Page 5 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

R elentless rain has bedevilled the autumn.

Meadows slide into mire, root vegetables rot in the ground.

The last late fruits are hanging on, browning in the showery, sunless gloom, and the trees sprinkle their yellow, mottled leaves over the saturated earth.

Indoors a clamminess persists in the air, the smell of wet wool pervades.

Jackets, caps, cloaks are no sooner dried by the fire than donned and drenched again.

From the shops, inns and alleys of Guildford come tales of colds and coughs, fears of the putrid sore throat.

Autumn, now nearly spent, has held back from bestowing the white signature of frost. A sodden, spiteful season.

Alice comes downstairs at Freemans, her neighbour’s house, deep in thought.

Perhaps it is the dull day that has damped her spirits, but it is long since she has known her friend Olivia Egerton so affected by the migraine.

Olivia has been subject to this unpleasant and painful malady for many years.

Though remedies help to alleviate the condition, it recurs with disheartening frequency.

Olivia recovers over a matter of hours or days, depending on the strength of the attack, makes light of it at the time, and does not refer to it when she is well.

But Alice knows the powerlessness of a friend and bystander.

She reaches the foot of the stairs as Jack Egerton emerges from the winter parlour.

Before he has remembered to adjust his expression, she sees her own suppressed anxiety mirrored in his face.

She says, ‘She seems a little better than yesterday. Sorry I am to see her so cast down by this wretched condition. Master Middleton has been, she tells me.’

‘Middleton’s a good apothecary,’ Jack answers. ‘He is usually able to help a little, so that she can get some sleep.’ There is a ‘But…’ in there, unspoken.

‘I wish there were more I could do.’

‘She looks forward to your company, Alice. We both appreciate your taking the time to come over. You do not tire her, unlike Jeremy Tillotson’s grandmother.

She calls on occasion, but talks endlessly of herself and her past conquests.

Olivia feels the visit is kindly meant but it drains her.

I would happily send the woman packing but she won’t allow it.

’ His expression softens in an attempt at cheer, ‘She will be better soon, it always goes away in the end.’

‘I’m happy to come whenever Olivia asks,’ Alice replies, adding with her own attempt at lightness, ‘and another who is always willing to come is Sam, at the prospect of playing with Robert’s children.

’ Robert, Jack’s head man around the Freemans demesne, has two boys and a girl, all a little older than Sam.

An orphan of the plague and now Alice’s adopted son, six-year-old Sam is catching up on the games of childhood.

‘Leave him here for a few days if you like. They will be playmates for each other.’

Alice hesitates. ‘I don’t like to load Cicely without warning.’ Cicely, Robert’s wife, always welcomes Sam, but Alice knows how easy it would be to overstep the line and impose.

‘They will all enjoy night or two together,’ he assures her.

‘Cicely often says that four imps are no more trouble than three. And our new maidservant Jemima is eager to help when needed. It will give you the chance of rest.’ He does not refer directly to Alice’s pregnancy, but at around eight months she recognises the value of his offer.

‘Well …’

‘In fact,’ he adds, ‘why don’t you stop now? All I can offer is news from London, but if you have the time and would like a little refreshment …?’

‘Time for news from the world beyond High Stoke? How can I refuse?’

‘Come into the parlour, then.’ He stands aside for her while he calls to the kitchen to bring mild ale for Mistress Jerrard.

Two rooms of this old house have been knocked into one to make a large if low-ceilinged parlour, comfortably furnished with a cushioned settle by the wide brick hearth.

Upholstered backstools are scattered around and two walls are covered by shelves holding books and rolls of papers.

By the window, more papers are spread on a table next to Jack’s ale mug.

The casement looks out over a terraced walk bordered by a low wall, its grey stone spotted with green and yellow lichen, and beyond that a straggly garden.

Albeit a ghost of its colourful summer display, it brings recollections of this past season when Alice sat on that wall with Olivia.

For Alice, initially, it was respite when thoughts of Henry, dead within weeks of their wedding, overwhelmed her.

As summer progressed, the two women fleeted the time in snatched half-hours of idleness, enjoying the warm sunshine on this sheltered side of the house.

Months ago. The weather has been inclement since mid-August, spoiling what promised to be an adequate harvest, reducing it to levels where once again, as last year, they are husbanding their resources very carefully through the winter months.

