Circle of Pearls Read online

  ‘Captain Harding,’ she intervened hastily, ‘why not say where you believe my husband to be? All will go easier if we are as direct as possible with each other in these unhappy circumstances.’

  His gaze switched to her. ‘Very well,’ he said on a less brusque note. ‘Your husband has gone to join young Charles Stuart, who would have done better to have stayed where he was sent, because his fate is destined to be the same as his father’s.’

  Anne tried to shut her ears to such a terrible prophecy. She refused to believe that this time all would not go well. No matter what this Roundhead said, nothing could shake her belief that Robert had done right to ride to the new King, who was known to be a very different man to his father. Yet she dared not voice these loyal sentiments. It was a time to be diplomatic at all costs.

  ‘Since you have guessed the whereabouts of my husband, I will name the other members of the family not here by my side. Michael, my son, is an undergraduate at Oxford. Julia, my little daughter, is still asleep in bed and I beg that she should not be disturbed. Nobody else is missing.’

  He did not doubt anything she said. The lie had been the old woman’s and not hers. She was transparently honest. There was also an intriguing air about her of innocence-never-lost that was belied by the flowing sensuous grace of her body, which in itself was guaranteed to stir the lusty instincts of any man. As for the nervousness that emanated from her, it came like a bouquet and would have made her a natural victim for rape if she had fallen into rougher company than his.

  ‘I’m not here to frighten children, but for another reason altogether.’

  ‘Then what exactly is your purpose here, Captain?’ she asked him.

  He spoke bluntly. ‘I am here to commandeer your horses. We have need of them for the final defeat of the Royalist usurper.’

  Up by the screen Julia froze with horror. Her pony was her dearest and most precious possession. These hateful men wanted to take him away. Never! Neither should they have the four old coach horses to drag their heavy wagons! As for the sleek saddle horse that her mother rode, it was ready to be exchanged for her father’s tired mount in time to come if he should be able to make secret visits as he had done previously during the war years. Surely her mother would forbid this officer and his men to go anywhere near the stables.

  Anne’s answer came in a rush. ‘There are no horses at Sotherleigh, sir. Our stables are empty.’

  The Captain was watching her closely. ‘I’m well aware that the stalls are deserted,’ he countered with sarcastic emphasis, ‘I sent two of my men ahead to mount guard there and they reported back to me. Everything as clean as a new pin, I understand, and no trace of feed anywhere. What’s more, whatever outdoor staff you have apparently scattered at our coming, because my men could find no-one to question. However, I happen to have been reliably informed only a couple of days ago that you are in possession of four strong coach horses, a good saddle horse and a Welsh pony.’

  Julia’s blue eyes, already wide and sapphire dark with anguish, became shot through with glittering tears. Her pony had gone already! She recalled all the talk she had heard in recent weeks about unscrupulous thieves with Parliamentary sympathies creeping into Royalist stables and stealing horses for the Commonwealth forces. Now it had happened at Sotherleigh in spite of her mother’s orders that a guard be kept on them day and night. Her pony wouldn’t understand what was happening to him. She thought her heart must break. A huge sob broke noisily from her throat.

  It was heard in the hall below and everybody looked up. Both men reacted automatically in swift military fashion, the Captain drawing his sword with a flash of reflected sunlight and the sergeant dropping to one knee and aiming his musket, already primed before entry into the house, at the screen. Anne screamed and darted forward in panic and with arms outstretched.

  ‘It can only be my little daughter!’ She turned and called frantically, ‘It is you, isn’t it, Julia. Answer me, please.’

  The tearful answer came. ‘It’s me, Mama.’

  Captain Harding snapped an order to his sergeant. ‘Check the situation!’

  As the sergeant went bounding up the flight, his musket still at the ready, Anne tried desperately to reassure Julia.

  ‘There’s no need to be afraid, my lamb. Nobody is going to hurt you.’ She spun round imploringly to the Captain. ‘Don’t let your sergeant drag her down, I beg you.’

  ‘He won’t.’

