by M C Beaton
He reached a crossroads where dead and rotting bodies swung over their heads on a gibbet and then took the left turn, which led to the town of Hedgefield.
As they entered the town, Isabella began to wish she had stated firmly that she did not want to go. So many people, so many common people, so many booths and flags and bunting, so much noise. She felt the quiet, cool rooms of Mannerling calling her home, calling her back.
He drove into the yard of the central inn, the Green Man. ‘Would you like some refreshment first?’ he asked as he helped her down and then threw a coin to an ostler who had come to take the horses to the stables.
But Isabella shook her head. A few moments at the fair and then she would plead a headache and ask to be taken home. They left the inn-yard and began to move among the booths, Isabella holding in her skirts, as if brushing them against the common herd would contaminate her in some way.
‘This conjuror is very good,’ said the viscount, stopping outside a booth. To Isabella’s horror, he bought two tickets and ushered her into the greenish gloom of the tent behind.
I shall never forgive him for this, thought Isabella as she sat on a hard bench at the very front. The fact that everyone was exclaiming and staring at her beauty went unnoticed by her. For all her faults, she was not vain about her looks and assumed everyone was staring at her because she was a stranger and because of the richness of her clothes. A large farmer’s wife carrying a basket sat down next to her, children were running and screaming around and under the benches, and the air was full of the smell of oranges, which some of the audience had bought from a seller outside.
Isabella had just decided to feign a headache and ask to be taken home when the conjuror appeared. He seemed a nervous young man and he was wearing a plain black morning coat and knee-breeches and a high cravat. He looked sadly round the audience and then solemnly appeared to take a coloured ball out of his ear. He looked at it in comic surprise. Then he took another from the back of his neck and another materialized from the top of his head, and so he went on until he had eight small coloured balls which he proceeded to juggle. Then he gave a little sigh and threw them all up in the air . . . and they magically disappeared.
And from that moment, Miss Isabella Beverley promptly forgot her surroundings and sat, fascinated, on the edge of the bench. When he finished his act by producing a whole bowl of live goldfish from under the tails of his coat, she clapped as loudly and rapturously as anyone else. And somehow, as they emerged blinking into the sunlight, Isabella became part of the fair, part of the crowds. She demanded to see the two-headed pig, the Morality play, and the painted lady. She searched through the booths which sold scarves, trinkets, and fans, cakes and jam, exclaiming at how inexpensive everything was, which surprised the viscount, who was amazed to learn that she knew the price of anything.
It was when they were drinking lemonade in the inn that a shadow began to fall across Isabella’s bright day. She said, ‘My ride on your Satan has quite spoiled me for my quiet mare. Papa is in London. I asked our secretary to see about purchasing me a proper mount and he said I must wait for Papa’s return.’
‘That seems sensible,’ remarked the viscount.
‘But Mr Ducket, that’s the secretary, has always handled things like that in Papa’s absence.’
‘A good hunter like Satan costs quite a deal of money. Have you considered that?’
Isabella gave him an amused smile. ‘That is one of the problems the Beverley family does not have, my lord.’
He put down his glass and looked at her seriously. ‘Things in life can change. Even families as rich as yours can come upon hard times.’
‘What can you mean? Such an idea is unthinkable.’
‘Just a word of caution. In any case, why worry? You can send a servant over to collect Satan and go for a ride any time you want.’
‘Thank you,’ said Isabella. ‘But it was most odd of you to hint that something might happen to our fortunes. You were hinting, were you not?’
But he appeared not to hear her. ‘If we leave now,’ he said, ‘we can avoid the crush of carriages on the road when the fair finishes.’
She suddenly wanted to tell him about those jewels. But he might voice the worry that had been growing and growing in her mind – that Papa meant to sell them, that something had happened to her golden world. But then the thought that he might confirm her worry in some way frightened her even more. Papa would be back soon and all would be well again.
As they approached Mannerling, the sky had darkened, threatening rain. The house reached out to welcome her. The viscount no longer appeared a charming and handsome companion but a man who was not quite a suitable consort for one of the Beverley sisters.
