Fairfield Hall

by Margaret Dickinson

  Clutching their bowls and spoons the smallest children formed a line in the aisle and followed the doctor out of the church towards the vicarage.

  ‘And the mothers with babes in arms,’ Annabel added. ‘You go too.’ She turned to Richard. ‘I’ll leave you to organize things here and I’ll take some soup to Mrs Brown.’

  ‘I’ll go back home and see what else I can bring,’ Edward said quietly. ‘I left Ma baking more bread and pies. Mebbe there’ll be summat ready to bring back. Tell you what, my lovely,’ he added, as a sudden thought struck him. ‘I’ll get the shops in town stirred up, an’ all, if they’ll answer the door to me on a Sunday evening.’

  ‘They’ll want paying what they’re owed afore they’ll let us have owt,’ Jabez said morosely. ‘They’re owed a lot of money by the big house and by us villagers. They supplied us for a while, but when they could see there was no money forthcoming, they stopped. They won’t even let us have owt if we go in with money. They just take it off the debt.’ He glared at Annabel. ‘We all thought it’d be better when his lordship married this wealthy heiress, see, but, from what I hear, your dowry – my lady – has gone to save the house and the land. There’s not enough left to save us. And soon enough, we reckon, we’ll all be thrown out because we’ve not been able to pay rent for months.’

  Annabel stared at him, her heart thumping. She still didn’t understand everything he was saying, but now she caught the gist of it. Her mouth tightened. ‘You’ll be fed, Mr Fletcher. You and everyone else in the village, and you will not be turned out of your homes. I give you my word.’

  The man’s lip curled. ‘Your word? And what’s your word worth, may I ask, my lady? You’re only a woman.’

  Annabel walked down the one and only street in the village and stopped outside the low cottage standing next to the public house, The Lyndon Arms. There was an air of desolation about what was the largest building on the street, save for the church and perhaps the vicarage. Annabel imagined that once it had been a thriving business, filled each evening with farmers and their labourers slaking their thirst after a long day’s toil in the fields. But now it was deserted. She wondered what had happened to the landlord. Was he still living here in the village or had he gone elsewhere where there was more profit to be made?

  There was so much she had to find out and she vowed she would do so, but, for the moment, the old lady lying in her bed in this cottage needed to be fed. She went round to the back of the dwelling and pushed open the creaking door. ‘Mrs Brown?’ she called tentatively and then louder, ‘Mrs Brown?’

  A frail voice answered. ‘In the front room.’

  The cottage was dark inside and smelled stale. And it was cold, even on this late summer’s day. No place for an elderly, bedridden woman. She pushed open the door into the front room to see the bed set against the far wall of the tiny, cramped room. Accustoming her eyes to the dim light, she could see the woman, dressed in a dirty nightdress and nightcap, sitting in bed resting against two pillows.

  ‘Who are you?’ the querulous voice asked.

  ‘I’m Annabel Lyndon and I’ve brought you some hot soup.’ She was glad she’d had the forethought to bring a bowl and spoon with her. She daren’t think what state the poor woman’s kitchen might be in.

  She set the pot of soup on the table and ladled some out into the bowl and added some pieces of bread into the liquid. Then she sat on the side of the bed and fed the old woman, mouthful by mouthful. When the amount that the doctor had advised she take to Mrs Brown was all gone, the old lady leaned back against her pillows and closed her eyes.

  ‘Ah’ve never tasted owt better than that, m’duck. I don’t know who you are, but I thank you.’

  ‘Do you live here alone, Mrs Brown?’ Annabel asked gently.

  ‘Aye,’ the voice was fading now and Mrs Brown’s eyes remained shut. Annabel realized that the woman was falling asleep. She rose quietly from the bed and put the empty pot, bowl and spoon back into her basket. She glanced once more towards the bed, but decided not to disturb her any more. She’d find out what she needed to know from the woman’s neighbours.

  Back at the church, she found that most of the villagers had gone home, replete for the moment with their unexpected meal. ‘We’ve told them to come back later this evening. The doctor says they can have another helping then as long as it’s not too much,’ Phoebe Webster told her.

