‘What do you mean?’ Caroline was startled by her emphasis on the last word.
‘You did not know?’ Mrs Norman’s face livened up a little at this chance to impart information. ‘A poor girl from the back slums by the Water Gate went out last night, to look for Dr Martin. Her child had the croup; she thought she could avoid the procession. She was unlucky.’ She fell silent, staring into the smouldering fire.
‘What happened?’ Caroline remembered the screams she had heard.
‘She was cutting through the back lanes; one of those beasts caught a glimpse of her. Then it was view halloo and tally ho. They chased her clear down the High Street, screaming, knocking on doors, asking people to open to her. She came here, thinking I might help, not knowing I always go to Mrs Bowles. When she found the house shut up, she ran off down the Green Lane to the river. Water Gate’s open, of course, Guy Fawkes night. She must have nearly got away; they spent some time here, as you can see, looking for her. But some of them caught her just the same. When they had finished with her, she jumped into the river. She’s dead, Mrs Tremadoc, drowned dead.’
‘No!’ She poured herself a glass of the sal volatile with a shaking hand.
‘It will be hushed up, of course,’ said Mrs Norman. ‘Given out as plain suicide. It’s happened before.’ She reached out a hand and took Caroline’s. ‘Don’t mind it too much, my dear, it’s the way things are here at Oldchurch, and at least it was the tag end of the procession. Mr Tremadoc could have done nothing about it.’
‘Thank you,’ Caroline said mechanically. So much for her hope that her husband’s presence in the procession might not be known. It reminded her of the purpose of her visit. More than ever, now, she felt the need to keep in touch with John Gerard, who seemed the only sane person in this town of madmen. ‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘About the library?’
‘There’s nothing I can do. It took all the little capital I inherited from my husband. It means the workhouse; I’d rather die.’
‘No!’ exclaimed Caroline. ‘I won’t have it. It’s their doing, those beasts last night. There’s nothing they can do for that poor girl, but at least they can make amends to you. I shall take up a subscription for you, if you will let me, from all the citizens of the town. After all, the library is a public service; everybody uses it. Will you allow me to do this for you?’
‘Oh, Mrs Tremadoc…But do you dare? Will your husband let you do it?’
‘I think he will be glad to let me. And I hope I can persuade him to send his man Jenkins to help you with the clearing up downstairs. I would urge you to go back to Mrs Bowles in the meanwhile, but I imagine you would prefer to stay here.’
‘Yes,’ said Mrs Norman. ‘There are men in this town who do not much like the library. They think their wives waste working time in reading. If they got the chance they might like to finish what was begun last night.’
‘And you’ll stay to stop them? You’re a brave woman, Mrs Norman.’
‘It’s my livelihood.’
Caroline went straight home and found Tremadoc still in bed. ‘I have been down to the town,’ she told him.
‘Oh have you?’ His pitiful attempt at a casual note told her that he knew what had happened the night before.
‘Yes. I went to the library — what’s left of it. Mrs Norman told me what happened last night. I suppose you heard all about it at your “select gathering”.’
‘We broke up early,’ he said. ‘A most unfortunate accident. I suppose the poor girl was frightened by the masks and slipped and fell in the river. She should have known better than to be out.’
‘You really believe it was an accident?’ But she could see that he was trying to. ‘We will have to discuss, when you are feeling better, just what you are going to say in church on Sunday, but for the moment I have two requests to make of you. I would like to send Jenkins down to set things to rights in Mrs Norman’s shop, and I intend to take up a subscription through the town to replace her stock of books.’
‘You intend?’ His head moved angrily against the pillow. ‘Without so much as consulting me!’
‘I am consulting you. And I think, if you pause to consider, you will see that it can do nothing but good. Word of what happened here last night is bound to get out. If you, as vicar of the parish, are seen to be taking the proper steps, it may lessen the talk. And I am sure if we take a lead, others will follow. You will want, I know, to find out what is happening to that poor girl’s child and make sure it is provided for.’
‘It’s a bastard,’ he said.
‘That hardly diminishes my sympathy for it. Will you make the enquiries about it, or shall I?’
‘Bowles said he would.’ Angrily. ‘You think you are the only one who can think of anything.’
‘That’s admirable. My plan is to go straight to Mrs Bowles and propose the subscription to her. Now I know she will help me.’
