Green Darkness (19 page)

Stephen was too exalted for sleep that night and was still joyful as he carried his lantern down the hill in the winter blackness and strode to Cowdray for six o’clock Mass. He did not remember warnings from the wise Abbot at Marmoutier that God seemed to have so willed it that ecstatic moments of communion and release were usually followed by rigorous trials. He officiated happily at the Mass, which was attended by all the servants, and in the lord’s gallery, a few of the highborn. Four ladies today.

There was little Lady Jane Browne, bride of a year, and five months pregnant. She looked ill. Her plain anxious face was haggard, her eyes dark-circled. Prayers for her safe delivery were always included. Beside Lady Jane there was the haughty young dowager, the late Sir Anthony’s widow whom Stephen had disliked immediately upon meeting her; and also the young Sir Anthony’s sixteen-year-old sister Mabel, a fat slothful girl given to snorts and giggles even at confession. She snuffled through the responses because of a cold, and toyed constantly with a new emerald bracelet.

There was also Ursula, who again cornered Stephen as he was leaving, to remind him that her niece would go up to his hut at noon. He had forgotten, and thanked her for the reminder. As he left he passed the chapel door and saw the “Dowager” Lady Browne sitting in a pew, and frowning with an odd intense expression on her painted face.

Ordinarily, Stephen would have hurried on—one of the old woodcutters was dying and had sent a request for the last rites.

But Geraldine Browne glimpsed him and called out imperiously, “Come here, Brother!”

Stephen entered the chapel and stood by the pew. “Yes, Lady?”

Geraldine turned up to his face her striking agate-blue eyes. Irish eyes, fringed with thick black lashes, but hard and opaque. They examined Stephen insolently.

“I wish you to deliver a message for me,” she said at last, drawing a sealed letter from the velvet pouch which dangled from her belt. “You appear more discreet than most of your ilk.”

Stephen flushed. The elder Sir Anthony’s widow seemed somewhere in her twenties. She was said to have been barely sixteen when she married the father. She had brassy hair, elaborately curled around her widow’s cap. Her skin was fine and very white beneath a coating of rouge and orris powder. Many men would consider her beautiful. She had been born Elizabeth Fitzgerald in Ireland, daughter to the ninth Earl of Kildare, but had taken the name Geraldine. Her childhood must have been as turbulent as her family’s fortunes, which rose to perferments and sank to attainders, imprisonment and executions, according to the changing Irish policies of King Henry and Wolsey.

Geraldine’s father had died in the Tower, accused of treason. Her half brother and five uncles had been hanged at Tyburn. Her brother, Gerald Fitzgerald, the rightful Earl of Kildare, was currently supposed to be lurking somewhere on his Irish estates in County Kildare, wondering what King Edward’s attitude would be under the Duke of Northumberland’s new power.

Stephen had heard some of the story, but had been able to feel neither interest nor sympathy in this woman, whose confessions were arrogant and perfunctory.

“Deliver a letter?” he asked warily. “And
discreetly?
An odd request, Lady. Surely one of the pages . . .”

“No,” she said compressing her lips. “Pages babble. I ask simply that you take this letter tonight at nine to the Close Walks, where a messenger will be waiting for you.”

Her tone annoyed him. Her demand for a servile act of complicity in some intrigue repelled him. “I am here,” said Stephen, “to fulfill my duties at Cowdray. I cannot see that this errand forms any part of them.”

“God’s blood!” Geraldine cried through her teeth. “You think my commands of no consequence? You will soon see differently. I’m the unconsidered dowager now—my family is ignored and I, too. But by the Rood, I vow this condition shall alter!”

“It may be so,” said Stephen shrugging. “If it be God’s will.”

Her stone-blue eyes gave him a look of fury, then the lids dropped. When she spoke her tone had changed, become throaty and coaxing. “Do you not know why I am called the ‘Fair Geraldine’? That the poor Henry Howard immortalized me in the beautiful lovesick sonnets now famous throughout England?”

She put her white be-ringed hand on his sleeve, paused, then quoted yet more softly:

Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast;

Her sire an earl; her dame of prince’s blood

From tender years in Britain she did rest

With King’s child where she tasted costly food . . . 

Her beauty of kind, her virtue from above

Happy is he that can obtain her love!

