Death at Dawn (15 page)

‘Is she the new queen?’ James whispered to me.

‘No. I’m afraid she died.’

Sir Herbert stood staring at the picture. None of us could move before he did. James fidgeted and gripped my hand even more tightly. He probably needed to piss.

‘What did she die of?’

An awkward question. I could hardly explain death in childbirth to the boy, especially in such public circumstances. I began, in a whisper, that she had caught a fever, but a higher voice came from my other side.

‘She was poisoned.’

Henrietta, in that terribly carrying tone of hers, determined to be the centre of attention. There was a moment of shocked silence, then her father’s head swung round, slow and heavy like a bull’s, from the picture to where we were standing. After his violence the night before, I was terrified of what he might say or do to the child. I was scared for myself too, certain that I should be blamed for Henrietta’s lapse both in manners and historical knowledge. The child’s lurid imagination and over-dramatic nature would be no excuse. I forced myself to look Sir Herbert in the eye, determined on dignity at least, and the expression under his black brow so disconcerted me that I fear my mouth gaped open. The man was smiling – a phenomenon I’d never before witnessed. He took a
few heavy steps towards us, then, amazingly, bent down until his eyes were level with Henrietta’s, gently tweaked one of her ringlets and put a finger to his lips.

‘Shhh,’ he said to her.

I think everybody there was as amazed as I was, not believing him capable of such a kindly and humorous rebuke. Henrietta was wriggling and simpering, having achieved exactly what she wanted. He touched her hair again, straightened up and said a few more words, equally surprising.

‘It is a pity you are not ten years older.’

They were said in an undertone, and I think I was the only one apart from Henrietta who caught them. Then he turned and walked into the drawing room and we followed him with the children. James had his half-hour with his mother, then we managed to get him back upstairs before he wet his breeches.

That evening, Betty went to her room soon after the children were in bed. I stayed on my own in the schoolroom with the window open and a lamp on the table, preparing notes on the geography of India for next day’s lesson. I was dozing over the tributaries of the Ganges when the door opened quietly and somebody came into the room.

‘Is one of the children awake?’ I said, thinking it must be Betty.

‘I hope not,’ Celia said, coming over to the table.

She was in evening dress, peach-coloured muslin with darker stripes woven in silk, bodice trimmed with cream lace. Her face was pale in the candlelight, eyes scared.

‘You were seen, Elizabeth.’

She took hold of the back of a chair and pivoted from side to side on the ball of one satin-shod foot, in a kind of nervous dance step.

‘By whom?’

‘One of the laundry maids has a sweetheart who works at the livery stables.’

‘Why didn’t you warn me?’

‘Am I supposed to know every servant’s sweetheart? I only heard about it from Fanny when she was doing my hair for dinner.’

‘What did she tell you?’

‘The stable boy was sent up here on some message. He told his laundry maid a tale of a woman appearing out of nowhere and catching a horse that was bolting.’

‘She wasn’t … I mean, how did he know it was me?’

‘He didn’t. Only he described you and what you were wearing and the laundry maid said it sounded a bit like the new governess.’

‘They don’t know for certain, then?’

‘Not yet, no. I was shaking. Fanny must have felt it. Then I had to sit through dinner wondering if Sir Herbert had heard about it yet.’

‘Did he give any sign?’

‘No, but then he may just be waiting for his time to pounce.’

I put down my pencil and found my hand was shaking too.

‘What are we going to do?’ Celia said. ‘I must have the reply to my letter.’

‘Oh, there’s certain to be a reply, is there?’

I was nettled at her refusal to consider any problem but her own.

‘I’m sure Philip will reply by return of post. I told him to write care of the stables. It should be there by Friday or Saturday at the latest.’

‘Is a love letter so important that I must risk dismissal for it?’

She sat down heavily on Henrietta’s blue chair.

‘It’s more than that. I wish … oh, I must trust you. I’ve asked him something. I need his answer.’ She looked down at the map of India, picked up my pencil and turned it over and over in her fingers. ‘I’ve asked him to elope with me.’

‘Doesn’t the suggestion usually come from the gentleman?’

‘I’m certain Philip would suggest it if he knew. But he can’t know until he reads my letter. You see, somebody’s coming soon and I want Philip to take me away and marry me before he arrives.’

‘This other person, is he the one your stepfather wants you to marry?’

She nodded.

‘When is he arriving?’

‘I don’t know. He’s expected any day.’

‘But your stepfather surely can’t have you married against your wishes, the moment this person sets foot in the house.’

‘It would be so much safer in every way if I weren’t here.’

