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A NOBLE LORD FALLS TO EARTH

The low-built house seemed to be dozing in the late summer sun. A golden light glinted off the leaded windows and burnished the honey-coloured stone. Emperor butterflies floated over the lavender beds flanking the portico that sheltered the studded front door. Suddenly the drowsy air was stirred by a young woman running across the lawn. Picking up her skirts, she lengthened her stride to jump the muddy carriage tracks, then struggled with the heavy oak door for a moment before dashing into the house.

‘Bella! Bella!’ She paused in the cool dark hallway and listened. The oak staircase stretched away and up, the dust motes dancing in the slanting light from the great west window on the landing. She called again. A door opened at the back of the house and an old man appeared. He looked as ancient and gnarled as an oak tree bent by the wind, but with a gay red neckerchief tied round his scrawny neck.

‘Miss Lucie, hush that clamourin’. Nuff to quicken the dead.’ He advanced slowly towards her, his eyes twinkling at the sight of the excited flushed face, her fair hair dishevelled and falling in damp tendrils round her ears.

‘Oh, Beamish, I’m sorry. Where’s my sister?’

‘Well, that would be tellin’.’ He grinned, not willing to give up his advantage too soon.

‘Oh, don’t tease.’ Lucie slipped a hand through his arm. ‘There’s something happening up at the big house. The windows are unshuttered.’

Lucie Carey had turned eighteen and country life was beginning to pall. She still rode her horse freely over the family’s acres and even trespassed on the neighbouring estate, but she longed for more exciting company than her busy sister and the elderly servants. No sight nor sound of their neighbours at Shotten Hall had been detected for the last four years. Lucie had got used to treating their land as her domain and habitually trespassed in the grounds. She had discovered two mysterious temple follies crumbling back into earth and strange dykes and ditches suggesting ancient waterworks that caught her imagination. It was a mysterious place, full of thrilling atmosphere, and the opening up of the house after so long was news indeed.

But Beamish was less excitable. ‘Aye, I hear last week they were a’comin’.’

‘Last week! Why didn’t you tell us?’

‘What’s to say, Miss? They been twigged in town. That harum-scarum Freddie is down with some cork-brained culls.’ Beamish sniffed and gazed mournfully at his young mistress. ‘All jackanapes. Too much rhino, not enough to do. Should be out sheddin’ blood in the Peninsula like the young master.’ He turned back towards the kitchen.

‘But where’s my sister?’

‘P’raps with her blessed bees,’ he said over his shoulder.

Lucie headed through the walled garden, her feet scrunching on the cinder path between wigwams of beans and rows of cabbages and parsley. She could just see through the far gate the spreading mulberry tree that marked the beginning of the orchard, but knew better than to halloo for her sister when she was with the bees. There Sybella stood, dressed in her workaday blue cambric and with her husband’s violin and bow in her hand. She lifted her instrument and began to play. The first notes were tentative and then the melody took over with a life of its own. The music floated upwards and out, vibrating between the trees, a familiar folk tune Lucie knew so well.

Perhaps it was the warmth of the afternoon, perhaps the magic of the orchard filled with sound, but a luminous envelope of light seemed to trace Sybella’s form against the humming air. Around her were five conical grass-woven beehives, her new experiment. She had explained to Lucie with excitement how these revolutionary hives opened at the top. Inside were wooden frames on which the honeycombs were built by her busy swarm of workers. She hoped it would make the harvesting of honey possible without having to kill the bees each year.

Lucie approached soundlessly over the springy grass. The trees were weighed down with apples and the bees were busy rummaging in the dusty hearts of ox-eye daisies, foxgloves and buddleia that fringed the orchard. Gently, she put her hand on her sister’s shoulder. Sybella stopped playing and turned her head. Her green eyes seemed distant and unfocused; for a moment, she was lost in another world. Startled from her reverie, she smiled, her whole countenance radiating warmth and a quizzical good humour. ‘Lucie! You were so quiet, I didn’t hear you coming.’

Sybella kissed her, tucking one of the loose tendrils of her hair behind her ear. ‘You look charming even with your dress muddied like that.’ She brushed the skirt with a quick hand.

Lucie fulfilled every ideal of blue-eyed, fair-haired beauty and had a body that was fashionably sylph-like but strong too, used as she was to riding pell-mell and climbing trees.

‘Well, you, dearest Bella, are just beautiful, even in your oldest dress and with twigs in your hair.’ Lucie picked a leaf from her sister’s cloud of hair, already tumbling half-undone. They were a striking pair. Sybella knew her own dark hair and green eyes were less the fashion but she was grateful to be tall and shapely and enjoyed the fact she was a woman now, no longer a girl. Her vivid face had a sensitivity that expressed every emotion, often close to laughter but always alive with sympathy. Sybella understood how it pained her sister to be adjudged by strangers as the pretty one. How invidious were comparisons, she thought, particularly between sisters.

‘You’ve been playing to your bees again?’ Lucie quizzed her.

‘I have. They seem to like it. I’ve been practising the “Sussex Waltz” and hope we’ll play it together to entertain us in the winter. Grandpapa’s piano-forte would like you to exercise it more.’ She smiled.

‘I love playing with you, Bella. It’s so unfair, though, that we can’t play duets together in company. Why is it considered indelicate to play the violin? How vexing!’

‘Many things are improper for well-bred young ladies. But we get away with it here as long as no one sees. When you’re presented in London, you’ll have to leave your hoyden tricks behind!’

‘Oh! I had forgot. I came to tell you some news. The great house is woken up. After all these years! Its shutters are open and it has eyes again. It’s come back to life.’

‘How do you know?’ Sybella turned to regard her sister with a knowing gleam.

‘I saw for myself,’ was the defiant reply.

‘You were trespassing again. I knew it!’

‘Of course. I love their woods and no one is there apart from the few servants who keep to their quarters at the back. No one goes into the woods.’

Sybella’s frown did not diminish. ‘You must not go there while the house is inhabited. You have no idea whom you may stumble across. You don’t want to be mistaken for a poacher and shot!’