There’d been a time when every window was lit, just as there were horses in the stables, wine in the cellars and a dozen servants scuttling around. Now just William and Anne were there, with only old Baines tottering around still trying to pretend he was running the place. Mrs Crabbe and her daughter who helped out by day would be back in their hovel in the village.
He had spent so many evenings, summer and winter, gazing up at the house and dreaming of the day when it would be his. He had never once considered that anything could change them from the weak, fearful and guiltridden people he knew so well, not before their money ran out and they were forced to sell up.
But he hadn’t known them today. They were proud, confident and determined, and they had an answer for everything. He had no idea what it was that had given them this sudden strength, but he did know they meant what they said.
‘I’d sooner burn the place down than let you two beat me,’ he muttered, taking another swig from his bottle.
The cloud obscuring the moon swept away, and all at once Briargate was illuminated. He could even see the ghostly white of the marble statues in his rosebeds, and that taunted him still further. Even though his mind was befuddled with drink, the thought of a fire stayed with him.
The estate would have little value to anyone without the house. Master bloody Rufus was too busy lording it up with his flashy friends in Oxford to want to rebuild it. But it would have value to him, and he’d get it even cheaper then. No one would suspect him; they’d think it was just a burning coal that fell out of a fire. And he’d make sure he was up at the house doing his best to put the fire out when people on the neighbouring farms sawthe flames and came running to help.
The study! A few books and newspapers left on the hearthrug would soon catch everything else alight. Leave the study door open and the flames would be across the hall and up the stairs in no time and they’d be trapped.
Of course old Baines was up there too, but he was so frail now that he was no more use to anyone.
Just a few minutes later, Albert was making his way through the field outside the railings of the drive as he didn’t want William or Anne to be woken by a scrunching noise on the gravel. He had it all planned now. There was a spare key to the kitchen door kept under a box in the yard. In the past, Baines or one of the other servants had always locked and bolted the door from the inside at night, but for a year now Albert had seen Mrs Crabbe fishing a key out in the morning to unlock it. He’d go in that way, set the fire, and then relock the back door and go back to the gatehouse. He could watch the fire from there, and only run to attempt putting it out once it had really got going.
‘A stiff wind tonight too,’ he said aloud gleefully, turning his coat collar up. ‘That will help spread it.’
Chapter Eighteen
Matt Renton hesitated by the gatehouse of Briargate. He had spent the evening with a farmer friend at Chelwood, and as it was now well after midnight, and very cold and windy, he was anxious to get home quickly. Going up Briargate drive and skirting around the back of the big house was a shortcut, while the other way through Lord’s Wood was much longer and treacherous in the dark; he’d come that way earlier and got plastered in mud.
His indecision was because of Albert. If he spotted Matt, he was likely to take a pot shot at him, using the excuse that he thought he was an intruder. But as the gatehouse was in darkness he surmised Albert was fast asleep and therefore he’d be safe enough.
Matt was thirty-seven now. His hair was growing thin and grey, his face very weatherbeaten, but he was still as strong and lithe as he had been fourteen years ago when he married Amy. Life had treated him pretty well. He’d managed to hold his head above water through several bad harvests, and over the last three years he’d done well enough to put a bit of money away. He counted himself blessed that he had four healthy children and the best wife a man could wish for.
His younger brothers, Joe and Henry, had slunk back to the farm three years ago with their tails between their legs. London had not been good to them. They were thin, hungry and filthy, without a penny to their name. Matt acted cool with them, reading them the riot act before agreeing to let them stay, but in his heart he was overjoyed to have them home. And the boys had kept their promise to him, working hard and keeping out of mischief, and they both had sweethearts now, steady girls who would make good wives.
But Joe and Henry always reminded Matt of Hope for they’d been inseparable when they were all small. It seemed incredible to him that she’d kept her silence about where she was for six whole years. Sometimes he thought Albert must have killed her after all, or that she’d been carrying a child when she ran away and perhaps even died having it. But mostly he was concerned she’d got herself into such bad trouble she was afraid to come back.
Nell still believed Albert had killed her, but that didn’t stop her hoping for a miracle. Each time she came back to the farm the first thing she asked was if there was any news. Rufus was the same. Going off to that school for young gentlemen and then going away to university hadn’t stopped him caring about her. The minute he got back to Briargate he rushed down to the farm. Matt wished more than anything that one day he’d have something good to tell them both.
Matt was about ten feet from the stable yard, just about to go behind the wall to the stile and the footpath to the village, when he heard something.
It wasn’t a loud noise, just a clicking sound which might have been the wind moving something, but it could have been a key turning in a lock, so he dived out of sight behind the stable wall.
Straining his ears, he waited. The wind had become quite fierce and he could hear nothing above it, but a sixth sense told him someone was there. He was right; he heard a muffled cough, and then suddenly there was Albert.
Matt knew little about the routine at Briargate, but he couldn’t imagine any reason why a gardener would be in the house this late at night, unless of course he was bedding Lady Harvey.
That was improbable. Rufus claimed his mother hated the man, and in any case Sir William was always there these days – rumour had it he only rarely went out. But even stranger was how Albert was behaving. Instead of just walking down the drive he was climbing over the railings.