I supposed she was referring to Sir Herbert’s violent temper. I felt sorry for her, but wished she hadn’t planted her burden on my doorstep.

‘Your stepfather said something surprising to Henrietta this evening,’ I said.

‘What?’

‘He wished she were ten years older.’

‘I wish to heaven she were.’ It burst out of her, vehement and unguarded. ‘When did he say it?’

I told her about Princess Charlotte’s portrait and the rest. All the time she stared at me, as if every word mattered. I hoped at the end of it that she’d tell me why it concerned her so much, but she just heaved a sigh nearly as deep as Rancie’s.

‘So what are we to do about your letter?’ I said.

Whatever happened, I must keep open a way of communicating with Blackstone.

‘I was hoping you’d think of something,’ she said.

‘You know the ways of the household better than I do.’

She stared down at her silk-stockinged ankles, looking so lost that I pitied her in spite of my annoyance.

‘If I can think of something, will you do it, Elizabeth?’

‘If you can, yes.’

She got up slowly, and took a few steps to the door, as if reluctant to leave the sanctuary of the schoolroom. At the door she turned round.

‘Don’t fail me. You’re my only hope.’

‘I’m my only hope as well,’ I said, but she was gone by then.

The next few days were almost calm, probably because Sir Herbert was away in London. I gathered that from Betty, who picked up most of the gossip from the other servants. I say ‘almost calm’ because even I was aware that the staff were having to work harder than ever. Whenever we left the snug little world of the nursery corridor, maids were flying in all directions, cleaning rooms, carrying armfuls of linen, washing the paint-work round doors and windows. Betty’s friend Sally reported that the kitchens were worse than Bedlam. Whenever I saw Mrs Quivering she had a worried frown on her face and two or three lists in her hand. Even the gardens, usually a peaceful refuge, seemed to have caught the panic, with a dozen men trimming lawn edges and clipping box hedges so precisely that we could have used them for illustrations in geometry. Relays of
boys trotted from vegetable gardens to the back door of the kitchens with baskets of carrots, white turnips, new potatoes, radishes, spring onions, salsify, artichokes, great swags of feathery fennel, sage, thyme. The appetite of the house seemed endless, but Betty said this was all just practising. They were making sure they had the new recipes right. As a result, the servants hall was eating better than it had for years, which was one blessing at any rate, if everybody hadn’t been too harassed to enjoy it.

‘But what are they celebrating?’ I asked Betty.

She shrugged. Sir Herbert was a law unto himself. When we took the children down on Friday evening, he was still away. Stephen was there, talking to his sister by the window. They both looked serious. Celia glanced over her shoulder and soon afterwards came across to me.

‘Miss Lock, my trees simply will not come right. Do look.’

She said it loudly enough for anybody in the room to hear and had brought her sketchbook with her. Stephen stayed where he was, but gave me a glance and a nod of approval. We bent over the sketch on one of the pie-crust tables, heads together. Her hair smelled of lily-of-the-valley and I was aware that mine was sticky and dusty.

‘Will you be in the schoolroom later?’ she said, under her breath.

‘When?’

‘Around midnight. Will Betty have gone to bed by then?’

‘Yes, usually.’

‘I’ve thought of a way, only … You see, they look like cabbages and I promise you I’ve tried so hard.’

This for the benefit of Mrs Beedle, who was coming over to look. The three of us pored over Celia’s mediocre landscape until it was time for the family to go into dinner. Betty was tired and went to bed early. I waited in the schoolroom with
Gallic Wars
and a single candle, listening to the stable clock striking the hours. Celia arrived soon after midnight, dragging a blanket-wrapped bundle.

‘What’s that?’ I said.

‘Some things to make you invisible.’

‘Are you setting up as an enchantress?’

‘Not of that kind. Open it.’

When I undid the blanket a tangle of clothes flopped out: plain brown jacket, tweed cap, coarse cotton shirt, red neckcloth, corduroy breeches, gaiters and a pair of that hybrid form of footwear known as high-lows, too high for a shoe and too low for a boot. They were all clean but had obviously been worn before.

‘Men’s clothes?’

‘Boy’s. It’s the next best thing to being invisible. Boys go everywhere and nobody gives them a second glance.’

‘I can’t wear these. It’s not decent.’

‘Why not? Women in Shakespeare are always dressing up as boys – Viola and what-was-her-name in
the forest – and they all of them end up marrying dukes and things.’

‘Then why don’t you do it?’

For a moment, in my confusion, I’d forgotten I had my own risks to run.

‘Of course I can’t. Imagine if I were caught.’

