Star-Crossed Summer

by Sarah Stanley

  Dickon drove up into Southgate Street, where the carriage wheels rattled and splashed through puddles among the uneven cobbles. Everything was oddly quiet, with no one around, and no other traffic. Something felt wrong. After passing Williamson’s Bank, and Dickon halted the team to ask directions of a young woman – plump, painted and blonde – leaning from an upper window in a gown so low cut it was a miracle her bosoms did not tumble out. Beth knew the house. It was a brothel, with one bawd or another always at the window, displaying her breasts and offering male passers-by a variety of services. This woman was more impertinent than most, and after telling Dickon how to get to the Crown Inn, she noticed Guy seated in the carriage. She winked at him and bared her nipples. ‘Like to play with these, luvvy? Can I give you a good f—?’

  Guy interrupted her. ‘The only thing you’re likely to give me is the clap.’

  Her rouged face suffused. ‘That’s a lie! I’m clean and so is this house!’

  ‘For pity’s sake drive on, Dickon,’ Guy said, tapping the roof with his cane.

  The whore’s screeches followed as the carriage began to move. ‘What’s wrong, molly boy? Can’t get it up except for another cocker? A bugger in velvet and lace, eh? Just a limp-wristed, tight-waisted, stretch-arsed bugger!’

  ‘How delightful,’ Guy murmured, while Beth kept her eyes lowered.

  The old streets of Southgate, Northgate, Eastgate and Westgate met at the Cross in heart of the city, where it was always busy. But today there was no one to see as Dickon drove over into Northgate, before turning left into Cathedral Lane, where stood two prominent inns, the Black Horse and the Crown. There ought to have been ostlers outside the Black Horse, trying to lure trade from the nearby Crown, but there was no one, although the angry murmur of voices could be heard in the taproom as someone delivered a rabble-rousing speech.

  The Crown’s galleried, ivy-twined courtyard was also deserted, and although the smell of roast beef emanated from the kitchen, there was no clatter of pots and pans. Only when Dickon bellowed for service did two reluctant ostlers venture rather furtively from the stables at the rear of the inn. A mist of rain drifted in the air as Guy alighted, but then shouting and general disturbance broke out at the Black Horse, and fear began to prickle over Beth’s skin. This was why the streets had been so unnaturally quiet, she thought. Word of imminent trouble had kept honest citizens in their homes. Fired by drink and the troublemaking orator, an unruly slogan-chanting mob poured into Cathedral Lane. Hatred of the new Corn Laws was tangible.

  A window was smashed in the lane, and Lancelot began to rear and whinny. Guy whirled around to one of the ostlers. ‘Hold him, damn you!’ The moment his attention was diverted, Beth jumped down from the other side of the carriage and slipped out into the dangerous lane just as the innkeeper ordered the courtyard gates closed. Guy hadn’t even realized she’d gone; if, indeed, he’d care, for of what significance was a starving ragamuffin compared to the alarm of a thousand-guinea horse? A bakery window had been shattered, and there were triumphant yells as men grabbed what bread they could. When the last loaf had been seized there was a moment’s eerie silence before a man in a sacking hood hurled a lighted torch into the bakery. The chanting and howls of bitter anger resumed. Mayhem was all around, and the smoke, but then came the sound of drumming hoofs, and someone shouted a warning that scattered everyone. ‘The militia’s coming, lads! Make yourselves scarce!’

  Beth’s heart raced as she followed some men to the cathedral close at the end of the lane. She hardly glanced at the great church’s soaring splendour as she ran across toward King Edward’s Gate, and then into Westgate at the bottom of which was the Severn and the riverside road to the new dock basin. From the docks it was only yards to Fiddler’s Court, the dingy yard where she lived with Jake Mannacott and his daughter, Rosalind. The docks, barely three years old, were still busy because the Severn’s notorious tides did not wait for anything. A ship canal was being built between Gloucester and Berkeley Pill, to avoid the treacherous meanders of the river between the city and the sea, but thanks to her father, among others, work on it had stopped due to lack of funds, forcing cargoes on to the river. As she skirted the timber yards on the northern side of the basin, she saw trows – traditional Severn barges – making ready at the river lock. She hurried around a wharf cluttered with coal, road stone, barrels, casks, bales, chests and ropes, and after tying the basket to her shawl, which served as a rope, climbed over a padlocked gate into the deserted street beyond.

