The Black Pearl

Book 5: Morland Dynasty

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

1659: Cromwell's protectorate is drawing to a close, and the restoration of the monarchy can only improve the fortunes of the Morland family. The years of civil war and their aftermath have left Morland Place in dire straits, but with the return of the King, Ralph Morland believes he can rebuild the family estates. For his beautiful and ambitious cousin, Annunciata, the Restoration means a journey to London – one that leads to the amours and intriges of Charles's court and to the unlocking of her mysterious past.
A new and kinder age is dawning – a time for healing wounds – but more uncertainty, conflict and sorrow await both Ralph and Annunciata before they can find peace and forgiveness.

Release date: August 25, 2011

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 416

Sample

The yard was full of horses and servants and the ladies of the house were coming forward one by one to the mounting block
as their mounts were led up. Two elderly servants were watching the scene from an upper window. The yard was full of deep
cool shadow and the soft, vivid smell of a June dawn, but the sun had reached over the roofs of the outbuildings and was warming
the top bricks of the house, and the two women had pushed open the casement and were leaning their elbows on the sill to enjoy
it.


Below them Annunciata Morland jostled her cousin Cathy out of the way and took her place at the block, lifting her slender
hand to the servant who was holding her pony, Nod. It was cleverly done, and no one below would have noticed it, except Cathy
herself, and Cathy was used to being slighted. But the two women saw it perfectly, and one tutted and shook her head. ‘What
that young lady needs is a whipping. She’s too uppish by half, and poor Miss Cathy—’


Ellen regarded the other woman sourly. ‘Poor Miss Cathy’ had always been a plain and sickly child, and had therefore never
attracted the love and attention of the Morland Place servants, who had a natural prejudice towards healthy, bonny children.
Leah herself had never had any time for her and had slapped and bullied and berated her through her childhood to her present
adolescence without ever calling her ‘poor’ Cathy until now. Ellen knew the reason for the sudden sympathy: it was pure jealousy.
Normally, Ellen would not allow anyone but herself to criticize Annunciata, but only that morning at Shawes Ellen had been
worsted in one of her increasingly frequent arguments with her young miss, so she confined herself to saying ‘Aye, well,’ in a noncommittal way.


They watched Annunciata mount gracefully and take the reins as the servant spread her skirts around her. She was plainly dressed,
as was everyone nowadays, with no feathers or lace about her, yet she managed to make the black broadcloth seem like a Court
dress and her stout dun pony like a milk-white fairy horse. Her luxuriant dark curls tumbled out of her plain black cloth
hood as if nothing could contain their bounty, and Ellen’s heart swelled with pride as she was led to one side and Cathy took
her place. The contrast between the girls was marked, and Ellen forgot her grudge against her young miss and thought instead,
why shouldn’t she take the place of that unlikely scarecrow?


‘There’s some,’ she murmured, ‘as whipping hasn’t helped along much.’

Leah bristled. She was older than Ellen, and her position as governess and mother-of-the-maids at Morland Place made her an
infinitely superior person to Ellen, who held a similar position but only at Shawes, a damp old ruin of a house on a small
and unimportant estate.


‘What your Miss Annunciata needs,’ she said firmly, drawing herself up with dignity, ‘is wed. Fourteen’s old enough. My mistress
was wed at fourteen and none the worse for it.’


‘Aye, but thy mistress has no book-learning,’ Ellen pointed out. ‘My Miss is right clever, and her thinkin’ is wick as an
eel.’


‘I don’t hold with over-much education for ladies. It does ’em no good,’ Leah said.

‘The old mistress was book-learned,’ Ellen pointed out with pleasure. Leah’s face darkened. It was ten years since Mary Esther
Morland died – the same year they killed the King – but she missed her still. She had nursed Mary Esther as a baby and been
with her all her life, first as nurse, then as personal maid, then as housekeeper and companion, and finally as governess to Mary Esther’s children. Losing her was like losing sight.


