When Falcons Fall

by C. S. Harris

  “Your father was a farmer?”

  “He was, milady. Cut his hand real bad on a sickle and died from it, he did, when I was just fifteen. That’s when I married my Nate.”

  “Your husband was a farmer as well?”

  “Yes, milady.”

  “So you remember when George Irving’s Bill of Enclosure passed through Parliament?”

  A shadow touched the chambermaid’s elf-like features, leaving her looking both older and sadder. “Don’t I just, milady. We didn’t know nothing about it till the commissioners come and posted the act on the church door. And by then, there weren’t nothin’ we could do about it, now, was there? The commissioners were the ones decided who got what, and of course they gave all the best land to Mr. Irving and divided up what was left amongst the rest of us. Only, we couldn’t keep it unless we fenced it, and who could afford to do that? Plus, there was all sorts of fees we was supposed to pay. And why was that, when it weren’t nothin’ we’d ever asked for?”

  She looked at Hero as if Hero might be able to supply some explanation. But she could only shake her head.

  Mary Beth said, “It would’ve been bad enough, them dividing up the furlongs like that. But they took away all our rights to the commons and wasteland too. Nate and me used to keep a cow, we did. The milk from that one cow was worth half what a man could earn in a day. But once we’d lost the commons, we couldn’t keep her no more and had to sell her. I had a little baby girl in those days; Julie was her name. I think maybe she’d have lived, if we’d still had the cow.”

  “It must have been a very difficult time for you,” said Hero, although it was such a woeful understatement that it struck her as almost cruel.

  Mary Beth nodded and rubbed the heel of her hand against one eye. “Everything was so different after that. We used to cut our firewood and peat from the wasteland, and gather berries there in the summer and nuts in the winter. It’s where we’d get the rushes for our lights and the thatch for our roof, and even set our pigs t’foraging. But then we didn’t have none of that no more. How was we supposed to live?”

  “Were there any protests? Disturbances?”

  A long silence followed the question. Then Mary Beth said, “He didn’t tell you? Mr. McBroom, I mean.”

  Hero knew an uncomfortable prickling of premonition. “Tell me what?”

  “About the troop of yeomen come up one night when a bunch of the lads had got together. Arrested more’n twenty, they did, my Nate and Lucas amongst them.”

  “Lucas?”

  “Lucas was my boy. Sentenced him to serve in the army, they did, even though he was only twelve. Shipped him off to India.” The chambermaid dropped her gaze to her lap, where her fingers worked plucking at the cloth of her apron. “Died of a fever when he weren’t there more’n a month. Or so I heard.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Hero, her voice now little more than a whisper.

  “At least they didn’t hang him, like they did my Nate. Nate, and my brother, John, both.” Mary Beth drew a shaky breath. “That’s when I came here, to work at the Blue Boar. Been here ever since. I was lucky, I was; most folks ended up in the workhouse. Or dead.”

  In the silence that followed her words, they could hear Martin McBroom in the distance, shouting at one of the stableboys.

  “Don’t seem right, somehow,” said Mary Beth. “To take the land that once belonged to everybody and give it to those who already have so much. Just so’s they can put a wall around it and arrest anybody dares set foot on it.”

  “It’s not right,” said Hero.

  Mary Beth nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, the cords in her throat working as she swallowed hard. “There’s a little ditty my Nate used t’ sing to my Julie, before she died. You ever heard it?” And then she began to sing, her voice pure and sweet, but wavering now with the strain of her emotions:

  “They hang the man and flog the woman,

  That steals the goose from off the Common;

  But let the greater villain loose,

  Who steals the Commons from the goose.

  The law demands that we atone

  When we take things we do not own,

  But leaves the Lords and Ladies fine

  Who take things that are yours and mine.

  And geese will still a Common lack,

  Till they go and steal it back.”

  The aging chambermaid’s voice faded away, leaving her staring at the cold hearth.

