Midsummer's Eve Read online

  “No. There were skirmishes. Gallons of boiling oil must have been poured from those battlements. You can see the marks of the battering rams on the gate. But you’re right. No one succeeded. It would take more than brute force to get a footing in Cador.”

  “Then it is safe.”

  “Yes. Only cunning could find a way in.”

  “You’re proud of it, Papa.”

  “Aren’t you?”

  “Of course.”

  As we rode home he went on talking about the house, how one of the towers had been damaged during the Civil War when the King had sheltered there, for no Cadorson could ever be anything but a staunch royalist. Cadorsons had stood firmly beside Edward IV during the Wars of the Roses and had played a big part in that conflict.

  “Much of the history of England is written on this house, Annora. It’s something to be proud of.”

  Mr. Hanson came to dine with us frequently. Rolf did not return. There was always a great deal of talk over the dinner table and at this time there was trouble in various places. We were a backwater and sometimes seemed apart from the rest of the country, but as my father said, what happened in London would affect us all eventually.

  Jacco and I had taken the meal with our parents ever since we were out of the nursery. My mother said she had dined with her parents at an early age and she thought it was good for us to listen to adult conversation. We were delighted with the arrangement and I was sure she was right and we did profit from these occasions.

  Having stayed in the Capital, my father had returned with a greater awareness of what was going on. A year or so ago the old King had died. He had been ailing for a long time and was almost senile. He had been dominated by his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, who was rather a sinister character and had been suspected of trying to murder the little Princess Victoria who was living with her forceful mother at Kensington Palace.

  All these scandals and intrigues fascinated me. I daresay a great deal of it was exaggerated but it did give me an interest in what was going on in the country.

  As soon as the old King died, Cumberland was dismissed by the new monarch, William IV, who had married the Princess Adelaide and they were shortly to be crowned.

  “Perhaps we will go to London for the coronation,” said my father.

  “There’s a lot of trouble up there, I believe,” said Lawyer Hanson.

  “Oh yes,” replied my father. “It’s due to this Reform Bill. And not only that. There is unrest everywhere among the working classes. They are determined to revolt and form unions against the employers. My wife’s relation, Peter Lansdon, is right at the centre of it.”

  “Oh, that Peter Lansdon,” said the lawyer. “If he goes on as he is now he could be Prime Minister in due course.”

  “Peter is a very ambitious man and seems to succeed in everything he touches.”

  There had always been a lot of talk about Peter Lansdon. The family connection was rather complicated, which was mainly due to the fact that Grandfather Dickon had married Grandmother Lottie late in life when he already had two sons by a previous marriage. My mother’s half-brother, David, was the father of Amaryllis, so my mother was almost the same age as she was and they had been brought up together more like sisters than niece and aunt. It was always difficult to explain these relationships to people.

  It was Amaryllis who had married Peter Lansdon, and their children were Peterkin and Helena, who were sort of second cousins to me.

  However, Peter Lansdon was a very colourful character. He was an enormously successful businessman. He exported rum and bananas, I think from Jamaica, where he had spent his childhood. Having succeeded magnificently in business, he had turned his attention to politics and, as was to be expected, he rapidly began to make himself heard.

  My mother had a great aversion to him. She never spoke of this but I could see how she felt whenever his name was mentioned; then a certain stony expression would creep across her face and she would become very silent.

  The rest of the family admired him; and Jacco and I thought it exciting to have a relation whose name appeared in the papers now and then and of whom it was said that he might one day hold the highest post in the Government.

  “Peter thinks there will have to be reform,” my father was saying. “Not only with franchise but with the workers. He thinks it would be better to placate them now than to have them forming societies which will attempt to force employers to do what they want.”

  The lawyer nodded gravely. “All very well,” he said, “but the more these people get, the more they will want.”

  “They haven’t very much at the moment,” my father reminded him.

  My mother said: “I don’t think workers on the land realize how lucky they are when they have a benign squire who is prepared to look after them.”

  Mr. Hanson agreed. “They have that and at first they are grateful. But people grow accustomed to what they have and start to want more. It’s a difficult situation. If they are given more, mark my words … once they get it they will want more and more.”

  “What is generally known as the vicious circle,” I put in.

  Everyone looked at me and my father smiled. “You have hit the nail on the head, Annora,” he said.

  Rolf came back in August. I was riding with my father when we met him. He looked no different and smiled at me in that warmly affectionate way as though everything was as it had always been.

  He told us that he was interested in a house his friend’s family were buying. They were restoring it and he had been helping them to make decisions. It had meant exploring old records, for the place was very run-down and much of the original character was in danger of being lost.

  It was hard to believe that he was the same person who had leaped over the bonfire and led the mob to destroy an old woman.

  He came to dine with us and the talk was all about the Reform Bill and the unrest among the workers. Then it turned back to property and Mr. Hanson’s desire to buy more land. He talked with pride about the pheasants they were breeding in their woods. “We’ll have a good shoot this autumn,” said Mr. Hanson proudly.

  “Luke is determined on that,” said Rolf.

