by Charles Todd
And broken trust was an emotion that could easily turn to hate.
Shrugging, she added, “Whether it’s Uncle Philip’s fault or not doesn’t matter. He’s responsible, isn’t he? And he deserves whatever happens to him. That’s how people think, you see. They don’t consider this family. They didn’t see Uncle Philip standing in his study, hands over his face as he wept for the dead. And Aunt Helen unable to comfort him.”
The interview with Constable Hood had not gone very well. He listened to what we told him, he looked at the broken window and the shards of glass that Mrs. Byers had left where they fell, to show him, and he examined the blackened chair. The candle was a twisted lump now, but it was clearly a candle. He even went down on one knee to study the carpet, still gritty with wet sand.
He was a square man with dark blond hair and cold gray eyes. I’d felt an instant dislike the moment I set eyes on him. There was something pinched and shuttered about his features, as if he had no intention of being objective or fair.
I’d given my evidence, and the others had recounted what they had seen and done. He appeared not to have heard a word.
Finally he said, “I’ll report this to Inspector Brothers, sir. He may have further questions, of course.”
“I hardly think,” Mark said stiffly, “he could need any further proof that this house was set afire by someone who didn’t particularly care how much harm was caused. This is an old house, Constable, it would have burned rather quickly. If Sister Crawford hadn’t awakened and smelled smoke, who knows how far the flames might have reached?”
“But she did smell it, didn’t she, sir?” He made it sound as if it had been planned that way. That we had set the fire ourselves and made certain it was put out before more than token damage had been done.
I said, in my best imitation of Matron’s most severe voice, “In my experience, Constable Hood, fires seldom follow instructions. From someone outside—or inside—a house. I hardly think after the blow Mrs. Ashton suffered yesterday, she would put her home at risk too. I can’t see how it would advance Mr. Ashton’s cause.”
He had the grace to flush.
Snapping his notebook closed, he said, “I’ll speak to the Inspector.” With a nod to Clara and Mrs. Ashton, he left the sitting room and walked out to where his bicycle was waiting, leaving the doors standing open.
Watching him go, Mark Ashton said, “I’d have offered to drive him into Canterbury. Now, I’m glad I didn’t.”
With that he whistled to Nan, crossed the hall to his father’s study, and closed the door behind him.
Mrs. Ashton put a hand on my arm, saying quietly, “Thank you, Bess. We weren’t in a position to defend ourselves. I’m very grateful. Now I think I should see if Mark is all right.”
Clara wasn’t very happy to be excluded. She quickly made an excuse about some household duty or other, as if that explained not being asked to join them, and I was left on my own.
Between the visits of Inspector Brothers yesterday and Constable Hood this morning, I could truly see how the people of The Swale region and even as far away as Canterbury were ready to believe the worst about the Ashtons. But that was the trouble; they seemed not to discriminate between the man and his family.
I considered going to sit in the herb garden, but that was Mrs. Ashton’s sanctuary, and I didn’t wish to intrude. Instead I collected my coat and went out for a walk. The sun had gone behind the clouds, but the day was still warm for this time of year and so I followed the abbey wall, looking for the entrance to the grounds. It led me instead to a street of interesting houses, and that in turn led to the town’s square, where there was a market in full swing despite the graying skies.
Wandering along the line of stalls, I couldn’t help but think how meager the goods were, compared to an autumn market before the war. God willing it would be over soon, and there would be peace. Still—it could never be 1914 again. Too many men had died or had suffered horrid wounds that would always be there—the lost limbs and the burns and the scars. How long would it be before these market stalls would be full once more, and women would have new gowns and hats and linens for their houses? And the horses were gone, as well as the men, and homes had been turned into clinics, and factories had grown accustomed to feeding the machines of war. Women had been just as patriotic as the men, replacing those needed at the Front, learning to work in factories and drive omnibuses and grow food on empty ground. How was that going to return to what we remembered in the past? Where would the house parties and the summer afternoons on the lawns or in quiet back gardens be held when there weren’t enough men to play tennis or croquet or dance with the women who had no one else to make pleasant conversation with and look pretty for?
It was a heartbreaking realization. That we’d fought so long and so hard and at such cost to save something that had been smashed to bits the minute the Germans crossed the frontier into Belgium. What would we replace it with? How would the future look?
Trying to shrug off my sad spirits, I suddenly realized that I hadn’t heard the usual banter that made market day more than what was put out for sale. I turned and looked back at the stalls I’d just passed, only to meet the speculative gazes of a dozen pairs of eyes as marketgoers and sellers in the stalls alike followed my progress in silence.
They knew who I was. They knew where I’d come from. I might as well be an Ashton, in their eyes. The enemy. And they would give me no quarter, just as they wouldn’t give an Ashton quarter.
It was a revelation. A first look on my part into the chasm of hate that separated Abbey Hall from Cranbourne. It was one thing to turn their backs to the motorcar, and quite another to treat a stranger as if she had been accused of murder too.
It was such an odd feeling that I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Walk back the way I’d come, or finish strolling through the square? And I think everyone watching me wondered as well what I would decide.
