Painting by Joseph Appleyard -1947
I’m having fun with the trials my heroine’s father has set up. In The Trials of Aleric, my hero is one of seven men competing to win the hand of a considerable heiress, and a place at her side as consort when she ascends to the title of Lady of Claddach. One of the trials is to co-ordinate and supervise the yearly fete. Here’s my hero, whose job it has been to supervise the contests. One of the other suitors has changed the schedule without telling anyone, and Alaric must persuade the chief judge to change it back:
One hiccup followed another all morning. Alaric and Luke found themselves solving problems in every corner. Howard, who was managing the parish stalls and those raising money for other charitable purposes, complained that several visiting merchants had taken over more than their allocated space, squeezing into the space taken by the charities.
Meadowsweet, who was meant to be managing the merchants, instead wilted under their complaints and abuse, and the pair of them came looking for help.
Alaric borrowed a measuring stick from the estate carpenter and he and Luke went and remeasured each disputed space. The encroaching stall holders grumbled, but Luke glared at them and Alaric joked with them until the stalls were in their correct position.
A farmer bringing his prize rams into the animal pens managed to lose one between his cart and the pens. While he was searching for it, it found itself in a pen with another farmer’s ewes, and had covered two of them before the two owners chanced upon the activity.
The ram’s owner cried theft and the ewes’ owner cried assault.
“How did he get in the pen?” demanded the ram’s owner? “This blaggard opened the gate, that’s how!”
“He can’t keep track of his own ram, and now he accuses me of letting it into my ewes? Why would I want lambs from that old wreck?” The ewes’ owner enquired, plaintively.
“Old wreck? I’ll have you know that’s the finest ram on Claddach. The old blaggard is too mean to pay my fee, and that’s a fact. Why else would he bring ewes in heat to the fete?”
It took Alaric and Luke a while to calm the pair down and the incident wasn’t done until the ram had been dragged out of the pen and herded to its proper place. Neither Alaric nor Luke felt qualified to handle any repercussions from the stolen mating, so they told the men to put their dispute to one side in front of foreigners from the mainland, and, if they must, bring it up with Claddach’s steward after the fete.
The morning flew by, and Alaric was yearning for a pie, an ale, and a rest when the stable clock struck twelve. He was meeting Bea in half an hour. In fact, if he was to wash and tidy before he met Lady Stowell, he had better hurry.
He arrived still damp but clean, and Bea was already waiting for him in the courtyard. She didn’t make any more sense of it than Alaric, but at least they would both be thinking of it. And watching out for a tapestry or a painting with water in it.
“How are preparations going?” Bea asked, so Alaric told her about the ram. She immediately named the two farmers. “Those two are always trying steal a march on one another,” she explained. They will curse and call names and insist that they are going to see the magistrate, but next week they’ll be at it again. The advantage goes back and forth, and they entertain the entire island.”
Alaric laughed. “I wish I’d known that. Luke and I thought we might have a murder on our hands. How Luke will laugh when I tell him. And you, Bea? I suppose you have been as busy as we are, preparing for the guests tonight.”
Bea’s mother, Alaric had noticed, spent most of her time with the ladies her own age, and otherwise in retreat in her room. It was Bea who hurried from housekeeper to cook to butler to keep the castle running, and organising the dinner and the ball appeared to have largely fallen onto Bea, though she had some help from her aunt—her father’s sister, Lady Joan. Not her mother’s sister, who was Viscount Beverley’s mother.
“You seem to be doing it all yourself,” he observed.
“Reina and Christina have been a great help,” she assured him naming her two friends from the town. “So have Sarah and Ellie.” She chuckled. “And today we persuaded Dorrie and Lucy, my cousins, that it would be fun to make garlands to hang in the ballroom. The other girls are all there now, either making garlands or arranging flowers. Look, Alaric, I think that is the Stowell carriage now.”
Alaric could see it, just coming up the hill from the outer wall.
They had been strolling away from the carriageway along the wall, but they turned back to the gatehouse and hastened their steps so that they could go through the arch into the inner courtyard before the carriage arrived.
They were in place before the footman opened the door and put down the steps.
“Good day, Lady Stowell,” Bea greeted the lady. She was a little plump woman richly dressed in a silk afternoon gown, fussy with flounces. She wore a spencer despite the warmth of the day, and her face glowed with the heat, but she had not removed her bonnet, which, Alaric thought, must weigh a ton, given all the decoration that covered it.
“Who is that? Ah, it is Lady Beatrice. Good day, Lady Beatrice. I have come to have lunch with your dear mother. Are you here to take me to her? How sweet of you, dear.”
“Lady Stowell, may I present Alaric Redhaven? He is a guest in the castle, and is helping to organise the fete.”
Lady Stowell fixed Alaric with a shrewd eye. “One of the suitors, are you? Who is your father, boy?”
Alaric bowed. “The Earl of Elsmouth, ma’am.”
“You must be the scapegrace who was sent to Brazil because of a fight with his brother. Over a woman, wasn’t it? One hopes you have learned your lesson if you are competing for the hand of our Lady Beatrice. So odd of Lord Claddach. A competition! But I suppose, since you refused to go to let your mother and aunt present you, Lady Beatrice, you need to find a husband somehow.”