  At that point the sergeant spoke through the screen. ‘The little girl is on her own, sir.’

  ‘Leave her.’

  Anne seized the chance to call out again to her daughter. ‘I had no idea you were about! Are you dressed?’ She knew Julia would never willingly appear before strangers in her nightshift.

  ‘Yes, but I’ve only brushed my hair.’

  ‘That’s not important. Come down to me, dearest.’ Then seeing that Julia made no move she tried again. ‘Do the soldiers outside frighten you? I will ask Captain Harding if we may have the door shut.’

  Katherine could scarcely refrain from banging her cane on the floor. She had been fuming inwardly from the moment that Julia had made her presence known. There was no denying Anne was helpless in a crisis. She should have flown upstairs at once to her daughter and whispered to her to say nothing, for the child was intelligent enough to grasp the urgency of the situation. As it was, Julia was likely to give the whole game away by saying innocently that the horses were in the stables yesterday evening when she had gone to give her pony a special tit-bit of sugar. That did not seem to have occurred to Anne in her concern for the child’s state of mind. As the sergeant came down the stairs again, Katherine moved forward.

  ‘I’ll fetch Julia.’

  Captain Harding levelled his sword at arm’s length and made a flicking movement with it to halt her hobbling pace and make her draw back again. ‘There’s no need for that. Let the child come down by herself in her own good time.’ He sheathed his sword again as Katherine obeyed him with a glare. He had good reason for his insistence. Children were guileless sources of information and nothing was to be gained by frightening them. Still less would be garnered if interfering old grandmothers were able to get to them first.

  After telling the sergeant to shut the entrance door, he stepped back a few paces in order to be in a more advantageous position to look up at the screen. The child could be seen like a small shadow against it. He smiled and spoke jovially to her. ‘Did you hear what I said, Julia? Come down here and join us as soon as you like. I’m sure you would prefer to be at your mother’s side than up there alone.’

  Anne added her persuasion. ‘Do as the Captain says, dearest.’ After a few moments she saw her daughter’s hand give a little wave through the screen and knew that her words had had effect. Only then did she remember that Julia was liable to plunge them all into terrible danger. She was helpless to do anything about it. Captain Harding had planted himself at the foot of the stairs in a manner that showed no-one should go up the flight until he had spoken to her child.

  Leaving the screen, Julia dried her eyes hastily on the back of her hands. Michael had told her it was babyish to shed tears and he wouldn’t have liked her to cry in front of enemy soldiers. Yet nothing could stop her weeping inside for the loss of her beloved pony. Everyone who loved horses knew they could get as homesick as people and she could not bear the thought of his being in strangers’ hands, perhaps ridden with a whip or used as a pack-pony until he dropped.

  She came slowly down the stairs, which were built around a well with short, easy flights with wide treads and many landings. A portrait of Queen Elizabeth hung on the wall of the lowest landing and now it glistened in a reflected shaft of sunlight from one of the hall windows which obliterated the gaze of the olive-dark eyes that appeared to look directly at anyone coming into the range of them. It was as if the Queen had shut her lids at this scene of greed and treachery against a fair house and would not open them again until these rough intruders were gone. />
  Captain Harding smiled when Julia came into sight. He had children of his own and although they were older, two of them wed, he knew that Julia was at an age when the truth was far more natural than deceit. It should not be difficult to find out from her all that he wanted to know. When she was just five stairs from the bottom he held up his hand for her to stay where she was.

  ‘That’s far enough for the moment.’ Setting his foot on a lower tread, he leaned an arm across his knee and smiled again at her. ‘I want you to answer a few questions for me. Will you do that, Julia?’

  She did not like him. His mouth was a row of big teeth, but his smile did not reach his hard and penetrating eyes. ‘Yes,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Good girl. Tell me, what is your favourite pastime?’

  ‘Being at Sotherleigh.’

  ‘That’s not quite what I meant. We all like to be at home. I’m a long way from mine and miss it very much. Do you like to play with dolls?’