  Then she paused, clutching the basket and shawl to her breast. That morning she’d had nothing; tonight she had a thousand guineas and was on the point of leaving Gloucester for a new life. She walked on. Every night she gave herself to Jake, pretending pleasure because she felt indebted for the roof over her head. He worshipped her as a goddess, yet she hadn’t stepped down from Olympus, merely from the Cotswolds, and she was flesh and blood, with all the needs, faults and frailties of her kind. Her body was no longer chaste, but her heart was. Poor Jake would be inconsolable when she left; his jealous slyboots of a daughter, however, would be overjoyed. Rosalind Mannacott was almost seventeen and didn’t care a fig for anyone but herself. She worked in Poll Barker’s tavern, although what sort of a barmaid she was could only be imagined. Saucy and congenial were not words that sprang to mind. Beth had heard that Poll would have dismissed her long since had not her odious, libidinous son, Ned, prevented it.

  At last she reached the narrow passage leading to the yard and dirty cottages of Fiddler’s Court. Jake’s cottage, little more than one room with a loft, stood at the far end. With faded green paint on the dilapidated door, and a grey, moth-eaten net curtain at the single window, it was hardly an agreeable abode, yet a light, girlish voice sang sweetly inside. Beth knew there would be silence the moment she entered. Sighing, she lifted the latch. The song broke off mid-note.

  Chapter Three

  Beth entered a low-ceilinged room where a dim light was provided by a rancid tallow candle that smoked unpleasantly as the door closed. The cottage was a far cry from the luxury of Tremoille House, possessing three rather rickety wooden chairs, a table with one leg supported on a brick, and a shelf bearing some chipped crockery, pots and pans, a pair of iron candlesticks, a tinderbox, and Jake’s shaving things. Opposite a tiny fireplace there was a ladder to the loft, where everyone slept. The rain dashed against the window, and every now and then a drop fell down the chimney to patter on the crumpled newspaper, sticks and stolen coal that were placed in readiness for a fire.

  Rosalind was on her chair by the fireplace, and her face had assumed the surliness she kept for Beth. She was a pretty girl, with long straight silver-blonde hair, and large forget-me-not eyes set above high cheekbones. Her figure was slender, and her small, upturned breasts had pronounced nipples that showed through her worn lilac cotton dress. Given good clothes and a better start in life she could have been elegant, but as a blacksmith’s dissatisfied daughter she was thin, ragged and sullen. ‘Hello, Rosalind,’ Beth said.

  The girl got up and spoke with a deliberately broad Gloucestershire accent. ‘I’ve done the lessons you left me.’ She took a battered notebook from the mantelshelf and dropped it on the table as if it were a dead rat.

  ‘The lessons your father asked me to leave for you,’ Beth corrected, unwilling to take the blame for trying to educate Rosalind Mannacott. She placed the pheasant on the table before taking the basket up to the loft to hide the pouch under the straw where she and Jake slept. The rain tamped noisily on the roof just above her head, but even so she feared the chink of coins would carry to Rosalind’s sharp ears. Then she took off her wet clothes to hang them on the rafter hooks, next to the fashionable togs she’d worn on leaving Tremoille House.

  The clothes were still immaculate. She hadn’t worn them since, because they made her look as if she were in one world, when in fact she was now in another. It had been money well spent when she used a little of her meagre purse to acquire ragged ga
rments and a battered valise in which to hide her former glory. Glimpsing her poverty-stricken reflection in a puddle had been a dreadful moment, so awful that she sat on the edge of a horse trough in tears. That was when Jake found her. He’d been so kind and concerned – genuinely so – and offered her a roof over her head in exchange for lessons in reading and writing for his daughter. But teaching Rosalind was a thankless task, leaving Beth feeling she wasn’t earning her keep; so she became Jake’s lover.