  “I have heard it, yes,” said Hero, quietly closing her notebook and setting it aside. Although the truth was, she’d heard the first four lines, but not the rest.

  Mary Beth raised her gaze to Hero’s face. “I can tell you this, milady: There weren’t nobody around here was sorry, the night Maplethorpe Hall burned and took George Irving with it. Weren’t nobody sorry at all.”

  Chapter 20

  An hour or so later, just as the church bell was striking eleven, the Reverend Benedict Underwood’s punctiliously correct wife, Agnes, paid a courtesy call on Viscountess Devlin. It was the done thing, for a vicar’s wife to make a formal call on any ladies of stature visiting her husband’s parish. Typically, the vicar’s wife would leave a card and go away, never expecting to be honored with an actual visit. So Agnes Underwood was visibly stunned to be invited up to her ladyship’s private parlor.

  The Reverend’s wife was a solidly built woman on the tall side, with a long, rectangular face and unmemorable features. She’d brought her husband a dowry of two hundred pounds a year, an additional income most welcome to a clergyman whose living could only be described as meager. And because she was inordinately proud of this fact, she made certain to impart the information to Hero within minutes of meeting her.

  “I understand you had Emma Chance to tea,” said Hero, handing the vicar’s wife a cup of tea sweetened with three sugars.

  “I did, yes. The Reverend invited her to the vicarage the first day she was here. Thought her a taking little thing and felt sorry for her.” Something about the way she said it suggested that Agnes Underwood did not share her reverend husband’s opinion—a suspicion that was confirmed when the woman leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “Although if you ask me, there was something undeniably fast about her. As I told the Reverend, I’m not surprised things ended the way they did.”

  Hero poured herself a cup of tea. “Oh? Why is that?”

  “Well,” said the vicar’s wife, her voice throbbing with meaning. “A young woman, gallivanting about the countryside with only an abigail? It’s simply not the done thing, now, is it, Lady Devlin?”

  “She was a widow.”

  “Yes. But . . . still.”

  “Did she tell you anything about herself?”

  The Reverend’s wife thought about it a moment. “Not really. She mainly asked about the village.”

  “What about the village?”

  “She was quite interested in the past. I gather her mother visited the area some years ago.”

  “Oh?” It was the first Hero had heard of any previous link between the dead woman and the village. “Did she happen to mention her mother’s name?”

  “Not that I recall, no.”

  Hero thoughtfully sipped her tea. “How long have you been at Ayleswick?”

  “Twenty-one years as of last February.”

  “You were here when the Enclosure Act went through Parliament?”

  “Oh, yes. Turbulent times, those were.”

  Parliament had passed thousands of Enclosure Acts over the previous three or four decades. Because each landlord pursued his own bill through Parliament on an individual basis, the slow erasure of England’s ancient common rights had progressed piecemeal and thus provoked no unified, widespread resistance. But local instances of disorder were not uncommon.

  “There were some rough elements in the village at on
e time,” the vicar’s wife was saying, her small mouth pursed. “I’m afraid they encouraged the others in their foolishness—firing ricks of hay, tearing down fences and leveling ditches, burning effigies. That sort of thing. But they’re mostly all gone now, thankfully.”

  “Where did they go?”

  “Botany Bay, the lucky ones. The rest are no doubt burning in Hades.”

  “You mean, they were hanged.”

  “Oh, yes—although not enough of them, if you ask me.” Her eyes blazed; the vicar’s wife was obviously not an advocate of Christian clemency.

  Hero had seen a weathered gibbet standing near the crossroads to the east of the village. She wondered what it did to a small community like this one, when those with power and wealth took the lives of those without either. “When was this?”

  “The hangings? A year or so after I arrived.”

  “And that ended it?”

  “Oh, yes. That and the transportations.”

  “The village seems so peaceful now,” said Hero, offering her guest a plate of small cakes. “One would never imagine it had such a violent past.”