Matt pressed himself further against the wall and watched, wondering where on earth the man was going. But stranger still, Albert remained close to the railings, going back in the direction of the gatehouse. What’s more, he kept turning to look back over his shoulder at the big house.
‘He’s creeping on the grass so he won’t be heard!’ Matt muttered to himself. ‘I bet he’s been up to no good.’
Aware that if he was seen lurking around the house, he might be blamed for whatever Albert had done, Matt slunk away himself, over the stile and down the paddock that flanked the hedged garden of the house, towards the footpath that led across fields to Woolard.
As he got right to the bottom of the paddock and went to climb the stile, he turned slightly. To his surprise there was a faint orange glow in one of the ground-floor windows at Briargate.
His first thought was that someone might have heard something and lit a lamp to go down and investigate. But lamplight was yellow, and surely one lamp wouldn’t be that bright.
All at once he realized what it was. ‘Fire!’ he gasped. ‘So that’s what he was doing there!’
For a second he was undecided what to do. The first rule in the case of a fire was to raise the alarm, but Lady Harvey, Sir William and Mr Baines were in there, and by the time he raised men in Woolard, then got back to the house, all three of them could be burned to death.
Throwing off his heavy coat, Matt raced back up the paddock. He could smell the fire now, so he didn’t bother with the stile by the stables, but forced his way through the hedge into the garden.
He had only been inside Briargate once, the day he came to see Sir William after Nell left, but he remembered the drawing room he’d been shown into ran from the front to the back of the house, with gl
ass doors at the back opening on to the garden.
A piercing scream from upstairs made him run faster. Once at the glass doors he could see inside the room plain as day for it was lit up by the glow of flames at the front of the house. Picking up some kind of heavy flowerpot on the terrace, he smashed the glass doors in, ran across the room and cautiously opened the door into the hall.
It was like opening an oven door. He was blasted by heat and the smoke made his eyes sting. The fire had clearly started in the room next to the front door, and that was an inferno; flames were already licking across the rug on the hall floor towards the stairs.
Cracking, popping and hissing sounds accompanied the roaring of the fire as it devoured everything in its path. Shutting the drawing-room door behind him, Matt took a deep breath and dodging the flames on the floor, ran for the stairs.
Lady Harvey was still screaming as he turned on to the landing. She was wearing a long white nightgown and wringing her hands, clearly too terrified by the flames below to attempt going down.
‘It’s me, Matt Renton, m’lady,’ he said firmly, aware that she was so deeply shocked she wouldn’t know him. ‘I’ll get you out. But first showme where Sir William and Mr Baines are.’
‘I can’t wake William,’ she sobbed. ‘I tried just now. He takes drops at night to sleep and he’s too heavy to move.’
‘Is there any water up here?’ Matt asked, wishing he knew his way around.
‘Only jugs on the washstands,’ she cried. ‘We’re all going to die, aren’t we?’
‘Not if I can help it. Now, calm down and show me where Sir William is.’
The room she led him to was right above the seat of the fire below, and full of smoke. Coughing and spluttering, Matt groped his way to the bed, grabbed Sir William like a sack of potatoes, threwthe cold water from the jug over his face and then hauled him out on to the landing floor.
‘Wake up, sir!’ he yelled, slapping at his face. ‘There’s a fire, you must wake up and get out!’
There was no immediate response, but the roaring sound of the fire below was growing louder by the second. ‘Wake him up,’ he ordered Lady Harvey, who was bent over her husband, coughing hard. ‘I’ll get Baines. Where is he?’
‘Upstairs,’ she said.
Matt ran back to the staircase, only to find it didn’t go up a further floor. The flames were at the bottom of it now; they couldn’t get down that way.
By the time he’d got back to Lady Harvey and learned from her that there was another staircase and where it was, she was so distraught at not being able to wake her husband that Matt had to lift her bodily out through the door to the back staircase, and leave her there while he ran up to find Baines.
The old man was already trying to put his breeches on, coughing and spluttering in the smoke. Matt heaved him over his shoulder and staggered down the stairs to where he’d left Lady Harvey. But she had disappeared, and assuming she’d gone down the stairs he continued too. He found himself beyond the kitchen in what looked like the servants’ hall Nell used to speak of, but there was no sign of Lady Harvey. He kicked open the door on to the stable yard and dumped Baines outside, telling him to get right away from the house.
As he came back through the backstairs door to the bedrooms, the other end of the landing was ablaze, and Lady Harvey was there, collapsed on top of her husband’s prone body. Matt didn’t know if she’d been overcome by the smoke, or was so frightened that she had fainted.
Matt scooped her up in his arms and carried her down to safety, depositing her on the far side of the stable yard where Baines was slumped, coughing his lungs up.
Smoke was billowing out all over the house now, even under the door Matt had just come through. He could hear crashing sounds inside and the roaring of the flames. Taking the kerchief from his neck, he dipped it in a butt of water by the stables, and tying it over his nose and mouth, went back in to get Sir William.
