Jane and the Stillroom Maid (27 page)

That was all Tess Arnold had thought fit to record; the words told nothing of Lydia Danforth’s agony, or Charles Danforth’s despair; nothing of the other children left silent and bewildered with their nurse upstairs; nothing of the dreadful building of so small a coffin, or the pain of leaving it, solitary in the autumn cold, in the Danforth tomb. Tess Arnold had said very little, I reflected, regarding the nature of the little girl’s illness. Her pen was reserved for the remedies she
had prescribed. But there had been others in attendance who might well know more. Dr. Bascomb of Buxton, for one.

I read on, as the hours of night fled away; I exchanged a guttering tallow candle for a fresh; I fought back weariness with the sick horror of one who cannot turn her eyes from disaster. The second eldest child—a girl of four named Julia—succumbed in February to a persistent fever and coughing; a wasting disease not unlike consumption, but far swifter in its effect. Dr. Bascomb, I observed, was not in attendance. He had been replaced by a London physician, who could do nothing to save little Julia; after three weeks of worsening ills—of morphia drops and Tess’s draughts—the child gave way to a violent sickness in her bowels, much as Miss Emma had done.

I set aside the book at half-past two in the morning, unable to read any more—or to face the minutiae of small John d’Arcy’s end. I understood, now, why the people of Bakewell wished Lydia Danforth at peace. Her final months on earth had proved a living hell. And how had Charles Danforth sustained his soul through such an onslaught of unspeakable misery? How could he not have thrown himself into the earth, that day in May when Lydia died, along with all his family? His survival beggared belief.

And with that final thought I stopped short on the threshold of my bedchamber, staring mutely into the darkness. How long would Charles Danforth have continued in health, had Tess Arnold remained alive?

Saturday
30 August 1806
∼

T
HE SUN WAS HIGH BY THE TIME
I
APPEARED IN THE
parlour, but as Mr. Davies only served breakfast at ten, I was able to scavenge some rolls and order a fresh pot of tea for my refreshment. Cassandra was seated over a book near the front window; Mr. Cooper had gone to pay a call of condolence upon George Hemming—a call that would undoubtedly involve the entire gaol in a good deal of singing—and my mother had walked out in the direction of the confectioner’s, intent upon procuring some little iced cakes for her dinner. After five days, she had grown tired of Bakewell pudding.

“You look rather pale this morning, Jane. Did you sleep well?”

“Well enough, Cassandra.” I raised one hand to my head and peered doubtfully at the harsh sunlight flooding the parlour. I would pay for the abuse to my eyes with a headache, and I was not careful. There could be no reading today.

“I hope you are not going to be indisposed,” she observed, “on the very day of Lady Harriot’s party.”

“Never! I shall be carried senseless into the dining parlour, if need be. All I require is a little breakfast.”

“And perhaps a change of scene,” she suggested. “You have spent a good deal of this visit to Derbyshire in racing over the countryside in Lord Harold’s company, and very little of it in mine! I feel myself outrageously neglected. Not to mention ill-used. The management of Mr. Cooper and my mother has been all my own, Jane, and I have not derived unalloyed pleasure from the task!”

The words were reproachful—but the tone was light-hearted; and I felt a welling of gratitude towards my sister, whose sacrifices were always borne with the best will in the world. I had hoped to spend a good part of the morning in perusing Tess Arnold’s stillroom book—but all such selfish notions should be put aside. I reached instead for Cassandra’s hand and squeezed it.

“I owe you a thousand apologies, my dearest. Such arrears in attention as I owe shall be totted up, with interest. Are you worn to a thread between the efforts of my mother and Mr. Cooper both?”