‘Olivia is keen to get out into the garden and make something of it to enjoy next year,’ Jack says, joining her at the window. ‘She won’t let me do it for her, says I’m ham-fisted.’ He laughs. ‘She’s probably right.’

‘I know she loves her garden.’ Alice privately admires her friend who, she knows, does not think her husband at all clumsy, rather is determined to recover and tend the beds and low box hedges herself.

‘I’d be hard put to look after it at present anyway,’ Jack goes on. ‘Much is happening in London and I also have a further errand there as soon as Olivia is well enough.’

Alice turns to the cushioned settle and rests her feet on the hearthstone. Curiosity vies with courtesy and she ventures, ‘I hear occasionally what Olivia can tell me without indiscretion – I gather His Majesty is proving difficult to advise …?’

‘Oh, that.’ Jack takes the backstool opposite, leans back and stretches his legs out before him.

‘No that’s not the reason I’m going back.

But it’s true that Charles holds his father’s firm belief in his God-given right to rule as absolute monarch.

But where his father used subtle argument to debate and persuade, Charles makes hectoring speeches to Parliament to “mend their errors”.

It makes for tense exchanges and it’s no secret that he’s running short of money. ’

‘And Parliament votes him none?’

‘Not unless he allows the Duke of Buckingham to be impeached, and he holds fast by the man. It’s the second time he’s dissolved Parliament because of the issue. He cannot see that Buckingham keeps too close control over matters in which he is incompetent.’

‘I have heard it said Buckingham worked himself ill in the service of King James.’

‘I doubt he would be ill so often if he relaxed his hold on the reins of power and appointed men of competence. Buckingham may be the King’s favourite but he’s a hazard. He’ll lead this country to disaster if he gets his hands on enough money. Look at the fiasco at Cadiz last year.’

Alice winces. It is common knowledge that the Duke of Buckingham appointed an admiral with no seagoing experience to lead the fleet.

Troops were landed in one place and inexplicably the food in another.

The troops discovered a wine store and Buckingham’s expedition sank into inglorious drunkenness.

No wonder Parliament wants to impeach him, she thinks.

‘How was that invasion financed?’ she asks. ‘Not with the two subsidies we’ve all paid this year I hope?’

Jack gives a short laugh. ‘Last year Charles tried to borrow from the Dutch against the Crown Jewels.’

‘No!’

‘Exactly what the Dutch said. They knew Parliament would never approve it. So he borrowed Buckingham’s treasury instead.’

She smiles. ‘I suppose that’s justice of a sort if His Grace effectively paid for his own disaster. But I assume he will now be seeking ways to regain his losses. More taxes?’

‘That wouldn’t surprise me at all,’ Jack says. ‘Thank you, Jemima,’ as a maidservant brings in ale and a dish of little ginger cakes. As she closes the door behind her, Jack pours Alice some ale and puts the cakes down on the settle beside her before taking up his own mug from the table.

‘I thought the idea of the French match between Charles and Henrietta Maria was to ally ourselves with Louis so that we could stand against Spain,’ Alice says.

‘Now I hear Charles wants money in order to pursue a war with France. Is that why there’s talk of a forced loan – to raise enough to go to war? ’

Jack sits down, putting his mug on the hearth, and reaches to add a log to the fire.

‘Forced loans, ship money. It’s being opposed of course, but if Charles gets his way, he knows it will create a precedent.

He might never to have to recall Parliament, simply demand money of us all to do as he chooses. ’

‘Or as Buckingham chooses. Henry said to me once, he wondered which of them was the King, Charles or His Grace.’

‘He had a keen brain, your husband.’ Jack seldom mentions Henry. She has to remind herself that Jack will have mourned in his own way, for the loss of a friend he had known since childhood.

She picks up a ginger cake and bites into it. Warm and spicy. ‘But how can Charles demand money from us all without Parliament’s agreement?’

‘A forced loan is just that, forced.’

‘Does he have any idea how difficult this winter already is, with yet another disastrous harvest?’

‘Precisely,’ Jack says.

‘Does he care?’

Jack shrugs. ‘King Louis doesn’t help the situation, vacillating between an alliance with us or one with the Spanish, but if we go to war with him, there will quickly be a Franco-Spanish alliance and we could be in worse case than ever.’

She picks up another ginger cake. It would be very easy to eat several of these. ‘Perhaps I should say, does Buckingham care?’