by Helen Peters
“What is wrong, Evie?” asked Robbie, looking at me with concern. “You look frightened.”
I moved closer to him. “I… I came to warn you,” I whispered. “Please, Robbie, you must believe me. You and Soph— Miss Fane – you must run away together, tonight.”
At the mention of Sophia’s name, Robbie turned completely white. He stared at me, his eyes huge with terror.
“I’m sorry to frighten you,” I hurried on, “but I’ve heard things, and I know Miss Fane is going to refuse to marry Mr Ellerdale and then her father will lock her in her room for the rest of her life. It’s going to happen very soon. So if you want to be together, you must get away tonight, before he locks her up.”
Robbie still looked petrified, but now there was a look of determination on his face too.
“Go,” he said. “Say nothing of this to anybody, I beg you.”
“Robbie, please trust me,” I begged. “Please. I know what will happen if—”
“You!” shouted Mr Masters. I whipped round to see him glaring at me from the other side of the garden. “Get out of my garden and back to your work.”
His garden? Ha! Sir Henry would have loved it if he had heard that. I was about to answer back but I bit my tongue just in time. I didn’t want him to chase me out of the garden. I needed more time with Robbie. So I curtsied politely and said, “I came to deliver a message from Mrs Hardwick, actually. I’m just about to leave.”
Without waiting for his reaction, I turned back to Robbie. “Please, Robbie,” I whispered. “I swear this is true. I’ve heard it from people who know. How can I—”
He held out his hand to stop me.
“We… I… We have plans,” he whispered. “Thank you, Evie. You must go.”
Mr Masters came striding across the path towards me, his face scarlet with fury.
“Calm down, I’m going,” I said to him.
I turned back to Robbie. “Today,” I whispered. “It’s urgent. You must go today. Believe me, please.”
Mr Masters was advancing on me. I hitched up my skirts and raced down the path and out of the garden before he could hit me. He looked like he had a pretty strong right arm.
Once I was at a safe distance, I slowed down and walked back to the house. My stomach was churning. What had Robbie meant by, “We have plans”? Was that what Sophia’s letter had been about? What were these plans? Did they realise how urgent it was that they got away tonight?
As I crossed the stable yard, my head was so full of our conversation that when I became dimly aware of shouting and stamping and jingling sounds, they seemed to be coming from another world. But then the sounds grew louder and louder, closer and closer, until they became a frantic clattering and creaking and crunching of gravel.
Around the corner galloped two glossy white horses, pulling a gleaming black carriage. On a high seat at the front of the carriage sat Charles Ellerdale.
“Whoa! Steady on, steady on!” he shouted, yanking at the reins.
But the horses didn’t steady on. And, in a chaotic blur of neighing and kicking and gravel and wheels, I realised they were hurtling straight towards me.
Just in time, I dived out of their path, crashing headlong on the grass beside the drive. The carriage careered to a stop, horses whinnying, harness clanking.
Charles Ellerdale leapt from the driver’s seat, almost landing on me, and handed the reins to Jacob, who had hurried out of the stable block.
I looked up at that vast stomach with the straining waistcoat buttons. He glanced down at me contemptuously.
“Get out of my way,” he barked, swinging his leg back. I gasped as I felt a sharp pain in my side. He strutted off towards the front door, leaving me staring, open-mouthed and speechless, at his retreating back.
I struggled to my feet, my heart pounding.
“Did you see that?” I said to Jacob.
“See what?”
“He kicked me! I was lying on the ground and he actually kicked me!”
Jacob shrugged. “You were in his way.”
I gaped at him for a moment. Then I said, “Serves me right, I guess, expecting sympathy from someone who beats dogs for fun.”
I turned to leave, but he grabbed my wrist.
“Get off me,” I said, trying to shake off his hand. But he grasped my wrist tighter and pulled me towards him. I could smell his rotten breath.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed,” he murmured.
