by Mary Mackie
‘Three cheers for you,’ I replied, heartened to think that there was someone who actually dared stand up to the prince.
* * *
As haysel ended, when long hours in the fields were sapping my resources, I had word that the Prince of Wales was out inspecting our coverts with Mr Jackson, his head keeper. I set out to find him, thinking to explain to him that I was his most loyal subject, and that I would be the last person to wish harm to him or his in any way. If he cared to check, he would find that his spring water was now as sweet as he could wish and I would personally ensure that it stayed that way.
If I had been less tired I might have realised the futility of such a quest. I had been working in the sun all day; I felt out of sorts, irritable and uneasy, with a headache behind my eyes – I often had such symptoms at a certain time of the month. In that mood, it seemed to me that a confrontation was the only answer.
I found His Royal Highness strolling among hazel thickets, with Mr Jackson in his green velvet coat beside him, a following of equerries and underkeepers, and two or three dogs wagging around. As I sank into a curtsey I saw the prince’s scowl. He didn’t greet me, or smilingly chide me for being so formal, as once he might have done.
‘So, Jackson,’ he said loudly, ‘you’ll be sure to provide good sport for my birthday shoot this year. I’ve plans for the biggest battue ever seen in England. I’m inviting all the best Guns. I’ll expect a good bag. A thousand brace, eh? See if Orchards Farm can provide us with a thousand brace.’
‘Why…’ Mr Jackson slid a glance at me, seeing my horror. ‘I’ll do my best, sir.’
A thousand brace! If it was to be even half possible it would mean extra vigilance all summer, work and nuisance and headaches for me and my men, with the keepers constantly on watch to make sure we harmed not the smallest partridge or the weakest leveret. And after six months of that we would face the upheaval of the shoot itself, hundreds of beaters tramping over the land, noise, havoc, slaughter… all for the sake of a tally in a game book. The biggest battue ever seen. One thousand brace. An impossible order.
The prince was looking at me, his eyes narrowed and mean in his fleshy, bearded face. ‘You won’t have any objections to that, will you, Mrs Pooley?’
‘No, sir.’
‘No. I should hope not. This is my land, after all. Since you’ve prevented me from giving my guests the chance to shoot across the best coverts in Norfolk, I choose to do it on Orchards Farm instead. Good day to you.’
He strode past me, calling the dogs to follow.
‘The best coverts in Norfolk’? Blackthorn Wood, of course. Once out of favour, any calumny would be believed against me. Now the prince thought I had colluded with Pooley, solely to thwart his desire for Blackthorn Wood! I didn’t think I could bear any more.
* * *
Since it was midsummer the evenings remained light. It felt humid, too, as if a storm were threatening. The haying was done, the hands all having an evening’s rest, so the farm was quiet. But the house seemed airless, its silence confining as a prison. I was hot and restless, suffering from a headache, longing for someone to talk to.
Going down to the yards, where the hayricks smelled sweet in the warm evening, I encountered Plant heading home, and with him old Milky Mickleborough, who had once worked for my father as cowman. Now he was nearly blind, looked after by his unmarried daughter, who took in washing and sewing to support herself and her father.
The old man was always scavenging after bits and pieces, making and mending in order to earn a copper or two to fend off the threat of the workhouse. Plant had found him examining an old cart of ours which, after years of wear, was all but falling to pieces.
‘He want to know how much you want for it,’ my teamsman said. ‘That, and a few other odds and ends as we’ve got together. I was a-goin’ to ask Mr McDowall in the morning, but…’
I asked to see the ‘odds and ends’, which were mainly rubbish we would probably have thrown away. The cart might have been worth a pound or two, but seeing the old man’s rags and evident ill-health, I said he could take it.
‘I don’t want no charity, Miss Rose,’ Milky objected, peering at me closely in an effort to see my face.
‘It’s not charity,’ I said. ‘If you get that cart fixed I’ll expect you to run a few errands for me. Come back and see me when you’re ready to go to work.’
