never cried when you hurt yourself."
***
Bad weather had kept them both inside for a week; it rained continually, not a torrential downpour, but insistent, so that the ground became slushy, grass beaten down into half liquid mud. The sky was dark, the sun invisible but for a ghostly paleness to the east most mornings, which disappeared slowly so that by noon the candles had to be lit. The wedding party had departed, leaving Margot and John and his few servants to occupy a house built for ten times as many; the heavy oak panelling and low ceilings oppressed her spirits as much as the lowering skies.
She wondered whether it was an omen for their marriage, this week of rain; whether their lives would continue under grey skies, tepid and slightly unsatisfying, and cold, the kind of cold that stole through your clothes and slowly worked inward till your very bones seemed frozen, and there was no longer any way to warm yourself again.
Then the first day of sun came, making the hills glow fervent green, and raising her spirits with it.
"Shall we ride?" she asked, trying to keep back the eagerness in her voice; and John agreed, though he had business to do, so their route would take in the excavations to the north of Oldcastle, before coming back to the Hall through the limestone country. In fact, she was keen to see the excavations; she imagined the mine as something like a cathedral, carved out of the solid rock, or a great cavern gleaming with the traces of ore. Besides, the way lay through a pleasant valley, one she'd passed a number of times before, where the land was open, yet protected by afforested slopes on both sides, and with mature trees standing in the parkland, and neat walls dividing the pastures by the stream.
As they neared the diggings, though, she regretted her impulsive acceptance. The land hereabouts was not civilised, nor green, but wild heathland covered with deep heather, in which her horse lost its footing and skidded sideways. There were no tracks, and the heather, flaming purple earlier in the year, was now turning brown. Above, a granite outcrop loomed, a reddish brown that seemed both dull and somehow unhealthy. Though the sun had been shining in the vale, now they were in the uplands the clouds had gathered, and the air seemed colder, the day darker. She pulled her cloak around her more tightly, and drew her horse closer to John's.
"How far is the excavation?"
"Not far. Do you see that scar on the hill opposite?"
"The bright red gash?"
"That's it. Just after it, we go over the pass and down into the next valley. It's rough going for a bit; will your horse manage?"
"I think so. If he has difficulty I will get off and walk."
John grinned at her. She'd learned her lessons well - never make a horse take too steep a downhill slope, walk it over the roughest places - and he knew it; she'd made sure of that. She rode astride, like a man; he'd approved that, too, since she could control the horse better, though he'd not let her wear breeches - she'd had to alter her riding habit to allow it.
He let his hands drop, and his horse walked on. She followed.
The going did get worse. It was level up to the scar, which opened the hill like a bleeding wound; but after that, the path lay steeply down, over sharp ridges of rock in which white quartz glistened like teeth. They dismounted, and led their horses down, but their mounts' hoofs still scraped and slipped on the stones. The track zigzagged a couple of times to avoid jagged outcrops of granite; the way was narrow, the view forward closed off by the shoulder of the hill. Once, she slipped herself, only just remembering to let go the reins so as not to pull her horse after her.
The ground flattened out at last into a narrow gorge. The sides were steep, sparsely covered with tough yellowish grass, except where the soil had slipped and only loose scree remained. At the bottom, the startling green of sphagnum moss showed where the bogs lay, bright accents in a skein of pale rock and dark water. It would have been beautiful, perhaps, if the sun had been shining, but in this weather it seemed sinister, particularly the sphagnum moss; you could fall into one of those bogs, and die slowly, if there were no one around to pull you out.
There was no beauty about the excavations, though, not in any weather. Rather than the impressive cavern she had imagined, a deep trench ran along one side of the valley, the shaly waste not piled neatly, but scattered around it. The vegetation was beaten down, bracken buried by the spreading dirt.
The place was full of noise; pickaxes smashing against the rock, a stuttering slow rhythm of five or six men working not quite in unison; feet crunching in the rock and mud as other men carried baskets of the excavated material out of the trench, to tip it out over the little greenery that remained; the splash of water being brought up in buckets and tipped away on to the pile, from which it flowed down, cutting sharp crinkled tracks in the fresh dirt till it reached the stream. On top of all this, someone was shouting at them; she couldn't hear the words.
A rough hut stood back from the workings, dry stone walls covered with a turf roof; it was from there that the foreman had been hallooing them, and it was there they tied their horses before making their way over to the trench.
"How is the excavation coming?" John asked.
"The digging's well enough. Another two feet down yesterday, and we're getting to a new layer of rock, as you thought we would. It's different; little glittering flakes in it."
