The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5)

by Jane Aiken Hodge

  Gazing across the foggy, silent square at the one blur of light, Caroline thought tomorrow seemed a lifetime away. A death-time? Nonsense. And absurd to have let herself be so out of proportionally disappointed at Gerard’s absence. But he’s the only friend I’ve got, she told herself. It’s natural I should miss him. She unfolded his note and re-read it by the light of her candle:

  I am sure you will call, and more sorry than I can say not to be there to see you, but am summoned urgently to town. There are grim rumours afoot. Believe nothing rashly. Try to persuade your husband not to march tonight. And, above all, do not you go out for any reason whatsoever.

  The last words were heavily underscored and followed simply by a scrawled: In haste, J G

  The handwriting reminded her of someone’s, but she could not think whose. Absurd even to suggest that she might consider going out anywhere tonight, considering what she remembered of last year. Were those Barrett’s soft steps on the stairs? She was not sure, but closed the shutters quietly and removed the chair from the door. And that was absurd, too. Alone in the house with Barrett, whom else could she fear?

  A gentle knock. ‘Madam?’ Barrett’s voice. ‘If I might speak to you for a moment?’

  ‘Yes?’ She opened the door a little and stood in the crack. ‘What is it, Barrett?’

  ‘A message for you, ma’am. Come by hand. Urgent.’ He held out a folded note. ‘It’s Mr Gerard, ma’am, the servant said. In trouble. Asks you to go to him, quick, before the procession starts.’

  ‘Oh?’ Suspending judgment, she took the note and moved over to the candle, glad to notice that Barrett came no farther into the room. She read quickly:

  Dear Mrs Tremadoc,

  I need your help most urgent. I have got safe away to Mrs Norman’s. Bring bandages, a heavy cloak, quick, before the procession starts.

  It was signed, after an illegible squiggle of a greeting, John Gerard.

  If it had not been for the previous note, it might have convinced her. The writing was a gentleman’s. The grammatical error might have been the result of haste. She would not have known that Gerard signed himself only with initials. She looked at Barrett, thinking fast.

  ‘It’s too late,’ she said. ‘Was the messenger delayed?’

  ‘That’s what he said. But the procession’s not started yet. He came past the church and says they’re still assembling. If you was to go through the churchyard and take the lane behind the Crown you could get to Mrs Norman’s easy.’

  So he knew what the note said. How? Who would be waiting for her in the dark graveyard?

  ‘Would you come with me?’ she asked.

  ‘I wish I could, ma’am, but I must mind the house. The procession passes right by, remember. You’ll be safe enough at Mrs Norman’s. Like a fortress her house is, they tell me.’

  Yes, Caroline thought, a fortress that would be closed against me. And yet, if she had not had Gerard’s previous note, she might well have gone. She moved over to open the shutters. ‘Listen. It’s too late already.’ The dull thud of a drum sounded hollow through the blanketing fog.

  ‘That’s just the assembly, ma’am.’ Barrett’s face showed blanched in the dubious light. ‘They always take an age getting marshalled. You could do it yet. The man who brought the note says he will go with you. He’s waiting.’

  ‘One of Gerard’s servants?’

  ‘He says Gerard’s hurt bad. No one else will help him on this night of all nights. I thought you was a good friend of his, ma’am.’

  ‘So I am,’ she said. ‘But…think of me a coward, if you like, Barrett, but tell the man to go for Dr Martin. He can give Mr Gerard better help than I can. I am not going out tonight. I have my husband’s orders.’

  For an instant, she thought a look of frightened fury flashed across Barrett’s face. ‘I’ll tell him.’ He picked up the lantern he had placed on the chest in the hall. ‘But I doubt he’ll go. Martin’s house is clear the other side of town.’

