Lowenna stared past her. All those months ago, but she could still feel it. The fire raging through the building, driven by the wind, roaring like something alive with a malignant will of its own.
She climbed down from the landau and looked along the rutted lane. The wall where she had found Adam lying in his blood after being thrown from his horse, when his wound had burst open. And she had been the only one there to help him.
She walked slowly toward the house. She could smell the charred timbers, wet and shining from the brief, heavy rain. Fallen bricks and masonry, broken glass glinting now in the returning sunlight. Exactly as she had last seen it. Avoided by people from the village; haunted, some said. A place used by smugglers, others claimed.
They had thought Montagu mad when he had bought it and converted it into a studio, several studios eventually, where he had worked and had trained others to follow his profession, spurred on by his fame and his genius. And now he was dead. Had begun to die that very day when the fire had broken out.
The doors were open or hanging charred from their hinges. Sunlight played through a great hole in the roof, so that the old stairway seemed to come alive again as her shoes crackled on fragments and scattered ash.
She knew Lady Roxby was following her. Wanting to help. And caring, as she had that time when they had first met, here in this house, when she had come to see Adam’s portrait.
She heard a bird fluttering through the main studio, nesting perhaps. The same studio where Adam had stood looking at her. Andromeda .. . she felt it like pain. He was gone. The rest was like a dream .. . something she was terrified of losing.
Why I came back here,
She quickened her pace and came into the old garden. Overgrown, a wasteland, but the roses were still here, clustered by the wall, holding the sunshine, as fresh and yellow as they had been that day. Like the rose on his coat in the finished portrait.
She stooped to pick one, twisting the stem, and saw blood on her finger. She could almost hear his voice.
Nancy watched her, without speech or movement: the figure in the flowing blue grey gown, a wide-brimmed straw hat hanging from her shoulders. Lowenna ... ‘joy’ in the old Cornish tongue. After what she had suffered, perhaps the fates were repaying what they owed this dark-eyed girl.
She crossed the moss-covered cobbles. ”Here, let me. I’m more used to it than you are.” She felt the girl stiffen, the old barrier rising between them, like those first meetings; it was her only defense. She added simply, ”I’ve not much else to do these days, y’ see!”
She felt the girl’s arms around her, the dark hair against her face.
”Don’t ever say that, dear Nancy. You are always busy, always helping others. It’s why I love you so much.”
They gathered roses in silence. Then Lowenna said, ”We shall leave the rest. It is our place.”
They walked slowly back to the lane, where Francis was fastening the two hoods, which he had lowered in their absence. The landau’s hoods were made of greased leather, which had to be constantly rubbed with oil and blacking to keep them pliable and waterproof. Lowenna noticed that the coachman, ex-cavalryman that he was, was wearing white gloves, without a single mark or smear.
”Thought it would be nice an’ easy for the ride back, m’ lady.”
Nancy smiled and touched his arm. ”Where would I be without you?”
Lowenna climbed up into the landau and tightened the ribbons of the hat beneath her chin. Nancy must have been lovely as a young girl. Now Roxby, her husband, ”The King of Cornwall’, was dead. Lowenna recalled their first meeting, when Nancy had said openly that she had had two lovers in her life. Now she was nearly sixty, but the light was still there, in her eyes and in her manner.
And she had not questioned her. Why had she come? How long might she stay? But this was the West Country and news rode a fast horse. Nancy knew all about her brief stay at the Plymouth boat builder house. She had asked once about the painting, and how it had survived the fire.
Lowenna had told her that she had sent it out to Adam’s ship before he had sailed.
Nancy had gripped both her hands and had looked straight into her eyes.
”I will not ask if that was all you gave him, dear Lowenna. I can see it in your face.”
No rebuke or warning. That was Nancy.
The carriage clattered on to the main road, the horses glad to be on the move again, away from the lingering smell of fire. Past wild countryside made beautiful by great patterns of purple foxglove, and wild roses amid the hedgerows and slate walls.
