Maulever Hall Page 2

  “But you had a passenger for the crossroads,” the stranger insisted. “A young lady.”

  “Young lady? Not me.” Once committed to his lie, the coachman saw no alternative but to stick to it. “George,” he appealed to the guard, who had, of course, overheard the entire conversation, “have we had a young lady aboard since Exton?”

  “Not us,” said George. “I only wish we had. I ain’t taken but sixpence in tips the livelong day. And now, if you please, sir, we’re three hours late already.”

  And at the same moment a vast woman in a red satin dress leaned out of the window. “What on earth is the matter now?” she asked. “Haven’t we been delayed enough already that you must be chattering here with your friends instead of trying to get us to Plymouth before it is quite dark?”

  “No friend of mine, ma’am,” said the coachman quickly. “It’s a gentleman as wants to know if we set anyone down at Pennington Cross. Course I told him it was against the company rules.”

  “Of course you did,” said the woman in red. And then, to the stranger: “You can take it from me, sir, we ain’t set no one down since Exton. You must a’ followed the wrong coach.” And then, as the stranger reluctantly gave way for the coach to proceed: “And about time too.” She closed the window and turned to address her fellow passengers. “Poor young thing. No wonder she looked so terrified with a blackguard like that after her.”

  The road Marianne had chosen ran steeply upward, and she was soon breathless with the climb, and the weight of little Thomas in her arms. But at all costs she must be out of sight before her pursuer (if he was indeed following her) should return to the crossroads. There must be no stopping for breath till she was safe round the bend in the road that seemed, maddeningly, always a little farther off. At last she reached it, almost sobbing for breath, and saw, before her, just such another prospect as she was leaving: rolling moor, the road winding around the side of yet another hill, a few sheep peacefully grazing. Of human habitation there was no sign; no smoke rose from beyond the farther hill; and, ahead of her, a black cloud cast a deeper shadow on the hills. A storm of rain was blowing up the valley; the air was getting colder; soon night would fall. The child shivered in her arms. However exhausted, she must not linger here. A backward glance, however, was reassuring. At least she was out of sight of the crossroads now. If the unknown rider did come back there, he would have no way of knowing which road she had taken. Or would he? An extra chill ran through her as she realized that, unlike her, he might know where she was going.

  But that was part of the terror of forgetfulness which she had already decided must be put resolutely behind her. There would be time, later, for terror; for the moment she must concentrate on finding food and shelter for the night, for herself and for little Thomas, who weighed so heavy on her arm. No use tormenting herself with questions. She had got her breath back now, and a few first drops of rain spattered against her face. She shifted Thomas into a more comfortable position in her arms and started doggedly forward. Her head was still aching; her knees were stiff from climbing and felt disconcertingly shaky now that the road ran downhill for a little way. She wondered how long she would be able to keep on walking ... But that was no way to be thinking either. She told herself that the next hill she climbed must bring a view of human dwellings. After all, there were sheep ... there must, somewhere, be a shepherd. A sheepbell tinkling somewhere above her told her how delusive this thinking was. On these lonely heights, the flock might roam for miles untended. But some other sense kept encouraging her that she was, indeed, nearing a village. The road was no wider, but there was a little grassy path beside it now; not just a sheep track, she told herself, but a path made by human feet. Odd, she thought, how she kept discovering things about herself. She was, she was sure now, country bred. She knew about paths, and the tracks that sheep make through the gorse, and the feeling a village gives to the countryside, even when it is out of sight.

  Or was she merely deluding herself with false hopes? The road had begun to climb again and the stiffness in her legs was an agony. She put Thomas down and tried to persuade him to walk a little himself, but his progress was so slow, and the now driving rain so harsh against her face, that she soon picked him up again and forced herself onward. She was at the top of the hill at last, following the road as it curved around its brow but still unable to see what lay ahead, except that the sky was black with more rain to come, and the light almost gone from the horizon.

