“Tommy,” they said as one, as Grey and Neville exchanged a glance of their own, then flew in the direction of the noise.
By the time they all got there, the howling and barking had subsided, and Tommy was in the custody of the Master of the Hounds, for it appeared that Highleigh Court was home to a foxhound pack, and Tommy had decided the half-grown pups were irresistible. Unable to get into the locked kennel, he had climbed the fence around the pens, fallen off, and landed among the hounds, who reacted with confusion and startlement. Once he had fished Tommy out of the pen and ascertained he was not seriously hurt, the Master of the Hounds was pink with anger.
By this time, most of the children from the school had arrived, and so had most of the servants who could spare a moment. The Master had Tommy by one ear and looked as if he was going to haul the boy up in front of some authority but hadn’t yet figured out who that was.
As Nan and Sarah hid, Mem’sab appeared, and the stormy expression she wore did not bode well for Tommy. The Master of the Hounds misinterpreted it, however.
“Now see here, Missus!” he began to bluster. “This boy of yours—”
“Has been getting into where he had no business being,” Mem’sab said, interrupting, her voice stern. “I know this because your master told me that the kennels are kept locked. Tommy knows this because he was told not to attempt any place that was locked up. So what do you suggest his punishment should be? On the whole, I am against whipping or caning, but a good spanking would not go amiss.”
For one long moment the Master of the Hounds stared at her, mouth agape, as Tommy hung limp with resignation in his grasp. “Ah—” the man began. “Don’t much care for beating a boy myself. Beating never helped boy nor dog to my knowledge.”
Mem’sab raised an eyebrow. “Perhaps, then, you could put him to some useful work instead? Since he seems so determined to see the dogs, he could help your underlings clean the kennels?”
Now taken even more aback by the suggestion that Tommy should do manual labor reserved for menials, the Master began to stammer. “Ah—Missus—what would his parents—”
“His parents have left his discipline in my hands,” Mem’sab replied, “And I think he will come to far less harm having a set down to his dignity by learning how much work a servant must do, than he would by a caning. Perhaps afterward he will be more considerate of his servants when he is grown.”
With a silent and astonished audience of manor servants listening raptly, the Master and Mem’sab worked out a compromise that kept Tommy in the kennels, helping to water and feed the dogs and other chores with the hawks and horses until just before suppertime, giving him just enough time for a bath and a change of clothing. Nan couldn’t help but grin; not because Tommy was one of the few who would have been inclined to play Little Sahib over the manor servants, but at the reaction of those servants themselves.
“They’re all on Mem’sab’s side now, aren’t they?” Sarah whispered, as a chastened Tommy was shooed into the precinct which he had but a few moments ago so much desired to get into. Nan nodded, feeling gleeful. She’d known she could count on Tommy to get into something that would put him at odds with the manor staff, but she hadn’t thought he’d do so that quickly.
And Mem’sab cemented that, by turning to her audience—an audience which others in her position might have ignored—and addressing them. “If any of the children get into mischief that discommodes you or violates one of the house rules, I would appreciate it if you would bring your complaint and the child in question directly to me, at once,” she said. “Thank you.”
The servants went back to their work, and the rest of the children went back to their explorations, and Tommy put in a much-scrubbed appearance at dinner in an interesting mood—chastened by the amount of hard work he’d had to put in, but very full of information about foxhounds, rat terriers, and the huge mastiffs that the caretaker and gamekeeper used to help them guard the place.
The next day, and the day after that, passed with only minor incidents—the head cook found three of the boys investigating the cellars looking for a dungeon, and one of the housemaids discovered a toddler who was supposed to be napping running gleefully naked down the portrait gallery.
But the next incident, alas, was all Nan’s doing.
She was passing the kitchen door, when a heady aroma seized her and dragged her inside. It was a scent she had whiffed only once before, and then she’d had no possibility of trying the product, and furthermore, on that occasion she had been literally starving and the aroma had nearly driven her out of her head with longing and despair.