‘Aye, well, there never was one like the old mistress,’ she said as if dismissing that argument. ‘But your miss – why, everyone
knows she was to wed Young Kit, ever since she was born. Why does your mistress delay? Fourteen’s old enough, and the lad’s
nineteen – why don’t they marry and be done with it? He’s a good match, and he’ll look elsewhere if she’s not sharp about
it.’


‘Maybe my mistress has other plans,’ Ellen said secretively. Leah looked at her sharply.

‘She’ll not find a better match,’ she said stoutly. ‘Young Kit’s got the city property from his father, and the Butts estate
from his mother, besides the Scottish lands. And now his mother’s dead he’ll be looking to wed—’


‘Nay, but he had to sell Watermill to pay the Roundhead fines,’ Ellen interrupted, ‘and Aberlady was burned down after the
battle at Dunbar, and Birnie is overrun with presbyters, and Lord knows if he’ll ever get it back, so maybe my mistress is
thinking twice about the match. After all, when you think who Annunciata is—’


She stopped abruptly, aware she had been on the brink of an unforgivable indiscretion. Leah narrowed her eyes.

‘Who is she, then?’ Ellen did not answer, and Leah went on, ‘Well all respect to your mistress, and pretty as Annunciata may
be, she’s a bastard when all’s said and done, and no one knows who her father was.’


‘Maybe so, maybe not,’ Ellen said smugly.

‘Are you saying you know?’ Leah demanded.

‘Maybe I know, maybe I don’t,’ Ellen said infuriatingly, ‘but the fact is Shawes is not entailed, and Miss Ruth can leave
it to anyone she likes. So my miss is an heiress as well as the prettiest, sharpest thing in the county, and Miss Ruth will
not rush into weddin’ her, and that’s it and all about it.’


Leah breathed hard, aware she had been bested, and that what Ellen said was true. Shawes, though a small estate compared with Morland Place, was a very good inheritance, and there were the warehouses on King’s Staith besides. Annunciata
was an important heiress, and she knew it, just as she knew she was and always had been the prettiest thing on two legs. Leah
looked down into the yard again and saw how Young Kit and Edward – Mary Esther’s last child – both hung around talking to
Annunciata while they waited for the rest of the party to mount up. Annunciata flirted with them both, playing one off against
the other. Meanwhile, on the other side of the yard, Cathy and her ten-year-old cousin Elizabeth Hobart sat their horses,
ignored. It was the same thing all the time. When there was dancing, everyone fought to claim Annunciata’s hand, and only
the losers approached the other young ladies.


Now the last of the ladies was mounting – Leah’s own mistress, the mistress of Morland Place, wife of Ralph Morland, the Master.
Leah felt a twinge of anxiety along with her pride, for the mistress was pregnant, and Leah never liked to see her ride when
she was pregnant. The anxiety sharpened her tongue, and she turned away from the window with one last barbed comment and a
jerk of the head towards Annunciata and her knot of faithful attendants.


‘Miss Ruth wants to watch she’s not more rushed into wedding the lass than she plans on.’

‘What dosta mean by that?’ Ellen demanded furiously, but Leah walked away, massively dignified, without replying, and Ellen
could only mutter after her. ‘Tha s’d watch thy spittle doesn’t poison thee, tha sidey owd bitch.’


As the party clattered out through the barbican and over the drawbridge, Mary Moubray was conscious, a little guiltily, of
a sense of relief. She knew she ought to feel that Morland Place was her home, and not a prison, and she knew that it would
break her husband’s heart if he thought she was unhappy, but she could not prevent the lifting of her heart and struggled not to let it shew too obviously.


They were riding up to Harewood Whin to collect elder. It was one of the periodic tasks and was often left to servants, but
Ralph, always eager to please Mary and always looking out for some way to make amusement for the household, had thought of
making it into a party. The laws had been growing more and more strict over the last ten years, until it seemed that almost
anything that was pleasurable was banned by the Purita government. At first they had been able to ignore some of the laws,
but then General Cromwell – Lord Protector he styled himself – had set his major-generals over them, with armed soldiers to
enforce the laws, and heavy fines and even imprisonment for infractions.