‘And what if I were caught?’

‘You won’t be. In any case, you’ll make a much better boy than I should. I’d never fit into the unmentionables.’

I picked up the breeches carefully.

‘They’re clean,’ she said. ‘I saw to that.’

‘Where did you get them?’

‘My grandmother collects old clothes from the household for the vicar to give to the poor. She was pleased when I offered to help her. Do the high-lows fit?’

I slipped my feet into them. They did, more or less. Somehow the touch of the leather against my stockings made the idea more thinkable, as if the clothes brought a different identity.

‘Very well,’ I said. ‘I’ll try it.’

She put her arms round me and kissed me on the forehead.

‘Oh, you brave darling. You’re saving my life, you know that?’

I turned away and picked up the neckcloth, not wanting to encourage her dramatics.

‘You’ll go tomorrow morning, early?’

‘Yes.’

‘There’ll be a reply for me, I know. Leave a flower on the bench again when you get back, and I’ll find an occasion for you to give the letter to me. I must go now. Fanny will notice if I have bags under my eyes in the morning.’

Luckily there was nobody to notice my eyes when I got up at four in the morning because I hadn’t slept at all. The boy’s clothes were piled on the chair beside my bed and I puzzled my way into them by the first grey light of the day, not daring to light a candle in case the light or smell of it penetrated to the maids’ rooms downstairs. It took time because my fingers were shaking, but I managed at last to work out the buttons and to pin my hair up under the cap so tightly that it dragged at my scalp. I slid my arms into the sleeves of the brown jacket and put my latest report to Blackstone into a pocket. The lack of a mirror to show me what I looked like was one mercy at least.

I went barefoot down the stairs carrying the high-lows and sat down on the edge of the pump trough in the back courtyard to put them on. Though the household would soon be stirring, I hoped the servants would be too bleary-eyed and weighed down with their own tiredness to worry about anything else. And yet, when I took my first steps across the courtyard, the feeling was so exposed and indecent that I felt as if the eyes of a whole outraged world were staring at me. I missed the gentle movement of skirt hems against my ankles,
the soft folds of petticoats. The roughness of breeches against my thighs seemed an assault on my softest and most secret parts. The high-lows were a little too large and, since Celia had not thought to steal socks as well, my feet slid around in them like butter in a churn. I tried to work out a way of walking that suited them, kicking one foot ahead and planting it firmly before moving the other. By this method I got myself through the archway and to the point where the drive divided, one part heading towards the bridge over the ha-ha and the front of the house, the other down the back road.

I sat down on the bank, plucked handfuls of grass and used it to pad out the high-lows so that my feet didn’t slip round so much. After that, walking became easier. I learned to bend my knees and swing my legs less stiffly, although it felt odd to look down and see brown breeches where there should have been lavender or green skirt. After a while, I was almost enjoying it and even pushed my fists into my pockets and tried whistling. When I passed the reapers and their boy on much the same part of the road as I’d met them before, the men hardly gave me a second glance, though the boy threw me a hard stare that might have been meant as a challenge. I dropped my eyes until they were well past.

It was full light when I arrived at the Silver Horseshoe. I waited by the gate until I saw Amos Legge coming out of one of the looseboxes and walked up behind him.

‘Good morning, sir. Any horses to hold?’

I’d been practising my boy’s voice as I walked along. A hoarse mumble seemed to work better than a boyish treble. He turned round.

‘You’d best ask … Well, I’ll be dankered. It issun May Day, is it?’

‘May Day?’

‘When the maids dress up for a lark. None of them made as good a lad as you, though.’

Rosalind in the Forest of Arden had poems written for her and stuck on trees. His compliment might not be Shakespearean, but it pleased me.

‘I thought it was in your mind,’ he said. ‘Only I didn’t know you’d do it. I’ll go and get the tack on her.’

‘Tack?’

All I’d intended was to give him my letter for Blackstone, collect Celia’s reply and go. Before I could explain that a big red-faced man came up to us.

‘Who’s that, Legge?’

‘Lad come to ride the new mare, Mr Coleman. Recommended especial by the owner.’

The man gave me a quick glance, then nodded and walked away.

‘Ride Rancie?’ I said.

‘That’s what you came here to do, isn’t it?’