They rolled past the stables. ‘Papa’s carriage is there,’ exclaimed Isabella. ‘It will be so good to see him.’
Again she thanked him and again he refused her offer of refreshment, touching his curly-brimmed beaver and driving off. A rumble of thunder sounded as Isabella went into the mansion.
‘Miss Isabella,’ said the butler, his face a white disk in the gloom of the hall, ‘Sir William is returned and requested that you should join the family in the drawing room.’
The thunder rumbled again. The storm was drawing closer.
Isabella’s maid, Maria, had appeared at her elbow quietly, in the way of a good servant, and took her mistress’s fan, bonnet, and parasol. As Isabella mounted the stairs, something suddenly made her turn and look back, look down at the hall.
Maria was standing there, on the black and white tiles, as still as a chess piece, and in her eyes was an avid, gloating look which was banished immediately when she saw her mistress looking at her. She bobbed a curtsy and hurried off. Isabella turned and continued to mount the staircase. A bright flash of lightning stabbed through the cupola above her head and then there was a crash of thunder which seemed to rock the house to its very foundations. She shivered in the increasing gloom. Two footmen at the top of the stairs turned and walked in front of her and then threw open the double doors of the drawing room.
She was never to forget the sight that met her eyes. Her father was standing by the fireplace, leaning one arm on the marble mantel and staring down into the black depths of the empty hearth; her mother was weeping quietly; and her sisters, Jessica, Rachel, Abigail, Belinda, and Lizzie, were still and white, as if frozen.
The footmen retired. ‘Papa,’ said Isabella, ‘what has happened?’
Lady Beverley found her voice. ‘We are ruined,’ she wailed.
Isabella felt for a chair and sat down. For once, there was no waiting footman to slide it under her.
‘The jewels,’ she said. ‘What about the jewels? They must have been worth a king’s ransom.’
The door opened and Mr Ducket came in. Sir William raised his head and looked wearily at his secretary. ‘I have had enough. You tell her.’
He held out his arm to his wife and they supported each other from the room.
Another blinding flash of lightning lit up the white faces of the Beverley sisters. It was followed by a roll of thunder, but slightly fainter than the last. The storm was moving away.
Mr Ducket stood in front of them. He was a plain and neat young man with a precise, unemotional voice. He began to tell them the dreadful facts. Sir William had been gambling and then speculating in risky ventures to try to recoup the money he had lost, and then gambling again. He had finally lost it all. He had lost the money from the sale of the jewels, and in one last dreadful night of gambling in St James’s, he had wagered the house and the estates. The winner was a Mr Judd.
Isabella was the first to find her voice. ‘Mannerling? Do you mean we shall have to leave Mannerling?’
‘Almost immediately.’
‘But where shall we live?’
‘Brookfield House is vacant.’
Brookfield House had been vacant for some time. It lay on the outskirts of Hedgefield. It had an acre and a half of garden, but no rolling
lawns or vistas or woods or farms.
‘Brookfield House is poky,’ moaned Jessica.
‘I am afraid Brookfield House is all that the Beverleys can now afford,’ said Mr Ducket.
‘How could Papa do this to us?’ demanded Isabella fiercely.
‘In this gambling age, I am afraid great losses are all too common,’ said Mr Ducket.
Belinda found her voice. ‘But where will the servants live at Brookfield House? Where will you live, Mr Ducket?’
‘I already have another position to go to,’ he said in his dry way. ‘I made provision for this eventuality. As to the other servants, Sir William must decide on the few who are willing to accompany the family.’
‘The few?’ exclaimed Isabella. ‘What of our lady’s-maids?’
‘As to that, I think you will find lady’s-maids to be now an unnecessary luxury. If you will all be so good as to excuse me. I have Sir William’s affairs to wind up.’
‘Stay!’ cried Isabella. ‘When do we have to leave Mannerling?’
Far away now the thunder rumbled and a watery shaft of sunlight shone in through the long windows.
