A Bouquet of Thorns (32 page)

R
ose buried him in London.

She was gone three weeks, accompanied by the ever-faithful Florrie. Passengers on the train to the capital, ignorant of the scandal Charles Chadwick's death had caused, turned their heads and sighed at the tragic beauty of the young widow's grief-ravaged face, the dark shadows beneath her striking lavender-blue eyes echoing the rich, black velvet of her mourning weeds. They judged the older woman with her to be her mother as she consolingly touched the slim, black-gloved hand, but it seemed the girl was encased in some impenetrable trance as she watched the miles race past the window, her expression impassive as the engine rumbled its way through the countryside, pulling the rattling coaches behind it. But despite the state of hypnosis in which she appeared suspended, there was an air of purpose, even determination, about her when the train finally drew into Paddington with a great roaring of steam. Undertakers were waiting on the platform to receive the heavy oak coffin with its solid brass handles, male passengers and railway staff respectfully removing their hats, and ladies bowing their heads. The handsome widow spoke but a few words to the funeral director as the pall-bearers shouldered the solid wooden box containing her dead husband, and then she and her mother swiftly made for the row of waiting cabs.

She had instructed Charles's solicitor, his agent and the butler to put their heads together to compose a list of his acquaintances to inform of the funeral arrangements. To everyone's amazement, she did not hold a wake, since she scarcely knew any of them, and her face was a mask of stone as Charles's earthly remains were laid to rest. Did they consider her a gold-digger, an adulterous, wanton hussy, for the story of Charles's demise must surely have filtered through to them? Only the inhabitants of Rosebank Hall, together with Captain and Mrs Bradley, knew of what she had suffered at Charles's hands. And now Florrie, who, although she knew something of Charles's treatment of his wife, had hidden her face in her apron as Rose had finally revealed to her the detailed truth about her marriage.

She closed up the house, entrusting its sale and that of its contents to the solicitor, and dismissing the servants, though not without providing each one of them with an excellent character reference, a month's wages and some item of value from the house to keep or sell as they chose. She held a meeting with the bank manager, the lawyer and the agent, setting up a system for the control of her financial affairs, and when everything was in order, she returned to Fencott Place – her home.

Florrie watched her keenly from the opposite seat of the first-class compartment. Would the sight of the moors bring some animation to her set face, some ease to her heart? Apparently not. She had not telegraphed ahead to tell Ned to meet them. Dusk was gathering fast, and she decided to spend the October night at the Bedford Hotel, whose opulence overwhelmed Florrie, who had never slept at a common inn, let alone such a renowned establishment. And first thing next morning, Rose hired a carriage to take them home, the driver wilting under her sharp, brusque words.

‘Oh, ma'am.' Patsy dipped a curtsy at the unexpected return of her mistress. ‘We didn't know you was coming. I must tell Cook.'

‘Tell her not to worry about preparing any fancy dishes,' Rose told her, the first hint of a smile twitching her mouth. ‘We'll eat whatever's available.'

‘Oh, right, ma'am. And, ma'am, there's been a gentleman calling for you. Several times. Leastways, I
think
'er's a gentleman. 'Er spoke and acted like one, though 'er was dressed like a worker.'

‘Mr Collingwood?'

‘No, ma'am. I think 'is name were Warrington.'

‘Ah.' Rose dropped her chin for a few seconds, then lifted it haughtily. ‘If he comes again, tell him I'm still in London.'

‘As you wish, ma'am. Shall I serve some tea, ma'am?'

But Rose had no time to reply as, with a scurry of claws scratching on the highly polished floorboards, Amber came bounding in through the kitchen door with a bark of delight, the long hair flowing from her flank and legs, while Scraggles and young Lucky skittered about in an array of confusion, tails wagging nineteen to the dozen. Rose dropped to her knees, her arms about Amber's thick yellow ruff. The stubborn shield of indifference she had drawn about herself against the horror of Charles's death was momentarily fractured, and the damning guilt speared into her soul. But then Scraggles was pushing his snout into her face, his tongue rough and rasping against her cheek and driving away the welling tears from her eyes.

She stood up, breathing in deeply as her shoulders stiffened with cool resolution once more. ‘Just give me five minutes, Patsy, and then tea would be lovely. Or perhaps coffee. Florrie, you decide.'

