News from Norfolk

Tag: historical fiction

26/03/2025

Pilgrimage

“You argue by results, as this world does
To settle if an act be good or bad.” 

TS Eliot, Murder in the Cathedral (1935)

For three nights in a row, Agnes dreamed the same dream. 

On the morning after that third night, she washed her face, put on her best red damask gown, fresh linen and also a hood in the new fashion, and went to see the parson.

Sir John rarely visited the village, a wealthy little port on the Norfolk coast. His other livings — there were perhaps half a dozen of these now — were all better situated — closer to the places frequented by mighty men and their wives. Nevertheless, he happened to be in residence at the moment, dealing with a lawsuit, an unreliable bailiff and contested tithes. So it was that Agnes found him there in the parsonage, enthroned at the high end of the hall, holding court as members of his flock, more or less welcome, offered up to him and his secretary their complaints, petitions and grievances.

The parson’s eyes lit up when he noticed Agnes at the far end of the room. Somehow the crowd of people — friends, neighbours, relations — parted before her, so that within a few moments she was standing in front of the parson, who looked her up and down, rose, and, almost before she knew it, had shepherded her into the parlour beyond. 

“Ah, Mistress Wright, we must speak about that husband of yours, and the roof of this, my poor parsonage house, and why it lets in the rain!” he declaimed, loudly, as he shut the door, for the benefit of those waiting outside.

The two stood alone for a moment, regarding one another. Each thought the other had aged a little. This was, of course, true. All the same, there was a kind of agreement between them, even a sort of familiar warmth, which they enjoyed in silence for a moment.

“Why are you here, Agnes? I trust Valentine keeps well?”

“Oh yes, the fits have passed entirely these last few months. I think Hubert sent you word of him? Valentine is like any other six-year old child now, God be praised.”

“God be praised,” agreed the parson, his dark eyes shining, unable to look away from the woman who stood before him.

“And that is why I must go to St Thomas, the blessed martyr, to give him thanks.”

Here the parson sighed, laughed mirthlessly, shook his head, and started to pace around the room. 

“You are a foolish headstrong woman, Agnes. If you want to thank St Thomas, why not thank him here? Your husband is an officer of St Thomas’ own altar gild, here in this parish, for heaven’s sake! Also, why are you so certain it’s St Thomas you should thank? Why not Withburga or Walstan? Or Felix? Or Our Lady of Walsingham, as far as that goes — although if you wish to bother her yet again, I’d advise you, in all confidence, to do so sooner rather than later? 

“No, Agnes, you’ve troubled every saint between here and the German Ocean and some besides with Valentine and his business. I have no time for a theology lecture this morning, my sweetheart, my darling, but you also know very well that the grace that healed Valentine — assuming that it was Becket that healed him, which seems debatable to me — flows ultimately from our Lord. You really needn’t travel all the way down to Canterbury — unless you simply want a holiday from Master Wright, which I could well imagine. 

“Speaking of which, send him to me, won’t you? I wasn’t entirely in jest when I spoke at the door. The roof over the curate’s room is letting in water every time it rains here. He complains of it endlessly. They are very wearisome to me, the curate’s eloquent, unanswerable complaints. And the floor in the buttery is always wet.”

Agnes simply looked at the parson, who eventually stopped pacing about.

“Agnes, my dearest, my heart, don’t go to Canterbury. Not now.”

“I must go.” Calmly, she told the parson about the dream.

“Oh, very well then. I suppose you want some money for the journey?”

“No, I need no money, thank you,” she replied. “My husband has enough. We’ve done well these past few years. God has been merciful to us. I am only here to seek your blessing.”

“And what will you do about Valentine while you are away?” the parson asked. “Will you leave him with your sister?”

“No, I will take him with me,” Agnes replied. “He must thank St Thomas too! He’s well enough now. Valentine and I will go together.”

So the parson, formally and in Latin — although they were already in a season when Latin prayers had fallen out of favour — offered Agnes his blessing. Then, as she had known he would, rather gently at first — later rather less so — he folded her into his arms and began to kiss her. 

Sir John smelled of oranges and cloves, civet and vetiver. The marten fur of his robe was very soft.

*           *           *

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13/12/2024

The Excavation

“’Tis the solitude of the Country that creates these Whimsies; there was never such a thing as a Ghost heard of at London, except in the Play-house.” Joseph Addison, The Drummer (1716)

“I hope you will consider it no impertinence, my dear sir, that I should ask such a thing, but in truth I can no longer restrain myself. Sir, have you never felt an inclination to investigate what lies beneath that raised bank of yours, over there on the lawn?” 

The Rev Mr Calthorpe paused, regarded his cousin briefly, then with infinite care and exactitude placed a slip of paper to mark the passage that he’d been reading, closed the book so gently that the gesture elicited no sound, and laid the little volume on the table next to him, where it joined the familiar company of candle, pipe, jug of claret and half-empty glass. 

Mr Calthorpe did these things slowly and deliberately, not because he was old or infirm — for he was, in fact, a good decade or two younger than you would probably think him to be, were you to meet him in the high street, and in excellent health, too, thanks be to God — but because doing so gave him time to reflect, not for the first time, on why it was that the young were so full of zeal to do things. 

Why not leave the raised bank behind the parsonage just as it was, and had presumably always been? Why innovate?

But because Mr Calthorpe was a very kind man, and sometimes even a politic one, he sighed, gently, and said none of this to his cousin. 

The young Rev Mr Chambers, meanwhile, wondered whether he had gone too far. For all his apparent self-assurance — coaxed into being at Wykham’s two great foundations, successively if not definitively — he nevertheless remained sensible, when visiting Mr Calthorpe at his Norfolk parsonage house, that he was very much the poor relation. 

For while Mr Calthorpe might appear, dozing quietly before the fire in his ancient Norfolk rectory, the simple sort of country parson whose quotidian predicaments and catastrophes might bulk out a Covent Garden farce, he was indeed, as all the world knew, younger brother and heir to Lord Calthorpe of Calthorpe Hall, Calthorpe, in the county of Suffolk — this latter personage recently promoted from Gentleman Usher Quarterly Waiter in Ordinary, to the infinitely preferable role of Yeoman of the Removing Wardrobe, no less, to His Majesty King George II. 

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