‘Women’s work.’ He turned away from her. ‘Gossip and chatter and reading trashy books. I’m exhausted. Let me rest!’
Mrs Bowles agreed enthusiastically to Caroline’s proposal. ‘My husband is a very unhappy man this morning, Mrs Tremadoc, and I have no doubt yours is too. Oh, they give it out that that poor girl slipped and fell, but you and I know better. Mr Bowles has already made arrangements for the child to be looked after, and I am positive he will agree to your plan. You intend to canvass for the subscriptions yourself?’
‘Yes, indeed. I thought, if you agree, that I might call at the houses in the square, and then if you and your friends were to share out the rest of the town between you? You know better than I who should do each district.’
‘I certainly should.’ Mrs Bowles, who had looked sick and wretched when Caroline arrived, was cheering up by the minute. ‘We will all be the better for something to do. I’ll put on my bonnet and call on Mrs Price and Mrs Trumpler right away. Leave all to me, my dear.’
‘I shall start work on my way home,’ said Caroline. ‘By the way, tell me about the strange man who lives next door to us. I am sure he must be able to afford a subscription with a big house like that and all those servants.’
‘If you dare call on him,’ said Mrs Bowles. ‘The old curmudgeon. He sent Mr Bowles away with a flea in his ear when he called, but maybe he will be less uncivil to a Duke’s daughter. If you think it proper? You do not think perhaps your husband?’ Her doubtful tone told Caroline that she too knew perfectly well that Tremadoc had joined in the procession the night before.
‘Mr Tremadoc is not well today,’ said Caroline. ‘I shall go myself. I look on it as my duty.’
‘I’m proud of you, my dear.’ Mrs Bowles surprised Caroline with a hearty kiss. ‘We all are. And glad to have you for our vicar’s wife. Blood will out, that’s what I said to Mrs Price and Mrs Trumpler just the other day and it’s true, my dear, and I hope the Duke is as proud of you as we are.’
Caroline smiled ruefully. ‘I am afraid he is still not best pleased about my marriage.’
‘Well,’ Mrs Bowles began. And then, ‘No, my dear, I can see you don’t want me to say it, but we all think you’re worth ten of him. A belted earl would not be good enough for you!’
‘I wonder why earls are belted,’ said Caroline and rose to take her leave.
She began her canvassing on her way home, starting anticlockwise around the square as the procession had done. All the ladies in the square had called on her when she first arrived, and all of them welcomed her eagerly. Most subscribed at once, but one or two said they must consult their husbands. None of them talked much about the events of the night before and Caroline thought sadly that all their husbands must have taken part. Were they secretly wondering whether their own men might have been concerned in the poor girl’s death? Thinking this, she realised what a debt of gratitude she owed to Mrs Norman for her assurance that it had been the hangers-on at the end of the procession who had been responsible.
Reaching John Gerard’s house at last, she pulled firmly at the ru
sty bell. The door was opened after some delay by a surprised-looking servant, whose jaw dropped when she stepped firmly inside and asked to see his master. ‘It’s about a subscription for Mrs Norman,’ she explained for the man’s benefit. All the servants of Oldchurch are cousins, she remembered.
The man returned almost at once, looking more surprised than ever. ‘The master asks if you will be so good as to join him in the library.’
It was a huge room, lined entirely with books. A man sat hunched up at a big desk with its back to the long windows. As he rose awkwardly to his feet she saw that one shoulder was higher than the other. He was older, too, than his voice had made him seem the night before, a tall man in an old-fashioned snuff-coloured suit and a full-bottomed wig. Dark eyes peered sharply at her from the forest of grizzled whiskers, but his voice was friendly as he greeted her. ‘Clever of you to think of the subscription for Mrs Norman,’ he said, when the door had closed softly behind his servant. ‘I am very glad indeed to have the chance of seeing you again so soon, and was at my wits’ end as to how to arrange it. I wish I could persuade you and your husband to move away from Oldchurch, Mrs Tremadoc.’
‘I only wish we could. But I am afraid there is no chance of it, at least for the moment.’ Sometimes, wildly building castles in the air, she dreamed of an instant, stunning success for The Downfall of Bonaparte that would make it possible for Tremadoc to quit the Church. But the poem would not even be published until the spring.
