Shadow of the Past

by Judith Cutler

  Edmund found hartshorn in his valise and mixed it with a little water. ‘Already there is some improvement, my Lady,’ he insisted, pressing the glass to her lips. ‘He has now recalled, without prompting, that his name is Hugo. And as we drove into the grounds, he said something about a rope swing.’

  Her face lit up. ‘He remembered that? It used to hang from an oak in the paddock. Let it be restored tomorrow.’

  ‘Let it indeed.’ Edmund looked around for Mrs Hansard. Finding her, he crossed the room and kissed her hand. He did not need to say anything. Nor did she, as she blushed rosily as a girl.

  ‘Dinner can be served as soon as everyone is ready,’ she said, struggling to regain her composure. She beckoned two of the new servants. ‘Owen, Mary – remember your duties. Show our guests to the rooms we have prepared for them, and then bustle about with the hot water. Off you go now.’ As they went, awkward in their new uniforms and new responsibilities, she smiled with a mixture of exasperation and amusement.

  Though Lady Chase insisted on moving up from the dower house to her old chamber in the manor, there was not room for all of us to follow suit. Dr Hansard suggested that Mrs Hansard should remain there, to supervise, he said, the inexperienced staff’s morning activities, a proposition with which she did not argue. But after supper Jem and I returned to the dower house, and the apple-scented attic.

  ‘Is there likely to be a happy ending?’ I asked Jem.

  ‘Possibly for some. But it seems too much to hope for one for everyone.’ He extinguished the candle.

  What did he mean by that? Had his taste for another life made him dissatisfied with his old one? I would hardly be surprised. The only question was what occupation he might take up. Even as I opened my mouth to ask, his breathing slipped into snores.

  * * *

  Once he had assured himself that Hugo was in the best of hands, Dr Hansard declared it was time for the party to break up. Mrs Rooke undertook to do whatever housekeeping was needful, so Maria and Edmund set forth first, visiting friends in Droitwich en route to Langley Park.

  Bess insisted on staying with Hugo, who clearly depended on her far more than Lady Chase liked.

  ‘’Ow could I not? ’Enry left him in my care, after all,’ she said reasonably, coming down to my makeshift timber yard for ten minutes’ fresh air. Jem, to whom the task would have fallen at home, was amused by my pretensions, and spent his time bringing the stables to his exacting standards. He had discovered a useable gig, and had managed to buy what he declared was a reliable, sweet-natured cob. ‘Lanky – his lordship, I should say – wouldn’t be alive now but for ’Enry. Well, you can see those scars, can’t you? Pity you gentlemen don’t wear wigs no more, ’cos far as I can see that hair of his is never going to grow anything like. But he wouldn’t have survived without me neither. Not since ’Enry went.’ Her voice changed from the almost unremittingly cheerful. ‘D’you reckon he suffered, Parson? ’Enry? At the end?’ She frowned back tears.

  I laid aside my axe. ‘Hardly at all. There was no sign of a struggle where we found his flask and Hugo’s ring.’

  ‘Got hisself drunk and just keeled over? And then the stream flooded and took him off? Come on, Parson – I’ve cut my eye-teeth, you know. All this secrecy.’ She looked around her and spread her hands. ‘You think someone done him in, don’t you? And you want to make sure no one does Lanky in.’

  I looked her full in the eye. ‘Or you, of course. If they think you have information about his whereabouts.’

  ‘I reckon that’s the only reason his old ma puts up with me,’ she said, sitting on a log. ‘She thinks I’ll blab if I go back. But I wouldn’t, Parson. I wouldn’t.’

  ‘I know you wouldn’t. You have behaved extraordinarily kindly, generously, towards the young man. I honour you for your loyalty and devotion, Miss Bess.’

  She gave me a self-deprecatory grin. ‘I got fond of ’im, didn’t I?’

  ‘And you want to see what becomes of him?’

  Her head went to one side as she reflected. ‘Yes, I suppose that’s it. If he’d been a common soldier boy, it’d have been better for me, you know. ’Cos if he’d got better, he’d have stayed with me and looked after me for a change.’ She sighed. ‘’Ere, put your weskit back on – you’ll be froze to the marrow.’