Morland Place had suffered. A large portion of the estate had been confiscated, as a punishment for the family’s royalist
activities, and later fines had been raised against them for the same thing, and for the continuance of the forbidden Anglo-Catholic
celebration in the chapel at Morland Place. Much of the family’s plate and jewels had had to be sold to pay the fines, and
it had been hard at times to scrape through. The worst thing had been the attack on the chapel a few years back, when armed
soldiers had broken in during the early Mass. They had damaged the altar, stolen the altar-furniture, and torn out the rails,
making a bonfire of them in the yard on which they had burnt the copes and altar-cloths and prayer-books.


It had been a terrifying thing, but even worse were the human consequences. The Master of Morland Place, Edmund, had suffered
a stroke while trying to save the ancient wooden statue of the Blessed Virgin. He had had one stroke the previous year which
had left him partly crippled; the second attack killed him, and he was found in the Lady Chapel lying face-down, the statue
hidden and safe under his body. The old priest, Father Michael Moyes, had been arrested and imprisoned, and not all that money
and pleading could do could get him released. He was an old man, and prison life was too harsh for him. He had died in his
cell the following winter.


Other deaths had followed indirectly. Hero Hamilton, Young Kit’s mother, had felt the shock deeply, and had gone in terror
of a second raid on the chapel at Shawes. She had died in her sleep two weeks after the raid, and everyone believed it was
fear that had killed her. And Mary herself, who was heavily pregnant at the time, had slipped her child early. The baby had
never been strong in consequence, and had lived only twenty months. Through all this, and through the hardship and fear that
had followed, it was Ralph who had held things together. From cheerful, indolent boyhood he had been thrust by events into
responsible manhood. His father had left Morland Place after the death of Mary Esther, passing over his inheritance to Ralph
and going to London to live, and with the death of Edmund, Ralph became Master of Morland Place in truth. It was a heavy responsibility,
but Ralph had always retained his natural cheerfulness, and everyone increasingly grew to rely on him to give them hope through
the difficult years. Ralph had shewed no signs of feeling the strain except once, last year, when the news came of the death
of Lord Cromwell: then he had cried ‘Thank God!’ and had fallen to his knees, covered his face with his hands, and wept.


Mary glanced at him as he rode beside her on Red Fox, his big chestnut gelding. He was a tall man, over six feet, and big-built,
with broad shoulders and long, strong bones, but there was nothing heavy about him – he was as lithe and graceful as a cat.
He was much like his grandfather in looks, having the same silver-fair hair, wide grey eyes, fine-boned, Grecian face and
golden skin, but where Edmund had been a cold, proud statue of a man, Ralph’s face shewed his lazy good-humour. His grey eyes
were flecked with gold, and had the long impassive stare of a leopard, and the lines around them were laughter lines, his long, sensuous mouth curling upwards at the corners.


Mary Moubray had been fourteen when she first met Ralph, a month before their wedding. She had been born and bred in the wild
Borderlands, and her home was at Emblehope, in the bleak and barren uplands between North Tynedale and Redesdale. Her father
had owned a large estate there: he had been killed in the last battle of the war, near Carlisle. Her mother had been half-sister
to Samuel Symonds, who married Mary Esther Morland’s eldest daughter Anne, and when Mary’s mother died, Sam Symonds had become
her guardian and had taken her to live on his estate at Bell Hill in Coquetdale, a greener place then Emblehope, but as wild
and bare.


Then, when she was fourteen, everything had changed, and changed so drastically that she had spent almost a year in a state
of bewilderment that amounted to shock. Sam had told her, kindly enough, that he had arranged a match for her. As her father’s
only surviving child she was his heiress, and a good match was not hard to come by – she was to wed Ralph Morland, eventual
heir of all the great Morland estate. Thus far the news had not displeased her, for she had always known that some day she
must marry; the shock came in the fact that they were to leave for Yorkshire on the morning, and she was to be wed within
the month.


