who had died within eight days of his old father, supposedly of smallpox, and about whom the Parliamentarian Rob Bennett had spread his poison rumour.
We then went below the archway, and I schooled myself to an introduction to the Rashleigh cousins. They were all assembled in the long gallery, a great dark-panelled chamber with windows looking out on to the court and also eastward to the gardens.
There were fireplaces at either end, with the Sawles seated before the first and the Sparkes circled round the other, glaring at one another like animals in a cage, while in the centre of the gallery my sister Mary held the balance with her other stepdaughter Elizabeth, who was twice a Rashleigh, having married her first cousin a mile away at Coombe. John propelled me up the gallery and with fitting solemnity presented me to the rival factions.
There were but two Sawles to three Sparkes, and my godchild Joan had made a pun upon their names, saying that what the Sparkes possessed in flame the Sawles made up in soul. They were indeed a dour, forbidding couple, old Nick Sawle doubled up with rheumatics and almost as great a cripple as I was myself, while Temperance, his wife, came of Puritan stock, as her name suggested, and was never without a prayer book in her hand. She fell to prayer as soon as she observed me--God knows I had never had that effect before on man or woman--and when she had finished asked me if I knew that we were all of us, saving herself, damned to eternity. It was a startling greeting, but I replied cheerfully enough that this was something I had long suspected, whereupon she proceeded to tell me in a rapid whisper, with many spiteful glances at the farther fireplace, that anti-Christ was come into the world. I looked over my shoulder and saw the rounded shoulders of Will Sparke engaged in a harmless game of cribbage with his sisters.
"Providence has sent you amongst us to keep watch," hissed Temperance Sawle, and while she tore to shreds the characters of her cousins, piece by piece, her husband, Nick Sawle, droned in my left ear a full account of his rheumatic history, from the first twinge in his left toe some forty years ago to his present dire incapacity to lift either elbow above the perpendicular. Half stupefied, I made a signal to John, who propelled me to the Sparkes--two sisters and a brother--Will being one of those unfortunate high-voiced old fellows with a woman's mincing ways, whom I felt instinctively must be malformed beneath his clothes. His tongue seemed as two edged as his cousin Temperance's, and he fell to jesting with me at once about the habits of the Sawles, as though I were an ally. Deborah made up in masculinity what her brother lacked, being heavily moustached and speaking from her shoes, while Gillian, the younger sister, was all coy prettiness in spite of her forty years, bedecked with rouge and ribbons and having a high thin laugh that pierced my eardrums like a sword.
"This dread war," said Deborah in bass tones, "has brought us all together," which seemed to me a hollow sentiment, as none of them were on speaking terms with one another, and while Gillian praised my looks and my gown I saw Will, out of the tail of my eye, make a cheating move upon the cribbage board.
The air seemed purer somehow in the gatehouse than in the gallery, and after I had visited the apartments of Alice and Joan and Elizabeth, and watched the rompings of the children and the kicking of the babies, I was thankful enough to retire to my own chamber and blissful solitude. Matty brought me my dinner--this being a privilege to which I clung--and was full of gossip, as was her nature, about the servants in the house and what they said of their masters.
Jonathan, my brother-in-law, was respected, feared, but not much loved. They were all easier when he was from home. He kept an account of every penny spent, and any servant wasting food or produce was instantly dismissed. Mary, my sister, was more liked,
We then went below the archway, and I schooled myself to an introduction to the Rashleigh cousins. They were all assembled in the long gallery, a great dark-panelled chamber with windows looking out on to the court and also eastward to the gardens.
There were fireplaces at either end, with the Sawles seated before the first and the Sparkes circled round the other, glaring at one another like animals in a cage, while in the centre of the gallery my sister Mary held the balance with her other stepdaughter Elizabeth, who was twice a Rashleigh, having married her first cousin a mile away at Coombe. John propelled me up the gallery and with fitting solemnity presented me to the rival factions.
There were but two Sawles to three Sparkes, and my godchild Joan had made a pun upon their names, saying that what the Sparkes possessed in flame the Sawles made up in soul. They were indeed a dour, forbidding couple, old Nick Sawle doubled up with rheumatics and almost as great a cripple as I was myself, while Temperance, his wife, came of Puritan stock, as her name suggested, and was never without a prayer book in her hand. She fell to prayer as soon as she observed me--God knows I had never had that effect before on man or woman--and when she had finished asked me if I knew that we were all of us, saving herself, damned to eternity. It was a startling greeting, but I replied cheerfully enough that this was something I had long suspected, whereupon she proceeded to tell me in a rapid whisper, with many spiteful glances at the farther fireplace, that anti-Christ was come into the world. I looked over my shoulder and saw the rounded shoulders of Will Sparke engaged in a harmless game of cribbage with his sisters.
"Providence has sent you amongst us to keep watch," hissed Temperance Sawle, and while she tore to shreds the characters of her cousins, piece by piece, her husband, Nick Sawle, droned in my left ear a full account of his rheumatic history, from the first twinge in his left toe some forty years ago to his present dire incapacity to lift either elbow above the perpendicular. Half stupefied, I made a signal to John, who propelled me to the Sparkes--two sisters and a brother--Will being one of those unfortunate high-voiced old fellows with a woman's mincing ways, whom I felt instinctively must be malformed beneath his clothes. His tongue seemed as two edged as his cousin Temperance's, and he fell to jesting with me at once about the habits of the Sawles, as though I were an ally. Deborah made up in masculinity what her brother lacked, being heavily moustached and speaking from her shoes, while Gillian, the younger sister, was all coy prettiness in spite of her forty years, bedecked with rouge and ribbons and having a high thin laugh that pierced my eardrums like a sword.
"This dread war," said Deborah in bass tones, "has brought us all together," which seemed to me a hollow sentiment, as none of them were on speaking terms with one another, and while Gillian praised my looks and my gown I saw Will, out of the tail of my eye, make a cheating move upon the cribbage board.
The air seemed purer somehow in the gatehouse than in the gallery, and after I had visited the apartments of Alice and Joan and Elizabeth, and watched the rompings of the children and the kicking of the babies, I was thankful enough to retire to my own chamber and blissful solitude. Matty brought me my dinner--this being a privilege to which I clung--and was full of gossip, as was her nature, about the servants in the house and what they said of their masters.
Jonathan, my brother-in-law, was respected, feared, but not much loved. They were all easier when he was from home. He kept an account of every penny spent, and any servant wasting food or produce was instantly dismissed. Mary, my sister, was more liked,
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