unsavoury little thing,’ and bang her down in one of the great square tubs, already swilling with icy water, and let fly at her with a large hard-bristled brush, and sometimes she nearly enjoyed it; but that was years ago, a lot of things had changed.
Margaret shrugged, and started to wriggle out of the tabard. If this crazy young nobleman cared to waste the time of his house-people on her then the chance was too good to waste; it would probably never come again.
The bath was filled rapidly, with much snorting and hissing from the geyser; the maids bound her hair, and one of them added to the water a handful of something that produced great towering masses of iridescent foam. That intrigued her, she’d never seen anything like it. An hour later she was feeling nearly inclined to be civil again; she’d been scrubbed and kneaded and massaged, and had to kneel upright while they poured on her shoulders something that smelled of sandalwood and ran and burned like fire and left a splendid glow in the muscles of her back that soaked away stiffness and tiredness. There was a dress laid put for her, a formal thing with a wide scooped neckline and miles of frothy skirt, and a diamante circlet for her hair. The clothes fitted; she wriggled, feeling the satin-cleanness of her skin against the cloth, and wondered a little wildly just how well Robert had equipped the castle with the apparatus of seduction. She found out later he’d ordered his absent sister’s wardrobe ransacked for the occasion; whatever his faults, he certainly never did things by halves. She was badly worried now about Sarah and her parents, but events seemed to have passed her at the gallop; it was bad enough just trying to keep pace.
It was evening before she was through, the sinking sun throwing mile-long shadows across the heath, waking blazing reflections from the tier on tier of diamondlighted and mullioned windows; the castle seemed to butt against the huge western haze like the prow of a stone ship. Sounds from the fair floated across the baileys; shouts, the din of the organs, the grumbling vibration of the rides.
Dinner was served in the sixteenth-century hall built alongside the donjon; the diners promenaded outside it, richly dressed, arm in arm in the warm air. Margaret was vaguely disappointed when she learned the great keep had been disused for centuries except as storehouse and armoury. On high days and holidays the Lords of Purbeck were accustomed to take their meals in the ancient way reintroduced by Gisevius; the less favoured guests sat at long tables in the body of the hall while the family and their personal friends ate on a raised dais at one end. Lamps burned in profusion, lighting the place brilliantly; the minstrels’ gallery was occupied by a small orchestra; servingmen and girls scurried about tripping over the dogs, brackets and mastiffs, that littered the floor.
Margaret, still a little dazed, was introduced to the Lady Marianne, Robert’s mother, and to the half dozen or so important guests. Her mind, whirling, refused to take in the names. Sir Frederick something, His Eminence the archbishop of somewhere else… She curtsied automatically, allowed herself to be steered finally to a place at Robert’s right. A cold nose shoved into her lap warned her she was attended; she fondled the bracket absentmindedly, tickling beneath the ears, and drew from her host a grunt of surprise. ‘You’re honoured, y’know that? Doesn’t take kindly to anybody, not that one. Had a swipe at one of the Serjeants the other day.’ He grinned broadly. ‘Two fingers…’
Margaret gently withdrew her hand. Mutilation seemed for Robert a major source of fun.
He’d heard her name more than once, introduced her by it a dozen times, but it seemed it hadn’t sunk in. She asked him, with as much dignity as she could muster, for a message to be sent to her home. Her eyes hadn’t missed the semaphore rigged beside the keep, or the chain tower on the nearby hill. He listened looking faintly surprised, bending his head to catch the request, then snapped his fingers to the Signaller-Page hovering nearby. ‘Who’d ye say, Strange?’
‘My father,’ said Margaret coldly, ‘is Timothy Strange of Strange and Sons, Durnovaria.’
The bombshell was not without effect. Robert grunted, raised his eyebrows, swigged wine, drummed a tattoo on the linen cloth. ‘Well, damme,’ he said. ‘Damme. Well, I’ll marry a bloody Bulgarian…’
‘Robert…!’ That from the Lady Marianne, a little further along the board.
He bowed to his mother, unabashed. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘Well, you’re a bad-tempered young bitch, I suppose that goes a way to explaining it…’ He scribbled on the pad proffered by the Signaller. ‘Look lively with that, lad, or we shall lose the light.’ The boy departed, scampering; a few minutes later Margaret heard the clack and bang of the semaphore, the answering clatter from the great tower on the hill. An acknowledgement was back-routed before nightfall; just a frosty ‘Message received and understood.’ From that, she presumed she was in disgrace.