Satisfied with that, he went on his way. He took the cart with him, loaded with his other acquisitions, himself between the shafts like an old shambling rickshaw man. Plant walked beside him, while I stood at the gate and watched. Seeing the way the wheels wobbled out of true, I wondered if the cart would last as far as the village.
Their going made the place seem even quieter. And I was in need of company. Even Basil would be better than no one.
I found myself in the stables, stroking the horses, talking to them, even telling them some of my thoughts. ‘Why is Basil never here when I really need him?’
‘Miss?’
The small voice made me turn to see Jack Huggins peering out of the hayloft where he slept.
‘I thought you’d be out rabbiting,’ I said.
‘No, not tonight, miss.’ For once he didn’t cheekily deny any criminal intent. His small face looked intense, his eyes bright. ‘Maybe you ought to try the old cockler’s cottage.’
I frowned at him, my aching brain trying to make sense of what he had said. ‘What?’
‘Old Fenny’s place. Out near Onion Corner. Mr Pooley goes there sometimes.’
‘Does he? How do you…?’ I stopped myself. Who knew how Jack knew what he knew, except that he slipped about, here and there, watching and listening? It was an instinct with him, to know everything and to be ready for anything. ‘I thought Old Fenny Jakes was dead.’
‘So he is, miss. Took by pneumony, last winter. Nice old bloke, too.’ He swung down from the loft and dropped lightly to the ground. ‘Shall I harness the trap for you?’
He knew more than he was saying – more than I cared to ask. It would be undignified of me to question a stable boy about my own husband. But what was Basil doing at Fenny’s cottage? My mind couldn’t grapple with the problem. Best go there and find out for sure.
The decision to go to the cottage seemed to have been made for me.
As he handed me the reins, the boy said, ‘D’you want me to come with you, miss? It’s late. It’ll soon be dark.’
‘Not so dark that I can’t get there and back on my own.’ I didn’t want him along with his sharp eyes and ears. I had to travel this road alone, wherever it might lead.
The evening was glorious, a mackerel sky painted in shades of grey and blue, with the sun sinking in clear yellow light. Over the marshes, clusters of swifts whirled and screamed, after flies, and beyond them flocks of gulls wheeled in the evening light. A jay went hastening by, showing off its blue rump, and a family of tiny pheasant chicks scampered ahead of me, frantically searching for a gap in tall grasses while their mother cried out to them anxiously.
But behind me, in the south west, black clouds were rolling up. Distant thunder muttered along the horizon and the wind began to rise. I wished I had brought a shawl; the air had turned cold. My head was pounding spitefully, laying a cloud on my brain that made it difficult to think. Where was I going? Oh, yes…
A red squirrel darted from the centre of the lane, vanished into undergrowth and appeared again darting up a tree-trunk. The sky ahead was turning pink and gold, the sun a bright ball low down, hiding itself behind a tangle of trees. Behind me the storm clouds moved closer, blotting out the brightness.
With the scent of wild garlic strong in my nostrils, I left the trap at the entry to the lane. I couldn’t have said why, not for sure. But a part of me – the instinctive part that had sensed what the boy Jack hadn’t told me – said that I should go warily, keep watch, look sharp.
Beyond the cottage, a rough paddock had been fenced off among the trees, and in it grazed the grey
gelding hack that Basil often rode on local journeys. The horse looked at home there. It snorted softly and came over to stand by its fence as I approached.
A child’s crying came from the cottage, whose windows were open to the air. It looked tidier than when I had last seen it, when Basil brought me here to meet Old Fenny seven years ago. In that time the thatch had faded from gold to grey. The fence was mended, the path had been cleared, the old nets and lobster pots taken away, the garden weeded. Fresh brown paint gleamed on window-frames and door, and the windows shone, backed by lace curtains that billowed in the rising breeze.
I heard a woman’s voice, crooning a lullaby. The sound made me stop, listening to her song. I didn’t want to go on. I didn’t want to know.
But curiosity drew me, dreamlike, to the open door, where I saw the room beyond, the fire burning, the lamps already alight. Inside the cottage, twilight had come. The woman sat in Old Fenny’s rocking chair with the child against her shoulder. It looked to be about a year old. She had been feeding it; her bodice was still undone, exposing the pale roundness of a heavy, blue-veined breast. As I watched, she seemed to become aware of the cooling draught. She shivered and got up, starting towards the door.