At one point they passed parties of labourers clearing the way for a new road. Mostly young men, stripped to the waist, looking up as the carriage moved by. A sign of the times: men who such a short time ago had been in the uniforms of troopers or seamen. A new and unfamiliar life, but at least they had work to pay and feed them. Lowenna had seen too many of the other kind. Men along the pier or dock wall, watching the ships, even the lifeless ones. Like Adam’s Unrivalled. Staring and remembering.
But never the bad times, the harsh discipline and the ever-present nearness of danger and death. Only the comradeship, something she had felt and understood, like love.
”I have to go to Bodmin shortly.” Nancy reached out and folded the girl’s hand in her own. ”The lawyers have arranged a meeting. Will you stay at the house until I come back? Longer, if you can.” She patted the hand as if to soothe it, like a startled creature. ”I would not ask you to accompany me, my dear.”
There would be too many bitter memories in Bodmin. Not least, members of her family who had turned their backs when she most needed their help and support. No smoke without fire. How could they even think it?
”Lawyers? Is it trouble, Nancy?”
”Always that, my dear.” She shrugged, glad that the hurdle was past. ”But we do need them. Tenant farmers, repairs to cottages and barns ... it never stops. I had hoped .. .”
She did not continue.
Lowenna remembered that she had two grown children, both of whom preferred London to Cornwall.
Nancy shaded her eyes as the roof of her own house showed above the familiar bank of trees.
”It’s Elizabeth, you see. She has her own governess, of course, but she’s growing up. Fast. Too fast, I think sometimes. She likes you. Admires you. I would feel less troubled if you were with her.”
”I’ve little experience, but I shall do my best.”
The grip tightened over her hand. ”Just be yourself. It will be good for her.”
Francis wheeled the horses through the gates, but heard them both laugh as Lowenna retorted, ”For both of us!”
A stable boy was already running to greet them, and Francis knew the exact moment when to apply the brake.
But his mind was still back on the new road, and the men who had paused in their work to watch this fine carriage sweep past. Glad to have employment when so many had come back from the war to find nothing; envious, too, maybe, at the sight of the lovely girl in the straw hat.
His boots hit the ground and he had the door open, and the step lowered without even noticing what he was doing.
But of course you never forgot. On the right of the line, the spurs digging in, the sabres all coming down in one shimmering rank, then the piercing blare of the cornet. Charge! Of course you never forgot.
”I shall be ready if you need me, m’ lady.”
But Nancy was staring past him, as if she had heard something.
”Take the roses, Lowenna.”
”What is it, Nancy?”
She shook her head. ”I’m not sure.” She climbed down carefully, one hand on her coachman’s arm. ”Something has happened. If only Lewis were here .. .”
It was the first time she had spoken her husband’s name.
John Allday walked carefully across the parlour floor, avoiding the parts recently waxed and polished. A plank creaked under his heavy tread and he glanced down at it. Something he could fix himself, play his p
art in running the inn. Belonging, being useful. Like the handsome inn sign, The Old Hyperion; it had been swinging in the fresh breeze from the Helford River, and it had squeaked with each move. A touch of grease would fix it. He had been in the yard, watching his friend Bryan Ferguson moor his plump little pony Poppy where she would be comfortable during his visit. Allday frowned. The visits had been getting fewer over the months; this was his first since young Captain Adam had set sail yet again, in a different ship, a third-rate no less, with a vice admiral flag above his head. As if he didn’t have enough troubles .. .
He looked at his friend now, seated at one of the parlour tables, his head resting in his hand. Older, strained; it seemed to have happened so suddenly. Allday tried not to think of it too often. They were older. Thirty-five years ago they had been pressed together and put aboard the frigate Phalarope and taken off to war. Their captain had been Richard Bolitho. In Cornwall it was almost a legend. Ferguson had lost an arm at the Saintes, and had returned to Falmouth a sick man. His wife Grace had done everything to restore him, to give him back his confidence and his health, and he had become steward of the Bolitho estate, with the same Richard Bolitho who was to become a Knight of the Bath, and an admiral of England. And I was his coxswain. And his friend. He had called them and a few others ‘my little crew’. And now he was gone, with all those other misty faces.
