‘It is Jennet and I, sir. We are uninjured, but the doorway has fallen in and the floor is not safe.’
‘We’ll have you out through the window when the ladders are brought. Stay calm, Mary, and move as little as possible.’
‘Aye, sir, we’ll have no problem with that.’
The boys came running with two long ladders and had them propped against the wall on either side of the broken window. A bright young apprentice from the estate carpenter’s shop brought a hammer and a crowbar, and was up the ladder in an instant like a sailor up the rigging, knocking and pulling clear the broken frame and glass. In a moment Jennet, stiff with fright and with her grey dress undone down her back, put her first foot out of the window and, supported by the apprentice carpenter, started down the other ladder. Once on the ground, she collapsed and started sobbing, but Mary, taller and harder to fit through the window, swung herself out and down quickly and gave her a quick hug. She began to button Jennet’s dress in a business-like fashion as Murray ran over. His heart was beginning to hammer, slow but heavy.
‘How many are there in the wing?’
‘There would be six or seven, I’d say, sir. We were –’
‘Murray,’ called Balfour, appearing round the corner, ‘the kitchens look bad.’
‘That would be Mrs. Mutch and the twins – they were putting the supper on,’ said Mary, finishing the buttoning. ‘I shall come and help.’
‘It would be best if you took Jennet and went into the house. Mrs. Freeman will need help arranging bandages and hot water. Do you know where Mrs. Chambers is? Or Robbins?’
‘I thought Mrs. Chambers was heading for her sitting room, sir, so she should be all right. Robbins was helping to bring Smith in.’
‘Smith is back?’
‘Oh, aye, sir, though he’ll not be useful for much. He was well gone when I saw him.’
‘Smith?’ said Blair, appearing suddenly beside them. ‘Drunk, do you mean? It cannot be true.’
‘Drunk or mad, sir, they had to carry him home from the kirkyard.’
‘We shall sort it out later,’ said Murray decisively. ‘Mary, off you go to the house, and see if you can find Mrs. Chambers. Blair, you had better take Dr. Inglis in and find him some brandy, if you please. You boys, and you,’ he pointed to the stablelads and the carpenter, ‘I want you to put ladders up to each window at the top on this side and look inside each room – look, do not go in, yes? – and see if anyone else is in them. Come on, Balfour, we had better see what we can do at the back.’
He led the way at a jogtrot back to the kitchen garden, where a small knot of soaking gardeners was obediently staying well clear of the unstable wing, white silent faces staring at the wreck. To one side, caught like a still life, were three of Mr. Elliot’s workmen, clearly pausing for a break from their labours when the tunnel fell, mercifully not inside it. The kitchen steps were broken, the doorway folded like a card dolls’ house. Dust still settled, frosting the plants, sticking to the wet leaves. Treading as lightly as possible, Murray edged up to a broken window, and peered inside, shielding his eyes.
The flag floor of the kitchen had broken down the middle, and the two ends of the room sloped down to a central trough. The fine rows of gleaming copper pans were now crooked and incomplete, and the dresser, nailed firmly to the wall, held only one plate and lower down the sugar pliers, clamped in place. The heavy firwood table had slid and was bare. At the other end of the room the Carron grate looked somehow lower than usual, until Murray realised that the black streaks down the floor had been made by live coals tumbling out of it. The trough in the middle of the floor was full of chairs, pans, plates and motionless people.
Shocked at the sudden recognition of them, Murray struggled to identify them. Plump on top of the heap, skirt indecently high over her little legs, was Mrs. Mutch, so the other arm and legs he could see, all thin, must belong to at least one of the Duff girls. Clearly they were all badly injured, but they could not be got out through the outside door as it was, and to widen it might cause the building to give way further. From what he could see, the internal door to the kitchen was less damaged: it was possible that they could be brought out that way, and straight into the house along the servants’ passage. But the dust and the broken windows, as the evening light dimmed in the rain, left them little to see by.
‘The doctor has arrived,’ called Balfour quietly, from a safe distance.
‘Good,’ said Murray, stepping back carefully. ‘We have great need of him. Balfour, will you stay here with these gardeners, within hearing distance?’