Strawberry tarts. Fresh strawberry tarts. Her mouth watered and the hunger of that long-past day came back quite as strongly as if she had not been eating well and steadily for the past several months.
Perhaps if anyone had been in the kitchen, she would simply have begged a tart from the first servant that looked kind. But the kitchen was momentarily empty, and the tarts were all set out in rows on the big table to cool, and the temptation was too much to resist. She seized as many as she could carry and scurried out with them, to hide (she thought) in a little nook and share them with Neville.
But an alert kitchen maid not only saw that the tarts were missing, but thought to look in the kitchen garden and spotted Neville with half a tart in his beak, and traced his path back to Nan’s hiding place. Found with crumbs on her face and surrounded by empty tins, her guilt had been clear.
Hauled up to Mem’sab with a full belly and just a twinge of regret, she found it hard to look completely repentant.
Mem’sab shook her head and sighed. Without even asking Nan if she was guilty—though of course the sticky fingers were mute evidence of that—she turned to the kitchen maid.
“Who of the kitchen-staff did the preparations for the tarts?” she asked, surprising the maid. “The cleaning and hulling and so forth.”
“Ah, that’d be me, Ma’am,” the maid stammered.
“Then you have charge of her. She’s no stranger to hard work, though you might have to show her what to do. She is yours for the remainder of the day, only see that she gets luncheon and is free in time to clean herself for dinner.” And with that, Mem’sab consigned her to her fate.
So she suffered through the hard work of a day in the kitchen under the direct supervision of the kitchen maid, who took immense and vindictive satisfaction in giving Nan all the most tedious jobs, and Nan discovered at firsthand how much work went into feeding a vast, and now augmented household like the one at Highleigh Park. Worst, probably, had been that she had been denied Neville’s company the entire afternoon of her incarceration, only getting free to scamper outside and try to explain it to him at luncheon. Neville did not entirely understand how doing something so natural as raiding a ready food supply of delicious treats was a bad thing. Nan got the feeling that he comprehended that people thought it was a bad thing, but he still didn’t grasp the reasoning behind that attitude. However, though Nan was incarcerated for the day, there was plenty for him to do, and he simply accepted it phlegmatically.
Two days later, Nan was still debating whether or not the pleasure of stuffing herself with strawberry tarts had been worth the pain of kitchen duty.
By that time the half holiday here was enough to make her giddy with happiness. She could have spent days merely exploring and observing the little lives in the brook that ran through the grounds. The home farm was near enough to run over to, and lambs were just as delicious to pet as she had imagined. There were half a dozen orphaned or rejected little things and extra hands to help bottle nurse them were always welcome.
This was when Tommy, who was now on good enough terms with the Master of Hounds to be allowed inside the kennel to play with puppies, discovered the home farm. Now, he had been utterly forbidden to even consider trying to ride any of the great high-bred horses in the stable, even though the grooms, who were not a great deal older than he, did so regularly to exercise them. There were no ponie
s there, as there were no children in the household, and he was mad to try and ride something.
And there, lord of the flock of sheep in the pasture nearest the manor, was a great big ram, relatively placid in nature and inclined to accept graciously any tidbits and scratches that came his way.
The combination was as irresistible for Tommy as strawberry tarts had been for Nan.
Nan and Sarah had been bottle-feeding lambs when shouts from the pasture made them and the farm manager come running. By that time, so she later learned, Tommy had already climbed the fence, jumped aboard, and had managed to stay on the ram’s back long enough to get halfway across the pasture before the offended animal bucked him off.
They arrived just in time to see Tommy trying to run—then see Tommy flying through the air when the ram administered his own form of punishment.
He picked himself up again, and the ram repeated the procedure. One more time as he tried to scramble over the fence that divided the pasture from the goose pond sent him sailing into the midst of the geese, who had half-grown goslings with them and were not inclined at all to take this interloper lightly.