  “Still giving satisfaction, that fellow of yours?” asked my father.

  “Couldn’t be better,” Mr. Hanson told him.

  “I can see Lawyer Hanson will soon be becoming Squire Hanson,” said my father.

  “Our place will never be a Cador,” said Rolf regretfully.

  “But yours is a wonderful old house,” my mother consoled him, “and you’re making an excellent job of the reconstruction. That staircase of yours is magnificent.”

  “Put in for Queen Elizabeth,” said Mr. Hanson. “Rolf tells me those carvings of the Tudor roses and the fleur-de-lys are the best of their kind.”

  “But you are the lucky ones,” said Rolf, “to live in a place like this and know your ancestors have been there through the ages. That makes a difference.”

  Rolf was not the only one who was interested in Cador. I discovered someone else who was and I must say that was a surprise.

  October had come. All through September there had been talk of the Fair. On the first and second of October St. Matthew’s Fair was held in the marketplace in East Dorey. Jacco and I had been taken often when we were young, usually by one of the grooms. We had bought comfits and gingerbread; we had seen the fat woman and the bearded lady; we had had our fortunes told by Rosa the Gypsy; we had done it all.

  Now that I was nearly twelve and Jacco was fourteen we felt ourselves to be too sophisticated for these simple pleasures and, rather condescendingly, said we did not want to go.

  The servants, of course, would all go. They had been talking about “Matthey’s Fair” for weeks. Even Mrs. Penlock liked to have her fortune told.

  My parents were out visiting and would not be home until late; Miss Caster was taking tea at the vicarage. I think the general idea was that I was going somewhere with Jacco; he, however, h
ad other plans.

  Thus it was that on that October day the house was deserted, and I realized that it was very rarely that I found myself alone there. In a house like Cador—even though it has always been one’s home—one is very much aware of the antiquity, of the intruding presence of another age when there is no one around to remind one that it is the present day.

  I had been reading in my bedroom and decided that I would go for a ride. I would go and look at the Hansons’ wood, of which they were so proud. It was about half the size of ours, a fact which I knew Rolf deplored. He had said: “One day our woods will rival yours.” I wanted to see him, to force myself to talk with him about that night. But somehow I had always held back. I think in my heart I was trying to pretend he had not been there and sometimes I almost succeeded in convincing myself that this was so. Suppose I talked to him. Suppose he admitted what I suspected, that it had been one of his experiments. I did not want my feelings for Rolf to change. But I feared they would. I feared they had. I was rather bewildered and I seemed to be more so every day. If only it had been someone else, someone I did not care about. I found it very hard to stop caring about Rolf.

  I was trying to shake off these thoughts as I came through the solarium, and as I did so I had the eerie feeling that I was not after all alone in the house. How is it that one is aware of a presence? An unexpected movement? A footstep? The creaking of a door? Was it being stealthily opened?

  These thoughts crowded into my mind as I went to the peep in the alcove and looked down on the hall.

  It looked the same as usual. There was the long table at which Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers had sat when they came searching for the King; the weapons on the wall which had been used by Cadorsons long since dead; the family tree spreading out on the wall … everything that I had seen many times and grown up with.

  And yet there was that uncanny feeling that someone was there. Then I saw him. From beyond the screens he came stealthily, looking about him with a kind of wonder: Digory.

  What was he doing in the house?

  I watched him for some time. He examined the family tree; then he came to the wall and very reverently touched the weapons; he turned to the table and picking up one of the pewter goblets, examined it closely, put it down and stood for a moment staring rapturously at the vaulted roof. Then he began to tiptoe cautiously up the stairs.

  I was at the top of the staircase when he reached it.

  “Hello, Digory,” I said.

  He stared at me silently, a look of blank dismay on his face. Then he spluttered indignantly, “Why don’t ’ee be at the Fair?”

  “Because,” I said, “I remained at home. I had no idea, of course, that you intended to pay a visit.”

  He turned and was about to dash down the stairs but I caught his arm.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “You looked as though you liked the place.”

  “I weren’t doing no wrong.”

  “I didn’t say you were. Why aren’t you at the Fair?”

  He looked contemptuous.

  “You preferred to come to Cador,” I said. “You do like it, don’t you?”

  “It ain’t bad at all.”

  “I remember in the woods you used to ask me about it. You wanted to know all the details.”

  I saw the shadow cross his face and I reproached myself. He would probably be remembering that in those days he had a granny and a home.

  I said gently: “I’m glad you like this house, Digory. I’m glad you came in. I’m going to take you round and show you everything.”

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  “It’s all right,” I assured him. “You know I’m your friend … Jacco too.”

  He relaxed a little.

  I said: “Do you like working in the stables?”

  He shrugged his shoulders.

  I remembered a bird I had once seen. Jacco had found it when it fell from its nest. We fed it. I kept it in a cage. It seemed content for a while; then it started to flap its wings against the bars. I opened the door and set it free. Digory was like a caged bird. He was well fed, he was safe, but he was not free.

  “I’m going to show you the house,” I said.

