The Keeper of Secrets (12 page)

‘Would you prefer that I broke the news to her?’

‘I would indeed.’

Matthew flung his axe down so hard it quivered inches deep into the tree stump. Then he turned on me. ‘I knew as how all that learning would turn out, making her dissatisfied with her lot. I knew it! And ’tis all your meddlesome teaching, Parson!’

‘You do not think that having seen life in a city, she has become dissatisfied with a country existence? She may also feel that if she earns more, she can send more home to her mother and be able to find Susan a better place than in a country parsonage. But if it is my doing, Matthew, I ask your pardon. And beg you to believe it was never my intention.’ Never did I speak more sincerely.

By way of reply, he turned and punched the nearest tree.

‘I do not have the address of her new employer,’ I said. ‘But I could write to Lady Elham on your behalf, and ask her to forward a letter asking her to write to you.’

‘Much good it would do, seeing as I can’t read,’ he spat.

‘You deserve to hear in her own words why she made the decision,’ I urged.

‘And who would read it to me? You, you, with your fine letters!’

‘I would have thought Mrs Beckles would be the one best fitted to deliver her sentiments, not the man you see – quite wrongly – as the cause of your distress.’

His face still averted, he said, his voice thick with tears, ‘In that case, Parson, I would be indebted if you would write to her.’

Without wishing to intrude further on his grief, I walked off in silence.

Breaking the news to Jem was a different matter. Matthew was an accredited suitor, but Jem and she had had but an illicit romance, if such indeed it was. Jem and I had been friends as boys, when there was no social chasm to divide, and cricket bats and fishing rods to unite us. We had rescued each other from many scrapes. Our friendship had even survived my time at Eton. But our ways had diverged when I went up to Cambridge and his becoming my groom set us irretrievably apart. Could I for a moment recapture our previous innocence?

At this time of day he would be mucking out the stables, so I changed from my clerical garb and donned boots to join him.

He raised an eyebrow, and grinned, but threw me a shovel without comment. I filled the wheelbarrow; he trundled it away and emptied it. Together we completed the task in no time, a fact I celebrated by fetching a couple of tankards of Mrs Trent’s homebrew from the kitchen.

We moved into the lea of the stables, warmed by a feeble sun.

‘Got yourself in a scrape, have you?’ he asked, touching his
tankard against mine. It was an expression he had often used when we were lads together.

‘Not me. I’m worried, that’s all. About Lizzie Woodman.’

‘What’s wrong with her?’ he asked swiftly.

‘Nothing yet, as far as I know. But I always worry when a country-raised girl decides to seek her fortune in London, and according to Lady Elham that is what Lizzie proposes.’

‘Is she out of her mind?’

Did he mean Lizzie or her ladyship? I waited in silence.

‘Has she simply quit her ladyship’s service or has she found other employment to go to?’

‘Lady Elham tells me she has gone to her cousin, Lady Templemead. Even so…’

‘Even so indeed.’ He spat. ‘’Tis a bad business, but it could be worse. She did not write directly to you, Toby?’

‘No, indeed. She has not written even to Mrs Beckles. It was Lady Elham who told her.’

‘What is she thinking of?’ he asked harshly. ‘Her friends deserve better than that. I had not thought it of her.’

I had not expected him to sound so censorious, though he had always been the first to speak plainly if my conduct was ever found lacking. But as I took the tankards to return them to the kitchen, I caught sight of his face. His gruffness had been an attempt to conceal his tears.

If I could not write directly to Lizzie, I had every right to ask my cousin for further details, a plan which met with Mrs Beckles’ instant approval. We hoped that Lady Elham would write back by return. She did not. Days merged into weeks, and weeks into a month. Still there was no news.

‘No doubt she’s gone up to London for the start of the season,’ I said, as Mrs Beckles commiserated with me.

‘But surely she’s left directions with her Bath household for her correspondence to be forwarded to her.’

‘You would have thought so.’ I grew restless, thinking I might go down to the capital myself.