Sam and an armed guard had escorted her on the long ride down to York. It was necessary in those troubled times to have armed
men with you when you rode through the wild lands, but to Mary, in her bewilderment, it had seemed as though they were soldiers
come to take her to prison. The idea had coloured her first year in Yorkshire. It was a strange land to her, a soft, wet,
green land, and she had felt stifled, and hated it. All her life she had known the wild airy uplands, their emptiness and
silence; now she had to grow used to the crowded, noisy, stinking lowlands. Hitherto she had had nothing to do but enjoy herself,
and had spent most of every day out of doors, riding, hunting, hawking, or simply walking over the moors and hills. Now she was
confined indoors with a bewildering number of tasks to perform. She was translated, at a stroke, from a careless girl to mistress
of a great household with all that that entailed.


And she had been married to the huge, golden, powerful man who terrified her. Deeply unhappy as she was, she was unable to
escape, and so she retreated inside herself, hid herself behind a mask of immobility, concealed her fear and confusion with
a slow-moving dignity which suited her new position and kept most of the multitude of people at a distance. Oddly enough,
the only person in the household who entered into her feelings was Edmund. He had been born and brought up at Morland Place,
but his father came from Northumberland, from Tods Knowe, only an hour’s ride from Emblehope, while his mother came from the
wild moors of Birnie, in Stirlingshire. He had inherited much of his parents’ love of solitude, and was himself an intensely
reserved man. A strange kind of silent sympathy had grown up between them, and Mary had found that when she was especially
driven and unhappy, she could take refuge with Edmund, for with him she could sit and be quiet, and no one would dare disturb
her.


Ralph caught her eye now and smiled. ‘Are you all right?’ he said. ‘You must tell me if you feel uncomfortable.’

She nodded. She did not smile, but then she rarely did, for the mask she had assumed had become habit. ‘I am well,’ she said.

‘Good. I know Leah did not want you to come, but we shall not ride fast – in fact we shall not go out of a walk all the way.
I do not think it can hurt you.’


‘I am glad to be out,’ she said. It was an understatement. Her eyes glowed with the pleasure of being in the fresh air again, and Ralph knew it. He had grown skilled in interpreting the minuter expressions of her face.


‘Tomorrow, if you like, we might go hawking out on the moor. Leah would never let you hunt, I know, but we could get up very
early and steal away – just you and I and a few servants. Would you like that, my hinny?’


She only nodded, but her eyes were happy. He was always kind to her, quick to sense what she wanted and try to provide it.
In the early years of their marriage she had been too confused and unhappy to notice, and had blamed him for her unhappiness,
for it was he who had married her, and it was he therefore who confined her to the house and made her pregnant. But as time
went on she realized that he had not chosen the marriage any more than she – it had been arranged between Edmund and Sam Symonds
– and that he did his best to mitigate the circumstances for her.


She had not found pregnancy hard, except in the curtailment of her freedom. She was a tall, healthy girl, and carried easily:
Leah said hill-folk always did, because of their strong sinews and upright carriage. But for the same reason childbirth went
hard with her, and her labours were always long and painful. Her first child, named Edward, was born in January of 1653, and
she was barely recovered from the birth when she conceived again. Edmund was born in December of the same year, and Young
Ralph in October of ‘54. The fourth baby was due in November ’55 but was born a month early. Ralph had named him Edward too,
for Edward was the family name, and he wanted to be sure that it survived amongst his children.


After the miscarriage she had had a couple of months’ grace while she recovered; but she conceived early in the new year and
her first daughter was born in September of ’56, and was named Sabine. Ralph had had to go to London that winter, to sort
out some business matters with his father, who acted as the family’s factor in London, and Mary had had a delightful winter of hunting and riding and freedom. Oddly, though, she had discovered herself missing Ralph,
and the big warm bulk of him in bed beside her, and when he returned in the middle of February she greeted him so lovingly
that she was soon pregnant again. That summer her second son Edward died, and on the II November, St Martin’s day, she had
borne another son, whom they had Christened James Martin. Her sixth son had been born in November ’58, had also been named
Edward, but had lived only a month, dying just before Christmas; and now it was June, and she was four months pregnant again.


