NB Although all of the great houses and historical figures are real, current period characters are purely from my imagination and have no link with anyone living or dead.

Part 4 Playing a New Part

I knew I was in trouble when he didn’t put his arms around me. When I had kissed him I brought my own arms down and stepped back. I said “I’m so sorry Tristan, I am so new at this girl thing I assumed you liked me.” He looked sad and then said the fateful words.

“I do like you, Princess. I respect you and will be eternally grateful to you for bringing my life back to me. In my time the man could spend years wooing his chosen woman and they usually were chosen for their position or their wealth. I loved my mother but I have never loved another woman and I am not really sure what I should feel. Please grant me a little time.” I held back my tears and told him I understood when I really knew I didn’t. We went back down and sat down for a proper meal. On the way down the stairs I asked him if my father had introduced him to Chinese food as delivered and he said that it was new and exciting but left a funny taste in his mouth.

Over dinner my father was quite animated. He told us that his plans were that Tristan would take my place as a guide, dressed in authentic clothing, and would tell visitors the story of life at the House as a true tale, not something we thought went on. That way Tristan could be added to the volunteer crew and also get given intensive schooling in reading and writing; something he was sadly lacking. I thought that it would work well once Tristan became used to strangers. My time, I gathered, would be taken up with becoming Beverley in thought and action as well as officially listed everywhere needed once the licence snag was cleared. He had called his friends and cancelled my visits to other sites.

As the next few days panned out, it was good that I had the time to spare. Sarah and Stella took me under their wings and gave me guidance in getting over my first broken heart as well as living through my first period that started not three days after my transformation. It was during that time I learned that a girls’ life is not all wine and roses. Oddly, the period actually made the lack of Tristans’ love seem trivial.

My father had spent those same days in a mad dash to be ready for the visitors that weekend. We had a coach-load of pensioners booked for a tour and if that was not a baptism of fire for Tristan, I don’t know what was. I spent some time with them and Tristan and I settled in a friendly relationship, actually a bit like brother and sister. He and I went through the clothing stores and we redressed the mannequins around the house in more authentic clothing as well as finding a proper outfit for me to wear as a scullery maid.

When I tried it on his eyes went moist so I asked him why. He just said that it reminded him of Sally, a maid in the household and a girl he had been friendly with. So I was given a quick lesson in Sally, her life and her duties so that we could use it on the visitors. I was also given some training in how to speak like a Tudor wench. That week he also had a thorough training in the use of modern toilets and the need to be clean once my father had caught him crapping in the bushes. It seemed that, in 1500, there was no need for a wash unless you got really dirty and, of course, there were no crappers then.

On the Friday afternoon, my friends played the part of visitors when Tristan; dressed much the same way he had been when we first saw him but a lot cleaner and now with a nit-less wig that was close to his own hair, gave us his practise tour. I have to say that it made the place seem real as he described the duties of every one of the family and staff with me and him describing them as if having a conversation about our fellow workers. Previously we had been glossing over the actual work that Thomas and Margaret needed to do before, thinking that they were just the ‘toffs’ and I found out that they had a place in the fabric of the house as much as the servants.

Going through the house was a new experience as well. Tristan had been through every room, telling my father what had not been available in 1516, the year he ‘disappeared’; and they had removed those items to the store-room. They had also recreated the outbuilding that Tristan had slept in, even putting in a crude bunk which he now used himself, feeling more at home there. He had made a crude wooden cross which was resting against the wall in memory of his mother and he described her death and his burying her under the floor. They had even spread some soil over the concrete to faithfully depict it as it was the last time Tristan had slept there. I had to walk out as it made me want to cry.

The other thing that made me want to cry was the obvious looks Sarah had been giving him. He had never seen her before, being unconscious at the time, and she had never seen him walking and talking so I suppose I should not have been surprised that he hit her in the heart as he had done with me. What was the odd part was that he started to talk to her as if he was telling her his story. After the tour finished Alec said to me “I have been through this place several times before, helping out, but it never seemed as real as it did today. Another thing that looks real is the relationship that Sarah and Tristan may develop.”