But I did not, because my parish duties increased. In the icy weather, even the most reluctant family conceded that it was worth sending their children to my school if only to get them from under their feet. They also knew there would be warmth and a solid meal for the little scholars. I divided the lessons between letters and numbers, ending each morning with a lesson from the Bible.

‘And do you charge them?’ Mrs Beckles demanded, arriving as I was waving the last child off.

‘A halfpenny a month,’ I conceded. ‘And another halfpenny when the child can read and write his name. Mrs Beckles, there is so much more I could do! If there were space, Mrs Trent could teach the girls to sew, or to cook.’

She smiled. ‘I think your master must be proud of you,’ she said affectionately.

‘The bishop?’ I asked, suppressing a sharp reply that as far as I could see he cared nothing for any of those he had ordained, especially some of the curates whose pitiful stipends were on a level with farm labourers’.

‘No, your Master! The One who told His disciples to suffer little children to come unto Him. Now, Tobias, I want you to look over my shoulder. What do you see?’

I blinked. ‘The sky?’

‘Exactly. And what colour is it?’

‘Blue.’

By now she was laughing. ‘So what should you do? You should go out and enjoy what nature has to offer. Wrap up warm, for the wind is still chill, and enjoy yourself.’

‘But—’

‘Go and do as you’re told, for once, my lad.’

It was the first of many solitary walks. As the weather grew insensibly more benign, and the frost began to lift, I ranged further and further afield, taking an interest in the changes about me. How different was this Warwickshire spring from the much later ones I had been used to in Derbyshire. Despite the cold, the trees were coming much earlier into bud, and the fields were greening before – I should imagine – the snow had left the Peaks. I was especially charmed by the birds, increasingly frantic in their courtship and nesting, though my own heart remained empty, hollow.

‘You should make a study of them, Tobias,’ Edmund said one night as I enthused about the structure of a robin’s nest I had come across.

‘It would be a gentlemanly occupation, would it not?’

‘It would be better than that. It would be a scientific one, and add to the sum of human knowledge.’

I nodded. If both Dr Hansard and Mrs Beckles thought I needed fresh air and a new interest, who was I to argue?

And so began one of the most fascinating episodes of my life. And then, though I was as yet in blissful ignorance, by far the worst.

At last I received a letter from Lady Elham, also undated and without an address. She was sorry to tell me, she said, that Lizzie had not taken advantage of her place in Lady Templemead’s establishment for long. She had told her new employer that she was homesick, and had left by stagecoach for Warwick, from where she hoped to obtain a lift to Moreton St Jude from a farmer or a carrier. However, she added, Lady Templemead knew not whether to believe this, as a footman had disappeared from her service the day Lizzie left. She believed that far from being in Warwickshire, Lizzie was in an illicit embrace.

Lady Elham still clung, she declared, to the belief that Lizzie missed her family and friends. She hoped I would remind Lizzie of her good fortune in being taken up as an abigail to a lady of fashion, and not live to repent the folly in giving up such a situation.

Lizzie on her way home! My heart rejoiced, even if my head insisted it was a most unlikely possibility.

‘But this time I would leave it to you, my dear Mrs Beckles, to tell my rivals in love,’ I declared. ‘For I could not wish them well with an honest heart.’

For several moments I did not notice the disquiet in her eyes. At last she said, ‘I wonder when she set out. And I wonder why she has not safely arrived.’

‘She’s a country girl, born and bred. She will not mind a long walk if she finds no cart coming this way.’

‘Of course she won’t.’ But the look of foreboding did not leave her face.

‘What is it you fear?’

She turned from me, pacing her parlour in her agitation.
‘Her ladyship does not tell us when she set out, but it was clearly an accomplished fact when she wrote. So why is there no sign of the poor child?’

I rode to Leamington and then with increasing desperation to Warwick, just in case her ladyship had made a mistake as to the destination. But there was no sign of Lizzie ever having travelled by stage or even post to either town. She had simply disappeared.

