Circle of Pearls Read online

  Circle of Pearls

  Rosalind Laker

  © Rosalind Laker1990

  Rosalind Laker has asserted her rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 1990 Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers Ltd.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  20

  Epilogue

  To Hazel for her enthusiasm

  1

  When Julia Pallister was born one October day in 1641 a rare and beautiful Elizabethan drop-pearl was placed in her tiny palm. She clutched it strongly for a matter of seconds while her grandmother leaned over her be-ribboned crib. Then it was taken from her and returned to a safe place. Neither parent knew of the incident. Robert Pallister was celebrating his daughter’s arrival with his nine-year-old son and some friends downstairs. His wife, Anne, was unaware of her mother-in-law’s presence in the bedchamber as she lay sleeping in the massive four-poster in which she had given birth just an hour before.

  Almost as if some consciousness of the pearl remained with Julia through its cool contact, she occasionally dreamed as time went by of something hauntingly glowing and lovely, so indefinable that it could not be recalled when she woke. As it was natural to her and an accepted part of her existence, she was not troubled by it and never mentioned it to anyone.

  Yet she always took particular notice of anything that struck her as being unusually beautiful, as if she might gain some clue to the mystery that intrigued her. She had watched the moon sailing amid the stars, held her breath when a swan arched its feathers on the lake as it glided against its own reflected image, and been dazzled by the display of a rare white peacock shivering its huge fan. Then one day she saw a pearl-white pony that widened her eyes with wonder.

  It happened in the Roman-walled city of Chichester, which lay no more than a few miles from the gates of her home at Sotherleigh Manor. There was a ribbon shop in West Street and her mother, who embroidered many yards of silk ribbon in a year, was replenishing her diminished stock. Julia, bored with the proceedings as any lively seven-year-old would be, gained permission to wait outside by the shop door where there was plenty to see.

  She was a slender, vigorous child with an ivory skin and an impish smile, her eyes large and blue. Bunches of chestnut curls bobbed over her ears as she rocked on her heels as if bound by invisible chains to the spot where she had been instructed to stand. She had an open view of the whole market place, in the middle of which was the medieval market cross set like a huge stone crown, and within its arches she could see the butter women selling their wares. From one of the many stalls there drifted the appetising aroma of gingerbread and caramel, making her mouth water. Less pleasant and more pungent were the penned-up cattle and sheep; in another section more interesting to her, horses were being bought and sold. Amid the throng of people milling about, gentry, city dwellers and farm folk, pedlars, gypsies and beggars, there were plenty of soldiers of the Parliamentary Army, for Chichester and the county of Sussex had fallen to them early in the recent Civil War and a barracks was still maintained.

  Dominating the whole scene was the ancient Cathedral, which with its separate bell tower stood on the opposite side of the street from where Julia waited. Plain glass had replaced the jewel-like medieval glass that had once sparkled from its many windows, for on the day of the city’s capture, the forces of Oliver Cromwell, their Puritan minds outraged by anything they suspected of being Papist, which included the whole of the Church of England, had smashed the beautiful windows and destroyed the pictures painted on boards from earlier centuries that had long been admired and preserved. The altar had been desecrated and stone effigies of past bishops prised from their tombs and smashed. Everything had been tidied up since that day and Puritan services, devoid of organ music, with sermons sometimes lasting three hours or more, were now held within the Cathedral portals.

  Julia by her dress was unmistakably the child of a Royalist family. Although she wore a plain cape she felt restricted by it and had tossed it back, revealing her elaborate gown such as no Puritan parent would have allowed a daughter to wear. Julia would have preferred her garments to be without the embroidered ribbons that adorned everything she wore on top and underneath. They were the bugbear of her days, for invariably she ruined or lost the dainty trimmings when she climbed trees or wriggled through hedges or caught them on twigs when out riding. Those on the yellow silk gown she wore today had chains of Dutch tulips on them, the stems and slender leaves linking the blooms, and the stitches so small as to be almost invisible. Other people were delighted when fortunate enough to receive a gift of them, because although woven brocade and patterned ribbons were commonplace, embroidered ones were not, the work too painstaking for most ladies, which made them extremely rare and therefore to be treasured. Julia would gladly have given away all the bows and love knots and streamers from her own garments.

  ‘When you were a baby,’ her grandmother had told her once, ‘you and your crib were so smothered in ribbons it was almost impossible to find you among them.’

  It had been a well-meant little joke and her mother had smiled, taking it all in good part, although Julia did not doubt there was a firm basis of truth as well as humour. It was as she heaved a sigh on the thought of her mother buying still more material on which to carry out the delicate work that she saw the pearl-white pony. With silvery mane and tail flowing, it came leisurely up West Street, its rider a boy seemingly about four years older than herself, black-haired and dark-eyed in a high-crowned hat with a buckle to its band and oak brown velvet jacket and breeches. He sat well, straight-backed and easy in the saddle as if he had ridden since birth. Accompanying him on a grey horse was a Parliamentary officer, probably his father, but she gave no thought to that. On and on the riders came. She watched with a rapt expression, her hands clasped high under her chin in sheer delight at the pony’s beauty, unaware that she was on tip-toe with admiration.

