Sutton Place (Sutton Place Trilogy Book 1) Page 4

Wolsey sat behind his desk, cluttered with papers. He was the alter Rex, omnipotent, unbeatable.

  ‘Well?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s in a bad humour,’ thought Richard. ‘Tread warily.’

  ‘The King’s enemy died this morning, my Lord,’ he said.

  Without looking up, Wolsey’s red-gloved hand, heavy with rings, searched among the papers on the desk and found what it was looking for. Still continuing with his work, he thrust a document unceremoniously forward. Richard took it and saw at once the King’s seal. Carefully he opened the scroll. It bore that day’s date, and at the bottom was the King’s own signature.

  So Richard’s prize had been immediate. He wondered if the King had signed and the messenger had been despatched with the document even before the head had rolled, or if he had waited for confirmation, picked up his quill and sent a man with a swifter horse than Weston’s to Hampton Court?

  No matter, it was here. His eyes ran over the contents. No peerage but for all that a rich reward. The grant of the Manor of Sutton in Surrey with all the forests and land appertaining thereto. Somewhere to build, a place for his family to pass down from father to son. In his mind’s eye he saw a great, mellow manor house.

  He caught the Cardinal looking at him, amused; the atmosphere had thawed.

  ‘You’re pleased?’

  Weston bowed low.

  ‘My Lord Cardinal. It has always been my dearest wish ...’

  ‘I know, I know. You’ve been patient; waited for your own land. That’s your strong suit, Richard, you proceed slowly. Teach your son — what’s his name ...?’

  ‘Francis.’

  ‘Francis — the same tricks.’

  ‘I will endeavour, my Lord.’

  ‘Then we’ll have another loyal courtier to call upon.’ Wolsey’s frosty gaze was the nearest it could get to anything approaching merriment.

  ‘You know Sutton, of course? It’s royal land. This gift is a very personal one from the King’s Highness.’

  Richard adopted a suitably gratified expression.

  ‘It once belonged to St Edward the Confessor,’ Wolsey continued. ‘He hunted there. It has passed through many famous hands. Now it is yours for ever.’

  Sir Richard went down on one knee and kissed the extended red glove. His face allowed only the merest smile but his heart beat with the power of attainment. Royal land was now his.

  After eating and drinking alone — the Cardinal excusing himself — Weston set off for his home in Chelsea. Wolsey had offered him a night’s lodging but he was anxious to return; to see his wife’s face when she realized she was a Lady of the Manor. With the document safe in a leather pouch, he rode as the sun set and finally reached home in the darkness of midnight.

  Anne Weston had gone to bed and came down the stairs in her nightgown. At forty-five she was still a fine-looking woman; hair more golden than grey and very beautiful long-lashed blue eyes. Richard thought wryly how typical it was that Francis should have inherited his mother’s soft looks while the girls favoured his own tougher appearance.

  Pouring himself some wine, Richard read solemnly to his wife in the flickering candlelight.

  ‘King Henry VIII, by Letters Patent, dated at Westminster May 17, 1521 — today, Anne! — in the thirteenth year of his reign, grants the manor of Sutton with its appurtenances and all the knights fees thereto belonging, villeins, goods and services, waifs and strays, wardships and rights, woods, meadows, pastures, fisheries, water, vineyards, ponds ...’

  Anne threw her arms round his neck and kissed him joyfully.

  ‘Wouldst smother me, woman? Hear how the King finishes. To his noble and well-beloved Privy Councillor; Sir Richard Weston, Knight, his heirs and assigns.’

  They kissed on the lips.

  *

  Three days later the entire family, accompanied by two servants, set out to see their new property. They conducted the journey in four stages, spending two nights at Guildford. Lady Weston travelled in her litter while the children and the manservant rode with Sir Richard. There was great excitement. The sun gleamed on Francis’s fair hair as he chased his sisters’ horses, not content till they had raced and he had been allowed to win, indulged as usual.

  Sir Richard’s slate eyes were untypically expressive as he looked at his son and heir. ‘Now he will have something worth calling an inheritance,’ he thought, and he thanked God that he had been potent enough to sire a healthy boy late in the marriage and that Anne — despite being thirty-five — had been safely delivered. Now, with a younger wife, there would have been more than just one boy trotting along beside his father ...