  Soon it would be dark. Where, among this wilderness of gorse and heather, could she and little Thomas pass the night? He was very tired now, drooping, half asleep in her arms, and once again she found herself on the fringe of terror, wondering how far they had come today, and from where. The coach that had had the accident had apparently only started from Exton, but she had learned from the conversation of her fellow passengers that it connected there with the night mail down from London. None of them, it seemed, had come on the mail, so there was no way of telling whether she and Thomas had done so. If they had, in fact, been traveling all night, it would account for little Thomas’s exhaustion—and her own. It would also mean that they were, in all probability, total strangers in this district. And yet, surely she must have been coming somewhere? Or could she just have been fleeing blindly from the terror that those galloping hoofs had represented? It was a chilling thought that she might merely have picked Pennington Cross as a spot remote enough for safety.

  She stopped in her tracks. The road had turned decidedly downward and, now, below her lay a tiny village, snug in a corner of the hills. She could see a handful of cottages, a surprisingly large and impressive church with a square, Gothic tower and, beside it, one larger house that must be the vicarage. At least, she thought, hurrying a little as she started down the steep incline of the hill, the smallness of the village narrowed her field of choice. Her fellow passengers had unanimously voted her a young lady, and she agreed with them. However strange her plight, she was not, she told herself, one of the screamers and yielders. “There’s nothing like blood,” someone had said. Of course, it was the great Duke, Wellington himself. Oh, it was infuriating. Why did she know about the Duke of Wellington, and nothing of herself? But the line of thought, combined with the prospect of food and shelter ahead, was oddly comforting. Surely, the more she remembered, the better. Very well then—she shifted the now sleeping Thomas on to the other shoulder. Wellington ... Waterloo, of course, but that was a long time ago. More recently, almost the other day, surely, he had been First Minister. Now he was in opposition and Lord Grey was trying to force through the Reform Bill which many people thought would bring chaos and anarchy to the country. Many people ... but who? Fragments of conversation teased at the fringes of her mind: someone talking about mob-ocracy ... and another voice: “Ruin of the countryside, my dear.” The first a man’s, the second, indubitably, a woman’s. But who? Where? She was back where she started from: Who am I?

  Best not think of it. Instinct agreed with the man in the coach who had warned her not to try to force her memory ... They had been kind, the people in the coach, the only friends she had. It was a chilly thought and brought her suddenly to a question that, among her many terrors, she had not asked herself before. How about money? She shifted Thomas to her left shoulder and put her hand into the deep pocket of her dress where, she seemed to know, her purse should be. She pulled out a handkerchief, a child’s much bitten toy dog— and nothing else. It was, for a moment, too much. She put Thomas down and felt wildly at her waist, the other side of her skirt ... nothing. It was impossible. She could not have come so far without money. Even if, by some unlucky chance, she had spent it all, she would still have the purse. Or could it be in the box that was to be put down for her at the Three Feathers? Of course not. The idea was ridiculous. She must have had it on her for her traveling expenses. Indeed, she had been sure there was a purse in her pocket. This was one of the memories, like that of the Duke of Wellington, that came through the curtain of for
getfulness. Or was it? Had she been deluded by the feeling of the child’s toy against her thigh? No, even in the panic of this discovery, she found herself still reasoning. She had known herself, now, only for a couple of hours or so, but she did not think herself a fool. Whatever this wild journey of hers might mean, she would not have come on it without money and a purse. There was only one answer. One of the fellow passengers she had just now been thinking of as her only friends must have stolen it while she was unconscious.

  The conclusion was ugly and irresistible, and she found herself wondering which one of them had seemed most eager for her to leave the coach at Pennington Cross. But what was the use of that? They were very likely in Plymouth by now, as safe from her pursuit as if they were in the moon. The question was, what to do now? And the answer was obvious. There was nothing to do but go on to the village and pray God she found friends when she got there.