“Mr. Cooper—having accepted with ill grace the deferral of his departure until Monday at the earliest—has taken the notion that he must stand friend to Mr. George Hemming in his hour of need.” She snapped together the covers of her book and set it upon the table. “You may thank me for having begun the idea, Jane, with many hints and careful surmises as to the nature of a soul in darkest torment, and the obligations of Christian charity, and the conduct his noble patron, Sir George Mumps, might reasonably expect. Our cousin presently regards himself in the light of a saviour. I daresay, if Mr. Hemming is reduced to a pitiable jelly by the effects of Mr. Cooper’s plainsong, we may win another four-and-twenty hours.”

“Delightful creature!” I cried. “What plans of pleasure have you drawn up for the day?”

“My mother begins to tire easily,” Cassandra mused.
“I do not think she will like to drive out, once her errand with the confectioner’s is done. She will spend the period before dinner quite comfortably, in reading her correspondence and writing letters. I think we may regard the day as ours, Jane—and I am perishing for a breath of air, and a glimpse of the hills!”

“Then you shall have them. The cost of a pony trap and driver should not exceed the combined weight of our purses, and Mr. Davies is most obliging in the provision of horses.” I pulled on the bell-rope to summon Sally. “I have two pounds, five shillings, and seven pence I may call my own; and I shall speak to the innkeeper directly. Where should you like to drive?”

“I have heard that there are caverns in the hills,” Cassandra said wistfully, “large enough to hold a banquet in; that there are torrents above the dales, and villages famous for the plague; that one might climb, with effort, along paths that rim the abyss, and reward with endless beauty.”

“Then we shall endeavour to find them all,” I told her decidedly. “Sally! We require a pony trap, a driver, and a provisions hamper with the greatest despatch!”

W
E DEPARTED LESS THAN AN HOUR LATER—MY MOTHER
having interceded upon her return to The Rutland Arms, and requiring a full account of all our plans, and the wasting of precious moments while she hung in agonised indecision, uncertain whether to claim the peace of the empty parlour or join us in our wandering. Peace at last won out; and we were suffered to drive away with an enormous basket of victuals at our feet, a variety of lap-robes against the dust, Cassandra’s sketching-pad and box of crayons, several novels, two sunshades, and an enormous blunderbuss of ancient vintage, which Mr. Davies propped on the box beside our driver—“for with these murderin’, godless ruffians abaht, miss, tha’ll be wantin’ a sound piece.”

Our driver was the selfsame Nate who had carried my urgent missive to Sir James Villiers two nights before, a strong young fellow of perhaps twenty, whose wall-eyed stare was roundly disconcerting. I wondered which eye he trained upon the road, and determined not to ask.

He pushed his cap to the crown of his head as we settled ourselves within the trap, and scratched ruminatively at his thick reddish hair.

“The Blue John Cave is what Tha’ ladies be wanting, ah’m thinkin’,” he observed ponderously, “wit’ all Tha’ talk o’ bankets underground, but it’s a good twenty mile fra’ here, an ah’ve never been, myself. The Plague Village’ll be Eyam, what lost so many a good bit ago, and that’s no more nor less than five mile. As fer they abysses”—in his mouth, the word was nearer
abbesses
, as though it were a nunnery we sought—“I reckon tha’ll find such along the Hucklow road, above Eyam. We might just do it, an’ Tha’ has time.”

Cassandra sighed over the lost Blue John Cave, but upon hearing that Nate could produce a Stone Circle for her delectation—a scattering of monoliths, from an ancient burial ground, not far from Eyam—she learned to be happy.

The sun was hot, and the wind stirred by the horse not worth mentioning; the pony trap wanted cushions for its hard wood seats. We swayed along the stony road at a drowsing pace, our sunshades propped against our shoulders, while the scents of drying grass and soiled sheep’s wool drifted across the fields to either side. I had tucked Tess Arnold’s stillroom book, wrapped in an embroidered shawl, under the mattress of my bed; and though my person was at leisure, my mind would often return to the closely-written pages. Not a glimpse of them should I have before tomorrow; but much might be elucidated at Chatsworth this evening. Various of the Devonshire family had known a good deal of the stillroom maid.

