To begin with, however, although the dinner table waited in the centre of the hall, set with white napery and silver plate, Francis assembled everyone around the hearth, where a good fire was crackling. Peggy came bustling out of the kitchen with Beth and Susie, and handed around wine, cider and small pewter dishes full of sweetmeats.
“We have a good dinner for you,” Francis told the guests. “But what I have to tell you won’t fit in with chitchat across the roast. I only hope you don’t all walk out in horror when you’ve heard what I have to say, and leave the meal uneaten!”
“It sounds,” said Owen in his deep, slow voice, “as if you’re going to tell us of a scandal.”
Ralph, whose good looks included excellent teeth, grinned and said, “Are any of us likely to walk out in a pet? We all know the world. And we’re all agog with interest, aren’t we? Is it scandal?”
“Well, let’s hear what Francis has to say,” said Thomas Stone in a practical voice. “Should Dorothy be here?” he added, glancing at his daughter. “She’s only sixteen.”
Dorothy glowered but held her tongue. Francis nodded to where Jane had seated herself apart, on a window seat. “So is my sister Jane and she knows all about it,” he said.
“Very well.” Thomas exchanged looks with his wife and then shrugged. “Dorothy may stay.”
Dorothy’s expression changed from sullen to pleased. Francis took up a position with his back to the fire, cleared his throat and embarked on the unhappy business of explaining.
Jane sat quietly listening, hands clasped on her lap. She had been presented with the tawny gown and yellow kirtle originally meant for Sybil. Though younger, Jane was the same height as her sister, and the clothes fitted her quite well. Madame La Plage had had to make only very minor adjustments before she went home.
“Please, I don’t want Sybil’s gown,” Jane had said, while Sybil wept forlornly, out of fear for her future and grief at her lost hopes. Eleanor would not listen and so here Jane was, whether she liked it or not, at what should have been Sybil’s farewell dinner, dressed in what should have been Sybil’s gown, uneasy in the first farthingale she had ever worn, and miserably embarrassed. Originally these important guests, landowners, a prosperous merchant, even a knight and his lady, had been invited to do honour to Sybil. Now it felt as though they had become her judges.
Francis finished his speech and then looked gravely at Ralph Palmer. “I feel especially bad about you, Ralph, since it was your cousin Edmund, a kinsman to me just as you are, who so kindly used his influence at court to obtain Sybil’s appointment for her. She has failed you both. I feel that in some way I, too, have failed you both. I am sorry.”
Ralph shook his head. “I can’t see that you’re responsible, Francis. I was going to London as part of Sybil’s escort. I will see my cousin Edmund there and if you wish, I’ll tell him that the girl isn’t strong enough for court life. Maybe,” he added, with a smiling glance toward Jane, “I could say that there’s a younger sister coming along, who’ll be ready for court in a year or two.”
“That is kind indeed, Ralph,” said Eleanor. “We all appreciate it.”
Oh, no. As the eyes of the company turned to her, Jane shrank back into her window seat. The eyes were friendly, but they frightened her. She didn’t want to be taken away from the dark moors and the green combes of home, which she loved. Sending a girl to court, with the necessary gowns and jewellery, was expensive. Hitherto, the plan had concerned only Sybil. But now…inside her heavy skirts and the unfamiliar farthingale, she shivered.
Still, for the moment, the danger wasn’t immediate. Francis smiled at her, too, but then said, “We will think about that later. Meanwhile, I want to ask you all for your advice. What am I to do with Sybil? Some provision must be made for her, but I can’t condone what she has done.”
There was a pause. Owen and Katherine whispered together, but said nothing aloud. Mary Stone was the first to speak.
“I agree with Master Sweetwater.” Mary was fat and pallid, with a voice full of phlegm. Her amethyst-coloured damask was expensive but stretched so tightly around her ample form that it formed deep creases across her stomach. She offered a depressing suggestion of what Dorothy might turn into eventually. The sweetmeats had been passing unobtrusively around throughout the whole business and Mary’s plump white fingers had helped themselves liberally. She licked sugar off her fingertips and said, “If she were our girl, she’d find herself turned out and depending on the parish. Isn’t that so, Thomas?”
“I might not go that far,” said Stone, “but I’d not keep her at home.”
“Nor me,” said William Carew. “Young folk can be the devil and all. What my youngest boy put us through—I swear it’s why my hair’s goin’ badger-grey afore its time. Pert, forward brat, Peter was. Played truant when I put ’un to school—I was sent for to deal with ’un more than once. Got him a post as a page at the French court later on, and he behaved so bad, he ended up demoted to stable boy.”
“Peter’s doing well now, though,” said Lady Joan mildly, also licking sugar off her fingers but with more delicacy than Mary Stone. “He’s in England, at the royal court. He went into the French army when he was old enough and we heard nothing of him for so long, we thought he was dead, and then he just came home one day! What a surprise!”
“If he’s made good, it’s because I stood no nonsense and nor did the Frenchies,” said Sir William. “And you can’t stand for this, Sweetwater. I don’t say throw her on the parish, but you can’t keep her at home. We wouldn’t. We might take the child in if one of our men sires a bastard, we support it or give it a home—our blood, after all. But the woman has to shift for herself. That’s how the world is.”
“Marry her off, that’s the best thing,” said Stone.
“Yes,” Francis said. “We’d thought of that. The only problem is, who can we find to marry her? Andrew Shearer obviously can’t.”
“What was that you said about his wife hitting ’un with a frypan?” enquired Sir William Carew with interest. “Just what happened when you went to see the Shearers, Francis?”
“I told Shearer what I thought of him, seducing a young girl—and his landlord’s sister at that—at the christening of his own son,” said Francis. “He started denying it and suggesting that maybe he hadn’t been the only one…you know the sort of thing…”
There were nods and murmurs of Aye, we know, we’ve all heard that one.
“That I knew wasn’t true,” Francis continued. “Oh, Sybil’s a silly girl, too easily impressed. We think now that it’s as well she isn’t going to court—too many temptations there! But I watch over my sisters and she’s had little chance to play the fool, and in any case, she’s not a liar. And the timing’s right, if she’s to have the babe in August, as she says. Eleanor here says that by the look of her, August is very likely right.”
“Yes. That christening party fits in,” Eleanor said.
“So I told Shearer I believed her and not him and aimed a punch at him. He hit back and we were fighting in the kitchen when his wife came charging in—and I do mean charging.” For a moment, despite the unhappy situation, Francis grinned. “In she came, like a whole squadron of cavalry. I’ve been a-listening! So you’ve been at it again, have you, you lecherous hound! That’s what she said. Then she grabbed a frying pan off a hook on the wall and landed him a beauty on top of his head. He sat down on the floor looking dazed and I said to her, sorry, but the two of them had to pack up and be off the farm double-quick. I want new, decent tenants. She cried and he sat there rubbing his head and cursing but I wouldn’t give in. They’ve kin in Barnstaple and that’s