I loved him dearly. I never had any doubt of that, and the fact that at times he seemed rather remote in his daytime personality made him more than ever attractive to me. I used to fancy I could hear my mother’s explaining: ‘You were very young to marry. Had you been at home I should have talked to you and warned you of what you must expect. You would have been prepared. But it happened so suddenly, so unexpectedly that you are groping in the dark a little. Have no fear. You love him and he loves you. You are a little in awe of him because he holds a high position in the country. Well, it is a good thing to respect your husband.’

I used to wonder if she had felt thus with my father.

I thought if Bersaba were here I could talk to her. But I could not bring myself to write my innermost thoughts even to her.

In the afternoons when Richard’s work was done we would ride together. He delighted in showing me the countryside. He had a great feeling for nature and he loved trees. He would point them out to me and tell me about them; and there were a great variety round Flamstead. It was like a lesson in botany to ride with Richard. He would pause by a stream where the willow trees grew. ‘See how they love the moist damp earth,’ he pointed out. ‘Look, their roots are almost in the water. This is a male tree, for the flowers of the male and female are on separate trees. You should see the furry silvery tufts breaking out in the spring and the males have golden-tipped stamens and the females green. When they’re in full seed they look as though they are covered in tufts of white wool.’

He would point out the Scots pines and the yews.

‘Look at that yew. It has been there for over a hundred years. Doesn’t that give you pause to think? Imagine what changes it has seen. It was there when Queen Elizabeth first came to the throne and before that when her father was dissolving the monasteries and cutting us off from Rome.’

‘There is something rather sinister about yews,’ I said.

‘Well, they are poisonous to cattle.’

‘There’s something witch-like about them. One could imagine their having secret knowledge. But the berries are not poisonous, are they? The birds eat them.’

‘My dear little Angelet, you see good everywhere. I hope you always will.’

He talked at length about the yews; how they grew very slowly and could live for over a thousand years, and the flowers were of distinct sexes and grew on different trees—the male flowers small round and yellow, their stamens producing a considerable amount of pollen, the female flowers small green ovoids which grew on the under part of the twigs.

I felt that he was explaining that there was a similarity between nature’s laws with flowers and with people. He knew that I was uneasy, and he was telling me that I would grow accustomed to what seemed a little strange and alarming to me at first. Hadn’t it been happening throughout the world since the creation because it was nature’s way of replenishing the earth?

I listened avidly and tried to convey to him that I understood and would in time accept life as it was.

He had interesting stories to tell of the trees and said that they were the most beautiful of all nature’s creations. There was no time of the year when a tree was not beautiful. In the spring it was a joy with its buds and promise, in the summer it was rich and full; in the autumn the turning colour of its leaves was an inspiration to the artist, and it was best of all in winter when its denuded branches could be seen against a winter sky.

‘I had not thought you could be so lyrical,’ I told him.

‘I am usually afraid of mockery,’ he said.

‘Not with me.’

‘Never with you.’

I felt happy then.

Then he showed me an aspen—the trembling poplar—and it was fascinating to watch how it quivered in the light breeze.

‘It is said that the cross of Christ was made from the wood of an aspen and that ever after it has been unable to rest.’

‘Do you believe that?’ I asked.

He shook his head. ‘The leaves tremble so much because their stems are so long and slender.’

‘Do you have a logical explanation for everything?’

‘I hope so.’

I was learning a great deal about him. In the evenings he liked to talk to me about his battles and I tried to learn about them. Oddly enough he had sets of soldiers—tin ones, infantry and cavalry such as children play with. I was astonished when I first saw them. To imagine Richard playing with soldiers was the last thing I would have thought possible. But it was scarcely playing with them. He showed how certain battles had been won or lost and he would take a large sheet of paper and draw out the battlefield and place his soldiers on them.

He would show a rare excitement as he moved the soldiers about. ‘You see, Angelet, the foot soldiers came along here, but what they didn’t know was that the cavalry was lying in wait behind this hill. You see, they were so strategically placed that they were hidden from sight. It was a mistake on the part of the foot commander. He should have sent out spies to assess the enemy’s position.’

I tried to follow because I was so anxious to please him and it moved me deeply to see him there with his miniature soldiers. It made him seem young and vulnerable in a way.

I wished that I could have been interested in the battles but I could only pretend to be. I had always hated talk of fighting. My mother used to say that wars were made by the folly of ambitious men, and although they brought temporary gain to one side it was rarely worth having. Of course they had still talked now and then of the defeat of the Armada, but that was a sea battle and we had been fighting for our lives and our freedom then.

So I would sit there in the evenings while he played out his battles and engaged me in a game of chess—a game at which I had never excelled. Bersaba and I used to play together and I so rarely defeated her that it was a red-letter day when I did.

After the game was over Richard would sit back and survey the board and tell me where I had gone wrong, and often he would put the pieces back and want us to start again at that point.

He was born to command and to teach, I suppose, and he seemed to take a special delight in instructing me. Sometimes I thought he looked upon me as a pupil—a beloved and cherished pupil but one, none the less, who needed a good deal of instruction.