  ‘He’s not to stay here,’ she said. ‘I want to hear him leave at once, Barrett.’ And realised, as she said it, that she had not heard the man come. Was he an invention of Barrett’s? She stood in the doorway, watching the flickering light of his candle dwindle away down the curve of the stairs, then closed the door and replaced the chair, feeling a fool again as she did so. Moving back to the window, she re-opened the shutters and stood behind them, listening to the murmur of voices below. Barrett was indeed seeing someone away from the house, but they had most certainly not come to it since she had been up here, listening. It only confirmed her previous certainty that the note had been a lure to get her out into danger, but now she began to wish that she had pretended compliance, got out into the square, then called at one of the neighbours’ houses for help. But would help have been available? John Gerard was away; the other neighbours might well hesitate to open up on Guy Fawkes night. Straining eyes and ears, she could not be sure that the man Barrett had let out had actually left the square. Was he perhaps lurking there, in the heavy darkness, just in case she should try to escape?

  Escape? Her candle was burning low and she moved across the room to where a double-branched stick always stood on the dressing table in case she wanted to read in the night. It was not there. Crazy not to have noticed this sooner. The tinderbox that stood beside it was gone, too. In the morning, if she complained, Barrett would produce an apologetic maid who had taken it down to clean and ‘forgotten’ to bring it back. In the morning? Would she still be alive to make the complaint?

  How much more light had she? Half an hour perhaps, and no way of relighting the candle; she must just make the most of it while it lasted. She moved round the room, searching for a possible weapon, and settled on the fire tongs as heavier than the small poker. If it was only Barrett? If she took him by surprise as he entered the room? There might be a chance, particularly if he had dismissed her as a coward. So…she arranged the pillows in the bed to look like her own sleeping figure. No one would come, she thought, until the procession had passed and she was likely to be asleep. For the time being, she left the chair against the door, to guard against surprise, and went back to the half-shuttered window, alerted by the louder sound of that insistent drum. Now it was joined by the squeal of fifes. The procession must be starting from the other side of the church.

  As she had the year before, she watched the sinister masked figures erupt into the square, flaring torches in their hands casting strange light and shadow on mask, and plume, and barbaric headdress. Only, this time, one unmistakable figure came first. Tremadoc’s white surplice was illuminated by two torchbearers who walked on either side of him, but just a step behind, so that he did indeed lead the procession, a book, presumably the Bible, in his hand. As he approached across the square, she could see his white face and see that he was smiling with what looked like pure happiness. He is having his day, she thought, and felt suddenly happy for him, despite her own terrors.

  Behind him, riding high on the shoulders of two masked savages, came the figure of the Pope, the three-crowned hat rising out of the open sedan chair in which the effigy was carried. Effigy? It was extraordinarily lifelike, she thought, as it passed under her window, and she drew back a little to make sure she could not be noticed.

  The procession seemed even longer than last year’s and it was an age before the last capering figure had vanished into the dark of the graveyard, and the throb of the drum had dwindled to a mere pulse in the head. No screams this year, thank God, and she was most certainly not going to venture out into the foggy garden to watch the huge bonfire from over the wall. The house was quiet. Waiting?

  The candle end was beginning to flicker. Five minutes more and it would be out. Now she wished that she had asked Barrett for a new one when he brought the note that was not, she was sure, from Gerard. Was this evening to be one long tale of lost opportunity?

  A sudden sound from downstairs took her to the door, heart wildly beating. What was Barrett doing? It almost sounded
as if he had fallen over a bit of furniture.

  ‘Mrs Tremadoc?’ A voice, low, urgent from the landing outside. Not Barrett’s.

  ‘Who is it?’ She had the fire tongs ready in her hand.

  ‘Charles Mattingley,’ came the amazing answer as the candle flickered and went out. ‘I’ve dealt with the man, Barrett, but we must get you out of here. Will you trust me?’

  ‘Mattingley?’ It did indeed sound like his voice, but after all this time how could she be sure? And, besides, what in the world could he be doing here?

  ‘Yes. The Duchess’ friend. Yours. Let me in; there’s not much time. They’re waiting outside in the square. To kill you. When Barrett does not open to them they’ll force a way in. Surely you know my voice?’ And then, while she argued it with herself: ‘Why did you never reply to my proposal of marriage, Caroline?’

  ‘It is you!’ No one else could have known about that. She pulled away the chair and opened the door. ‘Thank God you’re here. But how?’ She would not have known him, wrapped as he was in an all-enveloping cloak.