My heart started beating very fast. I tried to keep my voice casual. “Noticed what?”
“You know what.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Sneaking off to the kitchen garden to see that bacon-brained simpleton.”
“He’s not a simpleton!”
Fury flashed across Jacob’s face. He let go of my wrist and I staggered backwards.
“I suppose you think he’s better than me,” he said, “just because he can read and write and do those fancy drawings. My horseshoe weren’t good enough for you, were it? Dumped it on the ground, didn’t you? But you’ll run about after him when he shows you an old snail. Well, you want to watch out. People will start to talk, and you’ll be out on your ear with no character. And who will have you then?”
“Mind your own business, Jacob,” I said. “What I do in my own time has nothing to do with you.”
I turned and marched into the house. I could feel his eyes on my back as I walked away, and I hoped he couldn’t see my hands trembling.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Refusal
My head throbbed and my stomach churned as I went about my tasks that evening. Had Charles Ellerdale come to propose to Sophia? Was she about to refuse him and be locked up before she had a chance to escape?
I listened at the door of the White Parlour, but I couldn’t hear anything. I tried to get information out of George, who had been waiting at the table during dinner, but he had nothing of interest to say. Surely that was a good sign? Oh, I hoped so.
After supper, I was filling the coal scuttle in Mrs Bailey’s dressing room when I heard the crunch of hooves on gravel. I hurried to the window. Through the dusk, I saw Charles Ellerdale’s carriage tearing away up the drive.
What did that mean? Had he proposed and been turned down? Or had he not proposed tonight? My heart was thumping. I couldn’t stand this much longer.
The stable clock struck nine as I crossed the cobbles to empty Mrs Bailey’s chamber pot. An owl hooted nearby and another owl, deeper in the woods, replied. With my face turned away, I tipped the contents of the pot on the dung heap and walked back towards the house. Then my heart stopped as I saw Sophia, ghostly in the moonlight, slipping across the deserted stable yard. Was she on her way to meet Robbie?
And then I saw something that filled me with joy. She was carrying a bag.
I wanted to skip and shout and dance. They were running away! They did have a plan, and it was the right plan! They were leaving Charlbury and I could go back to the twenty-first century. The wonderful, amazing twenty-first century, with taps and toilets and TV and wifi. And my own home, with my own mum.
My warnings had worked. I couldn’t believe it. I felt dizzy with happiness.
I crept the rest of the way out of the woods, terrified that Sophia might see me and think I was spying. But I made it safely to the edge of the wood and was walking through the passage between the buildings, about to step out on to the cobbles, when a shout shattered the silence.
“Sophia! Come here this instant, I command you!”
Sir Henry pounded into the stable yard, sending rooks cawing and wheeling into the sky.
My heart stopped. What would Sophia do? I ran to the other end of the passage.
Sophia dashed into the wood. Her white dress billowed around her as she darted through the trees, the gossamer-thin fabric translucent in the moonlight.
Then she stumbled and cried out. Her foot seemed to be caught in the undergrowth. She struggled to disentangle
herself but one of her dainty evening shoes came off. She crammed it back on her foot.
“Get back here, you brazen little hussy!” bellowed Sir Henry.
Sophia ran further into the woods but her dress snagged on a patch of brambles. She tugged at the fabric.
From the stable yard, I heard Mrs Bailey’s voice. “Sir Henry,” she said in a voice much quieter than her brother’s, but deadly with anger, “have you completely forgotten yourself? Remember the servants, for goodness’ sake, and keep yourself under control.”
“Hang the servants!” he shouted, crashing through the trees towards his daughter. Sophia, her dress now caught in several places, hurled her bag into the undergrowth. Sir Henry reached her, tangled in the thorns, and grabbed her arm. She tried to shake it off but he yanked her towards him.
“Come back to the house this instant, do you hear me?” His voice trembled with anger.
Sophia lifted her face to look him in the eye and drew herself up very straight and tall.