  Annabel nodded. ‘Is there anything else I can do now?’

  ‘You’ve done more than enough already, m’lady,’ Richard Webster said, clasping her hands.

  ‘Oh Mr Webster, I’ve hardly started.’ Annabel smiled, her eyes sparkling.

  ‘Your grandfather’s gone home. He said he’d be back either later tonight or first thing tomorrow.’

  ‘And I’ll be going into town myself early tomorrow morning. But now, I want to see Mr Jackson. Do you know where he is?’

  ‘He’s waiting in the vicarage to take you and Jane home.’

  ‘Is there any soup left for us to take up to the house? The staff up there haven’t eaten properly recently either’ – she smiled wryly – ‘despite what Mr Fletcher thinks.’

  ‘And the rest of the village too. They all think the folk at the big house have been living in luxury whilst down here . . .’ Richard’s voice faded away and he sighed. ‘Mr Jackson will tell you everything. He knows more than I do.’

  ‘Has he had enough to eat?’

  ‘For the moment.’ Richard nodded.

  Before they set off, Annabel said, ‘Oh, I must just see how the baby is.’ She picked up her skirts and hurried across the street to knock gently on the door of the Cartwrights’ cottage. After a few moments, Adam opened it.

  ‘I just wondered –’ she began hesitantly as she searched his face for any tell-tale sign that the baby might be worse. ‘How . . .?’

  ‘Come in, m’lady. Doctor’s just called back. He’s with the missis and babby now.’

  ‘I don’t want to intrude . . .’ But she stepped inside, eager to know what was happening to the sick child. As she entered the room, Stephen Maybury stood up and turned to face her. Annabel held her breath for an instant, but then she could see that he was smiling. ‘I think we were just in time.’ He turned back to Betsy. ‘Now, you know what to do, don’t you, Mrs Cartwright?’

  Betsy, now smiling through her tears, nodded. ‘God bless you, Doctor. And you, m’lady. But for you . . .’

  She dropped her head and they saw tears fall onto her baby’s head. But they were tears of relief; now she had hope.

  Seventeen

  Bidding the family goodnight, Annabel and the doctor walked out of the cottage together. Across the road, Ben and Jane still waited.

  ‘I’ll be on my way,’ Stephen Maybury said, ‘but I’ll be back in the morning. I want to make sure everyone in the village eats sensibly. Too much, too quickly, and they could make themselves really ill. Especially the youngsters.’

  ‘Thank you for what you’ve done, Dr Maybury. I’ll see you tomorrow and by the way, although it was kind of you to offer your services for nothing, please send your bills directly to me. I’ll see that they are paid although I would ask you not to let that fact be known amongst the villagers.’

  He stared down at her for a few moments before saying, soberly, ‘You really don’t know what’s been going on here, do you?’

  Annabel shook her head. ‘No, but I intend to find out.’

  A look of sympathy flitted briefly in his eyes. He seemed about to say more but then changed his mind, gave her a small, courteous bow and climbed into his own pony and trap.

  ‘How’s the babby?’ was Jane’s first question.

  ‘I think little Eddie’s going to be all right,’ Annabel replied, smiling.

  When they arrived back in the courtyard, Annabel said, ‘Take the soup and bread into the house, Jane. I’d like a word with Mr Jackson. If you’re not too weary, Ben, I would like a few moments of your time.’

  ‘Of course, m’
lady.’

  They climbed the steps to Ben Jackson’s living quarters above the archway leading into the courtyard of Fairfield Hall. The rooms were clean and tidy, but there was no fire in the small sitting room into which he showed her.

  ‘Please sit down, m’lady. I’m sorry I’ve nothing to offer you . . .’

  Annabel waved his apologies aside. ‘Now, Ben, I want you to tell me everything that has led to the villagers being in this dreadful state. And things are not much better up here either,’ she nodded her head in the direction of Fairfield Hall, ‘as I expect you know. So, please tell me.’

  He sat down opposite her with a heavy sigh. ‘It’ll sound so disloyal, m’lady.’