  ‘No time for that.’ He picked up his lantern from the table outside her door. ‘Trust me, Caroline, and do just what I say. A warm dark cloak; quickly; bring nothing; there’s no time.’

  ‘You’re taking me away?’ She was pulling on the heavy cloak that hung behind her door as she spoke. ‘But Mr Tremadoc?’

  ‘Pray for him,’ he told her. ‘And come.’

  In the downstairs hall a lamp hanging from a hook revealed Barratt tied into a big chair, loose in his bonds, apparently unconscious. Mattingley bent over him for a moment. ‘He’ll live,’ he whispered, ‘though whether he deserves to…This way.’ The cellar door stood ajar. ‘Keep close behind me. The steps are steep.’

  Did he know she had never been down them? At the bottom of the dark, narrow flight he paused to let her past. ‘Wait here. I must lock the door behind us. God knows how long they will wait, but not long, I think.’

  It was ice cold in the cellar, and the air musty. She breathed a sigh of relief when Mattingley re-joined her, tucking the key into a pocket under his cloak. ‘It’s a heavy door. It should hold them for a little while. You do know me?’ He pushed back the muffling cloak.

  ‘I hardly would have.’

  He looked different, somehow, formidable. ‘You’ve had a bad time.’ It was not a question. ‘But that’s for later. This way, and watch your footing.’ The lantern he carried illuminated racks of dusty bottles…casks…a pile of boxes. ‘We’re out of earshot now.’ His voice, at normal pitch, echoed strangely in the low vault. ‘I take it you did not know you lived over a smuggler’s storehouse.’

  ‘I most certainly did not.’ But it explained a great deal.

  ‘We’re going to leave by their back way,’ he told her. ‘Careful now. This flight of steps is worse. Take my hand.’ His was cold on hers. ‘Not much farther.’ They felt their way down something between a flight of steps and a rocky slope, very narrow and slightly slippery, so that she was glad to be able to steady herself with her free hand on the cold rock wall. In front, he picked his steps like a cat, one hand holding the lantern, the other encouraging hers. ‘That’s the worst of it over.’ They had reached a wider passage that sloped away gently in front of them, and she began to smell salt air and fog, and hear, once again, the threatening throb of the drum.

  ‘The procession?’ she asked.

  ‘They must be almost down to the quay by now. When the bonfire is lit is our time to get away.’

  ‘We’re going down the cliff?’ She remembered what she had seen last year.

  ‘It’s the only way. Lucky, I know you for a girl who fears nothing.’

  ‘What in the world makes you think that?’

  ‘I don’t think it, I know it. Here we are.’ The lantern light showed nothing but fog, but she could tell that they were in a larger cavern and, she thought, one that was open to the air. ‘Over here’s the opening,’ he said, confirming this. ‘Stand still, while I make sure they are ready below before I rope you up. Don’t move a step,’ he warned. ‘The opening is sheer. Hold this.’ He gave her the lantern. ‘They won’t be able to see a signal in this fog. I just hope I don’t hit one of them.’ He picked up a stone from the cavern floor and moved cautiously away into the darkness. She felt the movement as he threw, then thought she heard, far down, the sound of a muffled splash. ‘Just in time,’ he said. ‘Here they come.’ There was a roar of sound as the head of the procession must have emerged from the Water Gate, and she had a vision of Tremadoc, leading it, that look of pure happiness on his face. Pray for him, Mattingley had said.

  ‘They’re waiting.’ He moved back towards her. ‘There’s a harness here. You’re not the first who’s gone down. I’m going to tie you into it and let you down to them. The cliff’s sheer, smoothed by generations of smugglers. Take off your cloak; you’ll be safer without it, though cold, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Cold! As if that was the worst of it.’ But there was almost a hint of laughter in her voice as she obediently took off the heavy cloak and dropped it on the ground, then fought down a strange involuntary shiver as his quick, firm hands adjusted the harness around her.

  ‘You face the cliff.’ His voice was matter of fact. ‘If you can, steady yourself with your hands and feet. I’ll lower you as slowly as I dare. They’ve lit the fire. We must hurry.’ His hands checked the rope and again that shiver went through her.