“Very well, Father.”
I slid down the rough brick wall of the passage until I was sitting on the ground, my head in my hands. So this was it. He was going to lock her up, and I would never get back to the present.
I looked up to see Sophia tearing her dress away from the brambles, leaving little pieces of fabric attached to the thorns. She seemed to have completely given up the fight. She allowed her father to escort her back to the stable yard, as meek as a beaten spaniel. I forced myself to get up and tiptoe to the other end of the dark passage, where the three of them now stood only a few metres from where I was pressed against the cold wall. I could see them all in profile in the moonlight, Sophia facing the other two across the cobbles.
“Come indoors, Sophia,” said Mrs Bailey in an icy voice, “and stop making a spectacle of yourself. Look at your gown, torn to pieces.”
“I want nothing to do with this gown,” said Sophia. “I want nothing to do with any of it.” She gestured at the house, her dress, the stable yard. “Every inch of it is tainted. It sickens me.”
Mrs Bailey threw a meaningful glance at Sir Henry. “She has gone mad. I suspected as much.”
Sir Henry stepped forward and shook Sophia roughly by the shoulders.
“I want the truth and I want it now. Why, after he spoke to you in the White Parlour, did Charles Ellerdale leave the house in a tearing hurry with a face like a thunderstorm? Why did you come running out here in this lunatic fashion? Tell me exactly what occurred between you or I shall whip you to within an inch of your life. Good God, to be so shamed in my own house!”
Sophia took a deep breath and looked her father in the eye.
“Sir, I know that Mr Ellerdale asked you for my hand in marriage this evening.”
“Did he propose to you? If he spoke, and you refused him—”
“He has not yet asked me to marry him,” said Sophia. “But he strongly hinted that he would do so tomorrow night. I must inform you, sir, that when he does, I shall refuse him.”
Mrs Bailey gasped. I banged my forehead on the wall in despair. What was she doing? Did she want to be locked up?
“Refuse!” shouted Sir Henry. “You little… Refuse Charles Ellerdale, with a thousand acres and a palace of a house? What right do you think you have, you little wretch, to refuse such a man? Why, you—”
“Do you know where his money came from?” said Sophia. “Oh, he told me. Boasted of it, indeed. So proud he is, of his trade in human lives. His ships, sailing out to Africa, loaded with guns and ironware, to be traded for people – people! – packed into the hold and shipped to the West Indies, and traded there, like merchandise, for sugar.”
“And what of it?” said her father. “The sugar plantations need labour. Where do you think you would get your tea and coffee from, your silks and cottons, if not from the colonies?”
“Exactly,” said Sophia. “It is all tainted. Now that I know by what means it was obtained, I want nothing more to do with any of it.”
Her father gave a scornful laugh. “And you’ll wear worsted, spun with your own hands, and eat potatoes you’ve grown yourself, will you, and live in a hovel like a peasant?”
“I simply think, sir,” said Sophia, “that we ought to treat people with dignity and respect. After all, it is a mere accident of birth that we were born into privilege and others into poverty. It is not right – it cannot be right – for a person to buy and sell another person.”
“I knew it,” said Mrs Bailey. “She has lost her mind. Spouting ridiculous, revolutionary ideas, just like her mother.”
Sophia wheeled round to face her aunt.
“Do not ever speak of my mother in that way. I assure you that I am of perfectly sound mind, as was my mother. It is simply that I have been reading and thinking about the world.”
“Ha!” barked her father. “Reading! Thinking! I should have stopped that nonsense long ago. This is what happens when we teach women to read.”
“I have lived my life in luxury and ignorance,” said Sophia. “Never before did it occur to me to wonder where my food came from, who spun the silk for my gowns, who crawled underground to mine the coal for my fires, who swept my chimneys. But now I know, and I am ashamed. All these things are done by people. People just like us, had we not had the fortune to be born into wealth.”