I did not mind. I was happy, desperately wanting to please him. I had to remember that I would seem such a child to him. I was going to try to grow up, to enjoy the things that he enjoyed, to be able to plan my chess moves as far ahead as he could and to understand why the infantry should have gone forward instead of remaining where they were—or vice versa.

So this life went on for those two weeks. It was a sort of routine—a tender teacher with his pupil.

Then one day a messenger came. He was in the uniform of the King’s Guard and he had a letter for Richard.

This captain and Richard were closeted in the library for a long time and then Richard sent one of the servants for me.

I went down to the library and Richard smiled at me rather sternly, I thought.

He presented the captain to me and said:

‘I shall be leaving tomorrow, Angelet. It is necessary for me to go north for a brief spell. Trouble is expected on the border.’

I knew I must not show my disappointment. He had told me that a soldier’s wife must be prepared for sudden calls such as this, so I tried to be the wife he would have wished me to and said, ‘What would you like me to tell the servants to prepare?’ My voice was a little tremulous, but I was rewarded with a look of approval.

The next day he left Far Flamstead.

The house seemed different without him. I had the sudden odd feeling that it was secretly amused because I was now at its mercy. I had always been fanciful; I lacked that logical mind which Richard had cultivated. He had left in the afternoon and I went right up to the roof and watched him until I could see him no more. Then I descended the newel staircase, and as I came down I paused at the door of the Castle Room. My hand was on the latch but I hesitated. He had not wanted me to go into that room for some reason. What would he think of me if I went in within half an hour of his departure? Resolutely I went back to our bedroom.

I stood at the window and looked out. I could just see the pseudo battlements of the castle, and I wondered why he had looked so stern when he had told me I was not to go there. I turned my back on the view and, sitting on the window-seat, looked at the four-poster bed. I should sleep there alone tonight, and it was no use my telling myself I was not relieved, because my feelings were too strong to be denied.

I shall get used to that, I told myself. And I thought of the lessons of the trees and the laws of nature, and I fell to wondering if soon I would know that I was to have a child. There was no doubt of my feelings about that. I imagined the letters I would write home.

It was strange eating alone, but I felt that the attitude of the servants had changed and that I was not served with the same military precision. Another facet of Richard’s character was that he could not endure unpunctuality. He would arrive exactly at the appointed time, and on one or two occasions when I had been a few minutes late his expression had shown his disapproval, although he had said nothing.

After supper the evening seemed long. I went to the library. Most of the volumes dealt with military matters. I smiled wryly. ‘Well,’ I told myself, ‘you did marry a soldier.’

Then to bed.

How big the bed seemed—how luxurious and comforting. I slept soundly, and when I awoke in the morning I felt a sense of desolation because he was not there.

Life, I assured myself, was full of contrasts, light and shadow, pleasure and endurance. During the day I would miss him so much, but I had to admit I was relieved at night.

I spent the morning in the garden as I always did, ate a solitary dinner, and the afternoon stretched out long before me. Should I ride? If I went far I must take a groom with me just as we always had to at home, so I had no great desire to go.

I found myself climbing the newel staircase to look at the view from the roof, but as I came to the Castle Room the urge came to me to go in and it was so strong that I couldn’t resist it. Even as I stood on the threshold I felt uneasy, I suppose because I was doing something of which my husband would not approve.

It was an ordinary room. Table, chairs, little writing table and court cupboard. What was unusual about it? Only the fact that from it there was a good view of the castle.

The castle! This room! Forbidden territory. I wondered why. As the castle was unsafe, the stone was crumbling, why not remove it? It seemed to be of no use, but it had been put there by an ancestor. But why should this most logical man care about that? I could hear his voice as he bent over his toy soldiers. ‘The infantry here were useless … quite useless. If they had been here, now … they could have done very good work and that might have been another story.’

The site of the castle could be used for another building. Something useful. Or gardens perhaps.

I went to the window-seat and, kneeling there, looked out. It really was rather absurd. Just a modest little house, really, with grinning gargoyles on its turrets and tiny machicolations from which no boiling oil or hot tar had ever been thrown down on intruders.

I turned back to the room. ‘Homely,’ I murmured. Yes, it did look as though it had been lived in. I wondered by whom. I tried to open the doors of the court cupboard. They were locked, but one drawer opened and in it was a key. It was that to the cupboard, so I was able to open the doors. It was full of canvases.

I was interested. Richard had said that he wanted me to start a tapestry and I thought it was just what I needed to fill the hours while he was away, and here were the canvases. I took them out and examined them. They were of varying sizes. I opened another drawer and found a quantity of beautiful coloured embroidering silks.

I took out the canvases, spread them out on the table, and as I did so a small worked piece fell out. I picked it up. It was one of those samplers which most children were expected to make at some time as a lesson in patience and diligence. This one was neatly worked and the cross stitches were minute. I had worked one myself, but Bersaba had cobbled hers and had asked my mother what useful purpose it served to have to sit there making neat little stitches—though Bersaba’s were never neat—in the form of the alphabet, numbers one to nine, and a verse from the Bible—‘Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the Earth’ or something like that—followed by one’s name and the date. My mother had seen Bersaba’s point and she did not have to pursue hers. I finished mine and my mother showed it to my father with great pride.