  Beth touched the cream muslin gown sprigged with pale rose pink flowers, and the exquisitely stitched rose velvet spencer. On a little shelf nearby were the matching velvet reticule, emerald green gloves and a pretty straw bonnet. Her white silk stockings were tucked into the black patent shoes that rested on top of a rafter. It all looked as if she’d just disrobed, and the quality was such that it would fetch a pretty penny in Gloucester, but Jake wouldn’t let her sell anything. He wanted her to keep this small portion of her former life. But even though he’d always been kind and loving, tonight she was going to desert him. It wouldn’t be an entirely selfish desertion, because she’d decided to leave him half the guineas. Only that way could she salve her conscience regarding the man who’d saved her and given her his love.

  A draught of cool, damp air beneath the eaves made her shiver and, as her nipples tightened, her thoughts became more sensuous and fanciful, but it wasn’t Jake who came to mind, it was Sir Guy Valmer. She had been very conscious of his worldly, almost feline appeal. He was sophisticated and dangerously handsome, and the enigma in his remarkable grey eyes promised things – pleasures – of which she as yet knew nothing. His hair, so richly coloured and curling, was thick and soft in a way that invited ruffling by female fingertips, and his lips promised kisses that would melt the soul. She touched her breasts and closed her eyes, recalling all she’d noticed about him, even his habit of toying with the shirt frill at his cuff. He had awakened something primitive that she hadn’t known before, a need to cross the chasm between dutiful caresses and fierce desire. What would it be like to lie with him? To have him inside her? To possess him just for a few minutes? To kiss his mouth, his throat, his chest, all of him? Yes, all of him. She wanted to bury her face in the tangle of hair at his loins, and breathe in the scent of him, wanted to take the source of his masculinity in her mouth and— Shocked by the path her desires were taking, her eyes flew open again. She had never even thought of kissing that part of Jake, yet mere kisses were the very least of her cravings for Sir Guy Valmer! What was the matter with her? He frightened her so she hadn’t been able to escape from him quickly enough, and yet now she dreamed of being sexually intimate with him. It wasn’t just a dream, but a physical lust that hunted through her flesh like hunger through the starving. She drew a deep breath, determined never to think such shameful things again. Much good would it do her anyway, because although the former Beth Tremoille might have been able to reach out to him without fear of rejection, he’d been disgusted by the Beth Tremoille of Fiddler’s Court.

  Rosalind moved around downstairs, and Beth hurriedly donned her second dress, a poor garment of faded brown wool, and then dragged her wooden comb through her damp, tangled hair. From the top of the ladder she watched as Rosalind inspected the pheasant. The girl looked up as Beth descended again. ‘Where did you get this? Gamekeeper turned poacher, eh?’ she sneered.

  Beth was in no mood. ‘No doubt you’ll be eager enough when the stew’s ready.’ The girl flounced back toward her chair, but Beth tossed the pheasant on to the seat. ‘Oh, no, you’re going to do your share of work. Pluck the wretched thing.’

  Rosalind clearly longed to hurl the pheasant back, but thought better of it and began to tug out the feathers savagely. Beth used the tinderbox to coax a fire in the hearth, and then drew water from the well in the rainswept yard and suspended a pot above the new flames. When the pheasant was gutted and ready she quartered it with a small axe Jake had made, and into the pot it went, together with the onion, carrot and few potatoes Rosalind had stolen in the market the day before. Beth was making the nourishing stew for Jake and Rosalind; she herself would no longer be here to sample it. Tonight they’d make do with dry bread and stale cracked Single Gloucester cheese. It would be tasty enough toasted.

  Her tasks finished for the moment, she decided to break the silence with Rosalind. ‘Did you get wet coming back from the tavern?’ she asked, but her amiability fell on stony ground.

  ‘There’s no way of coming back dry when it’s pissing down.’

  ‘Why do you always have to be so bitter? And so foul-mouthed? I’ve been teaching you how to speak properly, so I know you can do better.’

  ‘You’re a fancy Tremoille, so you swank around with your nose in the air. Me? I’m a nobody who’ll never amount to much, so why try to bully me into your snob ways? In the tavern I serve others just like me, not fine lords, so don’t try to make me what I’m not!’

  ‘I teach you because it’s what your father wants,’ Beth reminded her.

  ‘And what does he know? Nothing!’

  ‘He knows that he wants a better life for you, Rosalind. You’re a pretty girl and have brains. It wouldn’t take much effort for you to make a good enough marriage to put all this behind you.’ Beth indicated the shabby cottage.