  He tried not to look excited but he could not hide his feelings from me.

  “Come on,” I said. “We’ll begin at the bottom and go right to the top.”

  “All right,” he said.

  “There’s a dungeon down there. Would you like to see it?”

  We came through the kitchens and descended a short spiral staircase.

  “It’s very cold down here. Mrs. Penlock uses it as a place to store things. That’s very different from the old days.”

  We made our way past shelves upon which stood jars and bottles, and we came through a narrow passage to the dungeon with its iron gate.

  “You can look in,” I said.

  “There’s nobody in there,” said Digory as though disappointed.

  “Of course not. People don’t put their enemies in dungeons nowadays.”

  “Some might,” he retorted grimly; and again I saw the memory of that night in his eyes.

  “Not now,” I insisted firmly and I thought: I was wrong to bring him down here.

  “Let’s go up,” I said. “It’s cold down here.”

  So we went through the kitchens, past the ovens which had done service for hundreds of years, past the roasting spits and the great coppers, through the buttery to the laundry rooms. Then up to the great hall.

  I talked to him about the wars which had beset the country and told him what part my family had played in them. I took him to the dining room and explained what the tapestries on the walls were depicting. He listened in rapt attention, which surprised me. I talked of the Wars of the Roses and the Great Rebellion, that conflict between Cavalier and Roundhead which had rent the country. I felt like Miss Caster giving a history lesson, but he was interested; he wanted to know.

  I showed him the solarium and peeps, which fascinated him; he stood, for a long time, looking down into the hall and then the chapel. I took him to the turrets and we went out and walked along the battlements. I would not have believed that a house could have made such an impression on him. But then it was a wonderful house; it had been kept in good order over the centuries; it had been loved and cherished; and although it had been restored from time to time, there had been great care not to destroy the antiquity. That now seemed all around us. Perhaps it was due to the fact that we were alone in it, but as I talked to him I had the feeling that we were two young people walking back through the centuries.

  He had had no schooling; I suppose he had never heard of the events to which I referred before, but he was fascinated by them; and now and then would ask a pertinent question.

  We stood for a while looking out to sea.

  “Just imagine, Digory,” I said, “from out there Cador would have looked just the same five hundred years ago. Isn’t that wonderful?”

  “How do you know?” he demanded. “You wasn’t here.”

  “No. But it hasn’t changed so it must have been the same.”

  He looked steadily at me and said: “You’ve got the Devil’s kiss on your forrid.”

  I put up my hand. His was there before mine. He touched the side of my temple just beside my left eye. I knew what he meant; it was a little mole. My father called it my beauty spot.

  I had never thought very much about it.

  “What do you mean—the Devil’s kiss?” I asked.

  “They do say that’s how it be when the Devil kisses ’ee.”

  “What nonsense. I have never even met the gentleman—let alone been kissed by him.”

  “He do come in the night when you be sleeping.”

  “What a horrible thought! It’s a mole. My father likes it. He says it’s attractive. Who says it is anything to do with the Devil?”

  “Them,” he said; and again there was that look of hideous memory in his eyes. “Them says as how it’s the Devil as do
es it.”

  “I’m not afraid of them.”

  Again I had spoken rashly. He had been afraid of them; and so should I have been in his place on that terrible night.

  I felt very sorry for him. I put a hand on his shoulder. “Listen, Digory,” I said. “We’ve got to forget all about that. It’s over. It was cruel. It was horrible. But it’s done and nothing can be done to change it.”

  He was silent, staring ahead, seeing it all, I knew; and I was seeing it with him. I could almost smell the burning thatch.

  “We’ve got to go on from there, Digory,” I said. “You’ve got to get used to the stables. You’re fond of the horses and it’s good to work with what you love. Ferry is kind to you, isn’t he? My father insists that he should be. It’s a better way of life … to be part of a household like this … better than running round stealing fish. You could get caught.”

  He shook his head.

  “Yes, you might, Digory. If there’s anything that bothers you, you only have to tell us … tell me or Jacco. We’ll always help if we can.”

  He looked blankly at me and there was still in him that which reminded me of the caged bird.

  He said: “Tell you what. I’ll get rid of your Devil’s kiss.”

  I put my hand to my temple.

  “Oh, it’s all right, Digory. It doesn’t bother me. My father says that when I grow older I’ll call attention to it. Blacken it to make it stand out and make people notice my eyes.”

  “There’s them,” he said.

  And he meant that frenzied mob.

  I could see that he wanted to attempt to charm away my mole and that this was his way of showing appreciation for what I had done for him. “Never brush aside people’s attempts to repay you,” my mother had said. “You may not want repayment but their pride demands that they should give it. Do take it graciously.”

  I saw what she meant now.

  “All right, Digory,” I said. “You shall charm away my mole.”

  We came into the turret and went down through the house. Every now and then he would pause and gaze wonderingly about him. I was pleased and felt I had seen a new side to his nature; he might be uneducated but he had an eye for beauty. He seemed to find it difficult to tear himself away from the tapestries and I had to tell him again about the wars which had inspired them.