  The first glimpse from the top of the hill had been deceptive, and it was another hour of dogged plodding, one foot determinedly in front of the other, and no strength left over for either fear or hope, before she found herself among the first straggle of cottages. There were lights flickering in windows here and there, and no sign of life stirred in the street. People in country places, she knew, ended their day with the coming of darkness. In a way it was a relief to be spared the curious glances she knew her appearance must draw. She had not thought about it before, but with the prospect of encountering other people at last, she warned herself that everything would be against her. She had no idea—how strange it was—what she looked like normally, but now, she knew well enough, that mad flight through the gorse had left its marks all over her. Her cheek, she could feel, was scratched, and her hair disheveled. Her bonnet must have suffered from the prickly gorse before it was sodden to her head by the driving rain. For by now she was soaked to the skin, and grateful to the darkness for hiding the way her heavy worsted dress clung to her figure. Another, random memory mocked her: Lady Caroline Lamb used to damp her muslins to make them cling more closely to her figure. Lady Caroline Lamb was dead ... She shivered convulsively. What was the use of memories like that?

  The church was dark, but a welcome light shone in the windows of the house she had decided was the vicarage. As she drew nearer, she saw that a carriage stood at the double gate that served both vicarage and churchyard. A wild unreasonable hope surged up in her. Perhaps it belonged to her friends. But why should they be waiting for her here? At any rate, she now saw that it was empty, its only guardian a small boy, doubtless bribed by the coachman to mind the horses while he retreated to the comfort of the vicarage kitchen. Automatically, she gave the horses a quick, professional glance. She knew about horses, and these were good ones.

  She turned in at the vicarage gate, fought down a craven tendency to linger on the flagged path, found a door knocker in the half darkness and heat a rather timid tattoo on the door. Nothing happened. The wind blew keenly round the corner of the vicarage. It was even colder standing than it had been walking. Thomas stirred and whimpered in her arms. Time passed ... Her knock had not been heard. It did not seem as if anyone was expected here ... She knocked again, so much louder as to disconcert herself, and, this time, heard movement within. A shuffling footstep approached, and the heavy door swung slowly open to reveal an elderly maid of all work in a striped blue dimity dress with white cap and apron. The candle she held flickered in the draft from the door, throwing odd shadows about a gloomy looking hall.

  “Yes?” The woman stood uncompromisingly in her way.

  “May I come in?” Marianne shivered in spite of herself. “I have business with your master.”

  “Business? With Mr. Emsworth? At this hour of the night?” Each staccato question sounded more suspicious than the last.

  “Yes.” Marianne moved firmly forward into the comparative warmth of the hall, and the servant gave way before her for a moment, then stiffened as she got her first full glimpse of Marianne’s appearance. From her reaction, Marianne knew that it was quite as bad as she had feared. “Best shut the door,” she said with a calm she was very far from feeling, “the wind is cold tonight.”

  The woman looked more suspicious than ever, but complied, bristling and muttering something about “folks who shoved their way in unasked.” Then, in a louder tone: “But you can’t see the master. Mrs. Mauleverer is with him, and we never disturb him then.”

  Marianne recognized finality in her tone. “Very well. Is there a fire I can wait by? The child is chilled to the bone.”

  “Only in the dining room.” With wry amusement, Marianne realized that the woman was deep in anxious consideration about the flat silver and the candlesticks. “I don’t know what to do for the best,” she said at last.

  “Best call your master,” said Marianne mildly. “He will not want anyone left to shiver on a night like this. Particularly not a child.”

  The woman was still hesitating when a bell sounded from behind a closed door at the other end of the hall. She gave a sigh of relief. “There, he’s ringing now,” she said, “for coals, most like. I’ll tell him you’re here, miss. What name shall I say?”

  Idiotic not to have been prepared for this. For a long moment, Marianne hesitated, while the woman looked at her more suspiciously than ever. Fatal to delay so. “Miss ... Miss Lamb,” she said at last, inspired by a memory of Caroline Lamb and her damp muslins.

