Christie Dickason - The Lady Tree

As for Mistress Hazelton…Zeal curled a little tighter. Mistress Hazelton watched her with a curious little distant smile, no matter what she did. In the four years since her uncle Samuel Hazelton had bought her wardship, Zeal had tried not to worry about what she might be doing wrong, and not to see that Mistress Hazelton pinched her lips every time she spoke to her.

Her uncle only made things worse when he defended her. He let his wife see that he was amused by Zeal’s desire to learn Latin and by her questions about his business affairs (which were also her business affairs, as he had bought the use of her fortune along with her wardship). By the time, two years ago, that her uncle sent her to the boarding school in Hackney to improve her deportment, dancing and needlework, Zeal was worn out by trying.

I have anchored myself at last, she thought. When I have made myself the mistress, I will be able to choose my own way to be good or bad. Whether this place is good or bad, I shall make the best of it with a whole heart.

Outside the diamond-paned windows, the pale green tops of trees caught the morning sun. She uncurled and stretched again. The worn linen sheets slid smoothly against her skin. She spread her small pink toes like a cat stretching its paws and turned her head in the yielding welcome of the feather pillows. She now recognized the odd noise outside. It was the constant faint bleating of sheep.

Lady Beester. What a fuss everyone made about a title. It had even clamped a muzzle on Mistress Hazelton, for all her pious lip-curling at the lewd antics of the gentry. Again, Zeal smiled at the underside of the blue silk tester of her bed. What mattered was that Sir Harry Beester was her Harry.

He had appeared like a miracle, a very gentil parfait knight , and rescued her from the baying pack that had sniffed after her moderate fortune. Tall, handsome Harry, golden as Apollo, and kind. A little simple at times, but after six and a half years of being parcelled about, Zeal gave kindness its full weight in assaying the human soul.

Harry was also amusing. Though already twenty-two, he sometimes seemed her own age or younger. He did not scorn practical jokes or an occasional nostalgic game of hide-and-seek. He had never stuck his hand down her bodice to tweak her nipples, nor shoved his tongue into her mouth as other suitors had done. Most important of all, he had said that he quite understood how much having a child frightened her. He was in no rush for an heir. They could leave all that business until she was ready. He had sworn it in a solemn oath to her. In spite of her uncle’s dark objections that Harry was a fortune-hunter like all the others, Zeal felt she had made a good trade for her money.

She lay in the shadows of the huge bed, breathing softly, warm with a child’s first adult taste of the power of its own will. Harry would never regret his bargain either. She would be the most useful wife a man could want. She knew that he was disappointed in her as a social ornament, but she would startle him by how well she would manage Hawkridge House.

She eyed the unfamiliar objects of her chosen world and prepared to annex them. The pewter basin and jug on the table. A mirror. The end of a heavy carved oak coffer. The faded velvet-covered cushions on the bench fixed below the nearest window. The silvery-green trees outside.

She heard voices outside her windows as well as the bleating sheep. Her inventory of her new world suddenly leaped in length. Her peaceful warmth faded.

If I am going to be such a useful wife, I’d better make a start, she thought wryly.

She pushed down the quilted coverlet, slid across the acre of linen and lowered herself to the floor. Shivering, she looked around for a smock or robe. Her breath made a faint cloud in the chilly air. The rooms on the north side of the house were never warm in the morning until June.

Naked and on bare feet, she crossed to the window and peeked out. The paths of busy dairymaids, washing women, dogs, grooms, and chickens already criss-crossed the basse-court yard below. Harry’s cousin John strode purposefully across one corner of the courtyard, head down like a dog on an exciting scent. Mistress Margaret’s voice called through an open window.

A cold lump formed in Zeal’s stomach. The weight of her new world landed hard on her chest. She put her right foot on top of her left, to try to warm it.

All those people expect me to tell them what to do.

She remembered Mistress Margaret’s pinhole pupils and tight lips as she had welcomed Zeal to Hawkridge House.

She knows the house, knows exactly what to do and say here, and she’ll be waiting for my mistakes.

Zeal lifted the lid of the carved oak coffer. It was nearly empty except for some linen scraps. No clothes. Goose-pimples prickled her forearms, standing the fine gold down on end.

Do I have a maid to dress me here or do I dress myself, as at the school?

At the Hazeltons’ her woman Rachel had slept on a truckle bed in her room. Here she was alone. She dropped the lid of the coffer.

Has everyone already breakfasted? Do they eat in the dining chamber or their own rooms? How can I go call Rachel when I’m stark naked?

She put her left foot on top of her right.

I’m cold. And Mistress Margaret hates me. And I irritated Harry at dinner last night, our first in our new home.

She had felt skewered by glares at the table – Harry’s, Mistress Margaret’s and her aunt’s. There had been nowhere safe to look. Not even at Harry’s cousin, John Graffham, who had seemed so friendly when the coaches first arrived but then ignored her all through dinner.

She wrapped her arms across her full pink-nippled breasts. Both feet were now numb.

How did I think last night that I could manage all these people? I shall pay for my presumption. I’ll be punished for insisting on my own way. I’ll never figure out what is right and wrong here. I’ll never learn to run this place. Harry will be furious. His cousin will pity me. I’ll be miserable for the rest of my life.

She climbed back up onto the bed, pulled the quilt tightly up around her neck and stared into the folds of the hangings at the end of the bed. She would not cry! Her predicament was no one’s fault but her own. As so often before in her short life, she allowed herself a last brief moment of respite before she began to deal with whatever evil that life, the Good Lord and her own deserving might serve up next.

Her door opened.

‘Where would you like to breakfast, madam?’

Zeal was unreasonably pleased to see her maid Rachel, an over-pious young woman of twenty-six selected by Mistress Hazelton. This morning, the sulky, pock-marked Rachel was Zeal’s key to the newest set of unfamiliar rules. She could ask Rachel to bring what she could not find herself. Make her carry the weight of uncertainty. Zeal made her first decision as mistress of Hawkridge House.

‘I shall eat here,’ Zeal said firmly. ‘I like this room. Don’t you like this place, Rachel?’

Being in a strange house seemed to make Rachel, too, feel a greater warmth toward a familiar face. ‘It’s not as bad as I feared, madam.’

A little later, in smock, high-waisted jacket, stockings and mules, Zeal settled by the window with her bread, ale and cheese. She was feeling better. As Rachel helped her dress, Zeal had reminded herself that every new move had brought that same moment of helpless terror. Each time she shifted households she had wanted to die for the first day or two. Each time, she had pulled herself together and made the best of what was on offer. She had chosen this place and had no one but herself to blame if she failed here. She had Mistress Hazelton’s household as a model. She had prepared herself by months of study. She would ride this panic into calm as she had ridden the other panics.