“Has he views on manufacturers, do you know, Quillerson?”
“I have not enquired, sir; I do not know. Nothing about him would surprise me, however!”
“Perhaps I should carry my pistols?”
“No, sir, I do not think it will come to that – is that the pair of Mantons, sir? Morton said that you had a cased pair, and Mantons are said to be the best in the world.”
“There will be four fowling pieces delivered in the next little while – a pair of twelve gauge and a sixteen and a twenty, ladies and children’s guns as well. I felt that we should have them to lend to visitors particularly – showing away, you know!”
Quillerson laughed, said that he had never handled anything other than an old military pistol belonging to a local farmer who had been a sailor for a few years. Tom responded with the invitation to join him for a little practise later in the week – they could make a safe place with a few trusses of hay in the barn at the back of the stables.
“Too noisy for the thoroughbreds, sir – better on the Home Farm.”
Another piece of knowledge to squirrel away, one of the thousands of small items that he simply did not know, and needed to.
They collected the dogs and walked the mile down to Hammet’s farmhouse.
It was an old-fashioned place, inevitably, the sheep enclosures dating from the construction of the Hall two centuries before; the farmhouse was a low, single-storied, thatch over timber frame building, the barns much the same, the yard gravelled repeatedly over the years and higher than the floors so that the thresholds had been built up in their turn to keep the mud out, leading to a step down inside every doorway. Hammet was waiting for them, quite correctly.
Tom eyed him with some little interest, wondering if he would show obvious signs of madness, though he was not at all sure what those would be. He was a short, stocky, plain figure, dressed in home-spuns, unevenly dyed a mud-brown, trousers over boots, an open necked, collarless shirt under a woolly jumper, a round jacket over all; he wore a badger-skin hat, shapeless but extending far down his neck, almost certainly water-proof. As was Tom’s habit, they shook hands on their first meeting; he glanced surreptitiously downward as they made contact and he felt a sensation of something alien; six fingers!
That possibly explained some of the man’s peculiarities – incest was always a popular local pastime in the more isolated country areas and his father might well have been his grandfather – the family tree quite often was more of a tangled thicket in the smaller villages.
“I am pleased to meet you, Hammet, I had to go to London or would have seen you sooner than this.”
“All things come in their season, Mr Andrews, and there is a time for everything.”
“My father was used to say that, Hammet – the Bible, I presume?”
“Just so, sir.”
“By the way, and this is not something I have yet mentioned to you, I believe, Quillerson, I am no longer Mr Andrews – I became a baronet while I was in London, so it is ‘Sir Thomas’ now.”
They offered congratulations, without comment.
“I expect the Marquis played a part in it, he might prefer his daughter not to marry a very plain ‘mister’!”
They smiled with relief, both having had the same thought.
“Can we walk your acres, Hammet? The dogs will be safe with the sheep.”
“I have a couple of old rams out, Sir Thomas, either of them capable of teaching a dog his manners, even these bloody girt objects!”
Tom turned to the track leading out of the yard by the banks of the stream.
“Not that way, Sir Thomas – not safe that way, this week – they’re waiting up there. I saw them fly in yesterday, sir.”
The statement was made without emphasis, a perfectly normal comment in a mundane conversation.
“Ah… yes, you had better lead the way, Hammet.”
The farmer walked between house and barn and down a track hidden by willows, a hundred yards east before turning out onto the open meadow.
“The stream is my boundary with old Marchant, Sir Thomas, as far as my house. Floods a bit in winter, not too bad, just here.”
They walked up the shallow slope, open grassland, thinly dotted with sheep, a lark singing invisibly high, the wind surprisingly cold along the valley.
“Folds up on top, Sir Thomas, while the lambs are still small, safer that way. Higby stays with them, of course, keeps an eye out.”
The folds were squares of willow hurdles, about twelve feet on a side and lined with straw to provide a windbreak for the ewes in the first weeks after lambing; the shepherd’s summer shed was next to them, little more than a box large enough to take a pallet. There must have been a thousand sheep and as many lambs milling around them, the ewes cropping the grass and anxiously watching their young, each apparently able to spot her own in the mass of identical seeming blobs of wool.
