Taking Liberties (23 page)

They crossed the room to join him. Below them was a sheer drop of some hundred feet onto rocks. The view was glorious, almost gaudy, taking in the bright sapphire of the cove, its yellow sand, the even more yellow gorse running down the opposing headland which so completely hid the further bay where the smuggling cutter was that it might not have existed.

‘What's wreckers?' asked Philippa.

‘You don't want to know that, ma innocent,' Gurney said, promptly telling her. ‘Naasty people, wreckers. Put a light in this window, along comes a big ship headin' for it, thinkin' she's found harbour, an' crashes onto they rocks down there.'

He lowered his voice to sepulchral doom. ‘An' down go the wreckers, killin' and clubbin' the survivors, a-strippin' the rings off poor dead fingers and the jewels off the poor ladies' necks . . . oh, terrible. They do reckon that's how the Pomeroys made their fortune, wreckin'.'

‘The Pomeroys?'

‘Family as owns this place. Rich as nabobs, and all from wreckin'. Moved away from the house generations ago and went respeckable—guilt, they reckon. An' o' course, the place is marked on the charts nowadays so nobody don't wash up on they rocks 'cept by storm. But they do say'—his voice dropped another octave—‘they do say as how on wild nights the ghosts o' dead souls come knockin' on this window a-callin' for revenge.'

Dell was squeaking with superstitious terror. Philippa grinned up at him. ‘No good, Mr Gurney. I've been in a sea battle. Ghosts don't frighten me anymore.'

Makepeace was proud of her. She took her daughter's arm and led her away to investigate the rest of the house.

There was a dining room, nearly as big as the Great Hall but of nastier proportions, and an upstairs that defeated them, being tunnelled with corridors so dark that they could not investigate without a candle which they did not have, the spectral caretaker having vanished. ‘Probably back into her coffin,' Makepeace said.

The kitchen was the crowning horror. They surveyed it in silence.

‘Useful if you've got a hundred men-at-arms staying over,' Makepeace said, ‘and a hundred cooks. We can't live here—not even for Josh.'

‘Ma, it wouldn't be for long. Nobody'd find him here, we could make him well again and then get him to France. I know Mr Gurney would help us. He's a nice man, I think, he smiled when I said I wasn't afraid.'

The only other outside door in the entire place, as far as they could judge, was the one at the far end of the kitchen; that, too, had high steps to it that led down to an overgrown vegetable garden, and was heavily bolted.

When they got back to the Great Hall, Gurney was still by the wreckers' window. ‘Yere they come,' he said. ‘Admiral's barge but no admiral. What they a-wantin', I wonder?'

Beasley, nervously peering, said: ‘Press gang?'

‘Maybe,' Gurney said. ‘Dressed up pretty, if so. And there's women with 'em.'

Makepeace joined him. Two jolly boats were approaching the beach rowed by smartly dressed sailors with ribbons in their hats. A woman holding a parasol over her head sat in one with an officer, the passengers in the other were another woman and a black man.

She watched the first boat ground on the sand and the woman lifted out by a sailor, carried through the shallows and set down, having maintained an elegant pose throughout—no mean feat. Once the others had landed, both parties set off up the beach.

Makepeace's eyes stayed fixed on the woman with the parasol, nudged by a memory of some painful experience which, she eventually concluded, must be associated with the married years when she'd moved in Society and beautifully groomed women like the one now stepping with grace across the sand had made clear that she was an unwelcome, low-born intruder.

‘Comin' to the house,' Gurney said. ‘Ma Green won't let 'un in, that's for sure.'

‘Good.' Beasley was looking around for a place to hide.

Gurney nodded. ‘If so be it is the press,'tis best if they don't see no men.' He looked at Makepeace. ‘You talk to 'un, p'raps. Open that window, see what 'un wants.'

There was a light in the oriel, like a wicket gate, which resisted movement so that by the time she'd got it open the party from the boat stood in the courtyard. The woman with the parasol was accompanied by an older woman and a negro in livery. A young lieutenant and two sailors brought up the rear.

‘Afternoon,' Makepeace sang out. ‘What's your business?'