Lady Elham, to whom I wrote in haste, replied at leisure that Lady Templemead had retired to one of her West Country estates, she knew not which one, but she would write to her at once. But did I not realise, she asked, why girls usually left good places? Reliable as Lizzie had once been, she suspected that Lady Templemead’s fears were fulfilled, that Lizzie’s head had indeed been turned by one of her fellow servants and – to put the matter crudely – the girl had probably found herself in a promising way. Perhaps she had persuaded the man to marry her; perhaps not. It was likely that in either case she had been too ashamed to confess the matter to Lady Templemead. If that turned out to be the case, she would wash her hands of the girl, and so should we.

‘Any other girl and I might have believed it,’ Mrs Beckles sighed. ‘But not Lizzie. She had too many scruples, too much loyalty, to embark on such a flirtation.’

‘But it might not have been a flirtation,’ I said, reminding her of the then Lord Chartham’s assault upon her. ‘It might have been far worse.’

‘It might indeed. She wouldn’t be the first young woman to
be forcibly deflowered and then discarded.’ She turned to me and took my hands. ‘My poor Tobias, what are you going to tell the others?’

‘God help me, I don’t know,’ I confessed, and fell sobbing into her arms.

More and more I turned to the study of ornithology to comfort my aching heart, the innocence of my new feathered friends compensating in part for the woes of my human ones. How Matthew and Jem dealt with their grief, I respected them too much to ask, Mrs Beckles having kindly broken the news to them.  

But by some paradox, speaking to Mrs Woodman, a woman whom I suspected of cordially despising me, had fallen to my lot. It was not, I am sure, what Mrs Beckles would have wished, but, without a word of warning, the new Lord Elham had announced a plan to return, and Mrs Beckles was manoeuvring the great house over the shoals of chaos, all too aware that by the time everything was ready he might have changed his mind.  

Mrs Woodman greeted me with caution, perhaps even suspicion, not warmth. Trying to keep my voice steady, I read aloud to her Lady Elham’s letter.  

I expected tears, railing against an unkind world, or even cursing the Will of God, and had provided myself with a vinaigrette.  

She looked slowly at the letter and then at me. Then, her whole frame shaking, she cursed Lizzie. However I had tried
to dress the matter up, Mrs Woodman thought Lizzie to blame. Terrible words penetrated the inarticulate sobs. ‘No daughter of mine,’ I distinguished.  

I tried to remonstrate. She pointed with a gnarled finger at the door. ‘Leave me!’  

And I did as I was bidden, fearful that I would say something I later repented.  

Hardly had Lord Elham called off than his mother did indeed return. One of her first acts was to summon me. Never had her ladyship, who could, as Lizzie had once observed, charm the ducks off the water, looked more regal, so intimidating, staring down her aquiline nose.  

‘You should know that the wench has been found and been taken care of,’ she declared, the rouge standing out on her otherwise ashen cheeks. How had her new maid allowed her to appear like this?  

‘Some workhouse?’  

‘Indeed no. And,’ she added, with a smile that showed neither humour nor affection, ‘I can guarantee that the babe will not be abandoned in some foundling hospital. Lady Templemead knows her duty better than that. There is one proviso, Mr Campion, to her generosity. Neither you nor any others of her suitors will attempt to find her. Or her protection will be at an end.’  

‘But—’  

‘Did I not make myself clear? Now, if you will excuse me, I have much to do.’  

I managed to restrain a bark of ironic laughter. Once I might have agreed that ladies in her position had much to
occupy their hands and their minds. Now I knew otherwise. It appalled me that what I would once unthinkingly have spent on a suit of not extravagant clothes would have fed a family – nay, two or three families – for a year.  

On impulse I went down to see what I had come to regard as
my
little family, to see how they did in what was now less of a hovel and far more recognisable as a cottage. The thatch was waterproof, and a curl of smoke issued from the newly built chimney. There was a solid front door. From somewhere Mrs Beckles had conjured curtains, which hung cheerily at the clean glass of the windows.  