‘Certainly. But where will you be?’
‘I shall be inside. But I shall have to go in from the house: this doorway is not sound.’
He went to the courtyard door of the main house, and met Jennet, snivelling, on her way to the well for water. Inside, the ladies were in the parlour, straightening sofas and beating cushions into beds. The fire was brisk and bright, and Dr. Feilden was arranging some contents of his medical bag on a side table. They all looked up anxiously when Murray came in.
‘We have, I think, three women in the kitchen all knocked cold. I shall have to bring them out from the house side. Dr. Feilden, if you could be at the ready?’
‘Certainly, Mr. Murray.’ Attended by Mary, they hurried through the whitewashed passages to the inner end of the servants’ wing, where they stopped. The connecting door opened easily. Beyond was silence.
In the shadows, they could see that the trough in the kitchen continued, shallower, into the passage. Whitewash had fallen from parts of the walls, flaking the floor like the first fall of snow. Murray trod delicately towards it, and finding the floor was sound for some distance waved the others to follow him.
‘I shall carry on from this point alone,’ he began, when there came a groan, extremely muffled, from the room next to them on the upper side of the corridor. They held their breath. After a moment, they heard a voice say,
‘Is anyone there? What in damnation is going on?’
The door stood ajar and Murray leaned forward over the trough to look inside. Here, the hole in the floor was full of blankets, and on top of them, looking as though he felt he might be blamed, sat William.
‘Sir? What’s happened, sir?’
‘The wing is collapsed. Step carefully, we’ll get you out. Are you hurt at all?’
‘No, sir, I had a soft landing.’ He disentangled his legs from the blankets and rose, then sat down hard again at the sudden view he had of the destruction in the kitchen.
‘Oh, my,’ he said, shocked. From beneath him came a grunt.
‘Who else is there?’ asked Murray, waving at William to move him out of the way.
‘Me, sir,’ said one voice, and another added, ‘And Robbins, sir.’
William pulled at the ends of the blankets until they finally revealed Daniel and Robbins, red-faced and gasping for air.
‘William, you great lump!’ Daniel said angrily, but Robbins silenced him with a glare. At the very bottom of the heap lay Smith, and he was not moving.
‘Dr. Feilden,’ called Murray, making a long step over the trough to leave the doctor some room, ‘here is your first patient, Blair’s man, Smith.’
Feilden scrambled into the upheaval and found Smith’s wrist.
‘He’s alive,’ he pronounced, ‘but there’s not much breath in him. Can you help me carry him out?’
‘We’ve only just carried him in,’ complained William, but he stepped long-legged out into the corridor and took the weight as Smith was slid out to him, still wrapped in the blanket. Daniel knelt in some vomit and swore, then blushed when he saw Murray. They pulled Smith clear and carried him swiftly towards the main house, bumping through the connecting door and vanishing. Dr. Feilden and Robbins stayed behind.
‘This is not good,’ said Robbins, looking into the kitchen. Mary was peering instead into the deserted bedchamber.
‘There is a broken bed in there,’ she said, ‘but the head of
it is sound. We could use it as a hurdle to bring them out, one by one.’
‘If one of us, sir, each went down a side of the dip,’ said Robbins, ‘with the bed head between us, we could roll them on to it.’
‘True,’ said Murray. In spite of everything, he felt an odd glow inside.
Outside, lights sprang up suddenly. Balfour appeared at a window, silhouetted.
‘The gardeners have brought torches,’ he called in. ‘We thought it would help. Dear Lord,’ he added, seeing the kitchen properly for the first time.
In the dancing golden light their shadows played about the kitchen, as, stepping like beetles on a pond, Robbins and Murray slid one by one through the kitchen door and on to the uneven, uncertain slopes of the broken flag floor. Murray was still in his slippery church shoes, not the toughest of footwear but thin enough to let him feel his way. Robbins, booted, walked at an angle as if his legs were different lengths. They reached the worst of the damage, and the motionless body of Mrs. Mutch.
