Matty - Part 11

Matty Part 11 – The New Barn

~ 1702 ~

Lady Caroline Donald sat, Buddha-like, at the head of her four-poster bed. In front of her was a wooden tray laden with slices of fatty pork and hard-boiled eggs and thick chunks of bread and a glass of port. She was just gone forty-one years of age. Her thin grey hair hung limply from her head and her beady grey eyes sat on ruddy cheeks. Fat dribbled from her chin as she chewed on the pork and swilled it down with port, the new wine from Portugal. She licked her fingers clean before breaking the shell of one of the eggs by tapping it against the tray. The gold ring on the third finger of her left hand looked out of place.

‘Wot you doin, Mary!’ she said to the maid who was standing at the long mullioned window watching the workmen laying stone tiles on the roof of the new barn. ‘Come away from that window.’

‘Sorry, Mum,’ replied Mary. She was just a slip of a girl and none too bright. Her face was pockmarked and her long dark hair was tangled. Her apron and ankle-length dress were grubby and her feet were bare. ‘Will that be all, Mum?’

‘No, you can get me some more port,’ said Lady Caroline, speaking through a mouthful of bread. Mary took the wineglass over to the dresser, refilled it with port from a decanter and placed it back on Lady Caroline’s tray. There was a noise on the landing outside the bedchamber door, followed by a loud knock, and then the door opened and in walked Sir Henry Donald, gentleman farmer and Lord of Scarford Hall and the surrounding estate. He was a tall, broad shouldered, handsome man, in his late forties, dressed in a navy blue riding coat with white ruffles at his neck and cuffs, and wearing well polished boots and gaiters.

‘Good morning, Madam,’ he said to Lady Caroline, his accent upper class but very definitely Yorkshire. Mary curtseyed clumsily, and seeing her chance to escape back to the kitchen, she scurried out of the door.

‘And good morning to you, Sir,’ replied Lady Caroline, before gulping down more port and belching loudly. Sir Henry flinched, pulling a silk handkerchief from his coat pocket and holding it to his nose, suspecting that more than just a belch had escaped from his lady wife.

‘Why, oh why, did I ever marry this revolting woman?’ he thought to himself, and not for the first time. The answer of course was money.

The fortune his grandfather, Sir Albert Donald, had made as captain of a privateer had been all but lost by his incompetent father, Sir William Donald, who had seemed to posses the knack of investing in anything that would ultimately prove to be loss making. Though fortunately the estate and the house, built by Sir Albert, were still intact. But when Sir William had died leaving all, including his title and his mounting debts, to his eldest son Henry, something had to be done. And that something came in the shape of Lady Caroline Middlemas, a plump and not very ladylike girl, in her early twenties. Second daughter of Lord and Lady Middlemas, of Ilkley.

At first the marriage had been enjoyable, as Caroline had appetites for more than just food. Though she had seemed just a little too knowledgeable in bedroom activities, and Henry had often wondered just how close she had been to her equally plump younger brother, Charles. But the wedding settlement had been generous: the Middlemas’s being glad to marry off the least desirable of their three daughters. And Lady Caroline had an income of her own, thanks to an overindulgent uncle: another cause for Sir Henry to be suspicious. Then within a year Caroline bore the first of two sickly children: both girls. But both had died before reaching the age of two.

Sir Henry blew his nose loudly and put away his handkerchief. ‘I bear sad tidings, me dear,’ he said, scratching the back of his neck.

‘Let me take a guess,’ said Caroline, wiping her short stubby fingers on a white napkin. ‘The money you begged from me last month is gone and you want more.’

‘Nothing of the kind!’ replied Henry, angrily. ‘That money has been well invested in one of Mr. Tull’s new seed drills, and is at this moment being put to good use in the south pasture. And it will have paid for itself twice-over by the autumn.’

‘So you say,’ said Caroline. ‘What are your sad tidings then? It must be something monumental for you to enter my bedchamber.’

‘I would agree with you there, Madam,’ said Henry with a smirk. ‘And the news is grave, very grave. Our king is dead.’

‘What, King William’s dead?’ said Caroline, her jaw dropping and showing the gap in the bottom row of her teeth.

‘I am afraid so, Madam. Fell from his horse apparently. Died a slow and painful death, they say.’

‘So we’ll have a queen then,’ said Caroline, liking the idea.

‘Yes,’ said Henry, with a grimace that suggested that there was a nasty taste in his mouth. ‘Queen Anne, God save us.’

‘Don’t blaspheme,’ said Caroline. ‘An get out of my bedchamber. I want to dress. An please be kind enough to send up that retched girl.’

‘Very well,’ said Henry, glad to have a reason to leave the room. ‘Good day, Madam.’

Lady Caroline pushed her tray aside and clambered out of bed, her bare feet just visible under her night-gown and her buttocks protruding roundly. She pulled her woollen shawl around her shoulders and walked over to the window and looked out. The new barn looked almost finished.