  “Believe me,” said the vicar’s wife, nibbling on a cake. “It was quite terrifying at the time.” Since vicars typically benefited from the enclosures at the expense of their poorer parishioners, it wasn’t unheard of for rioters to set fire to churches and vicarages.

  “Was anyone killed—apart from those hanged, obviously?”

  “No. Although Lord Seaton’s steward was threatened once by some ruffians with blackened faces.”

  “You mean Samuel Atwater?”

  “Mmm.”

  Hero poured her visitor another cup of tea. “So, what do you think happened to Emma Chance?”

  “Personally? I’ve no doubt that when all is said and done, the inquest will return a verdict of felo-de-se.”

  “Suicide? Really?”

  “Yes.”

  “I suppose it’s possible,” said Hero.

  “It’s inevitable. We’ve never had a murder in the village. At least, not of the nature they’re suggesting.”

  Hero studied Agnes Underwood’s plain, complacent face. “Have there been other suicides?”

  “Not for some years, no. Not since several girls did away with themselves after getting in the family way. Some silly fools whispered at the time that they’d been murdered. But in the end, the inquest found they’d died by their own hand, as expected.”

  Hero sat forward. “Oh? How did they kill themselves?”

  “One drowned herself in the millpond. The other threw herself off the cliffs at Northcott Gorge.”

  “When was this?”

  “Fifteen years ago.”

  “So about the time of the enclosure troubles?”

  “A few years afterward, I believe. But . . . surely you don’t mean to suggest that there is some connection—either between those suicides and the disturbances, or between what happened then and the death of this woman now?”

  “No, of course not,” said Hero, reaching for the plate of cakes. “Won’t you have another?”

  After the vicar’s wife bowed herself out with a profusion of flowery compliments and effusive thanks, Hero changed into a walking dress of fine cambric, its hem embellished with a deep flounce edged in pale pink. She laced up a pair of sturdy half boots, tied on a wide-brimmed straw hat with a pink ribbon, pulled on a pair of fine kid gloves of the same delicate shade, and tucked her parasol under her arm. Then she went for a walk.

  Following the village’s narrow, winding high street, she turned east, skirting the edge of the green where Reuben Dickie sat on his step at the pump house, whittling another in a long line of small wooden animals. He must have a veritable Noah’s ark by now, she decided, watching his fingers move with skilled ease. He glanced up and found her watching him, and though she smiled at him, he quickly ducked his head again in confusion.

  She opened her parasol, tilted it against the strengthening sun, and walked on.

  It was her intention to follow the coach road out to the gibbet that stood on the eastern fringe of the village. But as she neared the entrance to the sunken drive that led to the Squire’s ancient manor house, three young lads came pelting down a lavender-edged cottage path toward her. They were shouting and laughing and pushing one another, and were so engrossed in their play that they nearly careened into her.

  “Oye,” shouted a man who appeared in the open cottage doorway behind them. “Mind where you’re going there, lads! And apologize to her ladyship.”

  “Beggin’ yer pardon, milady,” chirped the three boys in unison before tearing off again up the road.

  “If you’ll allow me to apologize as well, my lady,” said the man. He walked toward her, his head shaking as his gaze followed the three lads. He had one of those boyish Irish faces that are both ageless and charmingly engaging. But from the deep laugh lines beside his light gray eyes, she guessed he was probably somewhere in his late thirties or early forties. He was not, obviously, an ordinary cottager. His worn clothes were those of a gentleman, his speech and manner cultured, his accent only vaguely hinting at a Dublin lilt.

  “Are they yours?” she asked with a smile.

  “Oh, no, my lady. Those three young tearabouts belong to Jude Lowe, keeper of the Ship. I’m nothing more than the humble village schoolmaster.” He wasn’t wearing a hat, so he couldn’t sweep it off with a flourish. But he still managed to sketch an elegant bow. “Daray Flanagan, at your service.”