  I obeyed. ‘And as it is?’

  ‘I s’pose I shall have to go back to me whoring. Ain’t much else for the likes of me.’

  ‘I promised you you’d never had to do that again – if indeed, you want to go back to London. Her ladyship will make provision for you for life, Bess.’

  ‘Not without you nagging her, she wouldn’t. Can’t bear knowing he’d rather it was me kissed him goodnight than her.’

  I suspected that that was a euphemism, but could scarcely ask. ‘She will be generous,’ I insisted. ‘Would you prefer a pension for life or a position?’

  She regarded me, hands on broad hips. ‘I can’t see me working at some great house, can you? Except the gentlemen want a spot of…No?’ She laughed at the shock on my face. ‘But going back to London, to that room… I dunno, Parson, I dunno.’

  Who could wonder at the poor woman’s doubts? ‘Were you never apprenticed?’

  ‘Tried me hand at being a milliner, but it’s me eyes, see – not up to it. Either that or the mother’s ruin giving me the shakes of a morning. Trouble is, Parson, you gives me a purse full of money, I shall booze it all away, and soon find myself in dun territory.’

  ‘A weekly or monthly allowance? No? The more the money, the bigger the bender?’ I smiled sadly. ‘We shall think of something.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, pulling her shawl tightly round her shoulders and standing up, ‘no point in us both hanging round here catching our deaths, is there? He’ll probably be awake, a-calling for me.’ She shook her shirts free in a gesture her ladyship would have recognised. If only I could persuade her to converse a little with the poor creature.

  ‘Wait a moment, Bess. What would you really like for the future?’

  She stopped short and turned, shaking her head. ‘I dunno. You see, Parson, no one’s ever asked me that before. Things sort of ’appen to me, if you knows what I mean.’ As if faced with an insoluble conundrum, she chewed on a thumbnail and shrugged. She took a couple of paces away from me. ‘Maybe I shall stay here,’ she said, over her shoulder. Before I could respond, she returned to the house.

  I lifted my axe again, with all the more fervour because of my inability to see a future for her. At least, I told myself, for the time being she was useful, clean, well fed and learning – from Mrs Rooke’s example – how to conduct herself with decency and sobriety.

  ‘You won’t leave me here, though, will you, Parson?’ Willum demanded, coming on me as I weighed into the next log.

  ‘Heavens, boy, I nearly chopped off my fingers!’ I shouted, for I had indeed stripped a long slice of skin from a finger. There was a great deal more blood than there should have been, soaking quickly through my handkerchief. As the blood flowed, so did my fierce words. As it eased, I said more gently, ‘My apologies, Willum. I didn’t mean to ring a peal over you. But you must never make anyone jump when they are doing something dangerous – no creeping up on a cook, for instance, when she’s wielding a carving knife. Do you understand?’

  ‘Or a man when he’s loading a gun?’

  ‘Exactly. So you don’t want to stay in Shropshire, Willum? It’s very beautiful round here.’ To be honest, I did not really want to take him back to Moreton St Jude. I feared he would let slip enough hints about his recent adventures to put everything at risk.

  ‘Quiet as the grave, more like. Everyone as blue as a megrim. And now you’re in a dudgeon and going to leave me here, so help me.’ Occasionally – at a time like this – his self-assured mask would slip and he would become the child he was: anxious, vulnerable and indeed inclined to tears.

  I smiled and shook my head. ‘I’m not in a dudgeon – except maybe for the same reason as you.
I’m missing my home.’

  ‘Not missing mine, ’cos I ain’t got one to miss – I told you.’ Lower lip a-tremble, he left the silence to grow.

  At last I succumbed, as he must have known I would. ‘Would you like to come and live in the rectory with Jem and me?’ What work we could find for him I had no idea.

  ‘Bit of a rum touch, isn’t it, a village having two parsons?’

  ‘Jem is only a parson when he’s in London, Willum,’ I said, hoping that would be the end of the matter.

  ‘I’m more than seven, you know. You can’t be a parson only part of the time.’

  ‘The rest of the time Jem works with horses,’ I said, not attempting to argue.