‘Is she breathing?’ called the doctor from the doorway. Murray looked carefully, but the light was flickering and he could not tell. He laid a respectful hand on her chest, but still felt nothing. Her little eyes were closed tight, her mouth open and sagging. He put an ear to it. Outside the torches hissed and spat in the rain, making precise hearing difficult, too. Finally he sensed something, though whether it was sound or movement it was too slight to tell. Crouching by her, Robbins straightened her legs and skirt and they half-lifted, half-tugged her on to the bed head, and hoisted it awkwardly between them. They made their uncertain way back to the door, the extra weight no help. William and Daniel, returned from the parlour, slid her gently off the bed head and carried her, as they had Smith, back to the main house. Dr. Feilden followed, anxious to assess her condition.
Murray and Robbins wiped sweat from their brows and Murray tugged off his tight Sunday coat and threw it into the corridor. Robbins did not even wince. Even with the fire almost dead, the heat in the kitchen was considerable. Nodding to each other, they picked up the bed head again and edged back to see what was next.
A whimpering noise came from below a heap of pots and broken creamware. Robbins and Murray began to pull the smaller rubbish away, tossing it towards the back door. A foot, sticking backwards out of the rubble, twitched, and Murray seized the ankle.
‘Who’s that?’ he asked.
‘Iffy Duff, sir. It wasna my fault.’
‘No, it was not, Iffy. Are you hurt?’
‘Something hit my back, sir, and I couldna breathe, but I think I’m fine now, only I’m mostly upside down and the blood’s going to my head.’
‘Well, we cannot have that, can we?’ said Murray with a grin. ‘Let’s see if we can find the rest of you.’
A heavy chair, probably the object that had hit her in the back, was also pinning Iffy down. It seemed to be jammed hard, and in the end one of the gardeners passed a small saw through the window and Robbins inexpertly hacked the back from the seat and pulled the chair out in two pieces, while Murray and Mary hauled out Iffy herself. There was a small avalanche of rubble into the gap where she had been, and she sat up rather stiffly and looked about her.
‘Oh, my, the supper!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mrs. Mutch’ll be raging!’
She was able, limping, to walk, and Mary helped her carefully to the door. William and Daniel, waiting for their next task, cheered her on her way to the parlour.
Under the rubble, however, the whimpering continued.
‘Effy, is that you?’ said Robbins. The whimpering went on, then broke off for a little voice to say,
‘It hurts! I want my mammy!’
‘What hurts, Effy?’ asked Murray, trying to keep her talking as his hands worked gently over the rubble, trying to find how she was lying.
‘Arm hurts,’ came the voice. ‘Sore.’ She began to sob.
‘Come on, now, Effy, tell us what happened,’ Murray encouraged her. Robbins had found a shoulder, and was quickly clearing shards of plate from around her face. Murray worked down from the shoulder along her arm, which looked sound. He touched it gently in several places and she did not flinch. Robbins had her face clear now, dusty and tear-stained, sprinkled with blood from tiny cuts, one red eye looking up at them as she lay on her side.
‘The fire all lepped out at me,’ she said indistinctly, ‘and then I fell over and my arm hurts.’
‘You may have it broken,’ Robbins suggested. The men worked quickly clearing pans and dishes from around her legs, and then positioning the bed head so that they could roll her on to it. When they did, she screamed.
In the torchlight, her other arm looked as if it was still burning. The coals falling from the fire must have set light to the sleeve of her dress for it was gone, leaving only blackened edges behind. Beneath, the skin was raw, where it could be seen, and lumpy with dust sticking to burned flesh. Her hand was a blotch of red. Robbins and Murray stared at it, and at the side of her face where the hair was burned away. Effy, seeing the look in their eyes, began to panic.
‘What’s wrong? What’s wrong with me, sir?’
Mary was there in an instant.
‘Come on, now, Effy, you’ve had a scald. Now, we’ll take you through to the parlour with everyone else and clean you up. Iffy’s fine, but Mrs. Mutch’s not looking so good, so everyone will have plenty to do. And it’s not often a kitchenmaid gets carried about by the master, so make the most of it!’
With that, they hauled her up and carried her back to the kitchen door, where they passed the bed head to William and Daniel and watched it safe down the passage before pulling themselves out of the kitchen.