  But he dismissed such disloyal thoughts. Anne had been good to him; if her change had come upon her early it was only nature’s way. A vague idea of taking a mistress crept into Richard’s mind and shafted through it like the rays of sun that were falling on them through the gaps between the mighty trees of Sutton Forest. But by the time the little cavalcade left the cathedral-like atmosphere and saw before it the rolling parkland and the river out of which a single silver fish jumped again and again, Richard Weston knew that his life was destined to be that of a great land-owner and builder without other diversions.

  The beauty of the scene brought them all to a halt. The scent of May blossoms delighted the nose. The burbling of the river, in which the exultant fish swam, mingled with the honey-warm sound of bees and nearby doves and seduced the ear, whilst the sight of the lush green grass and wild flowers combined to make it seem like paradise — a far cry from the blood-soaked straw at Tower Hill that had been the necessary ugliness to obtain perfection.

  ‘Where is the house?’ asked Francis.

  ‘About two miles further. But it’s only a ruin now, built in King John’s day.’

  ‘I’ll race you there,’ the boy said, and kicking his heels into his horse’s flanks he was off at full canter. Although only ten years old he was already a good rider, spirited and strong, and his father had no fears for his son’s safety as he went after him. But to his surprise, when he caught up with him, it was to see that the boy had fallen and was washing his bloodied hands in an ancient well.

  Sir Richard dismounted.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, Father. My hands and knees are scratched. I came off over his head.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  ‘I don’t know. He shied at the well. He was frightened by something.’

  ‘But there’s nothing there.’

  Francis threw back his head suddenly to gaze at a diving swallow and Sir Richard thought how fragile his neck looked.

  ‘You’re lucky, you foolish child, that your neck wasn’t broken.’

  His words made him think horribly and violently of Tower Hill and the death of Stafford, and for no reason at all he felt a sense of foreboding.

  In the distance he could see the others were approaching.

  ‘Don’t tell your mother,’ said Weston abruptly.

  This was a strange spot, he thought, quiet and still, in contrast to the park which had been teeming with life. Even he — hard and shock-proofed — found it a little eerie.

  It was then that he saw before him the ruin of what he assumed had been King Edward’s hunting lodge. There was little left except the bare outline of the place which the Saint had used on his hunting expeditions. And then on his right, a hundred yards away, he saw the ancient remains of what had once been the manor house — the home of the Bassett family — now crumbled to nothing but a shell. Sir Richard had an overwhelming sense of the past; he had acquired part of England’s heritage on which to build. Thinking to himself that he was behaving very oddly, he stepped among the stones of the hunting lodge and thought, ‘Edward, King and Confessor, once prayed here.’

  At the nearby well Francis was still washing his scratched knees. Concentrating in the manner of all small boys, his tongue poking from his mouth, it took him a second or two to realize that despite the fact that the sun shone brilliantly he had becom
e cold — so cold that his teeth began to chatter. He looked up and became rigid at what he saw. The blurred outline of a woman stood between him and the sun. It was difficult to discern her features or even her shape properly but he was more afraid than he had ever been in his life.

  And then, with her body undulating and formless, he saw her throw herself on the ground and writhe and twist like an obscene serpent, as she hurled something into the well. Even worse was to come for slowly, slowly that terrible head was turning in his direction and from the amorphous face two great hollow eyes fixed their dreadful gaze upon him.

  The gurgling sound in Francis’s throat released itself. He screamed as he had never screamed before in his life. From the ruined lodge Sir Richard ran like a man of twenty.

  ‘In the name of Christ, Francis, what is it?’

  He snatched the boy up in his arms but the screaming continued. He administered a sharp slap to his son’s face. The noise turned to a whimper.

  ‘What is it?’ Richard repeated, his eyes rapidly scanning every tree for possible assailants.

  Against his father’s shoulder, which always seemed to smell of leather, Francis whispered faintly, ‘The woman.’

  ‘What woman?’