“That poetry and much more Lord Surrey wrote about
me,
” she said smiling.

“Fine verse, no doubt,” said Stephen curdy. “I have heard that Lord Surrey wrote sonnets to you, but so long ago, Lady, that surely you were then a mere child—unless rumor be false.”

Stephen had little knowledge of women, but recognized and recoiled from blatant feminine lure; and he had touched by instinct on a sensitive spot, for Geraldine had managed to conceal the thirtieth birthday soon approaching, as she hid the premature whitening of her red hair by secret chemical rinses.

“Forsooth, I
was
a child,” she said hotly, taking her hand from his arm. “You have scant manners, Brother Stephen.” Her voice rose higher. “I hate Cowdray, buried here in Sussex mud amongst these yokels. ’Twas bad enough when I was lady of the manor, but now—forced to yield place to that little meaching whey-faced Jane! But, no matter, I see remedies. And I
will
apply them.”

Stephen had no idea what she meant, nor cared. “I must hasten,” he said. “Old Peter Cobb, the woodhewer, is dying.” He bowed slightly, and hurrying from the chapel immediately forgot Lady Geraldine.

Down in the valley of the Rother, Cowdray Castle’s big bell clanged noon, Midhurst parish church following a chime behind. Stephen, in his hut on St. Ann’s Hill, mechanically repeated the office for the hour, then cut himself a slab of bread and cheese.

Peter Cobb had died upon receiving the rites, and Stephen was thinking of death, its dignity, its awesomeness, as he heard a timid knock on his wooden door.

He opened it and stared at the village girl in a russet wool gown and homespun shawl. Though it was confined on her head by a knotted linen kerchief, her yellow hair tumbled down her back to the waist. She looked up at him, and he felt a shock of puzzled recognition, a feeling that he knew, not the face, nor the shy look of the shimmering sea-blue eyes, but the person behind them.

“Lady Southwell, my aunt, said I might come,” she said nervously, twisting her chapped hands as he did not speak. “I’m Celia Bohun.”

“Aye—” murmured Stephen collecting himself. “We’ve met before, I think?”

She shook her head. “I seen ye once from a distance, crossing the Rother, as I went to Cowdray. I ne’er thought to meet ye, but Aunt Ursula, she told me to come up ’Tan’s Hill at noon.”

His attitude disconcerted her, he looked very black and forbidding as he stood with a hand on either door jamb, as though to bar the way inside, staring down at her with a frown.

“I can go back again,” she faltered, blushing. “I doan’t want to pester ye, Father.”

The February wind blew bitter from the Downs, and Stephen saw that she was shivering. “No, no,” he said brusquely. “Come in to the fire. I promised Lady Southwell I’d see you. And though I am a priest, Celia, I am also a monk. You should call me ‘Brother Stephen.’”

“Oh,” she said, still embarrassed. It seemed strange to call this pillar of dignity and obvious reluctance “Brother.” She followed him uncomfortably into his hut, where he prodded the burning oak log. He indicated the three-legged stool on the hearth.

“Sit down, child, and we will start with the state of your soul. Can you say the Creed?”

Celia moistened her lips, dismayed by his peremptory tone. “Not—not well,” she stammered. “Mother’d only take me to church Christmas an’ Easter, I forget . . .”

As he waited without speaking, she began hesitantly, “I believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and things vis—vis—”

Stephen shook his head. “In
English?
” he said sharply. “I know ’tis the law of this country at present, and the parish priest obeys, but it’s wrong, Celia. You must learn the Latin. Stand up!”

He clasped his hands and bowing towards the crucifix began reverently, “
Credo in unum Deum, Patrem omnipotentum factorem coeli et terrae . 
.
 .”

The sonorous words meant nothing to her, but she listened with startled pleasure to his beautiful voice, and joined his “Amen” in a whisper. He looked at her and suddenly smiled. The smile startled her, the flash of even white teeth, the upturning of his lips transformed his somber face.

She smiled back timidly, her eyes wide and rueful. “I could
never
learn that, B-Brother Stephen. It sounds like the organ music we had i’ the church when I was liddle. The King’s men smashed the pipes.”

“Aye . . .” Stephen sighed and motioned her to sit again.

She had been born just after the Dissolution, when King Henry was concentrating his attentions on the great monastic foundations—he had never been one to suppress music as did this new young King, who each year plunged deeper into fanatical Calvinism.

