“No, my lass. Now go fetch Nancy.”
Catherine scurried off, her flying feet on the gravel path making a rapid rhythmic crunching. She ran behind the stone fence and Mary could see only the top golden curls of her head bobbing along before she disappeared into the kitchen entry. The ivy-draped walls of the house reflected in the fishpond and the stark contrast of whitewashed walls and dark patterned wood made an image of a second Wivenhoe in its calm watery surface. Mary treasured Wivenhoe, as she always had Hever, for the calm and peace it gave. Then, too, there were gentle water lilies floating endlessly on this tiny pond as they had at The Golden Gull in Banstead. Even the manor’s ghost disturbed them not, though Mary had heard the stairboards creak at night and sensed unrest. Staff told her it was her own unrest and that the spirit visits had never yet occurred when he had been in the house. It was only the senile ravings of his old maiden aunt, he said. But Mary thought otherwise.
Once at supper, she had forced him into a debate over who the strange visitor might be who creaked the stairs. “My Aunt Susan always insisted it was my Uncle Humphrey, since he was the one hanged at Tyburn, and everyone thought a ghost must have a violent death,” he had said.
“But what do you believe, my love,” she had prompted.
“I reason that if there is any such thing, my Mary, it is my own father,” he had admitted. “You see, this manor was his birthright and Humphrey had Stonehouse Manor nearer to Colchester before they lost that as a result of the rebellion. Then too, my father died of fever in this house and, as far as I can tell, the ghost never acts up when I am in the house. Though my mother died here giving birth to me, the ghost never came until my father died. It is almost as if,” he concluded, his eyes growing distant and his voice softer, “as if my father is unsettled when I am at court in the hands of the king, so to speak, and rests quietly when I visit, and especially now that we reside here. It is only a theory if I am to believe any of my old aunt’s tales and warnings. Perhaps the stairs just creak, for I have seen nothing of it, despite the old lady’s stories of furniture moved about and doors ajar. If it comes now at all,” he had teased, “it will surely be to see what a beautiful wife and daughter I have brought to Wivenhoe. But you had best not tell little Catherine the tale. And do not worry yourself, for it is quite a friendly ghost.”
“How can you be sure?” she had probed, still nervous about the possibility of a haunted manorhouse.
“He fears not to creak about in day as well as night. Now the best folk tellers know that no evil ghost would dare that.” She had not been certain in the end if he were teasing or not, so she had let the matter drop. It was her own haunted mind, he had said, and well, maybe he was right.
But there had been no ghosts upon their joyous arrival here to live at Wivenhoe, she recalled, and a smile lit her tired face at the memory. Staff had carried her, dirt-stained and road-weary as she was, across the threshhold shouting for his shocked staff to assemble to greet the lord who so seldom visited and his new lady they had never seen. Safe at last in the oaken and stucco arms of charming Wivenhoe, Staff, Mary, Nancy, and Stephen had laughed and hugged one another in a raucous self-welcome. The eight-member household staff had stood in troubled awe at first to hear their new mistress was sister to the Great Henry’s Queen Anne Boleyn, but soon enough they had accepted and grew to like her too.
Proudly, bursting with enthusiasm, Staff had shown her the trim and lovely manorhouse of three gabled storeys. On the ground floor a solar, dining hall and kitchen rooms including pantry, buttery, and bolting room where all the storing and sifting of flour took place. Up the carved oak staircase, the master’s bedroom and sitting room and four other, smaller bedrooms. Above, under the high-peaked rafters, the servants’ rooms and extra storage. The house lay in a huge H-shape surrounded by garden plots, orchards and this lovely pond where she sat now.
The furniture inside consisted mostly of big, carved Medieval pieces Staff promised her they would replace over the years, but Mary had loved it all instantly. So like Hever in the rich, polished patina of the oaks, maples, and cherry woods; so open to the fresh smells of the gardens, yet so warm and cozy within. And best, she loved their tall dark oak bedstead with the carved tendrils of vines and flowers twisting up the four heavy posters which supported the intricately scrolled and crested wood canopy overhead. Even now, as autumn began, she could picture the crisp winter nights to come when they would pull the beige embroidered bed curtains closed and have their own safe world away from Cromwell’s spies and the sudden summons of the king.