truth, she was beginning to doubt whether the guesthouse would be the most suitable place to stay, after all, for although the fourteenth-century complex of buildings appeared to be more than adequate, they were far too close to the building site for comfort.
It was inevitable, of course, that any reconstruction work on this scale would cause some considerable mess, and although the abbey’s original stones were being re-used, the sheer scale of the undertaking had turned the whole of the abbey precinct, once so well kept and peaceful, into a waste land. The large area between the gatehouse, guesthouse, abbey church and its old monastic buildings were stacked with stone and timber, scaffolding and hoists, with mounds of grit and sand, with the lean-to thatched sheds of the masons, carpenters, plasterers and tilers.
Most of the workers had finished for the day, but a group of grimy and wide-eyed young labourers hung round to see who would win the argument, Thomas Vyttery, steward, or this saucy young lass on the bay mare. They gawped at her and her two maids appreciatively until their attention was diverted by the steward’s impressively muscular mastiff that suddenly noticed, through the legs of the lady’s horse, two grey deerhounds almost as large as donkeys, standing passively but with bristling crests and lowered heads. Taking him by surprise, the mastiff wrenched itself out of the steward’s grasp and fled for the safety of home with its tail between its legs, leaving the steward without his main prop.
‘My lady, may I be permitted to suggest that, before you make a decision’—he was nothing if not formal—‘you take a look at the inn in the village of Wheatley. You would have passed it on your way to the abbey. It’s quite…’
Lady Felice was not listening. She was looking over to the right, beyond the church, towards a group of ancient stone-built dwellings that must once have been used by the monks for eating and sleeping before the terrible years of the Dissolution had driven them out. The message that Lord Deventer had received last week from his master builder and surveyor, Sir Leon Gascelin, had said that some of the rooms in the converted abbey would soon be ready for furnishing. Surely those must be the ones he meant.
‘Those buildings over there. That must be Lord Deventer’s New House, I take it?’
The steward did not need to look. ‘The men are still working on that house, m’lady, and Sir Leon himself will be moving into the old Abbot’s House within the next day or two.’
‘Mr…?’
‘Thomas Vyttery, m’lady.’
‘Mr Vyttery, hand me the keys to the Abbot’s House, if you please.’
The steward’s voice quavered in alarm. ‘By your leave, lady, I cannot do that. I shall be dismissed.’
‘You will indeed, Mr Vyttery, if you refuse to obey me. I shall see that Lord Deventer replaces you with someone who knows more about hospitality than you do. Now, do as I say.’ She held out a hand. ‘No, don’t try to remove any of the keys. I want the complete set—kitchens, stables, the lot. Thank you.’
In furiously silent remonstration, the impotent steward turned away without another word. Behind Felice, the cavalcade of waggons, carts, sumpter-horses, grooms and carters, cooks and kitchen-lads, household servants and officials lumbered into motion, creaking and swaying past the building site through ruts white with stone chippings and lime.
The fourteenth-century Abbot’s House was on the far side of the abbey buildings within the curve of the river, far removed from the builders’ clutter and larger than Felice had imagined. There were signs of extensive alterations and additions, enlarged windows and a stately carved porch with steps leading up to an iron-bound door.
Sending the carts, waggons and pack-horses round to the stableyard at the rear, Felice handed the large bunch of keys to her house-steward, Mr Peale, whose meteoric rise to the position had been effected especially for this venture. Still in his early thirties, Henry Peale took his duties very seriously, ushering his mistress up the steps into a series of pine-panelled rooms with richly patterned ceilings of white plaster that still held the pungent aroma of newness. In the fading light, it was only possible for them to estimate the rough dimensions, but the largest one on the first floor would do well enough for Lady Felice’s first night, and the rest of the household would bed down wherever they could.
It was testimony to the young lady’s managerial skills that a household, quickly assembled from her stepfather’s staff at Sonning in Berkshire, so soon worked like a well-oiled machine to unload whatever was necessary for their immediate comfort and leave the rest on the carts until they knew where to put it. There was no question of assembling the lady’s bed, but when the candles and cressets were lit at last, the well-swept rooms held a welcome that had so far been denied them. So much for her stepfather’s assurances of comfort, she muttered to Lydia, her eldest maid.
‘We’ll soon have it ship-shape,’ Lydia said, drawing the unpinned sleeves over her mistress’s wrists. ‘But where’s Sir Leon got to? Wasn’t he supposed to have been expecting us?’
‘Heaven knows. Obviously not where Lord Deventer thinks he is. More to the point, what’s happened to the message he was sent?’ She stepped out of her petticoat, beneath which she had worn a pair of soft leather breeches to protect her thighs from the chafing of the saddle. ‘You and Elizabeth take the room next door, Lydie. I’ll have the hounds in here with me.’
Perhaps it was these vexed questions that made her come instantly to life long before dawn and respond with a puzzled immediacy to her new surroundings. To investigate the moonlight flooding in broken ripples through the lattice, she crossed the room to the half-open window, watched by the two sprawling hounds. The scent of wood-ash hung in the air and in the silence she could hear her heart beating.
The moonlit landscape was held together by an assortment of textured greys that there had been no time for her to remember as trees or groups of sleeping water-fowl. A cloud slid beneath the moon reflected in the glassy river below and, as she watched, a series of counter-ripples slid across the water, chased by another, and then another. Across on the far side where the darkness was most dense, a disturbance broke the surface and, even before her eyes had registered it, she knew that it was a boat, that someone who rowed on the river had been caught by the moon. Then the boat disappeared, towing behind it a wide V of ripples.
Wide awake, she pulled on her leather breeches and her fine linen chemise, tucking it in and hurriedly buckling on the leather belt to hold them together. Then, without bothering to look for her boots, she commanded the hounds to stay and let herself silently out of the room. The wide staircase led down to the passageway where the front doors were locked and bolted. They were new and well oiled, allowing her to exit without attracting the attention of the sleeping servants. She was now almost directly below her own chamber window and only a few yards from the riverbank that dropped to a lower level, dotted with hawthorns and sleeping ducks.
She followed the river away from the Abbot’s House in the direction of the boat, her bare feet making no sound on the grass. She kept low, putting the trees between herself and the river, passing the kitchens and the tumbledown wall of the kitchen garden and eventually finding herself on a grassy track that led to a wooden bridge and from there to the mill on the opposite side.
A small rowing boat was tied up below the bridge and, as there was no other, she assumed it to be the one she had seen, suggesting that whoever had left it there was probably in the mill. The miller, perhaps, returning from a late night with friends?
The owls had ceased their hooting as she retraced her steps, the moonlit abbey now appearing from a different angle, the great tower of the church rising well above every rooftop. Rather than return by exactly the same route, she was drawn towards a gap in the old kitchen-garden wall that bordered the track, its stones paving a way into the place where monastic gardeners had once grown their vegetables. It was now impossible for her to make out any shape of plot or pathway, but she picked her way carefully towards the silhouetted gables of the Abbot’s House, brushing the tops of the high weeds with her palms.
A slight sound behind her made her jump, and she turned, ready for flight, only her lightning reaction saving her from a hand