Usually I crammed my pockets with sweetmeats or, on Dr Hansard’s express instruction, fruit for the children; sometimes I took the luxury of some fresh new tea for Mrs Jenkins as a gift from Mrs Beckles. Occasionally they had the pleasure I found I could not deny them of giving me something in return, an egg that they could ill afford but that their dignity insisted I accept. In return I would soon offer them another gift. Mr Ford had at last found some pigs he deemed suitable, and they, not Farmer Bulmer’s, would roam my glebe lands. I had resolved that the Jenkinses would have some of their first litter.  

I found William chopping logs, every bit the man of the family at ten – my earlier estimate of his age had been quite inaccurate. Unlike his sisters, he still treated me with some reserve, as if embarrassed that once he had clung to me like the frightened child he was. Something had certainly happened to him, perhaps in that hell-hole of a gaol, to take the shine out of his eyes.  

His mother was gathering clothes from the washing line. One day I had discovered that all she could do was spread them on
bushes to dry, and had made her a gift of proper rope, which, I had had to claim, had come wrapped round a parcel. She would not have accepted it otherwise, seemingly thinking that to accept anything from me in some way compromised her. I respected her reticence, hoping one day that she would tell me shyly that she was walking out with another man. She was, after all, still in her twenties, a fact I had never grasped until I had seen her washed, with tidy hair and a gown befitting a young widow. The weight she had gained since leaving the starvation regime of the workhouse made her quite comely. Might Jem or more likely Matthew one day turn his eyes in this direction? Pray God it was only one of them, however!  

‘William works very hard,’ I said, knowing that this would please her. ‘Thank goodness we have so many trees here, Mrs Jenkins. Where I come from, the poor things are permanently bent and twisted, the wind blows so fiercely. Instead of hedges, we have dry-stone walls.’

She looked at me in disbelief, incapable it seemed of imagining anything other than this village.  

‘Are all the children well?’  

‘Pretty well, thank you, Parson. I see young Mrs Bulmer is out and about again.’ She pushed a lock of hair, torn from its cap by the wind, out of her eyes.  

‘Yes, God be praised. And Fanny, her little daughter, is thriving.’  

‘Maybe it was a blessing, losing the other,’ she said.  

I was so taken aback, I must have stared. ‘You can call a death a blessing?’  

‘The poor mite was bound to die, they say. And it’s best it should sooner rather than later, isn’t it? And if Jenkins had
lived, we’d still have been back down there.’ She gestured with a thick thumb towards Marsh Bottom as I tried to follow her shocking, pragmatic reasoning. ‘Or more likely in the workhouse,’ she conceded. ‘But now we’re here.’ She smiled. ‘And the children are thriving.’ As she often did she repeated the word I had used, as if she wished to establish it was the correct one. I do not think that even if she had had the chance she would ever have found book learning easy, but she would have been a rewarding pupil.  

‘Are you sure William is well?’ I risked. ‘He seems very quiet, almost unhappy, some days.’  

She attended to another errant lock of hair. ‘Sometimes he shouts out at night.’  

‘A nightmare? A bad dream?’  

‘Maybe. And he cries. But he won’t tell me why in the morning. He’s too grown up.’  

I nodded. I would ask Dr Hansard to call in next time he passed by, in the hopes that he could help with a mild sleeping draught, perhaps – though families like this did not have the luxury of physicking themselves.  

Any fears I had of rivalry between Lizzie’s lovers might be put to rest, as I discovered to my infinite embarrassment. Taking a walk along the river one evening, I heard a low but urgent scream. Thinking in my innocence someone was in pain, I hastened on, but even as I did so I registered that it was not that sort of scream. There it came again, and again, with a low grunting as a sort of ground-bass. Two pairs of feet in close juxtaposition told me that I must turn immediately and hasten away. My instincts bade me give no hint of what I had seen;
my conscience made me consider making such lewd behaviour a subject for my next sermon. Having at last put what I considered was sufficient distance between myself and the lovers, I paused to recover my breath. I leant on a bridge just like the one on which the late Lord Elham had met his end, and even had enough sense to test that it would take my weight. I forced myself to examine my feelings. Were they truly of disgust, or of envy? Did I not in my heart wish I could bury my longing for Lizzie between the thighs of another?  