“But, Celia, you
can
and shall learn the true Credo, the
Pater Noster
and the
Ave Maria
; and I’ll teach you the catechism. We’ll have lessons. You can come noontimes.”

“If you like, sir . . .” she said uncertainly. The prospect seemed formidable. “Mostwhiles this hour I’m no greatly needed at the inn, for ’tis ’twixt the breakfast an’ dinner.”

“Very well, then.” He seated himself in the armchair. “Today we’ll find out what Lady Southwell has been able to teach you. Recite the alphabet!” Stephen had lost the flash of recognition and intimate knowledge of this child and settle himself to an obvious duty, but he was a good teacher and soon put her at ease. Her feelings of rebellion vanished and she answered readily. Time went fast until Stephen glanced at his hourglass and rose.

“Enough today. You’ve keen wits for so young a maid. We’ll soon astonish your aunt.”

“Thank ye, sir,” she said glowing. “I wish above all to please my Aunt Ursula, who’s so kind to me.”

Stephen inclined his head, thinking that perhaps Lady Southwell’s ambitious plans for the girl might yet be justified, and that it was agreeable to have the molding of a mind, while leading the spirit towards a state of grace.

As Celia turned to go she glimpsed the corner of the hut near the chapel and cried, “Oh-h—” seeing the small painting of the Virgin. She ran over to it, and her pink mouth fell open. “Who’s that?” she cried. “So beauteous. I ne’er saw a woman so comely. Is’t a picture of your mistress, sir? Do ye love her?”

Stephen stiffened. He flushed at the blasphemous implication. Celia looked up at him, puzzled, inquiring, until he suddenly realized the extent of her innocence and smiled.

“I adore Her,” he said quietly. “My poor child, that is the Blessed Virgin Mary. God’s Holy Mother.”

Celia blushed, seeing that she had said something foolish. “I’m sorry, Brother Stephen, I s’pose you couldn’t have a leman—to be sure, a priest
couldn’t,
I have heard so. Yet I didn’t know God’s Mother’d look like that.”

“Nobody knows how She looked on earth, but many painters have shown Her as they think of Her now—the Queen of Heaven.”

Celia nodded thoughtfully. “This painter believed She was fair-haired like me? And are Her eyes like mine? I’ve only seen my eyes once when I crept to the looking glass i’ the red velvet chamber at Cowdray. Aunt Ursula hurried me away.”

“Rightly so. You must never indulge in vanity!” Stephen spoke sharply because Celia’s long eyes
did
rather resemble those in the portrait, so did the color of the hair. He stood in front of the picture as though to shield it from desecration. “Go now,” he said.

She clutched her shawl around her. “I’ll be here on the morrow?”

He almost denied her, for an instant he wished never to see the girl again, but his duty restrained him. He had never in his life broken his word. “At noon,” he said, made a perfunctory blessing and turned away.

So began nearly six months ago Celia’s noontime visits to Stephen on the top of St. Ann’s Hill. He never admitted to himself that he looked forward to them with increasing fervor, and was disappointed when either his duties at Cowdray or hers at the inn prevented. He did not notice that she blossomed during this period, that her figure took on new curves, that her little face grew lovely. He permitted himself to rejoice in the quickness of her spiritual progress. She mastered the Latin creed and prayers he taught her, first by rote, earnestly repeating every word after him. Then he taught her to recognize many Latin words in his black-letter vellum missals. He also taught her simple arithmetic, and in the teachings gradually took the edge from her Sussex accent and grammar. Her ear was remarkably quick, and it never occurred to him that her progress was spurred on by anything but innate ability, or possibly her strain of gentle blood. Celia herself did not know why she was so eager to please him. She did know that she worked verv hard to win his rare warm smile of approval.

And sitting in the window seat of her aunt’s room on July 25 watching for the King to come, beneath the excitement of the occasion, she was acutely aware of Stephen’s present humiliation and danger. Sir Anthony dared take no risks. The presence at Cowdray of a Benedictine monk as house priest would certainly enrage the King or Northumberland’s spies. To leave Stephen on St. Ann’s Hill was scarcely safe. Many in the town knew that he lived there, and there were always malcontents whom the hope of silver might cause to tattle.