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rolled white in the half-dark of his box, where he paced, baring his teeth. His name was Saladin. Edgar’s hunter was Ivanhoe, huge, iron-grey, full of oats and a great leaper. Edgar was always accepting challenges to jump impossible objects on Ivanhoe, who always rose to the occasion. The two of them were in some ways alike, rippling with muscle, standing tall, somehow strutting with pent-in force, not flowing, like the confined Saladin, like the mares and foals in the paddock, like Rowena and Eugenia. William could hear Edgar and Lionel coming in and out from rides as he worked, the quick clatter of iron on stones, the scrape of horses wheeling and dancing. The young women sometimes went out with them too. Eugenia rode a pretty and docile black mare, and wore a blue riding habit that matched her eyes. William tried to manage to come out of his cavern to watch her mount, her neat little foot in the groom’s hands, her own gloved hands on the reins, her hair bound in a blue net. Edgar would watch William from the height of Ivanhoe’s saddle. William sensed that Edgar did not like him. Edgar treated him as he treated the intermediate folk between the family and the invisible, speechless servants. He offered him the time of day, a nod on meeting, and no encouragement to converse.
    Lady Alabaster spent her days in a small parlour, with a view over the lawn. This room was a lady’s room, and had dark pomegranate-redwallpaper, sprinkled with sprigs of honeysuckle in pink and cream. It had thick red velvet curtains, often partially drawn against the sun: Lady Alabaster’s eyes were weak, and she frequently had the headache. There was always a fire lit in the hearth, which at first did not strike William, who had arrived in early Spring, as anything unusual, but brought him out in sweat under his jacket as Summer advanced. Lady Alabaster appeared to be immobilised, by natural lethargy more than by any specific complaint, though she waddled, more than walked, when she progressed along the corridors to eat luncheon or dine, and William formed the impression that under her skirts her knees and ankles were hugely, maybe painfully, swollen. She lay on a deep sofa, under the window, but with her back to it, oriented towards the fire. The room was a nest of cushions, all embroidered with flowers and fruit and blue butterflies and scarlet birds, in cross-stitch on wool, in silk thread on satin. Lady Alabaster had always an embroidery frame by her, but William never saw her take it up, though this proved nothing—she might have laid it aside out of courtesy. She did, in her fading voice, point out to him the work of Eugenia, Rowena and Enid, Miss Fescue, Matty and the little girls, for his admiration. She had several glass cases of dried poppy-heads and teazles and hydrangeas, and several little footstools, over which guests and servants stumbled on their way into the dimness. She seemed to spend most of her day drinking—tea, lemonade, ratafia, chocolate milk, barley water, herbal infusions, which were endlessly moving along the corridors, borne by parlourmaids, on silver trays. She also consumed large quantities of sweet biscuits, macaroons, butterfly cakes, little jellies and dariole moulds, which were also freshly made by Cook, carried from the kitchen, and their crumbs subsequently removed, and dusted away. She was hugely fat, and did not wear corsets except for special occasions, but lay in a sort of voluminous shiny tea gown, swaddled in cashmere shawls and with a lacy cap tied under her many chins. Like many well-fleshed women, she had keptsome bloom on her skin, and her face was moony-bland and curiously unlined, though her pale eyes were deep in little rolling pits of flesh. Sometimes Miriam, her personal maid, would sit by her and brush her still lustrous hair for half an hour at a time, holding it in her deft hands, and sweeping the ivory-backed brush rhythmically over and over. Lady Alabaster said that the hair-brushing