‘That’s my barn,’ she thought to herself. ‘I paid for it. Least, I paid for the stone, if not the timber and the building of it.’ Caroline moved her head until she found a part of the crude glass window that didn’t distort her view too much. Three workmen were on the roof laying the heavy stone tiles. One of them, the youngest, had his sleeves rolled up, revealing well developed muscles, and his breeches were just a little on the tight side. Caroline cast a critical eye over his body, watching carefully as he bent to pick up one of the stone tiles, and licking her lips with the tip of her tongue.

Sir Henry appeared in the yard below and Caroline stepped back from the window. ‘Mary!’ she shouted. ‘If you don’t want to feel the strap on your backside, you better get up here at once.’ Mary appeared in the doorway and hurried over to the bed for the tray of empty plates.

‘Never mind that now!’ shouted Lady Caroline. ‘Fetch water, and lay out my clothes, and be sharp about it.’

***

Sir Henry walked towards the barn, watching the three workmen on the roof and side-stepping the muddiest of the puddles. His estate steward John Barnes was talking with Daniel Smith the chief mason. Barnes was a tall gaunt looking man, dressed mostly in black. He towered over Smith who was short and stocky. Both men wore waistcoats over their shirts, knee-length breeches, and hose and buckled shoes. Both were bearded, their hair tied in ponytails.

‘These tiles should av been laid days ago, Daniel. You need to work the men arder. Sir Henry expected the barn to be finished be now.’

‘I know, John, but what with the rain an all,’ replied Daniel, looking past Barnes at Sir Henry who was approaching from the house.

John turned, following Daniel’s gaze. ‘Good morning, Sir Henry,’ he said. It’s terrible news about the King, Sir.’

‘Terrible,’ agreed Sir Henry. ‘And there’s talk of a war with Spain.’

‘May the Lord save us, Sir,’ said John. ‘But our brave lads are a match for any o them Spaniards.’

‘Aye, they are that,’ agreed Daniel turning back towards the barn. ‘If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve work to do. God save the Queen.’

‘Aye,’ said John. ‘God save the Queen. An think on what I said.’

‘I will, John,’ replied Daniel.

John turned his attention back to Sir Henry. ‘He’s a good lad, Daniel. But he needs a bit of a shove now and then. Is there anything you’re needin, Sir?’

‘Have the groom saddle my horse,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I’ve a mind to ride over to the south pasture to see how the seed drill’s working out.’

‘At once, Sir. Henry,’ said John, striding away towards the stables. John Barnes had worked for Sir Henry, and his father before him, for many years. Sir Henry considered him to be a very loyal and trustworthy servant, if a little pious.

‘Look out!’ shouted Daniel Smith, as a large stone tile slid noisily down the barn roof and plummeted towards Sir Henry. It landed with a splash in a large puddle a good six feet away, tipping over and spraying Sir Henry with muddy water.

A young man stood, wobbling slightly, close to the ridge of the roof while his two older workmates kept working as though nothing had happened. ‘Begin your pardon, Sir,’ he shouted. ‘I slipped.’

Both John Barnes and Daniel Smith came running over. ‘Are you all right, Sir Henry?’ asked Daniel, who got there first.

Sir Henry looked down at his mud-soiled clothes. ‘Fine that man three months pay.’

‘I will,’ said John, deciding to sack the man as soon as the three months were up. ‘Do you still want your horse saddling, Sir Henry?’

‘Of course. It’s only mud. It’ll brush off when it’s dry. Don’t waste that tile. It’s still in one piece.’

***

Lady Caroline took a deep breath as Mary pulled hard on the laces of her corset and tied them. Then she helped her mistress into her petticoat and gown.

‘Did you polish my shoes, girl?’ asked Caroline.

‘Yes, Mum,’ replied Mary, fetching her mistress’s shoes.

Caroline looked at herself in her looking glass and adjusted her wig, frowning. ‘You can take away that tray now, Mary,’ she said. ‘And then you can make the bed, and don’t you forget to empty the chamber pot this time.’

‘Yes, Mum,’ replied Mary, with a grimace. She hated emptying the chamber pot.

Caroline walked back to the window and surveyed the scene below. ‘Dammed noise and dammed mud, I’ll be glad when this building work’s finished,’ she thought to herself. ‘My life’s been wasted here, miles away from decent civilised society.’ She looked out beyond the barn at the endless rolling landscape: the hillsides thick with sheep, apart from where the quarrymen had cut a deep cleft into one of them. Cows grazed on some of the lower slopes and the stony road to Ilkley was visible where it crested a small hillock. She looked down again as a horse and cart came into view toiling up the rutted track from the lane, laden with coping stones for the ridge of the barn roof. She watched as the driver, old Benjamin Thomas, stopped the cart close to the barn and jumped down. The horse lifted its tail and urinated, as Benjamin walked stiffly, with a bowlegged gait, over to Daniel Smith, the chief mason.

‘Will that be all, Mum?’ Mary asked, replacing the chamber pot under the bed.

‘No,’ replied Lady Caroline, turning away from the window and looking at the panelled walls of her bedchamber. ‘This room could do with a good clean, but first you can tell the cook I want to see er.’