  He would as long as he stayed, at least. Jem had had itchy feet a while back, after a disappointment in love. Probably he realised, as I did, he could be far more than a simple groom. To be sure, he could not read and write in Greek, but he was lettered in English, and wrote a good hand. Perhaps if Willum relieved him of some, if not all, of his other duties, he could teach in the school Lady Chase proposed establishing for all the village children. He was patient enough, and firm, and would set an excellent moral tone – after all, he was not just my groom, not just my friend, but also my mentor.

  ‘I’m good with nags. I always wanted to be a tiger.’

  ‘I don’t need a tiger. Not in the country.’

  ‘Not need a tiger? You’re a bang-up cove for all you’re a man of the cloth, aren’t you? Stands to reason you need a tiger.’

  ‘Not in the country. It’s different there. But what I will do is ask Lady Chase’s coachman if you may ride on the box on the journey back to Warwickshire.’

  His face lit up. ‘Can I handle the ribbons?’

  ‘With her ladyship inside?Willum, you joke me.’ I softened. ‘If you make me a solemn promise, then I undertake at least to ask if you may sit beside James.’

  ‘Feed me liver to crows and let ravens peck my eyes out if I let you down, guv.’

  I managed not to shudder. I had seen what birds could do not just to sheep, of course, but also to humans. ‘I’m sure you won’t let me down. Because if you do it’s straight back to London with you. I want your most solemn oath never, under any circumstances, unless you have my express permission, never to reveal what happened in London and what has happened here in Shropshire.’

  ‘Nor any of the journey in between?’ he prompted.

  ‘Exactly.

  He spat in his palm. We were to seal the bargain by shaking hands. ‘Done. I won’t tell no one. Not that I shall know anyone to tell, shall I? You and Parson Yeomans apart, that is.’

  ‘Oh dear, Willum, you’ve made a mull of it already. He’s only a parson in London, remember. From now on, he’s Mr Jem.’ I would not confuse him with the Turbeville or Yeomans problem.

  Willum gave a parody of a salute. ‘Mr Jem it is.’ His face troubled, he added, ‘But you’re still Parson Campion, aren’t you?’

  ‘I am indeed. Now, will you stack these logs while I go and find a bit of clean rag for this cut of mine?’

  As Dr Hansard insisted, we all settled quickly back into our old ways back in Moreton St Jude. Dr Toone had delivered two more babies, whose parents wanted them christened immediately, before the cold of winter set in. Old Mr Jakeman had died in his privy, which gave rise to certain jokes best not repeated in company. The mummers were deep into rehearsals.

  Lady Chase, however much she would have preferred to be in Shropshire, was much to be seen about the village dispensing charity; only three of us knew that she received regular reports of her son, which were sent either to the rectory or to Langley Park, never to the Hall.

  Receiving her in my study two or three days before Christmas, I presented her with the latest. Absently she sipped a glass of Madeira, brought with a respectful curtsy by Susan, reading and re-reading the document as if studying her son’s face. She did not speak until Susan had left the room and quietly closed the door behind her.

  ‘The weather has been fine enough for him to sit on that swing we set up for him,’ she said. ‘And he has started to recall other events that took place there. He walks as far as the village now, and there is talk of him riding again. And – yes – he asked about his regimentals last night.’

  ‘That is excellent news,’ I began, but raised a finger as I heard a commotion in the hall.

  Susan knocked on the door. ‘There’s a strange man arrived,’ she announced. ‘And there’s nothing for it but he sees you, although her ladyship’s here.’ She bobbed another, lower curtsy.

  ‘Ask him to wait in the morning room, if you please, Susan. Offer him some refreshment and tell him I will be with him shortly. Well?’

  ‘It’s just as – he looks very rough, sir. And he talks very funny, so I can hardly understand him. Like Willum,’ she added, with a burst of inspiration.

  I had an inkling who this might be. ‘Even so, do as I tell you,’ I said gently but firmly. ‘And bid Jem join us there.’

  With another bob, and a rosy blush, she left us.

  Lady Chase rose to feet. ‘I will leave you to this intriguing person, Tobias.’