‘In a week’s time.’
‘A week! But that is not enough time. Good heavens, there are all the art treasures to be boxed up – the paintings, the statuary.’
‘Unfortunately,’ said Mr Ducket with his hand on the doorknob, ‘they are no longer the concern of the Beverleys. Sir William has not only gambled away Mannerling but the contents.’
He left and quietly closed the doors behind him.
During the miserable week that followed, Isabella thought often about the viscount’s remarks about loyal servants. The servants of Mannerling seemed almost thrilled at the ruin of the family which they had served. There was a dumb insolence about them, a gloating air. They had been treated like machines and now saw no reason to share in the misery of their betters. Rather, they rejoiced in it.
The sisters wandered through the elegant rooms like wraiths, touching loved treasures with hands that had never known work, gazing out at the elegant vistas which would so very soon be no longer theirs to look on.
None of them had been to Brookfield House. They did not want to know about the place. Sir William and Mr Ducket came and went, with the fourgon piled high with baggage, although the luggage was mostly clothes and such household items they felt could be decently taken away. Even the horses in the stables were to belong to this Mr Judd, this villain, this criminal who had so callously taken their inheritance away.
During that dreadful week the viscount called, but Isabella refused to see him. She now believed he had known of their impending ruin and felt that he might have warned her.
And no one called. For the news of the fall of the Beverleys had spread like wildfire throughout the county. They had patronized and snubbed so many that their ruin was greeted only with a gleeful, gossipy excitement.
Then there were the lawyers and the duns down from London, closeted in the study for hours at a time, and Sir William would emerge from these sessions stooped and aged.
Mr Ducket, at last driven to pity for the plight of his soon-to-be late employer, wrote to his new employer begging a further few weeks and rented a room at the inn in Hedgefield so that he could continue to wind up Sir William’s complicated debts and affairs.
And so the day came quickly when they had to leave Mannerling, being driven for the last time in the family’s travelling carriages, for they, too, must be returned to the stables to await the arrival of the new owner. The sisters had cried until they could cry no more. Huddled together, they stared bleakly straight ahead as they bowled down the long drive. The servants were all staying on in the hope of serving Mr Judd, the new owner. New servants had been hired for them from Hedgefield: a cook-housekeeper, four maids, a pot-boy, and an odd man. There was not even a coachman, and certainly not a butler or any footmen.
The sisters sat in silence on the road to Brookfield House. They had grown up each with her own handsome room and lady’s-maid. Now they were to share bedrooms and learn to dress themselves and arrange their own hair.
As last the carriage rolled up the weedy drive of Brookfield House, a large square grey building covered in ivy which fluttered and turned in an unseasonably chilly wind.
The new odd man, a stout, cheerful countryman called Barry Wort, was waiting to collect the last of their belongings from the carriage.
Lady Williams, said a little maid with rosy cheeks and a shy smile, was lying down. She would show the young ladies to their rooms. ‘Thank you,’ said Isabella, giving the girl a smile. She who had never thanked a servant for anything in her life had decided it was time she began. ‘What is your name?’
‘Betty, miss.’
‘Then lead the way, Betty.’
Oh, the misery of that dark square undistinguished hall, the poky narrow wooden staircase, and the bedrooms, one for Isabella and Jessica, one for the twins, and the other for Belinda and Lizzie.
‘Well,’ said Isabella to Jessica, ‘here we are.’
‘Just look at the carpet,’ said Jessica. ‘It’s worn.’
‘Quite a number of people do not have carpets in the bedrooms, only bare boards. Oh, dear, they must have taken this furniture with the house. The bed hangings will need to come down and be cleaned. I fear, Jessica, that we are going to have to learn about housework after all.’
‘Who will teach us? ’Twould be demeaning to ask the servants.’
‘Viscount Fitzpatrick’s aunt, Mrs Kennedy, would be delighted to help us.’
‘That peasant woman! You said she was as common as the barber’s chair.’