He put down two glasses and said, ”Have your wet, Bryan, an’ tell me all the news. You’re becoming a stranger here.”
Bryan looked up at him.
”Sorry, old friend. I’m getting past it. Time moves at a faster pace these days.”
Allday grinned, and said, ”Bilge! The whole estate would fall apart without you.” He winked. ”An’ your Grace, o’ course! All them good meals, a soft bed an’ servants to wait on you hand an’ foot you should be on top o’ the world.”
He sat down and looked around the parlour, the home Unis had made for them and their daughter Katie. The old life would never leave him, nor his desire for it, but he was grateful, and it troubled him to see his friend so dispirited.
Ferguson said, ”It used to be simpler .. . when he was alive. Now there are so many things .. . Grace does more than enough, and always has, as you well know, but there’s no hand on the helm, too many outsiders to deal with .. .” He listed them on his fingertips. ”The tenants always need something, and the land does not bring in the returns it should. The new road won’t help, not us anyway. Sheep to be moved, new walls to be built when the slate can be quarried. It takes me ten times as long to get around the estate and see every one.” He seemed to hesitate. ”I’m too old for it, and that’s all there is to it.”
Allday took a swallow of rum to give himself time. The estate, but more importantly the Bolitho house, had always been there. One Bolitho after another, every kind of ship and campaign you could think of. You didn’t question it; it was a part of their lives. Allday considered it. He lived with Unis here, in the little village of Fallowfield on the Helford River, not in Falmouth at all. But his heart was still there. The Admiral’s coxswain.
He tried again. ”What about Dan Yovell? He was helping with the books, an’ that. When he came ashore he said it was for the last time.”
Ferguson smiled sadly.
”What you once said, old friend, remember?”
Allday slammed down the glass. ”That was different. I was somebody in them days, an’ that’s no error!”
Ferguson reached for his own glass, as if he had only just seen it.
The times we’ve had together, old friend.” He drank slowly.
There were voices in the adjoining Long Room, as it was known. Two salesmen had spent most of the morning in there. Ale, cognac, and some of Unis’s beef. Money to burn. He did not need to look at the clock. Some of the workers from the road would be arriving soon. They could eat like horses, but their money was good, as Unis had often reminded him.
Dear Unis, so small and pretty; some of the customers got too stroppy when they had a few tankards of ale under their belts, and they thought it entitled them to take liberties with her.
He sighed. They only tried it once with Unis.
He said, ”Young Cap’n Adam will be well on his way to the Indies by this time, eh, Bryan? Brings it back when I think on it. Not the same for him, with a vice admiral breathing down his neck, I’ll wager!” He heard Unis’s voice outside. He had not even noticed the sound of the carrier’s cart coming into the yard. Unis had been into the market; he frowned; he could not recall what for. Then he swung round and exclaimed, ”You’re not leaving, man? You only just came alongside!”
Ferguson drained the last of his rum.
”I have some things to do. They won’t wait. Give my warmest regards to your dear Unis. She will understand. It’s just that they won’t wait.”
He hurried to the door and dragged it open as Allday had seen him do so many times, swinging it to avoid catching his empty sleeve.
Unis came into the parlour, the child Katie pulling behind her with a huge basket she could barely carry. She liked to be a part of everything.
Unis put a parcel down on the table and said, ”That was Bryan, was it? Did he leave because of me?”
The child called, ”Uncle Bryan where is he?” She always called him that.
Allday held Unis with one hand on either shoulder. As if he was afraid of breaking her, as she had sometimes told him.
”He had to get back. I think he’s doing too much.”
