Richard Stonehouse
His signature was unreadable. The letter was so totally unexpected and so difficult to decipher, with myriads of blots and crossings out, that the first time I read it I sat bemused, still, as shocked as if it was a letter from the dead.
I read it again. If the first shock was that he had written at all, the second was that he had asked me to forgive him. Was he genuine, or was he dissembling?
The third shock was to find I had feelings for the man I knew to be my father. He was dissolute and violent, but how much was that a reaction to his father and his perception of me as a usurper? Lord Stonehouse had brought me up in secret, but had once shown Richard my writing to shame him about his own hand. Was it any wonder that when he found out who I was, he had come to hate me? I knew what he had gone through at the hands of his father, for was I not having the same whip cracked at me? It was the effort Richard had clearly put into writing it himself which began to persuade me he was sincere. He despised writing: scrivener’s work as he put it. But I now felt his childish struggles had left him ashamed of his scrawl.
I was in my study. It was but a poky little room, with no fire, but it was the place I would most miss if we were forced to leave Drury Lane. On the small table, which I had in lieu of a desk, I had written some ideas for my interview with Cromwell. I wrote a good Italian hand, in sharp contrast to my father’s chaotic script. The third time I read his letter, I read not the words, but the effort that had gone into making them. I felt the painful determination to form letters, the sudden bursts of irritation as words tumbled illegibly into one another, and the anger in slashed loops and crossed ‘t’s. Anger at me, or at himself? Whole sentences had been crossed out. Other men would have made a fair copy, but he was incapable of that. Or they would have got a scrivener to do it. But he had wanted to write to me himself. He did not know, he could not imagine, that it was that effort, as much or more than the words themselves, that moved me.
Perhaps he had changed. I was afraid of believing it, but could not help myself. I suppose it is always there, in an abandoned child, that hope for reconciliation. I told myself I was being stupid as I felt the onset of tears.
Anne touched my shoulder. I had no idea how long she had been in the room. There was a sympathy in her touch which had been missing since I had refused to work with Lord Stonehouse. I blinked back the tears and handed her the letter.
‘What a hypocrite.’
‘You do not think he is sincere?’
‘Do you?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You don’t know? He tried to kill you!’
There was a knock at the door. I stared at the letter, half-hearing Jane tell Anne that Liz had had another bad night and been unable to keep her milk down. Anne began to follow Jane, but turned back.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Invite him to supper?’
‘Please don’t joke. What are you going to do?’
‘I have no idea, Anne.’ I picked up a quill, drew my fingers down the feather and felt the point. I did not intend to write a letter. It was an automatic reaction, to help me think. I was still dazed by the father I had all but forgotten, suddenly taking on human shape.
‘You’re not going to answer it, are you?’
‘Of course I’m going to answer it.’
‘What are you going to say?’
I was conscious of Jane hovering on the stairs. ‘That is my affair,’ I said coldly.
She told Jane she would be up shortly, then closed the door. She was trembling, and her cold had left her voice raw and hoarse. ‘It is as much my affair as yours, sir.’
‘This is the world upside down, is it? When a woman tells a man what to do?’
‘Has her say, sir, has her say. While you have been fighting I have built this place up. I have flattered Lord Stonehouse, sympathised with his illnesses, suffered his moods, his suspicions, his rages, his belches, his farts, smiling while I wanted to scream. When Luke was born I felt as if I was being torn apart. I thought I would not live.’
I got up and wanted to hold her but she pushed me away, telling me with a concentrated fury what she had been through while I was away. Things I never realised. I knew Lord Stonehouse had acknowledged me as his heir only out of expediency, when Parliament suspected his loyalty, but did I have any idea how shallow that acknowledgement was? He wrote secretly to Richard. She knew that from Mr Cole. Oh, she flattered him too. Promised him preferment when I inherited. Did I not know that? Did I really think it was a world upside down? It was the same old world, greased and oiled by favours – or the promise of favours when the King came back. Everyone was jostling for position except me, she said, who believed the world was changing into a different, a better, place.
Surely I realised, she went on, I was still a whim as far as Lord Stonehouse was concerned. It rarely happened that a bastard inherited such a great estate. It was almost unheard of that his wife was a commoner – a commoner with no dowry, no lands to bring to the estate. If Lord Stonehouse was planning to marry again, it was not for love, as I saw it, but for another Stonehouse. Another male. We were a fall-back, a second string, if there was no other Stonehouse blood left to inherit. When she said this, I felt I had known it all the time, but never put it into words. What I really cared about was the attainable – becoming an MP. Even that he had brushed to one side.
My anger mounted as she told me how she was treated, rebuffed when she did not conceive at first. Lord Stonehouse was not at home. Or he was in meetings. There was no coal. Only straw on the floor. Why on earth did she not tell me all this? Because I would not have grovelled. I would have ruined everything. Only men had the luxury of pride, she said bitterly.
In my brief, snatched visits during the war, what for me had been love, for her had been desperation, followed by the continual, gnawing fear of being barren, and of further rejection from Lord Stonehouse’s favour. Had I not seen the straw on the floor, or realised they were burning chopped-up furniture for me?
She had tried to find out if the entail on Lord Stonehouse’s will had been removed. The entail was the contract by which the landed classes double-locked and bolted the estate to the eldest son. Mr Cole knew most things, but that was a secret only Lord Stonehouse and his lawyer knew.
Her voice grew hoarser. I could not stop her. I did not want to. It was like a boil being lanced. She had not slept much because of Liz. She wore no paint. Lines I had barely noticed before cracked her beautiful skin. Her hair hung lifeless. She was so thin she looked as though she would break. Only her blue eyes crackled with furious, burning energy.
‘Luke furnished this place. When Lord Stonehouse thought Liz was going to be another boy the stables were built. Those fine horses arrived. Stallions.’ She put some of her old mockery into the word. ‘I do not want to go through having another child, but I will go on and on until we have what we want. I have done all that and I am not allowed my say?’
Her voice had shredded to a croaking echo. I held her tightly, stroking her, feeling her bones protruding from her skin.
‘What we want? That’s what matters. I want you, I want you,’ I whispered.
‘Do you?’
I kissed her. ‘Nothing else matters. We don’t have to have another child. Not yet. I will stay away.’
‘But I want – I want you near me.’ She kissed me passionately.
‘I’ll be careful.’
She half-smiled. ‘You never are.’ She stroked the scar on my cheek with a sudden tenderness. ‘Scar-face.’
‘Bag of bones.’
She