The geese decided to compound the retribution. Mister Thackers, in charge of the farm, was by this time laughing so hard that tears were running down his face, and waded in to Tommy’s rescue.
“Oh, my lad,” he said, as Tommy tried very hard not to cry, but was clearly in no little pain, “You’re one of those, ain’t you? Come along of you. I think you’ve learned more than enough of a lesson for one day, without me taking you to your mistress.”
At that point, he took Tommy off to the farmhouse. Nan lingered, as she and Sarah soothed the ram’s anger and indignation, and Sarah wordlessly promised him that no one would try that trick on him again. When Tommy came out again, this time alone, he was walking a bit easier and smelled strongly of horse liniment.
Mem’sab found out about it, of course, but other than a single pointed remark at dinner, nothing more ever came of it.
Neville was in heaven, too; here he had an entirely new set of interesting things to get into and investigate than in London. Mem’sab had gotten him to tolerate a set of bright red glove-leather leggings before they left, carefully fitted to and sewn onto his lower legs, and the gamekeepers and farmers were under strict orders not to shoot the raven with the red legs, so even an incident of egg eating at the home farm was let off with a scolding. Fortunately, the number of eggs a raven could eat at a sitting was far less than the number of strawberry tarts that could be consumed by an active girl at one go. When it was made clear to him that while pigeon, pheasant, quail and chicken eggs were strictly off-limits, rook, starling, sparrow and crow nests were fair game, he was a much happier raven.
As for Sarah and Grey… there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that both were as happy as they could be outside of being home again. Grey, like Neville, managed to get into a great deal of mischief with her curiosity and her prying beak. Unlike Neville, she was sneaky about it and never got caught.
Like Neville, however, she brought back all manner of curious objects for Sarah, and their little treasure boxes were filling fast. Neville found a great deal of trash and treasure in his raids on the nests of rooks and crows. Some were clearly valuable; a silver locket, for instance, and a broken rosary of delicate gold wire and blackened seed pearls that looked extremely old indeed, and a small hoard of coins. Mem’sab always made sure there were no existing claimants for such finds before allowing the girls to keep them. Some were merely interesting; odd pebbles, pot-metal charms, tiny faded pottery figurines and three small dolls of the sort called “Frozen Charlottes” because they were all one solid piece. Some were just trash: horseshoe nails, bits of ribbon and string, unidentifiable pieces of china and metal. Those, the birds kept, in their own little “treasure boxes,” a couple of old tea chests they could open themselves and poke about in.
Mem’sab’s plan for lessons every day was not as onerous as it had sounded. One morning was completely devoted to splashing about in the pond and learning about aquatic life, and similar mornings were spent exploring other parts of the home farm, gardens, and parkland. On rainy days, the servants would open older parts of the building and they would examine history in context as they looked at antique furnishings, pictures, and the rooms themselves. They spent whole evenings learning about stars and planets, and the myths behind the names of the objects in the night sky. There was a daily lesson in gardening, and when the mood was on her, the cook would even give lessons in plain cookery. There was a trip to the forge to learn about metal working, right down to the chemistry of it, and another to the mill to study the mechanics of turning flowing water into something that could grind grain into flour and run other machinery. The French teacher took them out on walks, taught them the French names of things, and required that they converse in that language the entire time. Mem’sab did the same in Latin.
Another set of lessons was that they were going to perform a play, Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream. They were having to make the costumes and props, learn their speeches by heart, and were also learning what some of the odd things they were saying meant. In Nan’s opinion, none of it was really lessons at all, just a way for Mem’sab to say she was giving lessons without really doing it.
But there were two places where neither Nan nor Sarah felt the least urge to go; two places that made them both feel strange, uneasy and acutely uncomfortable. One was an old dry well that the servants called a “wishing well,” though no one ever made any wishes there, nor in fact, ever seemed to visit. It was in the back of the kitchen garden near the oldest part of the manor. No bird or animal could be persuaded to approach it, and even Tommy, after one curious toss of a pebble into it to see how deep it was, left it alone.