She brushed some hair from her forehead and walked to the other door.
”The road workers will be here any minute.” She was dragging on her apron. ”Is the food ready? I asked if Nessa would see to that bread. And another thing .. .” She turned. ”What is it, John? I wasn’t thinking .. .”
Dick, the local carter, came into the parlour, his arms full of parcels and a sack of turnips.
He grinned. ”You good folk talking about Mr. Ferguson? He’s not gone far I think his pony has stopped for a quick nibble!”
Little Katie shouted, ”Uncle Bryan! I’m going to see him!”
Unis smiled. ”Forgotten something, I expect.”
Allday barely heard her. Poppy the little pony was always greedy, and Bryan often remarked on it.
He said, ”Stay here,” and it was as if he had uttered some terrible oath. The carter had dropped one of the parcels on the floor, and the child was staring at him with disbelief, as if she was about to burst into tears.
Only Unis was calm, too calm.
”What is it, John? Tell me.”
Allday looked at her and repeated, ”Stay here,” then, ”Please.”
She nodded, all else unimportant. She had seen his face, his hand as it moved to his chest and the terrible wound from the Spanish blade.
The door closed and she walked numbly to the window. All as normal.
The two salesmen were about to leave, a group of road workers by the pump, one dousing his bare arms in water.
Ferguson’s little trap was standing out on the road, the pony munching long grass by the stile. All as normal.
She saw Allday, her John, her man, walk slowly up to the little trap and stare into it. She did not hear him call out, but two of the road workers had run to his side, looking around as if uncertain what to do. Allday was not supposed to lift anything heavy because of the wound, although it was often pointless to try and prevent him.
She wanted to cry out, to run to him, but could not move.
The big, shambling figure, whose scarred hands could create delicate and finely detailed ship models, like the one of Hyperion here in the parlour. The ship which had taken one husband from her, and given her another. The man she loved beyond anything had stooped over the little trap, and was lifting Bryan Ferguson with such care that he could have been quite alone.
She heard herself say quietly, ”Fetch my brother. Bryan
Ferguson is dead.” She looked at the two empty glasses. ”We must send word to the house at onc
e.” She thought of Grace Ferguson, but then she touched one of the glasses and murmured only, ”Poor John.”
Lowenna paused on the staircase where it turned to the right, and led to the landing and the main bedrooms which she knew instinctively faced the sea. She wondered what had made her hesitate, when Nancy had insisted that she should feel welcome here.
She rested her spine against the rail and looked at the portrait opposite her. A dark painting, partly because it hung in shadow, but also because of its age. Sir Gregory Montagu had taught her much in his almost off-hand fashion. Only the main subject stood out, a telescope cradled in one arm, a ship or ships burning in the background. Nancy had told her that it was Rear-Admiral Denziel Bolitho, the only one of the family to have reached flag rank until Sir Richard, with Wolfe at Quebec. She almost touched it: the sword he was wearing was the same one she had seen in other portraits in the stairwell, the same sword she had helped fasten to Adam’s belt before he had left her. On that day .
She had been in other houses, larger and grander than this. Montagu’s residence in London, sealed by his lawyers after his death, was one of them.
She turned and looked down at the entrance hall, the cut flowers, and the most recent portrait by the tall window: Adam with his yellow rose. But none with such a sense of belonging, and the weight of history. Now the house was completely still, listening, holding its breath.
She had walked through the stable yard, the horses tossing their heads as she passed.
Nancy had said, ”If you need anything, the cook can help you.”
She had only met Bryan Ferguson twice, perhaps three times. A quiet, serious face. He had made her feel welcome, not a stranger.
She had seen his wife Grace before she had left here for the funeral. It would be over by now, or very soon, and life would return to this old house and the surrounding countryside.
She stroked the banister with her palm. What made this house so different from all those she had known or visited.
She had heard that Bryan Ferguson had no children; he and
Alexander Kent - Bolitho 26 Page 16