He could feel the heat from the flames even through the door to the landing, and he opened it carefully just an inch or two to look. He only kept it open for a second, but it was long enough to see he was too late to save Sir William. He was already engulfed by the flames.
The smell of burning flesh and hair made Matt retch. He knew Sir William must be dead already and he’d be killed too if he didn’t get out right now. So he shut the door and fled back downstairs.
‘Joe, ride into Keynsham and get the constable!’ Matt yelled as he came staggering into his farmhouse, supporting Lady Harvey with one arm and Baines with the other. ‘Henry, you ride for the doctor!’
The two brothers came tumbling out of the room beside the kitchen bleary-eyed, pulling on their clothes. ‘What’s happened?’ Henry asked, looking at Lady Harvey in her mud-splattered nightgown as if she were a ghost.
‘Albert set fire to Briargate,’ Matt said tersely. ‘Sir William is dead and these two are lucky to be alive. I must go and round up some men to try to save the house.’
Amy appeared on the stairs in her nightgown. ‘Be careful, Matt,’ she said, and then coming on down the stairs she went straight into the boys’ room, returning with two blankets.
‘You are safe now,’ she said, wrapping the blankets around Baines and Lady Harvey and nudging them on to chairs. They were silent and motionless as statues and looked too deeply shocked even to know where they were. ‘Just give me a minute to stir up the stove and I’ll see to you.’
Anne lay in the hard, narrowbed staring at the low, stained ceiling, thinking that this was like one of the terrible nightmares she used to have as a child. She remembered how she used to force herself to wake up, sometimes even to walk around the bedroom, but the moment she got back into bed and closed her eyes again, it would come back.
This nightmare didn’t relent for even a moment though. She could still hear the crackling of the flames, feel the heat, smell the burning, and picture William lying there on the landing in his night shirt.
It was her fault he had died. If only she’d got a grip on herself when Matt arrived to save them! She could have shown him where the backstairs were straight away, and the pair of them could easily have dragged William to safety.
But then, if she hadn’t goaded William into getting tough, Albert would have had no need to resort to burning Briargate down. What kind of fool was she that it never occurred to her he would take some form of revenge?
She had been here three days now, lying in this hard little bed with its scratchy sheets, so full of remorse and sorrow that she was barely aware whether it was night or day. Just the other side of the door Amy and her four children were carrying on with their normal life. From time to time she heard ordinary family sounds, laughter, chatter and arguing. She could smell food being cooked, heard dishes being washed, the stove being raked, chairs scraping on the stone floor. They were familiar enough sounds and smells, yet they seemed alien, as though she’d been transported to a foreign land where everything, language, customs and behaviour, was strange and frightening.
She had never met Amy, Matt’s wife, before the night Matt had brought her here, and she couldn’t fault the kindness the woman had shown her. She’d washed her as though she was one of her own children, bandaged up her feet because they’d been torn to ribbons walking through the woods to get here, even lent her one of her own night dresses, yet Anne hadn’t even been able to thank her, much less explain how she felt, or even ask why she could still smell smoke.
It was so strange. The soap Amy had used on her was strong enough to banish any lingering smells on her skin and her nightgown was clean. If she felt no pain from her cut feet, why should she still smell smoke?
Yet even in her almost trancelike state she was very aware of how remarkable Matt had been. He’d rescued her and Baines from Briargate, and got them both back here to safety, no mean feat when they were hardly able to walk. He’d then summoned men from the village and gone back to Briargate to try to save it.
Sadly, that was a lost cause. Amy had explain
ed that with only buckets of water and the strong wind whipping the flames, their efforts were wasted. She said the house was razed to the ground, that by morning even the walls had caved in.
Constables were out searching for Albert. It was thought he might have seen Matt coming out of the burning house with Baines and Lady Harvey and run off in a panic. Matt said that the whole county had been alerted now and he didn’t think it would be long before he was caught.
Anne wasn’t sure she even wanted him caught. It wouldn’t bring back William or rebuild Briargate, but it would give Albert an opportunity to expose both her and William at his trial. It was bad enough to deal with widowhood, the loss of her home and all her worldly goods – she didn’t need scandal too.
She smarted with shame as she remembered how she’d often wished for William’s death in the past, just so she could be with Angus! How could she have been so wicked?
But she’d got her punishment now. In truth, she would rather have died in the fire with William than have to face Rufus. Amy and Matt might believe there was nothing more to this than Albert taking revenge because he’d been dismissed. But Rufus was sharp-witted and perceptive, he’d know something else lay behind it, and he’d probe, poke and ask questions until he got the right answers.
A tap on the door made Anne look round. ‘Come in,’ she said wearily, expecting that it was Amy again with yet more food she couldn’t eat.
The door opened, and out of politeness Anne tried to force a grateful smile. But it wasn’t Amy in the doorway, it was Nell.
Anne gasped involuntarily, not only because she hadn’t expected Nell to call, not after six years of estrangement, but because she looked like a well-to-do housewife, not a servant. She was thinner than Anne remembered and far more attractive; her midnight-blue dress and matching bonnet gave her somewhat sallow face a real glow, and the hair visible beneath her bonnet was still raven-black.
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