  ‘Silk purses don’t come from sow’s ears,’ Rosalind replied.

  ‘Well, if you want to remain a sow’s ear, just continue the way you are.’

  Before Rosalind could think of a suitably stinging reply, familiar steps were heard in the court. They both turned as the door opened in a flurry of rain, and Jake bowed his head to come in. He brought the smell of the forge on his wet clothes as he went to sniff the stew pot. ‘What’s this? We’ve got meat to sup?’

  ‘I found a fresh-dead pheasant,’ Beth replied. ‘But it won’t be ready until tomorrow. I’m afraid it’s toasted bread and cheese tonight.’

  He grinned, and took off his old cloak to shake raindrops over the floor. At forty, he was still remarkably youthful, a giant of a man whose light-brown hair didn’t have a single strand of grey. His brown eyes twinkled as he drew a bottle of cheap brandy from his coat pocket and set it on the table. ‘This fell off a passing wagon, so we’ll live well for a few hours, eh, Bethie.’ He took two cups from the hooks above the stone sink. ‘The liquor will turn bread and cheese into a king’s banquet, and leave us with a nice glow, eh?’

  Rosalind pouted. ‘And what about me?’ she demanded.

  ‘No liquor for you, Rozzie, you’re too young.’

  ‘Not too young to work in a tavern!’ Belligerence entered her voice.

  Beth quickly diverted his attention. ‘I wonder if it’s quiet in town now? When I came back the militia dispersed a mob firing the bakery in Cathedral Lane.’

  ‘How come you saw something like that?’ The bottle paused over the second cup. ‘Your way home from Tremoille House doesn’t take you up into town.’

  She coloured with unnecessary guilt. ‘I – I was lucky enough to have a carriage stop for me.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, I’d fainted by the roadside, and—’

  He was appalled. ‘Fainted? Oh, Bethie!’

  ‘It was hot, I was hungry, and I ran to try to get to the woods for shelter from the storm.’

  ‘Who stopped?’

  ‘A gentlemen who’d bought a horse from my stepmother. His name is Sir Guy Valmer, and he’s lodging at the Crown. He didn’t know who I was.’

  Jake’s eyes darkened. ‘And what did he want for his charity?’

  ‘Nothing. Oh, no, Jake, don’t think that, because I can tell you here and now that I stank far too much for him.’

  ‘I know you wouldn’t lie to me about such things, Bethie,’ he conceded. ‘Forgive me, I still can’t quite believe I’ve got you.’ He pushed a cup toward her. ‘Here, take a draught of this, it’ll do you good.’

  Her guilty conscience increased, and she was quite relieved when he reverted to her earlier question. �
�As to the trouble in town, all I know is what I was told by a fellow I passed on the road. He said there’d been a curfew set after a riot over bread prices, and that I’d best get home as quickly as I could, or the militia would nab me.’ He sighed sadly. ‘I don’t know what the world’s coming to. Damned unjust, that’s what it is. Landlords and all the grand folks looking after their own interests as always, and leaving the rest of us poor sods to starve. They’ll rue it one day, Bethie, there’ll come a revolution in England like happened in France, unless they watch out in London. We peasants are good enough to fight for our country, but not good enough to get our fair share of the bounty.’ He took the bottle and sat in his chair. ‘I trudged to Whitton today for a couple of hours’ work. Damn me, it’s humiliating, Bethie. Standing around like a great girl, in case a mean-gizzard called Carter might need some help. Carter. Bloody ugly bugger he was, with an ugly disposition to match. I could have stuck his poker up his arse as soon as look at him.’ Jake ran his hand through his hair. ‘And all I could think of was how I’d like to buy a half-share of the village forge at Frampney. Twenty guineas are what I need, but I might as well whistle at the moon. Anyway, I’m this late because I went to Frampney to take a look. It belongs to a farrier named Matty Brown; his wife is called Phoebe. A straight couple, no nasty sides. I liked them both, and they liked me. They’re getting on now, and Matty needs someone younger for the harder work. It would suit me down to the ground, suit us all down to the ground.’ He drew a very long breath. ‘By all the saints, Bethie, getting into that forge would be a neat thing. A very neat thing. And Rozzie wouldn’t have to work at that damned tavern, or get groped about by that cock fool, Ned Barker.’