  ‘Whatever you tell me will go no further than this room, I promise you. But I need to know everything if I’m to do anything about it.’

  He passed his hand wearily across his brow in a gesture of utter despair. ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can do. It’s all gone too far.’

  ‘Please tell me,’ she pressed him gently.

  ‘I’ll need to start way back with a bit of family history. It – it might take some time.’

  ‘I’m listening.’

  ‘I don’t know how the Lyndon family came to be given an earldom and this estate. They’ve always been a soldiering family, so I’m guessing it had something to do with service to their country. You know the sort of thing?’

  Annabel nodded, but did not interrupt him. The time for questions would be later.

  ‘In the early years, so I understand, they prospered. The estate was well run, their tenants were granted sensible rents both for the farms and the cottages in the village. Most of the villagers worked on either Home Farm, run by the estate, or for the other tenant farmers. A grocer opened up, a butcher, a small general store and a smithy-cum-wheelwright. And at that time a carrier would visit once or twice a week from the town bringing goods that couldn’t be obtained locally. The third earl built the public house and the school to add to the church. So, at that time it was a prosperous, happy little village.’ He paused. ‘This continued until the fourth earl’s time. At first Charles Lyndon – that’s your husband’s father, m’lady – ran it well. I came to work for him as a young boy nearly twenty years ago. All was well then, but it was when his eldest son, Albert, reached maturity that things first started to go wrong. At eighteen, he was a wild young man. He lived the high life, spending most of his time in London. He drank heavily and he was a womanizer and a spendthrift. He refused to further his education and took no interest in learning how to run the estate. He even refused to go into the military, which had always been a strong tradition in the family. In each generation, there’d been a son who’d joined the army, though not always the eldest son. Albert brought further disgrace to the family by seducing one of the maids here in Fairfield Hall and she bore him a child. That’s the young woman to whom Jabez Fletcher was referring.’

  Annabel gasped and now she could not stop herself from interrupting briefly. ‘The child in the cottage at the end of the village? He – he’s Albert Lyndon’s son?’

  Ben pursed his lips as he nodded. ‘At first the villagers were reasonably sympathetic. She’s not the first young maid brought down by a son of the household where she worked and, sadly, she won’t be the last. Albert Lyndon did one thing for her – he gave her that cottage – but there’s been no other kind of support from the big house. At first, she and her mother made a living by dressmaking, but when times got hard, Nancy took to having a couple of – er – gentlemen callers from the town. Now, the villagers shun her because of that and also, more recently, because she’s the only one who’s been able to feed her child.’ He smiled grimly. ‘She tried to help others, but they’d sooner starve than accept charity from the likes of her, as they put it.’

  Now Annabel realized what had puzzled her about the little boy in the garden; he was not thin and sickly like the other children in the village. He was well fed.

  ‘They’d even see their own children suffer because of – of pride?’

  Ben nodded, his face grim. ‘It seems so.’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Where was I? Oh yes – Albert Lyndon. Well, he almost bled his poor father dry. Instead of making the foolish young man stand on his own feet, the old man – Charles – bailed him out time after time and after he died –’ he wrinkled his brow, trying to remember – ‘that’d be about three years ago now, well, Albert soon ran through the rest of his inheritance. He took out a loan against the house and the estate and put all the rents up so high that the farmers could no longer make a living or pay their labourers. The whole estate was on a slippery slope and still, Albert continued to drink and party. I’m not really sure how he lost his fortune. Maybe he made some bad investments, but he was forever in debt, that I do know. And, of course, there’d been death duties when his father died and then, when Albert died suddenly last December, the taxes were crippling. So things have been going steadily downhill for over three years. Farmers couldn’t afford to pay their labourers and because all the estate workers lived in the village, soon they had no money to spend in the local shops, so they closed.’

  Annabel was frowning. ‘I still can’t understand why everyone is in the same terrible state all at the same time. I mean, surely the farmers kept their animals for a while and there’d be something growing in the fields?’