  ‘Yes.’ Normally she was outgoing and would have spoken eloquently of her favourites, but she begrudged every word to this would-be stealer of horses.

  ‘Perhaps you like to draw?’ He received the same monosyllabic answer. ‘Can you sign your own name yet to your drawings?’

  She looked scornful. ‘I can read and write and cypher.’

  He feigned admiration for such talent by raising his eyebrows. ‘You’re very grown-up. I suppose you ride too?’ She gave him a nod, gulping on this sensitive subject. Anne and Katherine were on tenterhooks, able to see where the interrogation was leading. The child nodded. Then the next probing question came.

  ‘Have you a pony of your own?’

  Julia’s pent-up anguish rose perilously close to the surface. Her pony was still her property, no matter where he was now. ‘I have. He’s a chestnut with a white blaze.’ Her throat was choking. ‘That’s why I call him Starlight.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘With the other horses.’

  ‘And where are they?’

  ‘Taken by Roundhead thieves!’ She burst out in an explosion of fury and misery, thinking the culprits could only be associates of this man since he had come for the same purpose. ‘They take everything and spoil everything! Why can’t you kneel to the King and then my father and Starlight could come home again!’ She dived under his arm and rushed past him on her final words to hurl herself against her mother, wrapping her arms about her. Anne, almost thrown off balance, clutched at the newel-post to steady herself.

  Captain Harding felt his colour deepen in anger. He removed his foot from the stair and straightened up. The child’s spontaneous outburst had come from the heart and had been completely sincere, however roughly expressed. So his comrades had been here before him. It was unfortunate, for he was desperately short of horses, but at least they had gone to the right side. It was the second disappointment since late yesterday afternoon when one of his troopers had come running from an advance sortie to tell him there was a stableful of thoroughbreds at Sotherleigh’s neighbouring estate, Warrender Hall. He had thought mistakenly to find himself in luck. After setting a guard on the horses, he had discovered to his consternation that the late owner of the estate, Sir Harry Warrender, had been one of the strongest advocates in favour of increasing the powers of Parliament.

  To add to the embarrassment of the situation, the present Master of the Hall was Colonel John Warrender of the Parliamentary forces, who happened to have arrived home the day before. Any hope of an invitation to supper, over which two officers might have buried the matter, had come to nothing. What was worse, Colonel Warrender, irascible over the disturbing of his highly strung horses, had virtually snubbed a profuse apology.

  Angered by the rebuff, Harding had needed to give vent himself and had felt his vices rise up against his Puritan principles. Returning to the nearby city of Chichester, he had begun a tour of the taverns, looking for a landlord prepared to sell him more than a tankard of mild ale, there being a government ban on the sale of what was called ‘strong waters.’ It was known that the trade in bottles of spirit was still active in spite of ruthless measures to stamp it out, and it did not take him long to find an inn-keeper well used to being bribed by men like himself, who were committed to abstinence and yet found themselves overcome at times by a deep thirst and other urgent needs. With an armful of bottles he had taken a whore with him upstairs to one of the tavern rooms. There he had drunk too much, talked too much, and bedded the drab with all the pent-up lust of months of denial. He had also been swindled, for he thought he had paid her for the night, but she had left him long before midnight, slipping away when he had turned his back to piss into a chamberpot.

  He cleared his throat to deal further with this Royalist household. ‘You must teach your daughter more respect for the Commonwealth,’ he said brusquely to Anne, ‘particularly as Charles Stuart will soon be in chains.’

  ‘That is not a foregone conclusion,’ Katherine interjected icily.

  He curled his lip contemptuously, riled by this old woman who was able to get under his skin, then sternly addressed Anne again. ‘How long since the horses went?’

  She stared at him as if struck dumb. Until now she had avoided a direct lie and she knew a false answer would show all over her face. But she was saved by Katherine in the nick of time.

  ‘The pick of the stables was taken about eight years ago after your forces captured Arundel Castle and took the city of Chichester.’