***

It was late afternoon before Matthew Groves stacked the last of the flour sacks on the broad wooden shelf against the mill house wall and began to sweep the floor. Matthew was short but well built, with a mop of unruly fair hair and a few soft curls of ginger hair sprouting from his chin. His boyish sun-tanned face was friendly, with an air of innocence, and his eyes were as blue as the sky. As he worked he whistled softly to himself: an inaccurate and tuneless rendition of a hymn he had sung in church the previous Sunday.

At twenty-one, Matthew was not a very bright lad, in fact there were some that called him simple, but he was a good worker and a strong one. Though he did have a tendency to daydream a little and to loose track of time. Especially on fine sunny evenings when he would walk along the banks of the River Wharton or sit under the shade of a tree. His favourite pastime was fish-tickling, or poaching as the game warden preferred to call it. But the warden was a cousin of Matthew’s father, so he turned a blind eye.

Matthew would lie patiently on his belly on a rock at the waters edge, with the back of his hand on the gravely riverbed, waiting. The river was teaming with fish, especially trout, and they loved to bask in warm sunlit shallows. But if one of them strayed over Matthew’s hand it would be whisked out of the water and flapping about on the riverbank in no time; and Matthew and his father would enjoy a fish supper that night.

Matthew’s mother had died in childbirth when he was only two years old, and his father Jethro, the mill owner, had never remarried. So there were just the two of them. Jethro came in and stepped to one side as Matthew swept the dust out through the door. He was a short, portly, man with a round friendly face, a bushy ginger beard and a bald head. ‘Good lad, Matty,’ he said, looking around the room.

The corn mill had just the one pair of stones, used for making flour from barley or oats and driven by an old timber water wheel that was in turn driven by a stream that ran into the River Wharton. There was little work for the mill, as sheep farming had become prevalent in Whartondale, and the price of flour had dropped. But Jethro and Matthew were able to eke out a living. Matthew earned a little extra helping with walling and sheep shearing and other tasks suited to a lad with a strong back.

‘Is there owt else to do, Father?’ asked Matthew.

‘No lad,’ replied Jethro. ‘That’ll do fo today.’

***

It was a fine Spring day, if a little windy, as Sir Henry’s rode his black stallion along the lane and into the village of Scarford. Easter had come and gone and Sir Henry’s new barn was now complete and his workers had almost finished laying cobbles between the barn and the house and the stables. He was pleased with the barn, as well as with the new seed drill that he had been experimenting with in the southerly part of his estate, planting turnips to feed his sheep during the winter. For once in his life, things seemed to be going well. Even his lead mine at the northern edge of his estate was making a profit now that he had introduced gunpowder blasting.

So Sir Henry had agreed, at last, to his wife’s suggestion that they could afford to take on additional staff, including a footman and another scullery maid to replace the one who had disgraced herself by becoming pregnant.

Sir Henry rode along the rutted cart track through the village passing the yeoman’s cottages, and the grammar school that his grandfather, Sir Albert Donald, had built in 1648. Several male villagers touched their forelocks or doffed their caps as Sir Henry rode past, while the womenfolk smiled and curtsied, and bare foot children stood and gawked. These were good times for the common folk; the price of bread had fallen and meat was more plentiful, and even a chicken could be bought for twopence.

A dog ran out from between two cottages, barking loudly at horse and rider until an elderly man appeared and grabbed the dog by the scruff of the neck. Sir Henry’s horse shied a little but Sir Henry kept him under control. The man scolded the dog and hit its rump with the flat of his hand before leading it away. Sir Henry patted his horse’s neck and continued on through the village. Ahead were more cottages, as well as the vicarage, and beyond that the Anglican Church, with its sturdy Norman tower.

As Sir Henry drew level with the vicarage, the vicar, the Reverend Thomas Grenville, came out of the front door, pulling his hat down hard onto his head lest the wind should make off with it. He was a tall and incredibly thin young man with a perpetually smiling face. He waved to his two small daughters who had just appeared at the window and were waving furiously at him. Then, as he turned he saw Sir Henry, he removed is hat again, holding it above his head as he gave Sir Henry a small bow of respect. He hurried down the path towards his front gate, pulling his hat back on. ‘Good morning, Sir Henry,’ he said. ‘Lovely day.’

‘Aye, it is that,’ replied Sir Henry, stopping his mount.

‘And how is Lady Caroline?’ asked Rev. Grenville.

‘Very well, Sir, thank you,’ replied Sir Henry. ‘She’s visiting her kin at the moment, in Ilkley,’

‘Ah, taking a dip at the new bath house, no doubt,’ suggested Rev. Grenville.

‘No doubt,’ replied Sir Henry, though he doubted that very much indeed.

‘Will Lady Caroline be back for Whitsunday?’

‘Yes, I believe she said she would be… When is it?’ Sir Henry asked, suddenly a little embarrassed.

‘Why, a week this coming Sunday,’ replied Rev. Grenville.

‘Good Lord,’ exclaimed Sir Henry. ‘Is it so soon. Oh, beg pardon… Well, I must be on my way. I’m riding up to my lead mines at Coates Gill. Good day, Sir.’

‘Good day to you, Sir Henry,’ replied Rev. Grenville, raising his hat again while admiring Sir Henry’s steed and wishing he could afford such a mount.

TO BE CONTINUED