  She looked at him with renewed interest. “Ah, you’re the one who was speaking to the miller’s wife last Monday evening, right before she saw Emma Chance.”

  “I am indeed, my lady. And what a charming young gentlewoman she was. Such a pity, what happened to her.”

  “You spoke with her?”

  “Not then, no. I came across her earlier, though, when she was painting a watercolor of the high street.”

  “When was this?”

  “Must’ve been Friday or Saturday, I suppose. She had quite the talent, she did.”

  Hero studied his mobile, expressive face. “What do you think happened to her?”

  “Me? I wouldn’t be knowing, my lady. I’ve only been here a couple of years myself.” The smile lines beside his eyes deepened, as if with pain. “I’d have said it was a peaceful, friendly place, this. Which just goes to show, now, doesn’t it?”

  “How do you come to be here?”

  “Pure serendipity. I was passing through the village the day they were burying the old schoolmaster. Stopped at the Ship for a bite to eat and heard everyone talking about how they’d be needing to find someone to take the dead man’s place. So I stayed.”

  It was an artless tale that glossed over much the teller chose not to dwell on, including where he’d been coming from, where he’d been going, and why he’d been content to take up such a lowly position. Some of his pupils might pay for lessons with shillings, but most doubtless paid in kind—and only when they could.

  “Serendipity, indeed,” said Hero.

  Flanagan nodded. “My predecessor had been here forty years. The old Squire’d brought him in. Gave him—and me—this cottage rent free.”

  Hero had been thinking of Archie Rawlins’s father as a drunken boor who foolishly set his horse at a wall he couldn’t clear. Now she found she had to readjust that image. It wasn’t unknown for landlords to take an interest in educating the children of their tenants and cottagers, but it was uncommon. Most saw the education of the masses either as unnecessary or as a misguided, dangerous folly.

  Hero started to walk on, then paused to say, “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about the gibbet out near the crossroads, would you?”

  Flanagan’s gaze flickered up the gently curving road, empty now in the morning sunlight. “I’ve heard it was set up for some poor fellow hanged for
treason back in the early nineties. They say he was rotting up there for three months before somebody cut him down in the middle of the night and buried him who knows where. But I couldn’t tell you the details. Folks around here don’t like to talk about it much.”

  “It’s been standing twenty years?”

  “So I hear. Someone tried to burn it once. But the major, he had the fire put out. Even has old Silas Madden coat it with tar regularly, to help preserve it. Tends that gibbet with as much care as his wife tends her gardens, he does.”

  “I wonder why,” said Hero.

  But that was a question the Irishman was unable to answer.

  Hero had just passed the last straggling cottage when she became aware of an elegant curricle coming toward her at a fast clip, its driver a down-the-road-looking man in a linen driving coat.

  He drew up smartly beside her. “May I offer you a lift, my lady?”

  Hero twirled her parasol. “You’re not going in my direction.”

  “I can fix that,” said Devlin.

  The gibbet stood just before the sad remnants of the small hamlet at the crossroads. Towering some twenty or more feet high, its base set in a massive stone sunk in the ground, the thick post had strong bars of iron running up its sides as reinforcement.

  “Someone obviously wanted it to last,” said Hero, one hand holding her hat in place as she tipped back her head to stare up at the gibbet’s projecting crosspiece. In the distant past, men were sometimes gibbeted alive—hung up in close-fitted, specially forged iron cages and left to die of thirst and exposure. But more often it was used to display the bodies of executed criminals, both as a way to extend their punishment after death and as a warning to others. Murderers were sometimes gibbeted. So were traitors and pirates.

  “Care to tell me why you were so eager to walk out here and look at this?” asked Devlin, watching her.

  She told him of her interview that morning and her conversation with the vicar’s wife. “Mr. Flanagan says Major Weston rescued it from some anonymous arson attempt,” she said, her gaze on the rusty hook sunk deep into the underside of the tar-blackened arm. “I wonder why.”