  He nodded. That was plausible. He had been at both the siege of the city and the storming of the castle. Afterwards the orders had been to take only the best horses in the newly over-run district. ‘What of the rest?’

  ‘Those left to us were commandeered in full a few days ago.’

  Anne felt Julia’s head jerk in surprise against her at the lie and pressed her closer to smother any involuntary remark. To her overwhelming relief the Captain accepted her mother-in-law’s reply with a nod. He was not to know that Robert had replenished the stables during the time he was at home, and had taken the saddle-horses with him on his recent departure.

  ‘Very well.’ Captain Harding still saw no reason to doubt what he had been told, but he had to make sure no wool was being pulled over his eyes. Experience had taught him to follow on with the servants. He strolled over to the row of women and the kitchen lad. If one of them should be disgruntled, or not wholly with the Royalists, that was where he might learn something. He walked along the line, fixing each one in turn with a penetrating eye. Then he came to a halt.

  ‘Have any of you heard anything said since my arrival that goes against your conscience and for which every one of you will have to answer on the Day of Judgement?’

  They stared at him and shook their heads, all of them Royalists having strong personal reasons to be on their guard against him, either on religious grounds or because they were the daughters or sisters of the men who had followed the Master of Sotherleigh back to war. Joe Berry, the thirteen-year-old scullion, was an orphan with no political views stronger than his allegiance to the Pallister family, who had given him a home. To him it would have been the same if they had been Parliamentarians instead of Royalists, for he prided himself on knowing which side his bread was buttered. Square-bodied and short-legged, he had a plain face, impish and freckled, with an artfulness in the brown eyes, a vulgar breadth of nose and his hair a copper-red thatch. Having a keen sense of humour, he was hard put not to show his merriment at the game being played by the Pallister ladies. He would never have believed Mrs Pallister capable of standing up to this burly officer, who was studying him with gimlet eyes again. Quickly Joe shook his head as if to reaffirm that he had nothing to tell.

  The lack of response from the servants was no surprise to the Captain, but the feeling weighed in his guts that somehow this household had got the better of him. Well, he’d get the proverbial pound of flesh out of them anyway. To equalize matters he intended to be recompensed in kind for failing to achieve his purpose here
. He turned on Anne again, his whole attitude as belligerent as when he had first entered the house.

  ‘I don’t intend to leave empty-handed. Since you are unable to supply me with horses, I shall take valuables in lieu as compensation.’

  Anne was aghast. She unfolded herself from Julia’s arms and stepped towards him, flinging her hands wide. ‘But we have nothing left! Sotherleigh was ransacked on two occasions!’

  He knew this household would be of the Church of England or the Roman Catholic faith, neither of which was recognized by Parliament, having been officially abolished with the monarchy, the House of Lords and all the old pagan customs from maypole dancing to the celebration of Yuletide. There was every likelihood that some altar plate, previously concealed, would be in daily use since the old woman had spoken of rising early for her prayers.

  ‘Where is the chapel to this place?’ he demanded, ‘Indoors or located separately outside?’

  ‘Neither. This household has always worshipped at the local village church. You may search the house and the park if you don’t believe me.’ Too late Anne remembered with a sinking heart that Ridley might still be at the vital part of his task and if this officer thought that one thing was being concealed, he was likely to start poking about in every corner of the house. She sensed her mother-in-law’s exasperation at her foolishness and her clutched handkerchief rotated with the speed of a child’s windmill-on-a-stick in a high wind.

  ‘I take you to be a woman of honour, Mrs Pallister, and so I’ll not waste time looking for nonexistent altar plate. But what of your jewellery?’

  Already pale, she became ashen to the lips. She brought her left hand up to her chest and covered it protectively with her right. ‘Surely you would not take our wedding rings from us?’

  He sighed heavily. It might well be a case of scraping the barrel in a search of this house, but he had never yet stooped to taking wedding bands from women’s fingers and neither would he now. ‘No, set your mind at rest there. I cannot promise the house will be left tidy after the search, but it will be conducted in an orderly fashion for whatever items of value have been previously overlooked.’