“Two an acre, sir, is all I run here. I suspect I might be able to reseed the slopes and push towards three, from what I read, but the cost would not be small and the gain might not be great. This is not the best sheep country, Sir Thomas, not like Romney Marsh where they run six to the acre! Mr Quillerson says that you will assist me to run cattle on part of my land and turn more to the plough? I will need to hire a ploughman and a stockman, sir, and a labourer besides, and so would wish to build three cottages and another barn – though where I shall find three sensible men who can be trusted not to let them run wild, I do not know!”
Tom caught Quillerson’s eye, mouthed, ‘who’, silently, received a shrug in reply.
“Beef or dairy, Hammet?”
“Beef, sir – Kettering is too small, I think, to buy milk and butter and cheese in sufficient quantity to pay for a dairy herd, and we have no access to a canal. In any case, sir, milkers would not be profitable – they would strip their udders overnight.”
Fairies! Tom remembered childhood lore – the fairies would steal the cows’ milk, but they generally would perform a service in return, churn the butter, say, or leave a gold piece in a saucer; these sounded to be a more malevolent breed however. Quillerson was pointing, very quietly; he followed his eye.
The mastiffs were sitting idly, watching the lambs gambol, possibly puzzled at such an excess of energy; half a dozen of the older ewes had drifted across, placing themselves between the dogs and their young; behind them, a hundred yards off and trotting directly towards them, was a horned ram who had been grazing in an out of the way corner, his work for the year long done and irritated that he had to make an effort.
Hammet spotted the performance, stepped forward and shouted.
“Marcus!”
The ram stopped and looked up, then decided all was well and turned back to his grazing.
“A very wise beast, Sir Thomas, Marcus Aurelius in a previous existence, or so he informs me; we have discussed philosophy at some length and I have learned much from him.”
“Ah… good. Not a field of study of mine, I fear. Philosophy, you say?”
“Yes, sir – a noble study.”
“Yes. Would you wish the estate to build a new farmhouse, Hammet? Yours seems to me to be old and rather cramped.”
“Not immediately, thank you, Sir Thomas; it has been the labour of many years to purify and make safe every room in the house and I would not wish to perform that work again. I have it in mind to breed cats, if I can but lay my hands on a pair – to keep them out you know, nothing like a good cat, they have none of them in India, I discover, the cats the obvious reason. When I have a dozen or two, why, sir, then yes, a new farmhouse would be very welcome.”
“Cats… India. Do you actually mean tigers, Hammet?”
“Why, yes, Sir Thomas, did I not make myself clear? I am sorry, sir.”
They walked the rest of the farm, avoiding one area marked off with four sticks – it was dangerous, Hammet said – only half an acre, not worth doing anything about it – and reached the stream at the Home Farm boundary.
<
br /> “We intend to dig out a large pond here, Hammet, to control the stream in times of spate, and another down on Briggs acres, where the land is marshy. Then we shall change the route of the watercourse and hopefully bring the flooding to an end.”
“Very wise, sir – they do not like open water, it should lessen their infestations to a considerable degree.”
They made their farewells and walked off to meet Briggs.
“Somewhat irrational, Quillerson? He should be in Bedlam! He is barking mad! A raving loony! A dozen or two of tigers, forsooth!”
“But that was one of his good days, sir – I could understand almost everything he said – on a bad day he will give an hour’s lecture in response to any question, including ‘how d’ye do’.”
“When is his lease due?”
“Michaelmas of the year after next, Sir Thomas.”
“Too long. Can we have him put away?”
“There is a madhouse in Kettering, Sir Thomas, Doctor Porter owns it and runs it on the latest scientific principles; he has been consulted on the King’s illness, I am told. But he would be costly, Sir Thomas. A guinea a week, he charges – Smythe thought it too much. The estate would have to bear the cost, for he has no relatives – the family died out, it seems.”
