The Forest (88 page)

‘I think, Sir,’ Edward addressed Mr Albion with a charming smile, ‘that Louisa and I shall beg you, if the weather is fine, to let us steal our cousin Fanny from you for an hour or two tomorrow.’

‘Oh?’ Mr Albion looked up quite sharply. ‘What for?’

‘We mean to visit Beaulieu.’

For a second, not even that, a tiny shadow might have appeared on Louisa’s face, but in an instant it was gone. ‘Oh, yes!’ she cried. ‘Do let Fanny join us. We shall not, I’m sure,’ she declared, ‘be gone for more than half the day.’ And she gave Mr Albion a smile that really should have melted him, had he not looked away.

‘Beaulieu?’ They might have announced an intention to travel up to Scotland. ‘Beaulieu? That’s a long way.’

No one quite liked to point out that it was scarcely more than four miles from where they were, but Edward, to his credit and with a pleasant laugh, remarked: ‘Scarcely further than we have come to see you today. We’ll be there and back in no time.’

Mr Albion looked doubtful. ‘With my sister away and in
my state of health …’ He shook his head, frowning. ‘There’s no one else to take care of matters …’

‘You have Mrs Pride, Sir,’ said Edward.

But this interference in his domestic arrangements did not suit Mr Albion at all. ‘Mrs Pride has nothing to do with it,’ he snapped.

‘I think’, Fanny interposed gently, not wanting to see her father upset, ‘that it would be better, Edward, if I remained here.’

‘There,’ Mr Albion said crossly, yet with a triumphant gleam in his eye. ‘She doesn’t even want to go.’

This was so outrageous that Martell, who was not used to being crossed himself, could scarcely remain in passive silence. ‘You will permit me to observe, Sir,’ he said quietly but firmly, ‘that a brief excursion might benefit Miss Albion.’

Had this intervention done any good? For a second or two, as Mr Albion sat, his head momentarily sunk down in his cravat, in total silence, it was impossible to tell. But then, suddenly, it became all too clear. The old man’s head shot up on its stalk so that he suddenly looked like an enraged old turkey. The neck might be withered but the startling blue eyes were blazing. ‘And you will permit
me
to observe, Sir,’ he shouted, ‘that my daughter’s health is none of your concern. I am not aware, Sir, that the arrangement of this house has passed into your hands. To the best of my knowledge, Sir’ – and now he raised his silver-topped stick and drove it down into the floor with all his force, to accentuate each word – ‘I – am – still – master – of – this – house!’

‘I had no doubt of it, Sir,’ answered Martell, flushing, ‘and I had no wish to offend you, Sir, but merely …’

Mr Albion, however, was no longer of a mind to listen. He was white with rage. ‘You
do
offend me. And you will oblige me, Sir’ – he spat out the words with venom – ‘if you make your observations in some other place. You will oblige
me
, Sir’ – he seemed to be struggling to rise from his chair now, grasping the arm with one hand and the stick with the other – ‘if you will leave this
house!
’ This last word was almost a shriek as, unable to get up, he fell back into the chair and began a gasping cough.

Fanny, now white herself and obviously fearing her father was about to have an apoplexy, gave Martell an imploring look and, with some hesitation – in case Mr Albion really was having a fit and Fanny in need of assistance – he backed into the hall, followed by Edward and Louisa. Mrs Pride, by now, had already miraculously appeared and, having inspected her employer, signalled to the visitors that it was safe to retire.

Once outside, Edward shook his head with some amusement. ‘Not a great success, I fear, as a visit.’

‘No.’ Martell was still too surprised to say much. ‘That is the first time’, he remarked wryly, ‘that I have ever been thrown out of someone’s house. But I fear for poor Miss Albion.’

‘Poor, dear Fanny,’ said Louisa. ‘I shall go back there this afternoon, Edward, with mother.’

‘Well done, Louisa,’ her brother said approvingly.

‘They say there’s bad blood in the Albion family,’ continued Louisa sadly. ‘I suppose that’s what it is. Poor Fanny.’

An hour later, after she had helped Mr Albion to his room and sat with Fanny while she wept, Mrs Pride slipped out of the house and made her way across to Mr Gilpin’s.