  The boy spotted her. His serious young face took on a look of pride that his pony should be so admired. He spoke to his father, indicating they should ride to the north side of the market cross. It was agreed. Julia beamed with pleasure. They were going to pass within a couple of feet of her and she could gaze her fill at the pony.

  Then, as they drew level, she was astonished and delighted when the boy reined in, looking down at her. ‘Would you like to pat Pegasus?’ he asked, stern and lordly with ownership.

  ‘Yes, please!’ Even as she reached out her hand both her parent and his intervened. Anne Pallister had emerged from the shop at that moment. With a gasp of dismay she pulled Julia back by the shoulders while the boy’s father turned in the saddle to seize the pony’s bridle and jerk it forward.

  ‘Adam!’ his father growled harshly. ‘Have you lost your wits? We have no truck with Royalists!’

  The boy’s eyes hardened on her in bitter hostility and he turned his face stiffly away, increasing his pony’s pace to draw level with his parent. She heard her mother’s distress.

  ‘That was Colonel Warrender and his son, Julia! Our neighbours in name only! How could you let yourself show friendliness to the enemy? It is barely four years since the war went against us and now our King has been martyred by execution!’

  Julia felt her cheeks burning f
rom both the slight inflicted by the Warrenders and her own shame at being reprimanded by her mother more severely than she could remember. Although she would never have exchanged her own pony, which she loved dearly, for any other, she could not resist another glance at the pearly haunches and the tail of silver silk disappearing into North Street.

  Now and again on the drive home Julia stole a glance at her mother, able to see that she was still upset, although not angry, for that would have been alien to her gentle nature. Anne Pallister was a sweet-faced woman, her profile classical against the leather blind that was keeping out the draught through the open window space. Her clear grey eyes were long-lashed, her dark hair worn in the current mode of bunches of shoulder-length curls over each ear, the rest drawn back smoothly to a top-knot, presently hidden by her hat. It was a coiffure that left the neck prettily bare. Hers was swanlike.

  Julia supposed that when they were back at Sotherleigh her grandmother, a staunch Royalist, would have to be told what had taken place. Katherine Pallister was a formidable old lady, likely to be fierce over a lapse on her granddaughter’s part, for she was quick to utter a rebuke for any misdemeanour and to give Julia’s knuckles a sharp rap on occasion — something her mother had never done. Nevertheless a strong bond of love united them, and companionship bridged the dividing years between them, all the closer since Julia could not remember her grandparents on the distaff side. Their tempers also matched, equable until fired and then a spectacular explosion of wrath.

  The coach passed through the village. In the winding lane, beyond the mill and the woods, the gatehouse of Sotherleigh came into sight. Julia felt her qualms melt before the simple pleasure of coming home again. She loved her birthplace. The drive up to the house was half a mile long, flanked by elms sharply green in their new spring foliage, and beyond them, on each side, stretched the gentle parkland. As the coach lumbered on she caught a glimpse of the lake where she fed the ducks and swans. Just visible before a curve in the drive was the maze, a hundred yards in diameter, which was said to be one of the most intricate ever planned. Then suddenly the drive gave a view of the house that could not fail to please even the most jaundiced eye.

  Sotherleigh Manor was south-facing and smaller than most of the great country mansions that distantly neighboured it. As a compliment to Queen Elizabeth, in whose reign it had been built, it was in the shape of an E with the east and west wings projecting at each end of the main block and a central porch rising from a flight of wide steps through the two upper floors. It had a warm and welcoming aspect, its russet bricks free of any encroaching creeper and its patterning of local flints winking like inset diamonds. Behind it, rising gently against the sky, were the undulating Sussex Downs, their slopes green velvet that occasionally in winter were powdered with snow.

  To Julia every part of Sotherleigh smelt as sweet as if the scented Queen Elizabeth herself had just passed through. There was a fragrant blend of herbs and beeswax and sunshine, clean linen and lavender and tangy oranges piled in two rare Chinese bowls decorated in blue, green and iron red.

  The bowls had been brought back by her grandfather, Ned Pallister, from one of his many voyages to the Far East. Ned Pallister had been drowned at sea before his only son, Robert, was born.

  Julia had seen little of her father, a straight-backed, broad-chested, muscular man, during the first five years of her life, for he had fought for the King throughout the conflict and had not come home to stay until after the Battle of Naseby, a great defeat for the Royalists that had settled the conflict. Since then Robert Pallister, valuing family life, had tried to make up to her and her older brother, Michael, for his years of absence.

  Julia knew that he savagely resented the law imposed on him and other Cavalier officers that restricted all their movements to within a five-mile radius of their homes, quite apart from the heavy dues that had to be paid. Fortunately the estate of Sotherleigh came within the bounds and Robert rode his land frequently, keeping an eye on everything and always willing to listen to a tenant with a legitimate grievance. Michael either went with him or undertook some independent duty on the estate, father and son equally dedicated to the husbandry of the land. At every opportunity Julia liked to ride with them.

