Green Darkness by Anya Seton

Author:Anya Seton [Seton, Anya]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, Historical, Romance, Fantasy, mblsm, _rt_yes, _NB_fixed
ISBN: 9780544225565
Google: gZLTAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0899669468
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 2013-10-01T04:00:00+00:00

Thus passed the next three weeks at Cowdray, while they all, even Mabel, lived in mounting tension and uncertainty. Celia walked daily into Midhurst, where the Potts received her temperately, after some hesitation. She served ale, washed mugs during the dinner hour as she had used to; she parried amorous advances in the broadest Sussex accent—and she listened. Each dusk she returned to Cowdray and reported privately to Sir Anthony (she saw nothing of Stephen except in the chapel), sorry that there was so little to tell. There were rumors a-plenty . . . the King was better, the King was worse. The Princess Mary had seen her brother; no, she had been denied his presence. The Duke was massing forces on Blackheath, or instead, he had taken the bridal pair, his son Lord Guilford and Lady Jane Dudley, on a pleasure jaunt to Richmond. Two parsons had been hanged at Tyburn—no, burned at Smithfield—for singing Mass in the old way, and genuflecting idolatrously despite warnings. All church bell ringing of any kind was now forbidden in London. Good money grew scarcer, a groat’s worth of meal now cost sixpence. The shillings grew so red with copper, ’twas said they blushed for shame. All the ports were more closely guarded each day.

Celia garnered these tidbits, amongst much local gossip as to the rising prices of mutton and grain; the probable harvest; the scandalous behavior of the chandler’s daughter who had set up as a whore not three doors away in the ancient building which had once belonged to the Knight’s Hospitallers.

Anthony listened patiently, he thanked Celia, but they both knew that her information was worthless.

On St. John’s eve Cowdray closed the fair with the traditional bonfire. For days the servants had been laying it, chopping down oaks, amassing deadwood, collecting the pitch in great vats. When it was lit, Anthony led his family out to the mound where the Bohuns and then the Brownes had always built the bonfire. The flames were beginning to leap and crackle, reddening the twilight. The merrymakers deserted the fair to watch. A roar of triumph burst from them when the wood caught.

Soon, the villagers began to dance around the fire, a wild orgiastic dance, as they shouted and leaped.

Anthony, Ursula, Celia and Mabel stood a little apart from the frenzy while the flames flared up tall as a steeple.

“’Tis the finest bonfire we’ve ever had,” said Anthony, laughing grimly. And no doubt the last, he thought. He drew himself up as two horsemen suddenly came trotting across the meadow from the highway, and dismounted. One was the squire of Stedham, a village two miles away, and the other John Hoby, the King’s steward at Petworth. Both were vociferous Protestants, and both, he knew, were enemies.

“Good evening,” said Anthony coolly. “You’ve come to watch our bonfire?”

“Aye,” said Hoby, a great tub of a man with gimlet eyes between folds of puffy flesh. “Ye can see it for miles. Squire here and me were riding back to Petworth on a matter of business, an’ we thought we’d look in.

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