The woman lowered her sunshade, displaying a modish hat that matched her dress, which was grey, so that against the greyer stone of the courtyard she could have been a statue possessing, as she did, the same stillness and poise.

Shouting up at a window was obviously beneath her; she spoke softly to the black servant who called: ‘Open up, pleathe. Thith ith Lady Thtacpoole.'

Makepeace looked at Gurney who was keeping well back. ‘Lady Thtackpoole?'

He shrugged his ignorance. ‘Don't read the Society papers.'

She returned to the window. There was something about the woman . . . of more recent memory than she'd thought, but just as unpleasant. ‘What does she want?'

‘She wisheth to thee the houthe.'

The black man had raised his voice and, with it, his head, and the sun glinted on the collar he wore round his neck. It was a slave collar, gold and thinner than most, but still the unmistakable mark of ownership padlocked onto all human cattle sold in markets from Liverpool to South Carolina.

A
slave
. Betty had been a runaway slave, aided in her escape by Makepeace's parents, and Makepeace had absorbed hatred of the trade and the need for its abolition along with her milk.

‘Well she can't,' she said, ‘I'm buying this house.' She'd decided she wasn't, but the desire to thwart the slave-owning bitch in the courtyard was strong in her.

‘Thith ith Lady Thtacpoole'th houthe,' the black man said. He was becoming agitated. She probably beats him, Makepeace thought.

Behind her, Gurney muttered, as if with a new and awful suspicion: ‘Ask him what's her maiden name.'

‘You,' Makepeace called as rudely as she could, ‘what's your maiden name?'

She had the satisfaction of seeing the woman's mouth tighten but the slave answered for her: ‘Pomeroy.'

‘Dear, oh dear, we got the bloody Pomeroys back,' Gurney said, resignedly. ‘Better let her in.'

‘Not yet.' Makepeace was enjoying herself. She addressed the woman again. ‘If this is your house, why ain't you got the keys?'

The slave waved a piece of paper. ‘The houthe ith not for thale. Thith ith authorithation that her ladyship ith the rightful owner.'

‘When did you get that?'

‘Thith morning, from Mr Thpettigue, the agent.'

Lady Stacpoole was becoming restive; she turned to the lieutenant behind her and said something.

Makepeace admitted defeat. In a minute sailors would be battering their way in. She turned round to go and unlock the door.

Gurney and John Beasley had disappeared. ‘Gone out through the kitchen,' Philippa said, ‘just in case.'

Makepeace Hedley and the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole passed in the courtyard, ignoring each other.

With Philippa beside her, Makepeace tossed the keys to the poor slave. ‘Wreckers' house,' she said clearly. ‘Wouldn't live in it if you paid me.'

As they walked away she heard the woman say: ‘You must be Philippa, my dear. I heard you were lost. How nice that you and your mother have been reunited.'

Makepeace turned round sharply. The woman was smiling gently and deliberately—at Dell.

When they'd crossed the bridge, Philippa had to sit her mother on a bench in the inn's courtyard to cool her off. ‘How did she know about us?'

‘She was in the Sick and Hurt Office in London when I was enquiring for you.' Makepeace pounded the bench's arm. ‘What's she doing here? I
knew
I'd seen the high-nosed baggage somewhere, God rot her.'

‘I think it was an honest mistake, Mama.'

‘Of
course
it wasn't. That . . . that Dell, my daughter? She was having the last laugh. I'll give her daughters.'

They would have to remain where they were for some time. Both Gurney and Beasley had taken cover somewhere: a sensible precaution. The young lieutenant had joined his crew on the beach while he waited for his passengers and the sight of two able-bodied men who could be pressed into the service of the navy might be too tempting for him to resist. Sanders had also made himself scarce.

The enforced delay stretched Makepeace's temper. The fact that Dell had wandered down onto the beach and was talking to some of the sailors didn't improve it either.

One or two women came up from the far cove and knocked on the door of the inn to be admitted.

Now that she'd calmed down a little, Makepeace could hear the sound of raucous breathing coming from an upstairs window and the mutter of prayers.

‘I think there's illness in the house, Mama. Let's move away.'