We passed through the town of Baslow and the hamlet of Stoney Middleton. Cassandra’s eyes were bright and her colour fresh; I should never mistake her today for the younger image of my mother. She kept her sketchbook open upon her lap as we drove, and despite the swaying of the equipage and the necessity of keeping a firm hand-hold on the seat, managed a fair likeness of Nate, as viewed from the rear. In the Plague Village of Eyam, the horse was let to grass for an hour while we walked the narrow streets and exclaimed over the plaques on every side, that recounted the melancholy history of 1665, when two-thirds of the villagers succumbed to disease. A little girl with golden curls hanging down her back found us resting in the shade of an elm, and brought us spring water in a dipper made of tin.

Two hours out of Bakewell, we found ourselves ascending the Hucklow road, where we intended to rest a while among the standing-stones. The country fell sheer away on either side of our cart-track, in much the fashion of Nate’s promised “abbesses.” Cassandra had given over her expressions of delight at every turning, and was now gripping the sides of the swaying trap as though her very life depended upon it. She had suffered one carriage overturning two years since, and the experience did not rest lightly with her; frequent headaches from a considerable knock on the head were the fruit of disaster, and a consequent anxiety each time she trusted herself to an unknown conveyance and driver.

“You might as well get down, my dear, and walk,” I suggested. “I shall do the same. We should both benefit from the exercise, and the horse from the lightened load. You there! Driver! Pull up your horse!”

Nate turned his head around and stared at me. “Tha’s niver askin’ to halt the beast when he’s strainin’ up sich a hill? Tha’s a woman, for ye. Bide bit, till tha’s at the top.”

He had no sooner uttered the words, than the report of a gun set the horse to plunging in its harness. The frightened animal neighed wildly and attempted to bolt—Cassandra screamed, and clutched with both hands at my arm—Nate swore aloud, and dropped the reins to seize his antique blunderbuss—at which the horse, being given its head, plunged forward with a great lurch, spilling Cassandra and me backwards over the pony trap’s seat, along with a quantity of sunshades, novels, sketchbooks, and lap-robes.

The hamper of food, mercifully enough, remained within the equipage.

I tumbled down upon the stony roadbed, felt my head strike an inconvenient outcropping, and struggled to my feet. I looked for Cassandra—espied her bewildered countenance, and reached out my hand—when a shouted halloo from the road ahead drew both our heads around.

A man on horseback, his face masked in a scarf of India cotton, his hat-brim pulled low, was fixed at the head of Nate’s horse with a pistol raised. Nate himself was braced in the pony trap’s seat, his unwieldy weapon levelled upon the highwayman; and the two appeared to have achieved an impasse. I considered whether the wisest course might not be to run—when Cassandra observed, in a voice only barely discomposed, “What sort of highwayman plies his trade in broad daylight, Jane? The fool might be discovered by anyone along the Hucklow road.”

“True enough,” I murmured, and took a step forward.

The highwayman’s eyes shifted slightly from our driver’s wall-eyed glare to my own flushed cheeks, my disarranged sunbonnet. I untied the strings of my leghorn straw and removed it. I took a moment to smooth my hair. And felt Cassandra approaching slowly behind me.

I enquired: “What do you mean, sirrah, by incommoding us in this dreadful fashion?”

“No incommoding meant, and I’m sure, only I did
need so as to halt yer trap,” he promptly replied. “I’m under orders to fetch that there book as you carried away from Penfolds Hall yesterday, and I’m obliged to keep you here until you do give it up.”

“The stillroom book? You must be mad! Who are you?” I took a step closer, thinking swiftly of the quarto volume secreted under my mattress.

“Who I be makes no matter, miss,” the highwayman replied. “I’ll be taking that book now.”

“I haven’t got it,” I retorted stoutly. “I gave it into the keeping of Sir James Villiers, the Bakewell Justice—but perhaps you are already acquainted with
him
.”