The other was the bridge over the river on the road that led to the next village, a place none of the children had visited yet. Nan and Sarah had followed the road on a long walk one afternoon out of pure curiosity to see where it went.
They came to a signpost, eventually, which at least told them that they had come a half mile from the Highleigh Park gate, and that some place called “Shackleford” was another mile farther on. At this point, the wall of the park ended. The road continued on, as far as they could see, cutting through farm fields. In the far, hazy distance was a church steeple, presumably marking the village.
“Go on, or go back?” Nan asked.
Sarah shrugged. “They didn’t say we couldn’t.” she pointed out. “They just said not to get lost. We can’t get lost if we stick to the road.”
Nan nodded, and they went on.
But they could not have gone more than a quarter mile before they came to a bridge over a substantial river. There was nothing remarkable about the bridge itself; it was built of the same brick and stone as the manor, and was in good repair. Yet the nearer they drew to it, the more uneasy they became—very much like the feeling they had at that dry well, though not quite as strong. As they paused about ten feet from it, Neville circled overhead, croaking that he did not like Nan getting so near to the structure, and Grey fluttered down from where she usually flew beside him, landed on Sarah’s shoulder, and growled.
That settled it. Without a word, they turned, and made their way back to the manor. But both situations had the effect of, not rousing Nan’s curiosity, but cooling it. She did not want to know why the bridge and the well made her feel so uneasy, and even felt a reluctance to discuss it with Sarah, or anyone else.
Finally, she decided that it was a natural reaction, after that encounter with that horrible Thing in Berkeley Square.
“Leave well enough alone,” she told herself, and made an effort to put both of them out of her mind.
For now, at least.
9
DAVID Alderscroft descended from his carriage at the gate of a long-forgotten manor at the edge of some of the least-desirable real estate in London. Though the building itself was substantial, surrounded by an impressive wall an
d seemed to be in reasonable repair, he could not imagine anyone in his set willing to admit they owned it, much less live in it. He hesitated a moment—surely this could not be the correct address!—but the inscribed brass plaque inset into the right-hand gatepost assured him that this was, indeed, the “Harton School for Boys and Girls.”
So this was where Isabelle, his Isabelle, had come!
With a stern mental hand he shook sense into himself. Isabelle Harton, if indeed she was the same person as the girl he had once been acquainted with, was not, and had never been “his” Isabelle. Not that he couldn’t have had her, had he wanted her! Possibly even, in the crudest and most Biblical sense, had he put his mind to it. But of course, such an action, besides leaving him open to all manner of unpleasant repercussions, was unworthy of him and unworthy of the name he wore.
And, he reminded himself yet again, he had not wanted her.
Well, except during the first flush of infatuation. But Cordelia had persuaded him to responsible behavior, and that flush had cooled under the harsh light of reason.
Even assuming she and the headmistress of this school were one and the same. That was by no means certain, despite the name, and the fact that Nigel’s wife had known the woman in school—that was why he was here, after all, to find out the truth of the matter.
He rang the bell, and while he waited, contemplated the gardens just visible inside the walls. Though not showing the hand of a professional gardening staff, they were not as overgrown and neglected as he would have thought. The plants growing here were all hardy things, sturdy specimens that could tolerate a little neglect and a great deal of London’s bad air. Not manicured, but at least, trimmed and contained.
It took a very long time for someone to answer, long enough that he was about to give up and assume that there was no one in residence, when he became aware with a start that he was no longer alone. A tall, swarthy fellow in a coat of faintly military cut and Indian antecedents had come up soundlessly while he stared at the hostas and ivies through the bars of the gate. It startled him, actually; how long had the fellow been there? How had he managed to slip up so quietly?
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