The woman… I knew her now, knew her as she stopped dead, seeing me there, her mouth opening, her eyes staring. Ellen Earley. Ellen Earley, once our lady’s maid.
‘Miss Rose!’ She clutched the baby to her, grasping the edges of her bodice. Over the child’s small squirming body she gaped at me in fright. Her tongue came out to moisten her lips. She said, ‘What…?’ and then, frantically, ‘It wasn’t my fault. I swear it wasn’t. He made me. I was a good girl before I met him.’
My brain laboured, trying to make sense of what I had found. I suppose I knew what it was; I just couldn’t believe it all at once.
‘I told him he should have let me stay further away,’ she cried. ‘I knew you’d find out if I came to live so close. But he wouldn’t let me stay in Hunst’on, nor go to my folks in Lancashire. He wanted me near, where he could see me and the bairn.’ My silence seemed to frighten her more. She blurted, ‘Anyway, I’m not the only one. Not by a long chalk. Ask him. Ask him about that Mrs Longville. She calls herself Mrs Longville, but—’
‘Shut your row, Ellen!’
The snarl came from behind me. Basil stood there, trees tossing behind him against a sky gone ink-black shot through with swirling grey, as if the clouds were boiling. The gusting wind brought the sharp damp scent of rain, through which my husband’s face was set, with glinting eyes. He looked like a stranger.
‘Is this true?’ I said stupidly.
‘I told you should let me go home!’ Ellen cried.
Basil ignored her. He set down the creel of fish he was carrying and caught my arm. ‘This is no place for you. Come, I’ll take you back to the farm. There’s a storm brewing.’
‘I can drive myself,’ I said, and tried to shake free.
His hand tightened cruelly, his fingers biting into my arm. Eyes hard as sapphires, he said, ‘I’ll drive you.’
He was far stronger than I. Though not tall he was broad and muscular – and besides, he was my husband: I had vowed to obey him. And so, like one trapped in a nightmare without will of my own, I let him propel me back to the lane. Behind us Ellen wept, clutching her baby to her and shouting, ‘Pooley, no! Don’t! Pooley…’
‘What about your horse?’ I asked.
‘I’ll come back for it.’
My arm was starting to tingle, the blood flow restricted. ‘Basil, you’re hurting me!’
He only pushed the harder, herding me ahead of him down the lane while behind us Ellen Earley cried, ‘Don’t do it, Pooley! It’s not worth it.’
We had reached the trap. ‘Get in,’ my husband ordered. ‘I’ll take you home.’
‘I don’t need you to take me home,’ I retorted through gritted teeth, climbing up to the trap. ‘I don’t want you at Orchards any more. Stay here with them. This is where you prefer to be, isn’t it?’
I meant to drive off and leave him, but as I reached to untie the reins Basil leapt up beside me. His body thrust at mine, sending me sprawling as he forced himself into the seat.
Face grim, he gathered the reins, letting off the brake. He lashed at the pony, startling it. ‘Go on. Go on!! Giddup!’
The jerk of the trap over-balanced me further and I found myself clinging on desperately, trying to regain the seat while the vehicle bucked and swayed beneath me.
Storm clouds had brought an angry purple twilight full of gusting wind, flying leaves and heavy spots of rain. As we left the wood a small branch fell across the track behind us. The trap lurched round the corner, into the wider lane. All the time Basil urged the horse faster, using the long end of the reins as a lash. Beside me, the drainage ditch glinted in the livid light from the sky. Thunder ran muttering along the horizon.
Still holding on for dear life, at an ungainly angle in the corner of the seat, I looked at the man beside me. This man with whom I had lived for four years. This stranger. I kept seeing the cottage, and Ellen so peaceful with her baby. The baby – that was why she had left the farm. Mrs Benstead had been right to guess at ‘a man in the case’. The man in this case had been my own husband.
Had I ever known him at all? His face was contorted, dark with blood, eyes glinting cold as lightning flared, teeth bared in a rictus of fury as he whipped at the horse, shouting at it to ‘Giddup! Faster! Go on, giddup!’