I was only a guest in the Ashton house, yet Cranbourne’s animosity toward the family had spilled over to include me.
Or perhaps they’d already heard that I was the one who’d smelled smoke and prevented the fire from spreading.
No one was going to attack me here in the little square, in front of all these people, but I felt distinctly uneasy. For all I knew, any one of them could have tossed that candle into the sitting room, certain that his actions would meet the approval of everyone watching me.
I took a deep breath. I was wearing the uniform of Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Military Nursing Service. And I would not dishonor it by scurrying away like a coward.
Carrying on, I finished my circuit of the little square, head high, a calm expression on my face. My pace was leisurely, and if I inadvertently caught the eye of someone staring at me, I let a faint smile speak for me.
One woman, standing in front of her stall, actually spat at me, and another turned her back, refusing to serve me, even though I wasn’t buying.
A man cursed under his breath, just loud enough for me to hear the words he was using. I carried on as if I hadn’t heard. Or understood.
At last I came back to the street that had brought me into the square, and with a sense of relief, I put those unfriendly faces behind.
I could leave here—indeed, I’d be leaving tomorrow, and for Dover, not London. But the Ashtons couldn’t. And how safe would a household of women feel when Mark went back to France? I couldn’t see any way that Mr. Ashton would be freed anytime soon. In fact, he might be safer where he was until there was a trial.
As I reached the abbey wall, I noticed the woman ahead of me. She’d been carrying a basket of things she’d bought in the market. I could see the leaves of sugar beets and the pale color of parsnips. There was even a small aubergine tucked in beside the cabbage, rich dark purple against the dark green leaves. She had set the basket down and was rubbing the small of her back with one
hand.
I put her age at close to sixty. There were streaks of gray in her fair hair, and her face was lined from years of drudgery.
Catching her up, I said with a smile, “Let me carry that a little way for you.”
There was resentment in her gaze as she turned toward me. “I can manage.” Her voice was cold as Arctic ice.
“My name isn’t Ashton,” I said quietly. “I’ve come to Abbey Hall because I had helped to nurse Major Ashton when he was severely wounded, and I sat by his bed on long night watches with Mrs. Ashton. I wasn’t here when the mill blew up. It’s unfair to blame me for what I haven’t done.”
“You should have let him die,” she said venomously.
“You can’t mean that. Not if you have children of your own. You wouldn’t wish such anguish on another man’s mother.”
“I lost my only son at Ypres,” she said. “And he wasn’t nursed in a ward with officers.”
I picked up the basket and started walking. She had no choice but to come after me. “I daresay I’ve attended to the wounds of more men in the ranks than I have of officers. It doesn’t matter, you know, who is bleeding. One sees only the need.”
It was clear that she didn’t believe me. But she hadn’t tried to take the basket from me, certain proof that her back was really troubling her. I could see too that she had a slight limp, which surely wasn’t helping it.
Without waiting for her to answer me, I added, “I couldn’t help but notice in the square. The men and women with stalls and those who were doing their marketing eyed me with dislike. I found it disturbing.”
She said nothing for a moment, then she answered grudgingly, “They thought you were the Major’s new fiancée.”
I stared at her, shocked. “On the contrary. I’ll be going back to France in a matter of days. I was on leave, on my way to London, when Major Ashton saw me in Canterbury. The trains were running very late, and he suggested I visit his mother rather than spend the night in a hotel or failing that, the railway station. It was very kind of him.”
It was her turn to stare at me.
“It’s a great tragedy, what happened to the mill. I didn’t even know about the explosion until yesterday, when the Major told me. What I don’t understand is why his mother and his cousin should be harassed. How can the villagers blame them for this disaster?”
“It was coming,” she said darkly. We had left the shadows of the abbey wall now, and she pointed down toward the River Cran. It was the road that Mark had driven on that first morning, and where I’d walked on my own. We turned in that direction. “It was the nailbourne started it.”
“Nailbourne?” I asked, wondering if that was a person or a thing.
“The winter springs.” She nodded her head toward the river and The Swale beyond. “It’s marshy ground, that is.”
“Why did they build the powder mill in a marsh?”
She shook her head, certain now that I was dim-witted. “The powder mill was built on a deep chalk outcropping. But there’s marsh beside and below it.”
“Ah. And the nailbourne?”
“There’s a pond where one of the creeks ran, and the Ashton windmill feeds it. See, just there?”
We could look down on the River Cran now, and the ruins. I hadn’t paid any heed to the windmill before, because it was derelict, many of the slats on the bare arms missing.
The woman stopped, pointing. “I live over there, beyond the windmill.”
It was a long walk, carrying that basket. I was appalled.
“And the nailbourne?” I asked for a third time. “Is it a creek?”
“I said, didn’t I? They’re winter springs.”
“But you blamed them for the explosion.”