They walked down to the sand. Waders, who'd been scared away by the arrival of the boats, had returned and sedate oyster-catchers were feeding at the water's edge. An elderly man and woman had also come round from the far cove and settled themselves on upturned buckets by the slipway. Surrounded by withies, they were weaving, to the exact, timeless shape, the wicker baskets in which Makepeace had once caught the lobsters of Massachusetts for consumption in her tavern.

In fact, she was so reminded of those days that anger began to be replaced by regret. She liked this place, she'd liked Jan Gurney; it was sad and irritating that she should be being chased away from it by the damned owner of T'Gallants.

Now Spettigue would have to find another boat and another smuggling crew somewhere else to take Josh to France and bring Andra back. And here would have done so well. Damn the Stacpoole female or Pomeroy or whatever her damn name was. Typical English aristocracy, thought they owned the world. Well, America was showing them they didn't, bless it. Fight 'em, boys.

She turned to look back at the inn and felt the same nostalgic pull that had tugged at her when she saw the lobster-pots. It was the only building in the village made of wood. Clapper-boarded, weatherstained, it was her Roaring Meg blown across the Atlantic to land on this other coast.

There were differences, of course. A tattered Union Jack flew from a flagpole on the roof and a very English inn-sign, too worm-eaten to be read, hung on a pole outside it; nor had the Roaring Meg possessed a coach-house and stables. But the inn, like her old tavern, faced the sea full-on and two twisted chimneys at either end of the roof suggested a long room such as the one from which she had dispensed ale and flip and broiled buttered lobster to men not unlike Jan Gurney.

She saw again the burned spars that had been her last view of the Roaring Meg, saw them through tears.

Dell joined them. ‘The officer says they'll be off soon because of the tide. The grand lady's only come to look over the place before she settles in it. She's a widow with a husband just dead. It was her family's place and she's to retire here for the seclusion, he says, and live in it by herself. Poor soul, she'll be wanting to nurse her sorrow.'

‘I'll give her sorrow,' Makepeace said. Still, it sounded as if Babbs Cove's activities were not going to be curtailed by the presence of a great family and its guests—for which it would be grateful.

When the party from T'Gallants returned to their boats, Makepeace was talking to the couple making lobster-pots and ignored its departure.

Once the Admiral's barge was well out to sea, Gurney and Beasley emerged from behind the big house and joined the three women. John Beasley was wiping his neck in relief.

‘Pity,' Jan said to Makepeace.

She nodded. ‘Would you have taken my perishable goods?'

‘Reckon we might've. Course, I'd have had to talk to the others when they're back from fishin'—generally us don't cross the Channel till the winter. Revenue don't harass poor free traders so hard when 'tis stormy. But, yes, reckon we might've—for a price.
Oh my Lord
.'

He was looking towards the inn. The flag on its roof was being lowered to half-mast.

One of the women who'd gone inside the inn while Makepeace and Philippa sat outside it was hurrying towards them. ‘He's gone, Jan.'

Gurney took off his hat. ‘God rest his soul.'

Obviously, it was time to go. Sanders was turning the coach and team so that they faced the road leading out of the village.

Quietly, Makepeace said: ‘I'm sorry for your loss. We'll be away now. Perhaps we'll meet again.'

He nodded.

She said: ‘Good man, was he?'

Gurney sighed. ‘He were a mean-spirited old bugger, but I reckon as how the Lord'll be happy to see 'un.'

Once they were in the coach, Philippa said: ‘I wonder who it was who died.'

‘Landlord,' Makepeace told her. ‘Those old lobster-potters told me. They say it's a freehold inn.' She took off her hat and fanned herself with it—the sun was beginning to go down but was, if anything, hotter than ever. She added casually: ‘And they reckon his daughter'll want to sell it now he's gone.'

CAPTAIN Luscombe was pleased with the first fruits of the public subscription as displayed on the banker's draft the Dowager Countess, of Stacpoole handed to him. ‘Three hundred and fifty guineas, splendid, splendid.'

‘There should be more to come,' she told him. ‘Mr Coutts has written to say that the response in London has been quite good, even better than locally.'