Up ahead, the ditch met a deeper dyke that ran at right-angles to it, so that the lane took a sharp right-hand bend. Basil knew that as well as I, yet he didn’t attempt to slow down.
Among the confusion of doubt, anger and unease that filled me, fear raised a tendril that grew swiftly, blotting out all else. ‘What are you doing?’ I managed. ‘Are you trying to kill us both? Basil…’
He was driving too fast. Much too fast. The reins slapped, the trap jumped and jolted. Lightning seared the sky, terrifying the pony. The sharp right-hand bend lay not far ahead. The strong onion scent of wild garlic filled my nostrils.
‘Slow down!’ I begged, grasping my husband’s arm. ‘Slow down!’
He shook me off, so violently that his flailing hand cracked numbingly across my nose. The blow sent me back into the corner, sideways across the hard leather cushions, my hands grasping for a hold. Pain blinded me momentarily.
We were at the corner.
At the last minute, he dragged the pony to the right. The trap lurched like a live thing, trying to toss me out. A cry snatched from me, shredding in the wind. But my hands held firm. The trap settled back to a level. I found myself kneeling on the footboard, clinging to the back and side of the seat. We were past the corner, charging on down the twisting lane.
‘Basil!’ I gasped. ‘Stop! Don’t do this. Let’s talk about it. Please stop and let’s talk about it.’
He only whipped the pony harder. Flecks of her sweat flew back like spume. The storm was coming nearer, thunder crashing and then rolling, like a drum thrown to bounce down stairs. Out of the purple twilight a flight of duck came low, wings whirring as they called their alarm. I wished I could fly.
‘Basil!’ I clutched at his arm, fastening my hand in his sleeve. ‘You’ll kill us both! Is that what you want?’
He flashed me a look like demons, his eyes seeming luminous in a face that was near black in that strange light, running with sweat. ‘I shall jump free. You’re the one who will drown.’
Drown?
The bridge. The little narrow wooden bridge over the little narrow Babingley river. The river was in flood after spring rains, running full and deep.
I lunged for the reins, thinking to halt the pony. Basil fended me off. In desperation I threw myself at him, grasping for the reins. We struggled fiercely. Close as lovers. Deadly as enemies. I clawed for his face. I remember his breath on my cheek, the feel of his clothing, the odour of his skin.
The rest is only impressions. The bridge racing closer
. The river, glinting dark. Bushes tangled thickly along the banks. Out of these bushes, something white, startling in the darkness. Huge wings flapping. A swan! The pony screaming, hooves pawing the air. The trap, slewing round, bucking under me. Tossing me free. The sky revolving around me. The swan flapping away. Thunder cracking. Wood splintering. Basil’s cry.
And then nothing.
Nothing.
Part Four
Hester’s Girl
One
Voices came as if through water, blurred and distant. Faces swam through mists. In my half-conscious moments the voices spoke to me and I answered. Then the mists claimed me again.
When I woke it was evening. I knew that from the angle of the light. My head ached. I felt weak and thirsty. But at least the woolly feeling had left me.
A woman stood by the window, staring out over the garden and the woods, watching colours change in the sunset sky that framed her.
Moistening parched lips, I managed, ‘Please… a drink?’
With a little gasp the woman turned and came hurrying to me. It was Felicity, her face radiant with relief, though behind it I could see the strain she had been enduring. ‘Rose! You’re awake! Oh, my dear… Yes, a drink. Some cordial. I’ll water it down a little.’
Only when I tried to sit up did I realise just how weak I was. My muscles wouldn’t work. Felicity had to sit beside me and support my head while she helped me sip the cordial. Blackberry cordial, from brambles in Poacher’s Wood.
‘Have I been ill?’ I asked.
She made me comfortable against the pillows and sat beside me, holding my hand. ‘Yes, my dear.’
‘How long?’
‘Five days now. You’ve had concussion. A nasty blow on the head, and a little fever. I can’t tell you how glad I am to have you back in your right mind. I must go and tell the others.’