“That is quite possibly a matter for some relief, Quillerson – I would dread to think what the next generation would have been like. Make arrangements with Doctor Porter, put someone into the farm pro tem, find a tenant. Do we wish to keep the farm as a single block? Might it be wise to split it into a beef and a wheat farm? Give me your thoughts on the matter before I go back to London on Saturday.”
“You do mean to have him locked up, sir? Put away for good?”
“If he cannot be cured, yes. If the doctor can make him sane, then by all means bring him back, though not as a tenant, perhaps.”
“I don’t know that the doctor is in the business of actually curing his loonies, Sir Thomas, I think he is more about studying them and seeing if they may be controlled, made safe, as it were.”
“Ah, well, not to worry – he could not be left free, you know – perhaps you have been too close to him over the years, have become used to his little ways, but to an outsider seeing him for the first time, there can be no doubt that he is dangerous.”
Briggs was waiting and they greeted him kindly, taking his red-faced stutter as a polite reply.
They walked his acres in companionable silence, noting that he had ploughed all he could, that his fields were sown, turnips and beans and peas mostly to clean and fortify the land, but fifty acres down to barley for fodder and one hundred of the best to provide him with an income from wheat. He had worked hard to achieve so much; Tom complimented him, sent his face into the realms of scarlet.
“Four furlongs by two of marsh, roughly, Quillerson?”
“About that, Sir Thomas, a little more I suspect when we allow for the spread in winter and early spring. Fifty acres, say.”
They stared at the expanse of lush, green reeds and mud and the flock of wild geese on the banks and the mallards swimming happily in the middle, a very picturesque waste of good land.
“Make our lake on the western edge, Sir Thomas, say three acres in expanse, a weir on the west, then follow what seems to have been an old watercourse, do you see, sir?”
Quillerson pointed and Briggs peered with him, nodding his satisfaction that he had thought the same.
“How many men?”
“Twenty day-labourers, sir, for a month at two shillings a day and a slab of bread and cheese at noon. Dig out the relief channel first, then turn the stream into it and build up banks round the new lake and dig ditches across to drain it. Three or four years and we can put in land drains, sir, in place of the ditches, and then it will become wheat land. What will you do with it next year, Briggs?”
“Hogs, Mr Quillerson,” was the hoarsely whispered reply, “too wet for horned kine, but a couple of dozen Berkshires ‘ll do very well. Plant spuds and cabbage on the driest and us can feed they over winter, wi’ some of the barley. Supposin’ there be a butcher in Kettering to take they, us can keep ‘em on, cash money, like.”
The first of the visitors from Burton came on Friday, having delayed nearly a month since Tom had first appeared – a time carefully calculated, he suspected, to demonstrate that they were very nearly his equals in status, were actually making this visit to him as a concession rather than a social obligation. It had been a busy three weeks, he reflected, quickly changing from his outdoor, dog-walking informality into the frockcoat Brown demanded.
“Which family are these, Brown?”
“Squire Latimer and hith wife, thir, the richest – two thousand acreth, an income of about three, hith heir is eighteen, not gone up to University and not taking an occupation, thir, learning the family land. Five daughterth, from twelve to twenty-three, two married, one theventeen and accompanying them today – old enough and probably hopeful, thir. Best to tell them the good newth, thir.”
Tom made his entrance to his salon, apologised for his delay, he had been out walking Lady Verity’s dogs.
“Mrs Latimer and Miss Latimer,” the squire announced, identifying the daughter as his oldest unwed girl, she smiling her best as she made her curtsey, showing herself to be a sturdily built brunette, somewhat muddy-skinned but friendly seeming, a happy face. Had he not been promised to Verity he might have looked twice at her, but there really was no comparison; he would be in London tomorrow, would see Verity on Sunday morning, less than forty-eight hours!
He shook hands and smiled and did not notice their valiant attempts not to stare at the scar.