A painful blush rose up Isabella’s cheeks. ‘Do not remind me of that. Has it ever occurred to you, Jessica, that we have been most badly brought up?’
‘We were brought up as befitted our station,’ said Jessica stoutly.
‘I do not think so.’ Isabella opened the window and let in a gust of cold damp air and looked down at the scrubby garden and balding lawn. She swung round. ‘Perhaps had our servants at Mannerling been treated by us as people rather than as machines, we might have been able to command a certain loyalty when disaster struck us. But, no, not us. Not the famous Beverleys.’
‘Really, Isabella. You are beginning to talk like a Whig!’
‘Perhaps. Losing Mannerling is like a death. We must learn to live with our grief. There is no hope we will ever get our home back. We must make the best of things here. I do not think Mama even knows how to train maids.’
‘The cook-housekeeper will do that.’
‘Mayhap. Let’s explore the rest of our new home.’
There was a dining room off one side of the hall and a drawing room off the other. A long dark passage led to the kitchen at the back and to a cloakroom, study, and parlour. On the first floor were six bedrooms, the sisters in three, Sir William and Lady Beverley in two, and one left spare for a guest. The attics were for the servants.
At the back of the house were several outbuildings and a privy, a small carriage house, and stabling for a mere two horses.
Their first meal in their new home was a disaster. The untrained maids clattered noisily about with the dishes, the port had not been decanted, and the food! Beverley palates accustomed to the best French cuisine tasted with dismay dry meat, lumpy gravy, and watery vegetables.
‘This will not do, Mama,’ said Isabella, putting down her knife and fork. ‘Who is this cook-housekeeper, and how did we come by her?’
‘I do not know, my dear,’ said Lady Beverley wanly. ‘I do not concern myself with such things. Mr Ducket had to engage servants from the town at the last moment and it is hard to get qualified servants at a moment’s notice.’
‘Then, if we have to make do with what we have, she will need to be trained.’
‘By whom?’ wailed Lady Beverley. ‘Mrs Pearce is quite a rough woman and will brook no interference in the kitchen.’
‘We will see about that,’ said Isabella. She found it
hard to even look at her father, he who had ruined their lives with his silly gambling. He was drunk, she noticed, not jolly or rowdy, but almost as if drugged, sitting gazing vacantly into space with a fixed smile on his lips.
After dinner she wrote a letter to Mrs Kennedy, saying she would call on her the following afternoon, and then went in search of the odd man. She found him in one of the outbuildings, chopping logs.
‘Weather’s turned uncommon sharp, Miss Isabella,’ said Barry. ‘Best to be prepared.’
Isabella gave him a shilling and the letter. ‘Would you be so good as to deliver that to Mrs Kennedy at Perival?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I shall call on her tomorrow.’ Isabella looked at Barry in sudden dismay. ‘Oh, dear, no carriage, no horses. How do I get there?’
‘I could ask them to send a carriage for you, miss.’
‘Alas, things that seemed so easy to command before now seem like an imposition. Is there any way I could get there?’
‘You could walk, miss, and if you get permission from Sir William, I will act as footman and walk with you.’ Isabella’s face cleared. ‘That would be splendid. Thank you, Barry. We set out about noon.’
‘Right, miss. I’ll go to deliver this letter direct.’
He touched his forehead and Isabella walked away feeling strangely comforted. It was only as she fell asleep beside Jessica that night that her last waking thought was that her route to Perival would take her past the gates of Mannerling.
Sir William and Lady Beverley were still too cast down by their changed circumstances to raise any objection to their daughter’s statement that she was going to call on the viscount’s aunt.
Isabella, who appeared to have lost a layer of selfishness, could not help noticing that they took Mr Ducket’s work as their due. She doubted if they had even thanked the man for delaying starting his new employment in order to help them. Isabella had found a simple morning gown and pelisse and a pair of half-boots for her expedition. She was glad the weather had turned fine, but not too warm.
She basked a little in her sisters’ awed admiration before she set out. Walking! Dear heavens!