In a daze, I followed him to her loosebox and helped him tack up. When he led Rancie out to the yard with me following, some of the lads were already mounting.
I watched as they faced inwards to the horse and crooked a knee so that a groom could take them by the lower leg and throw them up into the saddle. When it was my turn, my legs were trembling so much that Amos must have felt it, but he gave no sign. He helped my toes into the stirrups and my hands to gather up the reins, and stood watching as the string of six of us walked out of the yard, Rancie and I at the rear. It felt oddly unsafe at first to be riding astride instead of side-saddle, but the mare’s pace was so smooth that after a half-mile or so I wondered why anybody should ever ride any other way. The fear began to fall away and something like a prayer formed in my mind.

Your horse, Father. Your present to me. I know it was
not meant to be this way. I’d have given my whole heart
for it to be different, for you to be riding her on this
fine morning and I watching you. But since it can’t be
different, I have this at least, perhaps for the first and
last time. I haven’t forgotten my promise to nail that
great lie they told about you. But this is here and now,
and for you too and
…

Oh gods, we’re cantering. Cantering, then galloping. She stretched out, hooves hardly seeming to touch the cushiony grassland, mane flying. I bent forward as the other boys were doing, the whole world a blur of green and blue and a pounding of hooves. It was the memorial to my father that the wretched ceremony by the grave in Calais had not been, this flying into the morning light, this certainty that in spite of every
thing it was worth going on living and breathing.

For a few minutes fear, confusion and even grief itself were swept away in the sunlight and the rush of cool morning air against my face. I hardly needed to touch the rein because Rancie seemed responsive to my very thoughts. When the others drew up panting at the end of the gallop, her breath was coming as lightly as at the beginning. I found myself grinning with delight at one of the other riders, a red-haired lad with a pale face and no front teeth. He grinned back, saying something about her being a winner. I just remembered in time not to reply, and to pull the cap well down over my hair. We turned back to the stables in a line, some of the horses jogging and fidgeting from excitement, but Rancie walking calmly like the lady she was, between hedges thick with honeysuckle and clamorous with blackbirds.

Amos was waiting outside the gate, looking down the lane for us. He walked alongside as we came back into the yard and caught me as I slid down from the saddle. My head only came up to his chest, and I was half smothered in the hay and fresh-sweat smell of him.

‘Best get her inside her box quickly, with all this pother going on.’

The stableyard was in confusion. A large travelling carriage had arrived, dust covered and with candle-lamps still burning, as if it had driven all night. Four fine bay horses were being unharnessed from it and could hardly walk for weariness. The nearside front
wheel was off and leaning against the drinking trough, its iron rim half torn away and several spokes broken.

‘What happened?’ I asked Amos, as we went across the yard.

‘Hit a tree a mile up the road. Driving too fast, he was, and …’

He went on telling me, but I wasn’t listening because I’d noticed something on the door of the coach. An empty oval shape, framed with a wreath of gold leaves, waiting for a coat of arms to go inside it.

‘What’s the trouble, lad?’

I suppose I must have stopped dead. Amos pushed me gently by the shoulder. Once the half-door of the loosebox had closed on us, he was all concern.

‘You look right dazzed, miss. Are you not well?’

‘Mr Legge, who does the carriage belong to?’

‘Two gentlemen from London, wanting to get to the hall. The fat one’s in a right miff because there’s nobody to get the wheel fettled. The guvnor’s sent a boy galloping for the wheelwright, but that’s not fast enough for him.’

‘Is he a very fat man, like a toad?’

‘If a toad could wear breeches and swear the air blue, yes, he is. You know him, miss?’

‘I think I might.’ I was sure of it, cold and trembling at the thought of being so near him again. ‘I don’t want him to see me. Where is he?’

‘In the guvnor’s office, last I saw. He was trying to convince the guvnor to take a wheel off one of his own
carriages to put on the travelling coach. The guvnor offered him the use of his best barouche and horses instead and said he’d send the coach up to the hall later, but that wouldn’t answer. It’s the travelling coach or nothing.’

‘So he could be here for hours.’

And me trapped in the loosebox in my boy’s clothes, with Betty and the rest wondering what had become of me, probably being found out and dismissed. All the time, Amos Legge was untacking and rugging up Rancie.

‘I’ll have a look for you, while I take this over. If he’s still going on at the guvnor, you can slip out like an eel in mud and he won’t notice.’

He left with the saddle and bridle and I cowered back into the dark corner by the manger. He’d mentioned two gentlemen and I assumed the other one was the man who called himself Trumper. I feared him too, but not a fraction as much as the fat man.

There was still a lot of noise and activity going on in the yard and a sound of hammering. Hurrying feet came and went on the cobbles by Rancie’s door, but nobody had any reason to look in. Amos seemed to have been gone for a long time. I’d almost decided to make a run for it, when the square of sunlight above the half-door was obscured by a figure in silhouette.