Ralph loved his children, and adored her for bearing them to him, but Mary wished there could be time in between one labour
and the next conception for her to savour a little freedom. As for her children, she was proud of them, and glad that she
had had them, of course, for an infertile woman was a useless thing, universally to be despised, but she had little real affection
for them, except for Martin. He was the only dark one of the brood. Ned, Edmund, Young Ralph and Sabine were all the image
of their father, big-boned, golden-skinned, blond and pale-eyed – beautiful children and much admired, especially by the servants,
who clucked over them happily and spoiled them as much as they could when Leah was not watching.


But Martin, who was coming up for two, had been a small, dark, wrinkled baby at his birth, and as he grew he took on his mother’s
looks. He was a slenderly made child with unexpectedly dark skin, silky black hair, and dark-blue eyes the colour of a young
kitten’s. He was not as boisterous as the other children had been at his age, and there was a sensitivity and thoughtfulness
in his fine-featured face which, with his dark colouring, made him seem alien to the brood. The servants sometimes talked
about him being a changeling, but they could not dislike him, for he was the sweetest-natured of all the children, and Lambert,
the tutor, praised his quickness and intelligence. Ned had not been able to read until he was three, and Edmund still wrote an abominable hand, but Martin, who was not two until
November, both read and wrote well, and knew three French songs already.


They passed through Ten Thorn Gap, and now they were no longer on Morland land, for the North Fields had been the part of
the estate that Parliament confiscated. It was owned now by one Master Makthorpe, a Puritan and Parliamentarian of rigid convictions.
He was the local Justice of the Peace, and made an uncomfortable neighbour for the Morlands, not least because it was well
known that he coveted more of the Morland lands than he already had. Ruth and Ralph were both of the opinion that it was Makthorpe
who had initiated the raid on the chapel, but they kept their thoughts to themselves, for fear of frightening the household.


The sun was beginning to dry the dew off the grass by the time they reached Harewood Whin – a wild, tangled wood through which
ran a little beck called the Smawith. It was the home of badgers and foxes and deer and, from time immemorial, the hares that
gave it its name, and there were many ancient and holy trees in it. It was from Harewood Whin that the Morlands fetched home
the may on May Day, and from there that they cut their holly and mistletoe for Christmas-tide. Morlands had hawked and hunted
there, children played there, and lovers met there, time out of mind.


They threaded their way through the overgrown paths, and soon had to dismount and lead their horses, for the boughs hung too
low to allow them to pass. The great elder tree was near the centre of the wood, where it was darkest and most mysterious
and, as they neared it, Mary felt the power of the place. They walked in silence, and the wood was quiet, no birdsong to shake
the peace, so that the sound of their passage – the rustle of leaves, the crack of twigs underfoot, the clinking of bits,
the occasional, startling ring of shod hoof on stone – seemed unnaturally loud. Then they came out into a little clearing, and there was the great elder in front of them.


Ralph signalled to some of the servants to take the horses to one side, and then gestured forward Clem, the steward’s son,
who was carrying the garlands. He did not need to tell anyone to be quiet – no one wanted to speak or laugh in that strange
silence, and even Annunciata was standing wide-eyed, forgetting to pull at her curls or look sideways at Edward. The elder
was the most venerable of all the trees in the wood, and it had great power, both to good and to ill. Its leaves, berries
and flowers, and even its bark, were used in a great number of medicines and salves, and sprigs of it warded off evil spirits;
but the elder-mother, if offended, ate little children, and it was also reputed to be the tree from whose wood the Cross was
made, and from whose branches Judas the traitor hanged himself.


Clem came forward and snatched off his hat, and bowed three times, very reverently, before the tree, and in a loud voice began
the prayer to the elder-mother, praising her power to good, and begging her to allow them to pluck her leaves and flowers.
To placate her, they had brought her garlands of honeysuckle and wild garlic flowers, and Clem wound these around the boughs
from which they intended to take what they needed. This done he stepped back, picked up his basket, and looked towards Edward.
Mary shivered suddenly. It was very cold in this shadowy place, and she was glad she would have nothing to do with the plucking
of the leaves, for she had too many children to risk. Clem, too, was married, and had two sons, and his mother had been a
woods-woman from up Wilstrop way, and he would have been very loath to perform the necessary task, as Ralph well knew. So
Ralph had asked Edward, who was a bachelor, to do it. Edward stepped up cheerfully but quietly with the knife and scissors.
He was not much of a believer in the old rites, or magic, or the pagan country powers, but even he took off his hat and bowed
to the tree before beginning.