The weather was perfect the following morning when Edward and Louisa set out with Mr Martell. Unfortunately, because Mrs Totton was already engaged, Louisa had been unable to go back to see her cousin; but she had sent Fanny a most loving letter, which the groom had taken across that very same afternoon, so her conscience was clear.

She really felt quite cheerful, therefore, as the carriage bowled up the turnpike towards Lyndhurst where they meant to pause briefly before crossing the heath. Mr Martell was in a conversational mood. It was very agreeable, of course, to be asked questions so attentively. Although always polite, she noticed that if Martell became interested in a subject he would pursue it, at least in his own mind, with a relentless thoroughness that she had not encountered before but which, she acknowledged to herself, was proper in a man.

‘I see, Mr Martell,’ she remarked upon one occasion, ‘that you insist upon knowing things.’ And this he acknowledged with a laugh.

‘I apologize, my dear Miss Totton, it’s my nature. Do you find it disagreeable?’

He had never addressed her as ‘dear Miss Totton’ before, nor asked her opinion of his character.

‘Not at all, Mr Martell,’ she said with a smile that had just a hint of seriousness in it. ‘To be truthful, no one in conversation ever asked me to think very much before. Yet when you issue such a challenge, I find it to my liking.’

‘Ah,’ he said, and seemed both pleased and thoughtful.

The village of Lyndhurst had changed very little since the Middle Ages. The forest court still met there. The King’s House, somewhat enlarged, with a big stable block opposite and extensive fenced gardens on the slope behind, was still essentially the royal manor and hunting lodge it had always been. There were two gentlemen’s houses in the near vicinity, one called Cuffnell’s, the other Mount-royal; but Lyndhurst’s scattering of cottages only really amounted to a hamlet. The status of the place was signalled rather by the fine church which, replacing the ancient royal chapel, had been erected on Lyndhurst’s highest piece of ground beside the King’s House and could be seen like a beacon for several miles around.

They paused only briefly at the King’s House before
going to look at the racetrack. This was an informal affair, laid out on a large expanse of New Forest lawn, north of Lyndhurst. There were no permanent stands: in the usual manner of the age, people watched the races from carriages and carts if they wanted a better view.

‘One of the attractions here’, Edward explained, ‘is the New Forest pony races. You’d be amazed how fast they can run and they’re wonderfully sure-footed. You must come back for a race meeting, Martell.’ And something about the look on Martell’s face told Louisa that he probably would.

They set out for Beaulieu now. The lane to the old abbey, which ran south-east across open heath, left Lyndhurst from just below the racetrack. In so doing, it passed by two most curious sights, which immediately engaged Martell’s attention. The first was a great, grassy mound.

‘It’s known’, Edward explained, ‘as Bolton’s Bench.’

It was the great Hampshire magnate the Duke of Bolton who, early in the century, had decided to take the little mound where once old Cola the Huntsman had directed operations and raise it into a great mound that overlooked the whole of Lyndhurst. The duke was well known for these sweeping alterations to the landscape. Elsewhere in the Forest he had arbitrarily blazed a huge straight drive through miles of ancient woodland because he thought it would make a pleasing ride for himself and his friends. But what struck Martell even more than Bolton’s man-made hill was the great grassy earth wall that stretched across the landscape just beyond it.

‘That’s the Park Pale,’ said Edward. ‘They used it once for catching deer.’

The huge deer trap where Cola the Huntsman had once directed operations was still an awesome sight. Enlarged even further some five centuries before, its earthwork wall strode across the landscape for almost two miles, before making a mighty sweep round into the woods below Lyndhurst. In the clear morning sunshine the great empty
ruin might have been some prehistoric inclosure in a genteel world; yet the deer of the Forest were still there, men still hunted; only the turnpike road nearby and the church on Lyndhurst rise had altered the place since medieval days. And who knew, as they gazed at the earthwork in silence, if suddenly a pale deer might not appear from beside the green hill of Bolton’s Bench and run out across the open ground?

It was at this moment that they heard a merry cry from behind them and turned to see a small open chaise coming round the track behind Bolton’s Bench; inside it sat the sturdy figure of Mr Gilpin, who was waving his hat cheerfully. Beside him was a curly-haired boy. And on the other side of the boy sat Fanny Albion.

‘Oh,’ said Louisa.

They all walked into the abbey together. Mr Gilpin was in high good humour.