Her father snorted. “What utter drivel! Do you want to see the streets of London running with blood? Because that’s what happens when people start to interfere with the God-given order of society. Look at France. Is that what you want here? You’d be the first to the guillotine, do you realise that? But you don’t hear the servants here complaining about their lot in life, do you? Some are born to govern and some to serve. That’s how the world works, and God help us if people forget it. Do you really think the country would be a better place if it were ruled by drunken footmen and imbecilic housemaids?”
“I think there should be more equality and respect between the social classes, that is all,” said Sophia. “It cannot be right to treat human beings as commodities, to be bought and sold.”
“Someone has been filling her head with this stuff,” said her aunt, taking a step closer to Sophia. “Who is it?”
“I have been talking to people,” said Sophia. “And I have discovered terrible things. Did you know that in this very village there are children, some as young as four, torn from their beds every day to spin silk in a factory, from five in the morning until six at night? Work for which they are paid less than twopence per day. And in these fields – your fields, sir – there are young boys working all day long, in all weathers, for no reward but beatings and starvation.”
Sir Henry stepped forward and grasped her shoulders.
“Who has been feeding you this nonsense?”
Sophia suddenly looked frightened. “I… I read it,” she stuttered. “In a pamphlet.”
“Nonsense. There are no radical pamphlets in this house. You are lying. You said you had been talking to people. I demand to know who has put these ideas in your head.”
“No.”
A sudden clap of thunder made me jump.
“No?” repeated Sir Henry, incredulously.
“No. I shall not tell you, and I shall not marry Charles Ellerdale. I shall marry for love or not at all, and that is final.”
“Marry for love?” he barked. “Marry for love? Is this what I brought you up for, educated you for, gave you every luxury and accomplishment for? Do you know how much you have cost me? Do you know how much this house costs to run? Why, you ungrateful young baggage, you—”
He raised his arm, but Mrs Bailey grabbed it. “Not in public, sir,” she hissed.
I felt a drop of water on my arm. Rain started splashing on the cobblestones.
Sir Henry swatted his sister’s hand away and took a step closer to Sophia. “You shall do your duty to your family and marry Charles Ellerdale,” he said, through clenched teeth, “or I shall whip you into obedience.”
“You can
whip me to death,” Sophia said, “but I shall never marry Charles Ellerdale.”
The rain was falling harder now, bouncing off the cobblestones and soaking through my dress.
“Bring me my whip,” barked Sir Henry to his sister.
“Sir Henry,” said Mrs Bailey, “think before you act, for heaven’s sake. Will Charles Ellerdale want a girl who bears the scars of your whip on her back?”
“Are you telling me she should not be punished?”
“Of course she must be punished. But I think not with a whip.”
“So what do you suggest?” he snapped.
“For now, sir, I would suggest you lock her in her room. Perhaps some time alone will help her understand her duty to her family.”
He hesitated. Then he said, “Very well.”
Suddenly Sophia bolted across the yard. Sir Henry gave a roar of fury and bounded after her. She stumbled and her shoe came off again. Her father grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back across the cobbles.
“You can lock me away for the rest of my life,” she said, “but you will never change my mind.”
“Why, you stubborn, insolent little—”
He walloped her around the head.
Before I knew what I was doing, I ran into the yard. Somehow I had to stop her from being locked up.
“Hey!” I yelled. Maybe I could distract Sir Henry and give Sophia the chance to get away.
But he didn’t even turn round. He marched her towards the front door, her aunt following.
The side door opened. Light spilled across the cobbles.
“Evie!” called Polly. “Are you out there? Evie, come in.”
I carried on running after Sir Henry. “Hey!” I yelled again. But Polly caught up with me, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards the scullery door.
“Get off!” I shouted, trying to wrench her hand away. “I have to stop him. Get off me.”
But Polly had my arm in an iron grip. “Oh, Evie,” she gasped, pulling me towards the house. “Evie, there is such a commotion inside.”