After I had changed back into a normal outfit my mother and I went off to the police station to see whether my name change was possible. The sergeant took us to an interview room and sat us down while he opened a file. He said that as this was a special case they had gone into the data base to find any matches. He told us that my fingerprints were an exact match with the originals, my blood type was the same but my DNA swab now had a slight difference. He had pulled my mothers’ DNA from the database and we were a ninety-eight percent match, well within the guidelines. What was odd was that our DNA was a good match with a family of noble birth called the de Veres. The spell had been almost right as it put us both on a noble line. Maybe being a Princess was not so far off the mark. Before we left I had my official records changed and was issued a new learners licence with my new picture and, most importantly, the F in the right place.

My mother said that she had come from Suffolk stock and had been told that she was a descendent of a family called Shernborne. When we got home I turned on my computer and we did some family research and the investigation showed that a Margaret Spring had married Aubrey de Vere, the second son of John de Vere, an Earl of Oxford. Their daughter, Anne, had married Christopher Shernborne and had a son called Francis. My mother said “Well that explains where the Francis comes down the line in my family. It was quite likely that John and Thomas Paycocke had dealt with the Spring family of Lavenham, both being grazier clothiers.”

Friday evening my parents had booked a table for all of us at the White Hart. It was a new experience for Tristan to actually go inside. It had been a way-station for coaches in his day and he told us that it had quite a reputation for its slatterns that entertained any travellers staying over. These days, of course, it was just a boutique hotel with a good dining area. We had a nice meal with Sarah making sure she sat next to Tristan and making his acquaintance.

Very early on Saturday morning we put out cones in the street outside the House for the coach to unload its passengers before it went off to park in the town at the car-park behind the Parish Council. The driver would come back then and join the tour. My mother went to the coffee shop and started making sandwiches, setting out the cakes that had come in from a bakery, and getting the urn hot. My father opened up the doors, made sure all of the warning signs were in place (a lot of entrances being both narrow and stepped) before setting up the brochures at the reception desk. When I was a lot younger I remembered my parents being here seven days a week in the season but, post-covid, we were just going with weekends until the things got back to normal. One of the odd things was that people did not want to walk far from their cars yet. There was no parking at the House and you had to park at the Grange Barn, some ten minutes’ walk away, a thirteenth century barn now open as a museum.

We were ready when the coach arrived at eleven, Sarah and Stella, now in suitable garb, helping the elderly folk out and escorting them to the Hall where Tristan and I waited to start the tour. As they came in I saw that we had some other visitors as well as one person I remembered who I knew was from the Trust head office, probably to see if we were up to scratch. Tristan introduced himself with his own name and we began the tour of the ground floor and the outside areas. There was not enough room for a whole group to go up the stairs and I could see that many from this party would not be able to climb the steep and narrow stairways anyway.

We did our conversation about the people who lived here and the things that had to be done. I must say that I enjoyed it and Tristan really made it real. Sarah and Stella were mainly there to stop people wandering off and getting stuck in doorways. No-one left the tour until we finished with me explaining that there was a first floor but that anyone who went up should be very careful on the stairs, especially coming down.

The bulk of the party went off to the coffee shop and the outside tables and benches, with the younger visitors trying the upstairs. Sarah and Stella acted as waitresses while Tristan and I were cornered by the chap from NT who was gushing in his praise for our presentation, telling us that it was if we had lived in the time. He asked who had thought up all of the interesting characters we spoke about and I said that they were all genuine people who had lived in the house at between 1500 and 1515 and that I had researched that knowledge from an impeccable source.

After that I went up to the reception desk to see my father and I noticed that he had put an urchins’ cap on the desk with a note that said “For your guides”. I asked him if he had seen the guy from NT and he said that they had told him that someone was coming but that everyone this morning had come through reception and paid the fee so the chap may have been trying to inspect us under cover. I then saw the chap heading our way so I said “Here he comes now” and headed off to help my mother and answer questions from those who had gone upstairs.

When we had said goodbye to all the visitors and checked the house and gardens for any strays, we gathered in the Great Hall and my father said that we had all done very well. He then told the others about the NT inspection which we had passed with flying colours, the chap from the Trust was only sad that I, as Sally, would be going off to University before the end of the season because he had never been so engrossed in a tour before, having been at hundreds. He had also reported his happiness that the tour had been carried out by competent teenagers. I had not thought too much about it but the covid must have cut a swathe through the older volunteers. The tips that were in the cap were all for Tristan to give him a start in his new life and the poor lad nearly keeled over when he was told the amount. He had earned more in a few hours than he would have in two life-times when he was a youngster.

Marianne Gregory © 2022