He had been surprised by Mrs Pride the housekeeper’s call the day before, yet rather intrigued and delighted to do something to help Fanny. He quite agreed with her that Miss Albion needed to go out with her cousins, especially after the behaviour of old Francis Albion. But he pointed out to her that, if the old man continued in his present mood, it would scarcely be possible to extract Fanny.

But while Mrs Pride acknowledged that this was true, she also assured him: ‘Some days, Sir, Mr Albion sleeps right through the day and would not even know if Miss Albion were out.’

‘You think tomorrow might be such a day, do you?’ the vicar asked.

‘He was so excited this afternoon, Sir, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

‘I do believe’, the amused Mr Gilpin remarked to his wife, after Mrs Pride had gone, ‘that she’s going to drug him.’

‘Is that proper, my dear?’ his wife asked.

‘Yes,’ said Mr Gilpin.

So he had set off very cheerfully that morning in his light two-wheeled chaise. Calling at the school on the way, he had also collected the Furzey boy. He knew he shouldn’t, but the child had such a sparkling intelligence that it was almost impossible to resist the temptation to educate him.

Arriving at Albion House, he found Mr Albion sunk in a profound sleep and, tempted yet again, sent up a secret plea to God that the old man’s sleep might be eternal. Fanny, however, proved more of a problem. It was not so much the fear of leaving her father that worried her, but the prospect of encountering Mr Martell after what she felt had been her humiliation the day before.

‘My dear child,’ the vicar assured her, ‘there was no humiliation whatsoever. Although quite unjustified, I gather that for a man of his age, your father put up rather a fine display.’

‘But that Mr Martell should meet such a reception in our house …’

‘My dear Fanny,’ remarked Gilpin shrewdly, ‘Mr Martell has people fawning upon him wherever he goes. He will have relished the change. Besides,’ he added, ‘I don’t even know for certain that your cousins will have carried out their intention of going to Beaulieu at all. So you may have only me and young Furzey for company. Pray come along, for I have a letter to deliver up at Lyndhurst on the way.’

He insisted, now, upon walking beside the two Tottons, leaving Fanny and Mr Martell to follow.

If Fanny felt a sense of embarrassment after yesterday’s events, Mr Martell was able to dispel it. Indeed, he made a great joke of the business, said that he’d never been thrown out of a house before but no doubt would be many times in future. ‘Indeed, Miss Albion, your father reminded me very much of my own although, if we could set the two of them to fight each other, like two old knights in a tournament, I think your father might prevail.’

‘You are kind, Sir, for I do confess’, she owned, ‘that I felt mortified.’

Martell considered. It was not her mortification that he remembered from the day before. It was her pale form advancing across the hall, her air of inner sadness, even tragedy, his own desire, perhaps scarcely realized at the time, to protect her. Yet here she was, flushed with the ride in the morning air, warm flesh and blood, very much so. Two images in a single person, two aspects of a soul: interesting. He would see if he could not keep the tragic shade at bay.

‘Ah,’ he continued cheerfully, ‘if only we could all control our parents. But when they flash, you know, your father’s eyes are very fine.’ He glanced down at her, somewhat searchingly. ‘As indeed are yours, Miss Albion. You have your family’s wonderful blue eyes.’

What could she say, or do, but blush? He smiled. She had never seen him so warm.

‘I believe your family is very ancient in the Forest,’ he went on.

‘We say we are Saxon, Mr Martell, and that we had estates in the Forest before the Normans came.’

‘Dear heaven, Miss Albion, and we Normans came and stole from you? No wonder you throw us out of your houses!’

‘I think, Mr Martell’ – she laughed – ‘that you came and conquered us.’ And without especially meaning to, as she said the words ‘conquered us’, she looked up into his eyes.

‘Ah.’ He gazed straight back, as though the thought of conquest had suddenly struck him too, and their eyes remained looking into each other’s for several moments before he looked thoughtfully away. ‘We old families’, he said with a hint of intimacy that seemed like a comforting cloak around her shoulders, ‘perhaps dwell upon the past too much. And yet …’ He glanced in the direction of the Tottons in a way that suggested that, although fine enough
people, there were things that a Martell or an Albion could never quite share with them. ‘I think we belong to the land in ways that others do not.’