If only there were some maiden to whom I could turn my affections. My thoughts turned briefly to the charming Miss Sophie Heath, she with the violet eyes and the extraordinary interest in Burke. Had she found her belted earl, with his ten thousand a year? And had he prostrated himself before her? Did she ever think kindly of the country parson who had stood up with her at her first impromptu dance?  

Behind me I could hear carefree laughter. I did not know the woman, but I knew her swain. It was Matthew. To avoid embarrassment, though I do not know which would have been the greater, mine or his, I strode off, hoping that they were so engrossed with each other they did not see me.  

When I preached the following Sunday, it was not to condemn furtive couplings in a riverside bush, but to urge my listeners to ponder the meaning of true charity. It was as much for my benefit as for my parishioners’.  

Try how I might, I could detect no resemblance between Susan and her lost sister. There was nothing in her voice, her face or her bearing to show the relationship. She would never be anything but short and sturdy, with a determined walk far
removed from Lizzie’s ladylike glide. Her voice, now under Mrs Trent’s tutelage losing the strong local burr, was light, where Lizzie’s had been deep. Susan’s eyes were so dark a brown they were almost black, in her brown complexion. My Lizzie – but it was foolish even to think of her more, except to remember her in my prayers.  

One day Hansard caught me looking at Susan. ‘Think of my blue hyacinths turning pink,’ he said, following me into my study and making himself at home in his favourite chair.  

‘I can only think of a more obvious explanation,’ I said prosaically, sitting in mine. ‘That Mrs Woodman has had two husbands – or at least,’ I added, thinking of the riverbank lovers, ‘two different men to her bed.’  

‘So worldly-wise, Tobias! You impress me. But the wench is too young to mend your heart anyway. Aye, and Jem’s.’  

‘He treats her like the sister he would have had her become,’ I said. ‘I ought to send him on his way, Edmund. How in this village can he find another to love?’  

‘How can you? But I don’t notice your packing your bags. Which reminds me, I hope to have a drawing room soon. How shall I celebrate its arrival?’  

‘By introducing a mistress to your house? Come, Edmund, all this talk of love, and you and Mrs Beckles have been smelling of April and May ever since I arrived! Nothing would give me more happiness than for me to join you in matrimony.’  

Had I presumed too much on our friendship?

‘You are right. I am honoured that Maria and I have an understanding,’ he said repressively.

‘Why not wed her? A more respectable widow I never met.
Nor a greater lady,’ I added, in perfect truth.

For reply, he rose from his chair, pacing towards the window and looking out. ‘And you are no bad catch! You still have your teeth; you stride about like a man half your age. True, you cannot expect to set up your nursery, but—’ As he spun on his heel, I saw his face, and stopped abruptly.

‘My friend, you presume too far!’

‘I am sorry for it. Pray, Edmund, forgive me.’ I stood in contrition, head bent.

After a silence lasting minutes, it seemed, he clapped me on the arm and pushed me gently back into my chair. He, however, did not sit, but returned to the window and his inspection of the gathering dusk.

He might have spoken to the glass itself, so little expression was there in his voice. ‘Nothing in the whole world would give me more pleasure than to pledge myself to her in holy matrimony. But I am not at all a good catch, Tobias. How could I confess to her why half my rooms have no hangings? Why I can afford only the bare minimum of servants – and do not think I would let any wife of mine toil over the stove.’

‘Some see pride as deadly sin,’ I remarked. ‘Whether it is or not, my friend, do not let it ruin your life and another’s.’ Knowing I had said enough, perhaps more than enough, I turned the conversation. ‘Now, did I tell you that blue tits are already exploring the hole in the tree at the bottom of my garden…?’