  “Miss Lamb, is it?” With abrupt discourtesy, the woman turned and walked away down the hall, the candle she carried flickering as she went. By its diminishing light, Marianne looked around her for somewhere to put down Thomas, now fast asleep and heavy as lead in her tired arms. But the room was little more than a passageway, its only furnishings a vast umbrella stand and a high chest with a tarnished silver card rack on top. Prints hung on the walls, their subjects indistinguishable in the half-light that now filtered out of the door the servant had opened. Marianne could hear the murmur of voices, and wondered how she was being described. Then a man’s voice came, louder and, she thought, impatient. “Oh, very well, I’ll see her. You will excuse me for a moment, Mrs. Mauleverer? Bring the light, Rose.”

  So she was to be interviewed here in the hall like the merest vagrant. Well, she told herself, that was what she was. She took a firmer grip on Thomas and watched the tall figure approach, dark against the lamp that the servant now carried. He stood for a moment looking her up and down while the maid put her light down on the chest, bobbed a curtsy, and vanished through a green baize door at the other end of the hall. Silence dragged out while Marianne returned Mr. Emsworth’s gaze steadily. It was not, she thought, now that she could see it, an encouraging face to which to pour out so strange a story as hers. He might be the most benevolent of clergymen, but he certainly did not look it. Scanty hair receded from a low, mean forehead, and a thin mouth made too straight a line across a pale unhealthy looking face. He had been looking her up and down for as long as she could bear. If he did not speak soon, she would have to.

  But now, having finished his leisurely survey of her bedraggled appearance, he spoke in a singsong, almost whining voice that suggested half-comprehended responses in church: “You wished to see me, Miss Lamb?” He must, after that long, cold-blooded scrutiny, have been aware of her drenched condition, and of the weight of the child she carried, but made no move to usher her into another room where she could sit down and warm herself.

  “Yes. You are the clergyman of this parish?” Absurd question, his exquisitely neat clerical black answered it for her.

  “Yes.” A little impatiently now.

  “I am come to beg your help.” A frown creased his pallid brow and she hurried on. “I have missed the friends who were to meet me, and find myself, by some misfortune, penniless.” His frown was blacker than ever. “I am come, in my trouble, to beg, of your charity, a night’s shelter for myself and the child.”

  She was angry with herself as she spoke. This was not the way to do it, she knew, but she was too tired t
o do better.

  “A night’s shelter!” He sounded as scandalized as if she had uttered a blasphemy. “In my vicarage? My good young woman, I hope I know the world better than that, if you do not. But tell me who are your friends and I will do my best to have them sent for to fetch you. This has been an ill-managed business on someone’s part.”

  “But that is the heart of my trouble.” She was in for it now. “I ... I have lost my memory. I do not know who I was coming to see.” And she poured out her whole story, doing her best to ignore his increasingly scandalized expression and only leaving out the nameless terror that had sent her panicking into the gorse. It sounded, even to her own ears, a fantastic tale, and when she finally limped to a close with “and so if you and your wife would only have the goodness to give me shelter for tonight,” she could read his answer in his eyes.

  “A likely tale of a cock and a bull,” he said. “You bring my wife finely in at the last of it, miss, as if you did not know well that she has been dead this twelvemonth and more, God rest her blessed soul. What is your plan, hey? To foist your bastard off on me in the morning, or merely to let in your knavish friends tonight, and murder us all in our beds?” He moved around her as if to open the front door. “The workhouse is the place for sturdy beggars, Miss Lamb.” His face made the name a mockery. “But you had best make haste or you will find the gates closed.”

  Anger had driven out fatigue and fear. She moved between him and the door. “You are right,” she said. “Anything would be better than to accept charity from someone capable of so insulting a helpless petitioner. Where is this workhouse, sir, and I will trouble you no further?”