"Oh?"
"Not metal, no. I wish it were. Nothing in that way, not yet. But the real problem is the water. We can't keep it out."
She looked down. The sides of the trench were seeping with water, that pooled on the floor of the digging and mixed with the dirt to make a viscous red mud. The men were working half naked in the sludge, smeared with mud, their clothes soaked and clinging to them.
"Shouldn't they have better clothing?" she asked John, when they'd fallen a little behind the foreman.
"They do. But they don't wear it in the trench; it gets soaked."
She shivered. The air chilled you as soon as you stopped moving; even in warm clothes, the cold seemed to creep down the back of her neck.
John was speaking to one of the men, a thick-set man with a surly face that broke into a grin when he saw his master.
"So, no gold yet?" John called, good-humoured.
"Nothing. Just rock and water."
"No copper either?"
"None."
"There's fool's gold," said another of the men, and spat. "That's everywhere."
"Yes, fool's gold for fools like you," the first man said, "but it doesn't fool me." He levered a rock free of its matrix, and handed it up to John; it glittered as he twisted it in his fingers.
"It's not completely useless," John said: "it can be burnt to make copperas. That's for ink, and for dyeing. But it's not worth much, not unless we find iron as well."
He tossed the gleaming nugget at Margot. "Take it. A jewel for my new wife. Though I think the wife is worth more than the jewel."
She smiled; she'd not seen this side of him before, almost whimsical. But the man who'd spat at the mention of the fool's gold was still scowling, and she turned her face away from him, feeling his ill wishing like a physical blow.
She'd never seen this kind of man before; dangerous, wild, like a wolf. Even the one who'd smiled at John was wild, bull-like; they seemed rough, as if they'd been carved from the rock itself, and left unfinished. She found herself staring at them. Wet cloth clung to their bodies; their muscles stood out as they swung their pick-axes, their veins starting proud from their skin. All their movements held not only power, but a hint of violence. There was something intoxicating in the sight, and she found it hard to turn and follow her husband back towards the foreman's hut.
They rode back to Oldcastle by way of the stud, a more reliable source of funds, though if her father's experience was anything to go by John paid out as much on new horseflesh as he made by selling his most promising yearlings. The grey buildings of the stables were ranged around a cobbled yard; in the summer, the horses were turned out to the surrounding pasture, but now they were being brought back from the furthest fields, some to the looseboxes, some to the infield, before the weather turned definitely towards winter. It was still early in the year, summer only just passed, autumn still not definitely established; but winter could arrive unexpectedly, with a flurry of snow, and then the higher passes would be cut off. Which wouldn't be a problem with sheep, but horses were both more delicate and more valuable, particularly the Arabians.
As they came into the yard one of the grooms hailed John. "You'll want to go over to the small yard," he said; "it's Matchless being covered."
"She's come into season then?"
"At last."
"You'd better come," he said to Margot, swinging himself down from the saddle. "You'll need to manage the stud yourself, when I'm not here."
She thought the groom looked strangely at her, but told herself to ignore it; no doubt the master's new wife was a novelty.
The small yard was reached by a low alleyway between two of the buildings; unlike the open main yard, full of bustle, it seemed hushed, expectant. Every one of the stable doors was closed; and in the centre of the yard stood two men, and two horses.
"That's Matchless, the mare," John said; "she's been teased already, she'll take the stallion now. And that's the Turk."
Matchless was a pretty thing, a chestnut with a white blaze on her forehead and a feathery tail, standing quietly beside her groom; if you could say a horse looked demure, that was the effect she had. The Turk was quite the opposite, treading the dirt with his feet, throwing his head from side to side impatiently. His huge dark eyes gleamed with malice; his black shoulders rippled with muscle, the sweat beading on his skin. The groom held him back with some difficulty, the reins taut as the Turk tried to rear, pawing the air and snorting.
"Bring him round," said the groom who was holding Matchless.
"He's too much to handle," said the other.
John strode up, as if to take the Turk's reins; then thought better of it. "When was he last bred to the mare?"
"Last month. They're all in foal, except Matchless."
"No wonder he's eager. Hold him hard; we'll have to bring the mare to the stallion instead."
Matchless's groom walked her in a wide circle around the yard, bringing her up past the stallion's flank to stand just ahead of him. As the stallion caught her scent, he nickered, his nostrils wide. But he wasn't given his head; the mare had to be hobbled first, to prevent her kicking back at her impregnator. She stood docile as the groom passed a rope around her back legs, and tied it loosely, while the stallion jerked his head against the rein and grunted with impatience.