  ‘Thank you, my Lady. But you forget one thing.’ As inexorable as Edmund would have been about destroying any news of Lord Chase, I pointed at the fire. ‘The missive, my Lady.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The visitor rose, treating us to a bow and an affable smile. ‘Alfred Mullins of the Runners at your service, gents.’

  Susan was right. Mr Mullins did speak like Willum, presumably because he came from the same part of the country – London. In fact his accent was his only defining aspect: he was indeterminate in appearance, build and even age. Was that how a Runner eschewing his distinctive red waistcoat should look? Such anonymity might be needful in some duties, where to be recognisable might be a hindrance. But I found the studied nothingness unnerving, not knowing what it might conceal.

  ‘Like manna from heaven, that,’ he declared, running his stubby finger round the plate he held, as if to endure that not a single scrap of whatever refreshment Susan had brought should elude him. His tankard, which had held ale, was no doubt as clean as the plate.

  I gestured him back to his seat, refilling the tankard. Jem, taking his favourite chair, also accepted ale; I helped myself to wine.

  ‘You have news for us, Mr Mullins,’ I prompted. ‘But first, I wonder if you could prove that you are who you say you are.’

  Raising an eyebrow, he showed me his warrant. ‘There’s not many as has the rumgumption to ask that,’ he said, as if undecided whether my wariness merited suspicion or respect.

  As for me, I became ever more convinced that Mullins was not the mutton-headed fool he would like us to believe him, but a man of considerable native intelligence. ‘Thank you. And what do you have to report?’

  ‘I been the length and breadth of the country,’ he affirmed. ‘And the roads getting deeper and dirtier by the minute. Durham one day, Devon the next. I tell you, I’m worn to a frazzle – and me piles getting worse by the mile. Begging your pardon, your reverence.’

  ‘Parson Campion will do,’ I said. ‘And what news do you bring me?’

  He made a great show of reaching out his notebook, but I thought he had the information by heart. ‘I have not yet spoke to the party on whose premises you was robbed in broad daylight, sir, but I understand that he – or even they – are expected any moment in Dawlish, down in Devon, that is, for Christmas.’

  ‘Not yet arrived? So where have they been since they quit London in such haste some three weeks since?’

  My question had been rhetorical, but he responded with a shrewd one of his own, with nothing of the rhetorical about it. ‘Why are you so wishful to know, if I might make so bold?’

  Feeling that I was suddenly the one under suspicion, I temporised. ‘From London one may reach Dawlish in three or four days – Devon is hardly the end of the earth.’

  ‘Why, as to that… But I grant you,
Parson, their route has been unusual, given their destination. And they have done mortal strange things, like bespeaking rooms at one inn, but staying at another. You sure it ain’t the crown jewels they half-inched?’

  ‘Not from me, at least.’

  ‘Quite so. As for the nurse, she does indeed come from Northumberland. But she will not, according to my informant, be returning there because she is still in the employ of the Larwoods, who will be requiring of her services over the festive season. And the first snowflakes are falling,’ he added plaintively and not at all irrelevantly.

  I rang for more refreshment, not least because however much I had expected, nay, hoped for this news, I needed urgently to reflect. It had come at a time when I simply could not act upon it. How could I leave my flock, neglect divine worship, during the second most important festival in the church calendar? The simple answer was that I could not.

  Susan, round-eyed with curiosity, brought more of Mrs Trent’s excellent biscuits and another jug of ale. I would have to invent some explanation for Mr Mullins’ visit, because, whether or not I swore both housekeeper and servant to secrecy, everyone in the village would be talking about it before dusk.

  Mullins was used to practising discretion; he made no attempt to speak till she had left us on our own once more.

  ‘Will you be wanting me to go to this ’ere Dawlish and apprehend the party on suspicion that one of their servants robbed you?’ he asked, mouth not quite empty.

  Put like that, the venture seemed absurd. I temporised. ‘It is Christmas, it is not? The time of good will to all men. And I am sure you have a home to go to.’ I smiled persuasively.

  ‘Aye, that I have. And a Mrs Mullins and a whole quiverful of nipperkins a-waiting for me.’ He applied himself to his tankard, but his eyes were ever observant.