Bell-ringing in the church again and a great stir and bustle in the house, for Roland my lord’s nephew has come, with another young man, a friend of his from Lincoln’s Inn, but not the expected chantry priest, whose whereabouts are unknown. The two arrived this afternoon in a swirl and jangle of hooves and harness, having ridden fast from Watlington as if they had urgent business, although it appears that they do not, and are here merely because they have nowhere else to be. Strange how some people agitate the air around them. Roland is one such: he can be sitting in silence in a corner of a room and still compel attention; he is impossible to ignore. It is as if some invisible thing clung always to his shoulder, shivering its unseen wings. All eyes turn to him wherever he goes and yet he himself seems heedless of his own effect. He absorbs the regard of others as a storm cloud does the sun.
Hugh is touchingly pleased to see his brother, and Roland’s appearance has also lifted my lord my husband’s spirits. I know that my lord is fond of both young men, these sons of his dead sister, but Hugh is familiar, a part and parcel of the household, having been here since his mother died. Roland, however, who is five years older, was a boy at Paul’s at the time, and later a scholar in Cambridge, and afterwards returned to live in London. Consequently, when he visits, he is a novelty and he brings to this secluded place a welcome breath of the outside world. He has acquaintances at Court, he has travelled across the sea to faraway cities – Paris and Geneva – he has studied law; he can converse with his uncle on terms that no one else can, in this house. He resembles him as well, they share the same dark eyes and unusual height.
I too am glad that Roland is here, but I do not love him as I love his brother. There is no sweeter-natured person on this earth. Hugh has something of a child’s directness and clarity of gaze, and he has deep wells of kindness. If he possessed as much gold as there are leaves on a pear tree, he would give it all away to anyone in need. When I came here, as the new wife of my lord, Hugh was but a boy, and yet even at his age he sensed how hard it was for me to conform to a house with long-established ways, to a man so much older and a bereft stepchild, and all without companion of my own, except for one maidservant. It was Hugh alone who strove to turn this strange place into home. He showed me everything – the house, the garden, the village, the fields, the meadows and the woods, the riverbank – until he thought I knew my way well enough to feel that I belonged here, to some degree at least. We still walk the demesne together, when we can. Dear, round-faced, gentle Hugh who, like my own lost brother, knows the names of flowers and stars and birds, and hears the songs of the fields.
Roland, though, is for the new. And, unlike his brother, he is not blue-eyed and plumpish but as gaunt and beaky as the heron. There are shadows beneath his cheekbones and his hair is black as night. He is a beautiful young man. His friend is called Henry Martyn, and so far he has said nothing but for that demanded by politeness. I have never seen a grown man so pale of hair and skin. He is as white as a garment washed in lye and left out in the sun to bleach. Thistledown hair, eyelashes as fair as strands of spider’s web and eyes a milk-whey shade of grey. When they stand side by side, Roland and Henry look like a painted allegory of darkness against light, although in life they are not in the least opposed but evidently think alike on every matter.