Florrie's head rocked backwards in astonishment as Rose flicked her skirt and strode purposefully towards the back door, the dogs scampering about her knees as she disappeared out into the dank and dismal autumn air. Out in the yard, a cry of bitter fury strangled in her throat at what she was about to do. But as she passed Gospel's old loose box where she had concealed Seth all those weeks, Honey who occupied it now put her pale gold head over the top of the half-open stable door and whinnied to her. Rose stopped and wrapped her arms about the mare's strong neck. She wept then, her tears soaking on to the creamy coat and making it glisten with long, wet streaks, her emotions taut and twisted into a tight, confused knot.

When she heard Ned whistling, her brittle nerves cracked. Ned, who had betrayed the escaped convict for the sake of five paltry pounds. Within seconds, her tears had dried and she was marching across to him and thrust an envelope and a small purse into his hands.

‘There you are,' she said with utter control, though her eyes were black with anger. ‘Your thirty pieces of silver. Go on. Count them. They'll see you through until you find another position. I've written you a good character, though you don't deserve it. I want you out of here by dinner-time, and then I never want to see you,
ever
again!'

She thought she saw him as she climbed the stairs to bed, and she shivered. It wasn't possible, of course. His bones and mutilated, decaying flesh were lying deep underground nearly three hundred miles away. But it was as if he stood there, waiting for her, glaring at her, a thing of torment to haunt and unnerve her. She knew it wasn't real, just a figment of her tortured imagination, but she nevertheless gave the apparition a wide berth, and hurried into the bedroom. Was he there, too? No. And her heart sagged with relief. A welcoming fire blazed cheerily in the grate, setting apricot and peach shadows dancing merrily on the walls. The room was warm, the furnishings she herself had chosen before she had known what she would have to suffer there, suddenly fresh and pretty once more, the carpet deep and luxurious beneath her feet. She changed quickly into one of the new nightdresses she had bought ready-made from the pleased seamstress in Princetown in the few days she had spent at Fencott Place between Charles's death and leaving for London. Lovely as they were, she could never again bear against her flesh the nightgowns that had witnessed the abuse of her innocent body in her marriage bed, and she had ordered them to be burnt. And now she stood, staring at that very bed she had shared with the man who had been her husband, but who had wanted to possess her in every way, and to crush the life and the vitality that had once belonged to Rose Maddiford.

She was free. But the brilliance had gone from her lavender-blue eyes, leaving them dull and lacklustre. A bewildering numbness held her as if in some deadened state of limbo where no feeling could enter, suspended in a futile void. She slid between the crisp, snowy sheets, the corners of her mouth flickering upwards at the comforting stone hot-water bottles Florrie had placed there. Dear Florrie, whom Rose had insisted was to move down from her servant's room in the attic and occupy instead one of the bedrooms on the same floor as herself. They were five women now – Rose, Florrie, Cook, Patsy and Daisy – living alone in the isolated house, with not even Ned sleeping outside in the stable yard. The three dogs were no longer banned to the stables at night, but guarded their mistress and her female companions by sleeping inside the great hallway of the house. Rose planned to take on some male servants in due course, one to live in, perhaps with a boy as well, to take care of all those duties in a large house that required the strength of a man, and another to take Ned's place and perhaps assist with the gardening. As Rose closed her eyes, she wondered idly if the lad who helped the gardener who came a couple of days a week knew anything about horses and might be interested. But she was deathly tired, her strength drained, and her exhausted mind slipped easily into unconsciousness.

But Charles crept into her sleep like some fiendish, slithering snake from the depths of hell, his blackened, scorched face leering at her, his burnt disembodied hands reaching out to drag her down into the inferno that raged about him. She sat up, the haunted scream strangling in her throat, her body drenched in sweat and her eyes blank with terror in her white face as the ghoulish spectre faded into the darkness.

Oh, God. Though she knew it had been but a nightmare, it had pierced into her heart, causing her physical pain, and her pulse raced frantically, refusing to be calmed. ‘Oh, Charles, I'm so sorry. I really didn't want it to be like that. I wanted us to be happy. But I just couldn't go on as we were. 'Twas my fault. I was the wrong wife for you. And now you can never forgive me.'

She slid out of bed, moving as if in a dream, and floated across to the window. The glass was cold against her cheek, the night so dark that she could hardly distinguish the garden let alone the moor beyond. But that was what her bleeding soul hungered for, the solid eternity of the land that no man could ever tame. Scar, perhaps, with the quarries, the mines, the failed attempts to conquer the wilderness and turn it into farmland, the only success the prison fields that broke the convicts' backs to clear and cultivate. But one day, she was sure, the moor would reclaim it all, proud and unforgiving. Constant, powerful, the very core, the bedrock upon which her life was founded.