  ‘You here again,’ Michael would tease whenever she came trotting up on her pony as he and their father rode out of the stableyard. He was a merry youth, bony at the jaw and with a straight nose. Under his dark brows, less peaked than Robert’s but adding to the resemblance, his eyes were the same grey as Anne’s and never without a twinkle in them.

  Julia would always laugh, retaliating to his quips. It was his joke to say that her curls were the red of his chestnut horse, but she took that as a compliment, thinking it a handsome colour and hoping her hair was really that shade.

  Much as she enjoyed her brother’s company, she felt more grown-up when she rode beside her father on her own. She would have skipped her lessons at any time to be with him, but he was as strict as her grandmother in that respect. Her tutor came two mornings a week and in between she had set-work that had to be done. She never went with Robert or Michael to hunt, hawk or course hares with greyhounds on the Downs. Neither she nor her mother had the stomach for such sports, and no bull from a Sotherleigh farm ever went to be baited by dogs or a bear before it met the butcher’s knife.

  The coach was drawing up at the steps of Sotherleigh. Usually Julia sprang into the house to run and tell her grandmother all she had seen and done, but today the incident in Chichester was hanging over her. She followed her mother indoors at such a slow pace that Anne was already upstairs when she entered. She met Michael with a net of bowls on his way to play a game on the green to the east of the house with his friend from his Westminster schooldays, Christopher Wren, who was waiting for him there. Christopher had come to stay for a short while before the two young men went up to Oxford where they were to enter Wadham College. ‘Coming to watch, Julia?’ Michael asked her.

  She heaved a sigh, ‘I don’t think I’d better do anything for a little while. I’ve upset Mama.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I spoke to a Warrender.’

  He looked taken aback and gave a low whistle at such folly on her part. ‘Nobody’s going to be pleased about that.’

  It was rare for Michael to look severe and it should have chastened her, but she could not feel much remorse. It had been a beautiful pony and the Warrender boy had been as full of goodwill as she until they had both been reminded of political differences that were not of their making.

  ‘I’m going to make a clean breast of it to Grandmother.’ Steeling herself, she went into the library where Katherine sat reading. The book was lowered at her approach and Julia related all that had happened.

  Katherine heard the child out, making no interruption. She was in her early eighties, dignified and of gracious appearance with a thin, aristocratic nose, bead-bright hazel eyes and a sharp chin. Her hair was snow-white, frizzed over a high roll in the style she had not changed since her young days when she was lady-in-waiting to Queen Elizabeth.

  ‘You were not to know either Colonel Warrender or his son, my child,’ she said fairly. ‘We have had no contact with Warrender Hall since the outbreak of the war when we took different sides, although once the Colonel’s late father, Sir Harry Warrender, and I were good friends. You may forget what happened, Julia. Naturally your mother was distressed, but she will have forgiven you by now and neither will your father reprimand you for what you did.’

  With such generous absolution Julia felt she should have been able to forget what had taken place in Chichester, but an image of the pony’s beauty became imprinted on her memory and she could not recall it without seeing Adam Warrender’s stern young face at the same time. Whenever her dream came to her he was not in it any more than anyone else had been, and yet it was as though the pearly beauty that she could never quite see was now nearer than it had ever been before. Had he and his pony come galloping out of those silv
ery mists she would not have been in the least surprised. For the first time she felt a need to discuss the dream with someone.

  Her natural choice of a confidant was Christopher, whom she considered as much her friend as her brother’s. She sought him out down by the lake the day before he and Michael were to go up to Oxford. He did not hear her approach, having thrown a book down on the grass in some anger to lean a shoulder against a tree as he watched unseeingly the swans and ducks on the water.

  Wondering what had upset him, for he had the most amiable nature, Julia picked up the book and opened it at random. It was in the students’ language of Latin, which she recognized through having begun lessons in it, as well as French, with her tutor. As yet this instruction was a heavy burden on her, but children in her station in life often began such study earlier.

  According to her grandmother, Queen Elizabeth had been set to learn Latin from the age of three and at least she had been spared that!

  ‘Why does this book displease you, Christopher?’ she asked curiously.

  He turned with a start and his wide mouth curled in a smile at the sight of her, his ill humour dispersing. A thin, bony youth of medium height, he had a mane of brown, wavy hair that fell fashionably to his shoulders and framed his kindly face. His nose was largish and well shaped, and he had a mannerism of setting his head on one side at times that was quick and almost birdlike. He came forward and crouched down on his haunches to bring his face on a level with hers.

  ‘It doesn’t displease me in content. I happen to be the one who translated it into Latin for the author. It’s a mathematical treatise by a most eminent man in that field.’

  ‘Then why did you throw it down?’

  He hesitated. How to tell her that he had been acutely embarrassed by the preface, about which he had had no warning? To him there was nothing unusual about the amount of knowledge he had acquired in the new sciences or in the mathematical instruments he had invented, for his sickly health and wheezing chest in his earlier years had kept him to study while Michael and the rest of his contemporaries had used their freedom from their schoolbooks in vigorous sports. He saw it as no cause for praise, but the author had showered it on him in the preface for all the world to see, saying that the translator of the treatise had been only fifteen years old at the time and great things could be expected of the young inventor, Christopher Wren, in days to come.