When the basket was full the two men bowed again, Ralph spoke the prayer of thanks, and they all departed gladly. They passed
through quickly to the north side of the Whin, and when they broke out into the sunshine, everyone’s spirits lifted as if
they had successfully avoided some danger.


‘Shall we breakfast here?’ Ralph asked, pausing by some grassy hummocks on a slight rise above the beck. ‘What need to go
further? Clem, you could spread the cloth there, on the level ground. Barnabus, take the horses and tie them in the shade.’


Talk and movement broke out as if released by his words. The servants bustled about preparing things, spreading the cloth
and bringing out the food, taking the horses and pointing out the best spots for the ladies to seat themselves. Ralph spread
his doublet for Mary to sit on. ‘The grass is still damp here – you might catch a chill.’ She allowed him to fuss around her,
too glad of the fresh air to mind anything. Beyond the beck Low Moor stretched flat and bare towards Hessay, and beyond Hessay
was Marston Moor, where so many Morlands had died. Mary heard Young Kit saying, to Annunciata:


‘Over there is where my father fell. You’ve never been that far, have you? I’ll take you there one day.’ Mary glanced round
in time to see a quick tussle between him and Edward as to whose coat Annunciata would sit on, a tussle which Edward won as
he won almost every contest between them. Edward was as beautiful and wicked in his way as Annunciata was in hers, and Mary
knew from first hand how dangerous he could be. Although he was Ralph’s uncle, he was actually four years the younger, and
was so astonishingly like him in looks that strangers always took them for brothers. He had the same colouring, moon-pale
hair and grey eyes, and the same firm, classical features, but he was smaller and stockier in build. During the winter that
Ralph had spent in London, Mary had found herself more and more often in Edward’s company. He had taken her riding, hunting and hawking; he had danced with her in the long saloon, he had played cards with her, had played the lute
to accompany her while she sang through the long dark evenings. Mary, missing Ralph as she did, had been in danger of falling
in love with him.


He was easy to love – handsome, amusing, witty, attentive, and with an unexpectedly feminine approach to many things which
made him easy for a woman to talk to. Afterwards, on more mature consideration, Mary had decided that he had intended her
to fall in love with him, even that, had things gone that way, he would have made love to her. It puzzled her even while it
shocked her, for it was a kind of wanton wickedness that did not accord with the rest of Edward’s nature. He was not a cruel
person, and he had no spite against Ralph – he and Ralph were the best of friends. In the same way, he tormented Young Kit
by continually tempting Annunciata’s wavering affections away from him and towards himself, even though he and Kit had grown
up together and done their lessons side by side in the same schoolroom. When they were both children, Edward had protected
the more timid Kit from the rages of their hot-tempered tutor, often provoking a beating for himself to distract attention
from Kit; while Kit, the more intelligent of the two, had frequently done for Edward the work which he was too stupid or lazy
to do himself.


Mary saw now how it puzzled Kit to be thwarted continually by his best friend, and how he tried to make excuses for Edward
that would prove him innocent of any design against him. It puzzled Mary, too. She did not think Edward was in love with Annunciata,
any more than he had been in love with her that winter. She wondered if it was in him to be in love at all. There was something
odd about Edward, something restless and misdirected in him that she could not quite put her finger on. She had had a little
dog, when she was a child, that had been caught in a trap when it was a pup, and damaged its leg. Because it was so young, the leg had healed, and the pup appeared quite sound, except that when it ran there was something odd about
its gait, a limp so well adjusted to that it was impossible for a stranger to determine which leg had been damaged. Edward
gave her the same feeling. There was something broken or damaged inside him that he had compensated for, so that all that
appeared was this undefined strangeness.


The servants were bringing round the food, and while Mary watched Edward said to K