The moor flashed beneath Honey's hooves early next morning, the purple heather, the tufty grass, the dying bracken, the golden swaths of autumn-flowering gorse, the pale shafts of sunlight filtering through the scudding clouds as if illuminating her path to some elusive salvation that teased and tantalized, and was gone before she reached it.

Rose stood atop Sharpitor for perhaps an hour, gazing out across the southern moor and the winding River Tamar in the west, while Honey languidly cropped the grass. And then away they raced down to the picturesque Walkham valley, to what she had always fancifully called the fairy wood at Eggworthy, where ancient moss clung to boulders forged in the realms of time in the watery glen, and where she had met with . . .

No! She forced him from her mind. It wasn't right. She didn't deserve it. She had been the cause of her husband's horrific death, and the guilt, the shame of it, sliced into her very existence. She dug her heels into Honey's flank and the willing mare stretched her muscled limbs to bound up the steep incline towards the tiny hamlet of Sampford Spiney. Then out on to the moor again, past the familiar crags of Pew Tor and Heckwood Tor, and the unmistakable piled rocks of Vixen Tor. She paused when she came to the main road. She could quite easily turn left . . . towards . . .

She set Honey's head for home, her heart ripped into incomprehensible shreds. But there was one visit she must make as she walked Honey solemnly through Princetown. The churchyard. There were fresh flowers on the two graves: chrysanthemums, whose glorious colours she recognized from the garden at Fencott Place. So Florrie had been there before her. She bowed her head, and in her fragmented mind, she was holding Alice in her arms, and she felt her father touch her hand.

It was the same, day after day, once she had seen to the needs of the three horses, since she had done nothing as yet about employing any new staff. To Florrie's consternation, she did nothing at all beyond giving her the money to pay the household bills. She ate, almost in a trance, whatever Cook chose to put in front of her, hardly speaking at the table or as she sat with Florrie by the evening firelight, her face pale, the skin taut and transparent, as a miserable autumn deepened and the first snow of winter peppered the heights of the moor. She seemed impervious to the biting, lacerating wind, the penetrating cold and damp as she spent her days traversing the moor on Honey's back. Even the swirling, treacherous mists did not deter her, as she could navigate a straight line even in the densest fog, and knew exactly the clear path or track she would intercept. She visited Molly and the baby once, but she barely heard what her dear friend said, and was soon wandering desolately again in search of her lost self, scouring the high exposed ridges, the sheltered, tumbling river valleys, drowning in a deep, unbearable grief, and never able to find the peace she craved . . .

‘You cas'n keep turning that poor lad away,' Florrie berated her. ‘Twice a week he comes, regular as clockwork, and all that way! Now that I've met him, I can see why you made such an attachment to him, and now you never even opens the letters he leaves, nor those he brings from those good people he lives with. You should be ashamed on yoursel'! No matter what the weather, he's on the doorstep, and you'm either not here, or you refuses to see him. Handsome fellow like that . . .'

‘I just can't see him, Florrie.' Rose's voice was flat and expressionless, as if she had gone beyond despair, locked in a world where nothing seemed to matter any more. And Florrie shook her head. For where had the tempestuous, spirited child gone?

The bundle of papers arrived from London during the second week of December, and Rose opened the package with a ponderous sigh. Both the lawyer and the agent had sent letters, begging her to come to the capital, and since she had ignored them, they had got together and sent the papers to her instead. The London house and its contents had fetched a sum Rose could scarcely believe, but the small fortune must now be invested. The sheaf of papers made various suggestions of stocks and shares, new and existing opportunities with what risk or return each might carry, plus the most recent reports on the investments Charles had held, and which had made him rich but might now need reviewing. Rose's heart sank. It was all very well to be monied, but it meant you had responsibilities, not just to the household you ran and the servants you employed, but investments could make or break a new or struggling company. Or you could suddenly lose a devastating amount if you weren't constantly looking ahead. Charles had been brought up to it, but she had not . . . Domestic economies she understood, and those of the moor. There was talk of Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt's horse-drawn tramway being replaced by a steam railway, coming back into Princetown again, and linking up with the existing steam line from Plymouth up to Tavistock possibly at Horrabridge. The proposed new railway would not only serve the quarries far better, but would be greatly welcomed by the prison and the civilian population of isolated Princetown. Sir Thomas himself would surely have been as delighted as he would have been to know that his prisoner-of-war depot had been reopened as a gaol back in 1850, though whether he would have approved of the barbarity shown to many of the convicts was another matter. But what did Rose know of national companies, or of those Charles held all over the world – of which there were more than a few!