  ‘She was standing by me at the well and then she fell on the ground and ... Father, it was a ghost. She looked at me and her eyes weren’t there — only the sockets. It was the walking dead.’

  Despite the warmth, Richard felt every hackle on his body rise and he broke into a cold sweat — it was the words the child had chosen, they were ghastly. Nevertheless he did not believe in ghosts and he was sure that logic lay behind all this.

  ‘Come now,’ he said, ‘you know as well as I do that ghosts are for old women and small girls.’

  ‘But it was not like that!’

  Francis’s voice was peevish and Richard felt himself becoming irritable. Obviously the boy had imagined the whole episode for, in fact, nobody could have hidden so quickly and there was certainly no one at the well now. Sensing his father’s annoyance Francis began to cry loudly.

  Overcoming an urge to hit him, Sir Richard looked round. In the near distance Margaret and Catherine — Francis’s sisters — had seen that something was wrong and were trotting their horses forward. Lady Weston and the servants were still mercifully some way behind.

  ‘Curse the child,’ he thought, though he had to admit that the boy had obviously been frightened by something or other. Too much imagination — just like his mother. An expedient lie seemed the only possible course.

  ‘Francis, I tell you — and I will not be denied — that it was a beggar drawing water.’

  A look at Sir Richard’s expression told Francis that further protestation was pointless, and now the rest of his family was arriving. First his sisters, bright-cheeked from the ride, and then his mother — enraptured with her new estate — smiling and beautiful, as she was helped down from her litter.

  Margaret, the eldest, was opening her mouth to ask if all was well with her brother but Sir Richard cut across. ‘I am hungry,’ he announced decisively. ‘Wife, I wish to eat.’

  So Lady Weston’s attention was distracted as she supervised the unpacking of cold food from especially prepared baskets. Fowl — for Sir Richard’s delight — pies, fruit, cakes, wine and ale; the last for the servants.

  They all began the outdoor meal but Lady Weston could not help but notice that Francis had completely lost his appetite and was staring over his shoulder, apparently at a disused well. She was about to ask him what was amiss when her attention was arrested by the arrival of a stranger, trudging in their direction from Sutton Forest.

  He was short, with hair cut in the shape of a fringed basin, big widely-spaced teeth and bright blue eyes. The stained appearance of his skin, beneath its natural coating of dirt, suggested Romany extraction. Sir Richard and the manservant Toby rose to their feet protectively but any idea of menace was shattered by the man doing a somersault, then a cartwheel, and finally a split jump, ending up on one knee before Sir Richard.

  ‘Good morrow, my Lord.’ His accent was Romany all right. ‘Giles of Guildford, if I can be said to come from anywhere. A humble tumbler by trade, a strolling player, a fool. In exchange for a meal, your Ladyship ...’ — he looked longingly at the remainders of the food — ‘I will dance for your children, tell tales of great doings, sing songs of love.’

  Normally, Richard would have sent him on his way but today, looking at Francis’s drained face, he considered the idea. He glanced at Anne and she gave him a smile and a nod.

  ‘Very well, fellow.’

  The man kissed Sir Richard’s hand.

  ‘God’s blessings on you for ever, my Lord. No food has reached my sad stomach these last three days.’

  And with that he fell to, munching and drinking voraciously, sitting all the while a little apart with the servants and occasionally bowing his head in the direction of his patrons. He looked so strange as he chewed and bowed, and bowed and chewed, that Catherine and Margaret began to laugh. And shortly a smile came to Francis’s face. Sir Richard, thanking God for the lightening of the atmosphere, called out, ‘Some shillings for thee, man, if you entertain us well. Are you ready?’

  ‘Ready, aye, my Lord, I am,’ and thrusting a huge piece of cheese into his mouth, he approached them.

  Swallowing convulsively, he addressed himself to Lady Weston.

  ‘If my Lady will forgive me, I will tumble for you later. On such a full stomach, so recently empty, I fear I may be prone to the evils of wind.’

  Francis was just the age when any mention of nature’s functions sent him into uncontrollable laughter. In this he was joined by his sister Catherine. Lady Weston and the elder girl, Margaret, looked shocked. Sir Richard said hurriedly, ‘Then tell us a tale, man, and no coarseness, do you hear!’