The night passed quickly enough, too quickly for Margaret; she could imagine well enough the surly reception waiting for her at home. The dinner was followed by an entertainment by a troupe of acrobats and fairground people. Trained dogs bounced through hoops, ran on their back legs in kilts and breeches; the affair was a great success. The near-demise of one of the performers, caught and tossed by Robert’s delicate tempered hounds, scarcely dampened proceedings.
The animal act was followed by a jongleur, a long-faced, mournful-looking man who, evidently primed by Robert, delivered a series of rhymes in a thick patois that Margaret perhaps fortunately couldn’t follow but that set Robert roaring with amusement. Then trays of nuts and fruit were passed, and more wine; the party broke up well past midnight, Robert bellowing for linkboys to escort Margaret to the room he’d had prepared.
She decided abruptly, trying to stand without swaying, that it was just as well nobody was fetching her tonight; the rich Oporto, once restricted to the tables of kings and the Pope, had nearly proved too much for her. She collapsed in a warm haze, mumbling good nights to the woman who relieved her of her clothes, and was asleep within minutes.
She woke soon after dawn, lay listening for the sound that had roused her. She heard it again; a dog barking, far off and bright. She got up fuzzily, draped an embroidered counterpane round herself and padded to the long slit of a window. She saw far below over a tumble of roofs Robert, two brackets circling the heels of his horse, ride across the lower bailey to the gate, falcon sitting his wrist like a little blind and bright-plumed knight. The ringing barks of the dogs sounded on the quiet air a long while after their master had gone from view.
At eleven that morning a Foden, maroon-liveried, puffed its indignant way through the outer barbican, its driver demanding the person of one Miss Strange; and shortly after Margaret bade good-bye, regretfully, to the great castle of Corfe Gate. Once home she found things weren’t as bad as she’d feared; the family, with the exception of Sarah, were more impressed by her jaunt than annoyed. It took a lot to impress a Strange; but the Lords of Purbeck owned most of Dorset, their demesne stretched to Sherborne and beyond. Once they’d been landlords to Jesse himself, until he’d scraped and saved and bought the place in fee simple. Her uncle approved, in his silent way; and that counted for a lot. He sat with her that night while she told him how things had gone, pulling at his pipe and frowning, throwing the odd quick question that brought out every last detail. But Jesse was an ailing man already, illness marking and greying his face.
Again Margaret was scurried forward in time. It was as if the images presented themselves with all the ghostly, flickering speed of the yet-to-be-invented cinematograph. She remembered the brooding and waiting, the hoping for some sign that Robert hadn’t forgotten her totally. She tried to analyse what she felt about him. Was it just his craziness that appealed to her, was she attracted to the sheer animal maleness of him, or was it something deeper? Or more reprehensible, the simple urge to sell herself in the best market possible, set herself up above the rest, above her own family, as mistress of Corfe Gate? She told herself if it was that, to forget it, stop dreaming third-form dreams. Because she never would belong in that great place down there on the hill.
Autumn came and the carrying-in of the sheaves, the services for Harvest Home. The hauliers plaited new corn dollies out in the sheds, hoisted them into the house eaves to replace the old dusty shapes of last year that were ritually burned. Margaret was kept busy in the kitchens supervising the laying-in of preserves for the winter ahead, the bottling and jam-making and salting-down of meat; and the locos came in one after another off the freezing, rutted roads, travel-stained, rusting, to be refurbished in the sheds, greased and oiled and polished and painted for the next year’s work. Every bolt must be checked, worn wheel treads replaced, valve gear stripped and reassembled, steering chains examined and tested.
The forges bellowed all day long, fanned by blackened imps of hauliers’ boys; lathes hummed, men swarmed over the towering Burrells and Clayton and Shuttleworths. There was labour to spare; for Strange and Sons, alone in the haulage trade, didn’t lay their people off. Jesse as ever worked with his men, listening head cocked to the huge beating of the locos, touching and diagnosing; only from time to time the gripping pains doubled him and he swore and went off and rested and drank his beer, and buckled to it again.
The days shortened to midwinter; Christmas was barely a week away when a bailiff, breath steaming, cantered into the house yard. Margaret cracked the seals off the letter when it was brought her, hands shaking. She