“I should just mention, Mr Latimer, that I have changed my name – I was made baronet this week, am now Sir Thomas.”
They offered all of the correct words, Mr Latimer rather sourly – he had been hinting for five years now to the Lord Lieutenant that he really would enjoy the reward of a knighthood for his many services to the local world.
“It is rather fortunate that you came today, Mr Latimer, for I had hoped to meet you before I went away. I am off to London tomorrow, then back to Lancashire and the Lakes, shall be away a month – a wedding trip, Lady Verity Masters having done me the great honour of accepting my hand. We shall be married on Tuesday.”
Quick work indeed, Latimer thought, she could not have known him a fortnight – but the Grafhams were very poor and the new man was very rich – it made sense – more sense than he had credited her with, in fact. No wonder the man had been walking her dogs.
“I shall pass the word to my cousins, Sir Thomas, that they must delay making your acquaintance till mid-summer. I am sure that they will join me in wishing you very happy, sir.”
“Thank you, Mr Latimer, I am sure I shall be. If I am not it will certainly be my fault, for I will have every opportunity to enjoy a blissful existence!”
Book Two: A Poor Man
at the Gate Series
Chapter 3
Lady Verity had no time to spare for her affianced husband, not just two days before her hurried wedding – there was too much to do, no time for more than a brief embrace.
“Twelve o’clock on Tuesday morning, Thomas, at St George’s, and then to the Clarendon, because there is simply no time to organise a wedding breakfast here, as it should be, and, in any case, good as Mr Masters is, it is not our family home. I have, I think, all the arrangements in hand, have accounted for all that I need do. Is all well with you, sir?” She halted uncertainly, stared into his face. “You look somewhat worried, Thomas. Tell me, truly, are you happy in this marriage? It can still be halted, if you have come to realise that that is what you want.”
She did not allow herself to show her own dismay at the prospect, for she was sure that he had been rushed into this wedding and the only honest course was to release him from his obligations if he wanted; a gentleman could not withdraw from a contract, not and be a gentleman, whilst females were at liberty to change their minds. Sh
e knew now that she would be downcast for the rest of her days if he did cry off – not ‘heart-broken’, a truly commonplace emotion, unworthy of one of her standing – but deeply unhappy, for it seemed that her affections had become engaged, or so she must believe from the sheer joy she had experienced when his name was brought up to her.
“I am worried, my dear, of course – but not about the wisdom of marrying you at the earliest possible moment. A week away from you has driven home to me just how much I want this union – I have been counting the hours till I saw you again! I do have a problem, however – the groomsman – I know of no suitable person within reach. I stood for Joseph Star, ten years and more ago, and he would do the same for me, was he not two hundred miles away! Other than that, I could hardly bring young Quillerson down with me, and I literally know of none other.”
That was a problem, there must be a socially acceptable gentleman to stand with him. She thought of her brother, but could not guarantee that he would be able to stand at all, let alone be willing. It was Sunday, her father at home; she passed the problem to him while she considered exactly what Thomas had said and meant, in increasing delight as she concluded that he very probably had been saying that he loved her. She must not jump to conclusions, however, he was the soul of courtesy, might have been saying only what he felt was polite.
The Marquis listened gravely to Tom’s problem and gave a smile of satisfaction.
“I had wondered about that, Sir Thomas – my secretary, Mr Walker, is holding himself ready to perform the function. He is the son of Lieutenant-General Walker, who was distinguished in the American War for being one of our very few undefeated general officers; that may well have been because he only ever performed garrison duties and never actually came face to face with either French or American troops, but, when it comes to the army, one must make the best of the little one has, after all. Mr George Walker has performed his duties very well and is, in fact, our nominee for your parliamentary seat; he will, I have little doubt, be a member of the government within a very few years. I think you will find him to be a cordial sort and one it will be easy to work with. I will beg him to meet you at the Clarendon at ten o’clock tomorrow morning?”
Nouveau Riche (A Poor Man at the Gate Series, Book 2) Page 7
