‘We’re a danger to you,’ they told us. ‘If the enemy were to arrive here and find us, they would destroy the place.’
‘They might do that if you are not here,’ replied Bersaba bitterly.
‘Let us hope that even Roundheads would have some respect for defenceless women,’ they answered. ‘They are supposed to be men of God.’
‘They have little respect for anything but their own righteousness,’ retorted Bersaba, and I explained her bitterness. ‘My sister’s home has been destroyed, her husband and his sister and their servants killed, and she escaped only by the greatest good fortune.’
Bersaba retorted, ‘That is only how any of us escape. I do not want to know who is winning but when this foolish war will be over.’
They left us and the days fell into the old pattern. We sewed, we walked, we played with the children; it seemed incredible that so close to us battles were waging and men were killing each other and dying for their cause.
October came. Jesson went into London to buy food and came back with the news that the Parliamentary forces were having successes which must prove vital. It was largely due to General Fairfax and Oliver Cromwell. Cromwell was instituting a new model army. He was training them, paying them well and above all exerting an iron discipline. He never let them forget that their consciences were concerned; he imbued them with the idea that they were fighting for an ideal, an escape from bondage, and that God was on their side. With such an ally they could not fail to succeed.
We talked a great deal after that of Richard and wondered where he was.
‘I would give a great deal to know,’ I said.
‘I would he could come home,’ answered Bersaba fervently.
But nothing happened. The weeks began to pass. The days were long and quiet, overshadowed always by menace.
My condition was beginning to show itself slightly and I rejoiced because I was half-way through my pregnancy. When I was stitching in the Castle Room I felt almost happy because it was so easy to forget the dangers all around and I could lull myself into the belief that I was an ordinary mother expecting her first child.
But it was hardly like that when I did not know from one day to another when the soldiers would come. This was a Royalist household, known as the home of one of the King’s most loyal generals, and it must go hard with us if Cromwell’s men ever came this way.
Everyone in the household was watching me more than ever. I would often find Mrs Cherry looking at me with an expression of greatest concern. Grace and Meg too. ‘Are you feeling all right, my lady?’
‘Yes, of course, don’t I look all right?’
‘Well, my lady, shouldn’t you rest a bit?’
I must escape those watchful eyes.
There was a strangeness about them all … even Bersaba. Sometimes she seemed cautious. She would not discuss the castle, and told me sharply that I must not think about it, Sometimes she wanted to talk about Richard and at others she would abruptly change the subject.
It was rather disquieting and more and more I sought the peace of the Castle Room.
The chapel began to exert a certain influence. I used to find myself wandering down to it. I liked to sit in the pew and think about all the Tolworthys who had worshipped there in happier times, and I wondered if Magdalen had come here often to pray for a safe delivery.
That was what I wanted to do now.
I went to the altar. The cloth had been made by several of the ladies of the household one hundred and fifty years ago, Richard had once told me. I touched the stitching reverently. It was so delicately worked and the colours were exquisite. One day, I thought, when my baby is older, I will make an altar cloth and I will find just such colours as these. That blue is so beautiful … blue for happiness … wasn’t that a saying? How neatly it was finished off. I wondered how they had done that … I had turned the cloth in my hands and as I did so I must have jerked it forward. There was a clatter as the chalice fell to the floor and in the next second I was hit by one of the vessels, the cloth came away in my hands, I was lying on the chapel floor, and at that moment I felt for the first time the movement of my child and I fainted.
Mrs Cherry was standing over me. Bersaba was there too. I noticed Mrs Cherry’s face was so pale that the network of red veins stood out on her cheeks. She was shaking.
Bersaba, kneeling beside me, was saying, ‘It’s all right. She’s better now.’ She was undoing the collar of my bodice. ‘All right, Angel. You fainted. It often happens at this stage.’ Her voice seemed to come from a long way off. ‘Don’t move for a bit. Just stay here. You’ll feel all right in a moment. Then I’ll get you to your room. But it’s nothing. It happens.’
So I lay on the cold floor of the chapel and I remember feeling the life inside me, and I kept repeating Bersaba’s words: It often happens at this stage.
Bersaba said, ‘I should rest for an hour or so. It’s nothing. Women often faint the first time they feel the movement. Then you get used to it of course. You’ve probably got a lively child.’
It was pleasant lying there. She talked about how she had been with Arabella and how all these little things were a part of a woman’s life during pregnancy.
‘It’s fortunate for me that you have gone through it all before,’ I said.
‘And that I’m here to look after you.’
‘I hope you always will be,’ I answered.
‘Now you’ll have to look after me sometimes.’
I slept a little and she must have left me, for when I woke up it was to find Mrs Cherry coming into the room.
‘I just had to come in and assure myself you were all right, my lady.’
‘It was nothing, Mrs Cherry. Just a faint when the baby moved. My sister says it’s normal. It often happens the first time.’
‘It was the chapel what worried me,’ said Mrs Cherry.
‘I was looking at the altar cloth. It’s so beautifully worked and I must have pulled it off.’
‘And kneeling there at the altar, were you?’
‘Yes, I was.’
She frowned a little. ‘Well, my lady, I just wondered. We’re all anxious about you, you know.’
‘I do know it and I wish you wouldn’t be. Everything’s perfectly all right.’
‘Oh, I do hope so, my lady,’ she said vehemently.
And there I was … uneasy again.
I could not sleep. They say women have strange fancies when they are pregnant. I certainly had them that night. It began when I thought I heard stealthy footsteps creaking on the stairs. It’s nothing, I soothed myself. Just old boards and my fancy.
I remembered how often I had been afraid of the dark when I was a child and what a comfort it was to know that Bersaba was close. But there was something in the air that night, something that meant danger. But we lived in dangerous times.
Almost without thinking I rose from my bed and, putting on slippers and a robe, made my way to Bersaba’s room.
My heart leaped in fear, for she was not there. The bedclothes had been thrown back as though she had left hurriedly. Then I had heard footsteps on the stairs—Bersaba’s!
There was a full moon and the room was almost as light as day. I went to the window and looked out. I stood there for a few moments before I saw my sister. She was running across the grass as though her life depended on escape.
‘Bersaba!’ I cried out. ‘What …’ I stopped short, for I saw that she was pursued by something—a large, loping ungainly creature. It had a human shape and yet I was not sure that it was a man.