  ‘Now.’ He urged her gently forward to where darkness, less absolute, showed the open front of the cave. The noise of the procession was louder, and as he halted and steadied her at the very edge of the cliff she could see the fire surging savagely upwards, the dark crowd leaping and shouting around it. ‘Don’t look,’ he said. ‘Over the edge with you, let yourself down by your hands, then, trust me, and let go.’

  ‘And you?’ She hesitated for a moment.

  ‘Will follow you down the rope once you’re safe. The sooner the better.’

  ‘Yes.’ The wildly blazing fire would not last long. As she lowered herself over the edge the insistent drumming stopped, the crowd hushed, someone was beginning to speak. Tremadoc?

  ‘Let go.’ Mattingley’s voice from above, steady, commanding.

  Her feet in their soft slippers felt the gritty sandstone of the cliff. The harness was firm under her arms. She took a deep breath, let go, swung dizzily for a moment, then felt her hands scrape against rough rock as she plunged steadily downwards. It was an eternity; it was an instant. She had never been so frightened in her life. And she had not even asked who was waiting below. She could hear voices now, the muffled splash of oars. They were drowned suddenly by a wild burst of music and shouting from the quay and then a scream so horrible that her hands and feet stopped obeying her and she plunged for a few moments, helpless, banging against an outcrop of the cliff, then, mercifully, was grasped by steadying hands, pulled sideways, deposited in the rocking bottom of a small boat and, half fainting, felt the rope roughly removed.

  ‘He’s coming now.’ A man’s voice.

  ‘And not a moment too soon.’

  ‘What’s happening over there? Can you see?’

  ‘No, thank God, but I can guess.’

  ‘Nothing we can do, but pray God it’s quick…’

  ‘He’s still screaming.’

  ‘Yes. Hold the rope steady. Ah!’ The screaming had risen to a half-human pitch, then stopped. ‘God rest his soul.’

  Whose? She was afraid she knew. Pray for him, Mattingley had said. She lay where they had dropped her, every joint aching, hands and feet bleeding, trying with a numb mind to make sense of what they were saying.

  ‘Christ!’ said the first voice. ‘I can smell it.’

  Caroline could, too, and fainted.

  She ached all over. The hand she put up to her brow was bandaged. There was light; the crackle of a fire; somewhere a bird was singing. Daytime? She turned awkwardly in the bed and tried to sit up.

  ‘Don’t.’ A woman’s
voice; a gentle hand on her forehead. ‘The doctor says you must rest.’

  ‘Dr Martin?’

  ‘No dear. You’re safe away from Oldchurch. At Denton Hall. Charles Mattingley brought you to us. We’re your kin, child, cousins of your mother’s.’

  ‘Cousins?’ It was an effort to open her eyes, but she made it and saw a plain, kind-looking woman sitting by the bed.

  ‘Call it that.’ Unbecoming colour flooded the tired face. ‘Dick — my husband — don’t much like it talked about. Well, you can’t blame him. He thinks what his sister did killed his first wife. Poor Ruth, she died in childbirth and the little boy with her. A long time ago, my dear, and no blame of yours, but if it’s all the same to you, we’ll just call you a distant cousin, and save explaining to the children.’

  ‘Children?’ The woman was talking in riddles that her tired brain would not follow. There was something else, something lurking at the back of it, waiting to spring. ‘You have children?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’ The plain face became beautiful. ‘Two boys and a girl. Francis and Richard and my little Jennifer. You’ll meet them all when you are strong enough to come downstairs. Francis and Richard came home from Cambridge to protect us from invasion, bless the boys. They are both army mad, of course, but their father says they must get their education first. I’m tiring you with my chatter.’ She looked conscience-stricken. ‘Mr Mattingley said you must rest. He’ll be angry if he gets back and finds I’ve been letting you tire yourself.’

  When Caroline next woke a small girl was sitting by the bed looking at her with large, interested eyes.

  ‘Cousin Caroline!’ She jumped to her feet. ‘I’m Jennifer, and Mamma said I was to call her the instant you waked.’ She patted Caroline’s hand. ‘Now stay good and quiet until I come back with Mamma.’

  ‘You look much better,’ said her mother, a few minutes later.

  ‘I feel it, Mrs…’ She hesitated.