  ‘Begging your Lordship’s pardon — not meaning to give offence. I thought there would be more offence in the wind, sir.’

  Francis shrieked joyfully.

  ‘Oh, get on with it,’ said Sir Richard, impatiently.

  ‘My gypsy blood tells me, sir, that I address our new Lord and Lady of the Manor.’

  ‘How did you know that?’ interrupted Anne.

  ‘I am in touch with things beyond your ken, my Lady.’

  ‘More like in touch with the landlord of the inn at Guildford,’ thought Richard but he said nothing, for his wife’s eyes were glistening. She was excited by strange phenomena and had consulted astrologers before the births of all three children. Richard also suspected her of visiting soothsayers from time to time.

  ‘I should very much enjoy hearing the history of the Manor of Sutton,’ she said. ‘All I know of it is that King Edward the Confessor once had a hunting lodge here and that it has been royal hunting land for many centuries.’

  A quite extraordinary expression passed over Giles’s face. ‘There is very little to tell, my Lady,’ he said hurriedly. ‘As you say, it belonged to King Edward so long ago it’s all forgotten now.’

  ‘How disappointing.’ Anne Weston was speaking. ‘It would have given me so much pleasure to have heard the chronicles of our Manor. Giles, if you should come across a fellow in Guildford who knows the tale tell him that Lady Weston will give him a good purse for the telling.’

  Giles’s expression changed again. Richard Weston thought, ‘God curse the rogue. He is hiding something, though what I cannot fathom, and yet his greed plays at him like cat with mouse.’

  Giles thought, ‘How can I tell them that this Manor of theirs is accursed? Sir Richard would not believe me; my Lady would; the children would be afeared. And yet there is but one farthing between me and starvation.’

  He decided on his course. They would have a story and it would be the facts, told without hints of underlying evil. Aloud he said, ‘Well, my Lady, I do know a little of the history. Wilt give me a purse if I speak well?’

  ‘I will judge that,’ said Richard.

  ‘What an interfering
ear-piercer,’ thought Giles. ‘If the curse of the Manor falls upon him ’tis divine justice.’

  He smiled obsequiously. ‘Now where shall I begin?’ he said. It was all going to need careful phrasing wherever he started.

  ‘Begin before King Edward,’ said Catherine Weston as she moved nearer Giles, her round blue eyes in her twelve-year-old face large with anticipation.

  ‘Well, before King Edward these lands were as they are now. Vast forests loved by the Saxon Kings. King Edward, he was a great hunter. He thought highly of this place and he built himself a hunting lodge which is now that ruin yonder.’

  ‘Did his son inherit it?’ asked Francis.

  ‘He didn’t have a son,’ said Giles. ‘Come to think of it, I don’t believe he had any children at all.’

  His eyes wandered innocently over Sir Richard’s face but there was no reaction.

  ‘So he left this land to a friend of his — a fellow who’d been a good servant while the King was alive. He had a strange name. Wenness — Wennitt — I can’t remember. No wait, it was Wenesi.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  ‘Well, it was 1066, my Lady and he was called to Hastings.’

  ‘And ...?’

  ‘And he gave up his life to protect England from the Norman Bastard.’

  Anne Weston could visualize the scene. The two armies encamped on the night before the battle; Harold, son of Earl Godwin, determined to stop the Norman invader; Duke William, tough and committed to ravaging England. And somewhere in the English camp, a simple man called Wenesi, Lord of the Manor of Sutton, with only another twenty-four hours to live. She noticed Giles looking narrowly and she wondered why. ‘’Tis a good tale,’ she said.

  ‘I believe Duke William then gave Sutton to the Malet family. William Malet had been a friend of King Harold and he had a horrible job to do.’

  ‘What?’ asked Francis.

  ‘From that terrible battlefield — laden with naked corpses — Duke William had the dismembered parts of Harold’s body removed and wrapped in a purple cloth, and there on the Hastings clifftop, William Malet buried them under a heap of stones. He put a slab by the mound bearing this inscription: “By command of the Duke, you rest here a King, O Harold; that you may be guardian still of the shore and sea.”’