“They come up in the winter, those nailbournes. And as the weather warms, they dry up. But a few can run something fierce for a time, and this one did in the winter of 1916, running as hard as any creek, seeking The Swale. More water than any of us ever recalled seeing, even old Harry Barnes, and he’s near ninety. And it kept running when the others had disappeared into the earth they come from. They’re fickle, these upwellings. Not all appear, and not every year. Then men from the mill came out to have a look at this nailbourne, and they claimed if it kept on widening its channel, it was going to weaken the banks of yon mill pond they needed for making the gunpowder. We told them not to mettle, but those men went to Mr. Ashton and reported what they’d seen. And he came out there and dammed it before it could reach the pond. Late March, that was. The next morning, the nailbourne began drying up, all the way back to its spring. Mr. Ashton was right pleased.”
I could begin to see where she was going. “But if the nailbourne—the spring—should have dried up of its own accord, but didn’t, then was it so harmful to encourage it to stop?”
“You aren’t from Kent, so you wouldn’t know, but Mr. Ashton was born here, he should have understood. Such springs must find their own way. And this one couldn’t. Some of us tried to tell him no good would come of it, that this one was already a Sign, but he wouldn’t hear of such superstitious nonsense. That’s what he called it, nonsense.”
The bloody battle of the Somme had begun in July 1916. I tried not to think about that as her Sign. To her, the explosion in April was more important. “But how did this cause the explosion? How could this nailbourne have interfered with the powder mill?”
“It was the powder mill caused it to be dammed, wasn’t it?” She gave me that withering look again. As if I ought to understand the implications straightaway. “And so the mill had to pay for it, didn’t it?”
“But to blow up the mill, with such tragic loss of life—it seems rather—” I was at a loss to find the right word. “Severe,” I said finally.
“The nailbournes have always been there, haven’t they? Having their own way long before the Conqueror came. And didn’t St. Augustine himself cause one to rise where he’d knelt, over Elham way? Besides,” she added, with a distinct note of triumph in her voice, “only the men died that day, didn’t they? Not the women who worked in the mill of a weekday. Only the men. The woe-water wasn’t greedy.”
It was a telling argument if you believed in such things. I could now see why the case against Philip Ashton was so powerful. He’d defied the ancient gods, as it were, and the mill had paid the price, along with the men inside there on that Sunday.
I picked up the woman’s basket again, and we walked as far as the banks of the Cran. It was low enough now that one could cross, and she knew precisely where the bank was lowest on both sides. I told her I’d carry the basket to her door, but she shook her head. She’d done this year in and year out and didn’t think of it as a hardship. With a nod, she went on her way, and I watched her for some time before turning back to the house.
The door of the shed belonging to the man who built boats was closed.
CHAPTER FIVE
WHEN I HAD a chance later in the day, I tried to explain to Mark what the woman had told me about the woe-water.
He smiled and shook his head, saying, “Local superstition and legend. When my family built the first powder mill here over a hundred years ago, there were people who were against it then. And yet it provided a living for many generations to come.”
There was no point in arguing. And lunch was ready. Through the open study door I’d seen Mrs. Ashton and Clara walking together toward the dining room.
Still, I thought he was overlooking one source of the unrest I’d felt in this village. Legend or not, superstition or not, how people felt about such things mattered. Given the nailbourne drying up so suddenly and inauspiciously, and the explosion occurring almost on the heels of that, many would see a connection and come to believe in it, and it would take a great deal of persuasion to move them to change their views—if not a miracle to match a miracle.
The empty chair at the head o
f the table cast a shadow over this meal as it had all the others since Mr. Ashton had been taken away. Mrs. Ashton must have realized just how demoralizing it was for everyone, including the servants trying to avoid it, and she said, “You know, I think we’ll have dinner this evening in my sitting room, if the glazier has finished. I shan’t feel up to dressing, and there are only the four of us tonight.”
As if we’d been twenty or thirty at each meal, and tonight was a respite from such busy entertaining.
Everyone agreed. And I silently cheered her for carrying it off so well.
In the afternoon Mark went to another conference with his father’s lawyers, and Mrs. Ashton asked to go with him in the hope that she might also be allowed to speak to her husband.
Both mother and son returned with long faces. Mrs. Ashton hadn’t been permitted to see, much less speak to, her husband. And the solicitor, after the conference with Mr. Ashton’s barrister, didn’t hold out much hope.
“But they’ll send for the witness, won’t they? Rollins?” I asked. “If only to refute these new depositions? After all, he came forward at the time, whereas apparently they’ve suddenly recovered their memories.”
“I’m certain they will, my dear,” Mrs. Ashton assured me, but I caught the echo of doubt in her voice. So many accusations pointed in her husband’s direction. And of course no one quite knew what Mr. Rollins would tell the court.
I said bracingly, “Early days. Once their case is put together, Mr. Groves and Mr. Worley will feel better about what they can do with the evidence.”
Her face brightened a little. “Yes. Yes, I’m sure you’re right. Thank you, my dear.”
Clara spoke, her voice carrying a mixture of anger and anguish. “He’s a good man, Aunt Helen. Uncle Philip has always been admired and respected. No one could possibly be convinced that he could commit murder. It’s all the fault of selfish people who can’t believe they’ve lost their positions at the mill. Once they’ve been shown up as vengeful, it will all be over.”