‘Have you seen Mrs. Chambers yet, Mary?’ asked Murray. He wondered what time it could possibly be.
‘I have not,’ said Mary, ‘but Iffy said she had seen her go into the stillroom.’
‘What?’ said Murray. ‘She might still be in here!’
The stillroom door was closed but opened freely. The only light, coming from torches more directed at the kitchen, was sidelong and dim. Inside, all the food for the ball was laid out on the tables, a little dusty but otherwise undamaged. The only difference was that the tables, and the blocks of ice beneath them, were rather further to one side of the room than they had been that morning: they had, in fact, moved as far to one side as they could, given that Mrs. Chambers was between them and the dresser. She looked up as they opened the door and gave Murray a weak smile in the dusk.
‘I am very glad to see you, sir,’ she said. ‘I had not the breath to call out.’
‘If we pull the tables away, will you fall?’ Murray asked.
‘I have no idea,’ Mrs. Chambers replied. ‘I do not know how long I have been here.’ Mary hurried across to stand as close to her as possible, while Murray and Robbins began to pull the tables back up the now sloping floor. It was a struggle. ‘I saw the dishes move, you see, and I thought to save them, but it all happened far too quickly.’
‘Your arm is broken, ma’am,’ Mary observed.
‘I know, but it could be worse,’ said Mrs. Chambers. The men eased the table away carefully, and she gave a little gasp and moved her good arm quickly to support the broken one. ‘Who else is hurt? I heard cries.’
They walked back together to the parlour, a scene of incredible and unaccustomed industry. The three couch or cushion beds were taken up by Smith, Mrs. Mutch and Effy: Smith was still unconscious, but Mrs. Mutch was coming round and making remarks about supper. A fine imprint on the side of her head showed where she had been hit by one of the iron salamanders as she fell. Mrs. Freeman was bathing Effy’s terrible burns but as Isobel, holding the bowl for her but looking away, explained, the burns would have been much worse had she not then been scalded by the soup she had been stirring. Mrs. Balfour was sedately making tea over the fire and serving it in the absolutely best Spode china which was all she had been able to find. Murray restrained an urge to laugh out loud at the sight of the little flowery cup in William
’s solid fist. Blair and Dr. Inglis ministered, each in his own way, to the shocked, and Mr. Balfour at last appeared to say that Thalland had arrived, having been with friends after the preachings, and had taken the outside servants back to a hearty supper at his house. Balfour took a cup of tea from his wife, raising his eyes at the porcelain, and stood close to the fire to dry off.
‘Any dead?’ he asked Murray quietly.
‘No, all accounted for. Three injured badly, and one quite badly, but on the whole we have been lucky.’
‘What will you do?’ his cousin asked.
‘I have not thought,’ said Murray. ‘Seven of them, and Mrs. Balfour’s maid and Mrs. Freeman’s maid who were both in the main house ... the worst injured should not be moved tonight, I think, but the others might go into the empty house across the way.’ He pointed out into the dusk at the house that was the mirror of Thalland’s. ‘I know Thalland has seen to it that it is kept clean. It has not been lived in since Robbins’ predecessor Fenwick with his family. I must ask Thalland, but it may be that they could go there tonight.’ He found that he was beginning to shake slightly, and tried to stop himself. The front door bell ringing provided a distraction and he turned away from his cousin to see who Robbins would admit.
It was Thalland, apologising for using the front door. They met in the hall.
‘I thought you would want to know what was happening, sir. The carpenter and I are arranging for the back of the wing to be shored up tonight. It should not take more than an hour or so if we work quickly: we have those timbers we brought back from Pitmen Wood the other day. When that is done, we may be able to bring out some furnishings and belongings.’
‘With great care, though, Mr. Thalland,’ Murray urged him.
‘Indeed, sir. Well, we have brought some things out just now anyway.’
‘What?’ said Murray. It was enough that his household servants should be hurt, without risking the lives of the outdoor servants, too. The weight of guilt on his head for agreeing to Mr. Elliot’s ambitious scheme was close to unbearable. Thalland frowned apologetically, drawing his already indistinct chin further in.
An Abandoned Woman (Murray of Letho Book 4) Page 27