  Ben gave a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll say one thing for the folk here, everyone shared what they had. No one was fed whilst others starved, but of course that’s why they’re all so hungry now – all at once. Cattle were slaughtered to feed the whole village, fields were stripped of anything edible, and as for the local wildlife . . .’ he gave a humourless laugh – ‘it’s almost non-existent. It’s a fool-hardy rabbit or hare that comes anywhere near Fairfield now. We’ve fed on rooks, pigeons – and even hedgehogs, which were baked in clay.’

  Annabel stared at him in horror. Now she was beginning to understand and her thoughts came back to the man who had caused all this hardship.

  ‘What did Albert die of?’

  ‘Liver failure, I shouldn’t wonder,’ Ben said sarcastically. ‘But I never did get to know the official verdict. The family closed ranks and wouldn’t say. He died in London and I reckon there might have been a bit of scandal, though it was all hushed up. But he was brought back here to be buried in the family plot as if he was some sort of hero. More money spent on a man who didn’t deserve it.’

  ‘And my husband?’ Annabel asked in a small voice. She was beginning to realize that she had fallen for the charms of a young man she hardly knew anything about. There had certainly been no hint of anything like this in his family background; he had kept that very well hidden.

  ‘I haven’t got to know him very well, m’lady, I have to say,’ Ben said carefully. ‘As a boy and a young man growing up, he was certainly nothing like his wayward brother. He did well at school, as far as I know, though he was away at boarding school.’

  ‘Another expense the family could ill afford,’ Annabel murmured.

  Ben shrugged, but made no comment on her remark. Instead, he continued with his story. ‘As soon as he left school, he went straight into the army, so since about the age of twelve, he’s never been at home much.’

  ‘But what’s happened since his brother died and my husband became the sixth earl? Hasn’t he tried to put matters right here?’

  Ben shook his head. ‘He’s an army man. He has no interest in farming or the estate. He’s left it to me and I’m afraid I’ve failed to pull it round. Lord Fairfield told me to see his sister about matters I couldn’t handle, but she flatly refuses to release any money to help the estate. They – the family, that is – need it, she says and I suppose in a way she’s right. The big house is crumbling around their ears. But she has no thought for all the folk in the village. Their village.’

  ‘What do you mean? “Release any money”? I thought you said there was none left?’

  Now Ben was ill at
ease. He shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  ‘The only thing the master could do was to marry into money, m’lady.’ Annabel gasped and her eyes widened, but she said nothing as Ben continued. ‘We all thought your dowry would be the saving of us all, but it seems it’s not to be.’

  ‘Ah yes, my dowry?’ This was the second time it had been mentioned. ‘Tell me about it.’

  He blinked at her. ‘Don’t you know, m’lady?’

  Annabel shook her head.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you all this,’ Ben murmured worriedly.

  Annabel recovered enough to say, ‘I won’t let you down, Ben, but I would like to know everything.’

  He sighed and went on, albeit reluctantly. ‘It seems a mutual acquaintance of your father’s and the Lyndon family – a Lady Carruthers – introduced James Lyndon to you. She knew that he was in desperate straits and needed to marry an heiress and she also knew that your father –’ he paused briefly before taking a deep breath, for he was finding this deeply worrying – ‘was anxious for you to marry into the nobility. He wanted you to have a title and for his future grandson one day to become a lord and a wealthy landowner. The rumours say that your father was prepared to give his lordship ten thousand pounds upon his marriage to you.’

  ‘I see,’ Annabel said quietly – and she did. Her quick mind was leaping from one thing to another and soon she had pieced it all together. How naïve and gullible she had been. Hurt by Gilbert’s desertion, she had been vulnerable to James’s undoubted charms and blind to her father’s schemes. She wondered again, briefly, if Ambrose had been instrumental in Gilbert’s disappearance too. And now – after everything that Ben was telling her – nothing would surprise or shock her.

  Ben had fallen silent and sat with his head bowed. Annabel felt sorry for the man and tried to put him at his ease. ‘I will keep my promise to you, Ben. No one will hear from me what you have told me, but I am going to need your help.’