‘You do not think that if the Duchess were to speak to the Duke?’ he asked. And then, ‘Forgive me, but the talk has been wide enough.’
‘It has indeed,’ she said wryly. ‘I think when I arrived, the good ladies of Oldchurch expected a scarlet woman at the least of it.’
‘You lost no time in making a conquest of them. But it’s your husband I am anxious about. He is such a strange mixture, by what I hear. Not two ideas to rub together in conversation, and then those brilliant sermons, which cut quite close to the bone, here in Oldchurch. If you have any influence on him, Mrs Tremadoc, I think you should try to persuade him to tread a careful path for a while. Last night’s disaster is bound to be reported in the national press and it would be unfortunate if any trenchant comments of your husband’s should also receive general attention.’
‘I don’t understand.’ She had had another dream about writing Tremadoc a sermon so powerful that it would gain him promotion.
‘Of course you do not. That is precisely why I am delighted to have so early a chance to explain to you just how things stand here in Oldchurch. There is a very powerful gang indeed at work here and one against which it has been impossible to get evidence that would stand up in court. As you must have realised, they have a stranglehold on the town. Those who are not actually members have been frightened into cooperation. It is like the Hawkhurst gang, years ago, only worse, much worse. That was no accident last night. Someone persuaded that poor girl that she could get safely up to the doctor’s house. She must have known something that made her a danger to them. I wish to God I knew what. Let her fate be a warning to you. I do devoutly hope you got back into your house without Barrett’s being aware that you had been out.
‘Yes. He’s a member, of course.’
‘A powerful one. I have long suspected that there was a means of access by way of your cellars to the cliff, but last night was the first time I had seen it used. The man got clear away, I am afraid. I had hoped he might be stopped by the preventive cutter down at the harbour, but they were called away on a fool’s errand over to Hastings. It’s a formidable gang, I do beg you always to remember that.’
‘Horrible,’ she said. ‘Just for profit!’ She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. ‘I feel…dirty. I suppose everything one buys, here in Oldchurch, is run goods.’
‘I imagine so. Best not to think about it too much. The less you know, the safer you will be. I have wondered, a little, about those London servants of yours, the couple who have married without your husband’s knowledge.’
‘You are well informed, Mr Gerard.’
‘Forgive me! Don’t you see, this is just what I am trying to tell you. There are no secrets here in Oldchurch, except from you women and from your husband.’
‘And Dr Martin?’
‘Clever of you. I think he must have decided that the duty of healing comes first. He makes a policy of seeing nothing and saying nothing, and, so far, it has been respected. Lucky for him that poor girl did not get to him last night or he might have met with an “accident” too. And now’ — his voice was friendly and she suspected a smile behind the forest of beard — ‘I have seen your eyes wandering to my books. Having become publicly acquainted over the very generous subscription I am about to give you for Mrs Norman, you are going, are you not, to ask my permission to make use of my library? And, much to everyone’s surprise, I am going to give it. Why, I wonder? Have I, perhaps, fallen a little in love with you, in my dotage? I might well have, and, indeed, we might let out just a hint of that, but, in the main, if you will bear with me, I think I must be thought to be attempting to curry favour with your powerful papa.’
‘That will not make the world think you very well informed.’
‘Just so. I am a simple creature, remember, a nonentity who retired down here after a moderately successful career in the law, and a disastrous marriage.’
‘Then why would you want to curry favour with the Duke?’
‘Why indeed?’ Again the hint of a smile in his voice. ‘You’ll be an ally in a million, I can see. But, in fact, I have an answer to that one. It is for my nephew’s sake, a young lawyer, who hopes for preferment through the Duke’s good offices.’ He reached down to open a drawer of his desk. ‘And now for my lavish subscription. £20, I think. I shall look forward to your next visit, Mrs Tremadoc.’
‘Use the old lunatic’s library?’ Tremadoc had whistled at the size of Gerard’s contribution. ‘You used your charms to some purpose, I can see. Well, I see no harm in it. I can’t have you turning out any more disasters like last Sunday’s sermon. I had a call from old Bowles, by the way. He is pleased with your idea of the subscription for that Mrs Norman. I suppose I had better contribute something myself.’ He felt in his pocket and reluctantly produced a guinea.
‘I shall give something too.’ She had been forced, in the end, to tell him about the Duchess’ allowance, and was always afraid he would appropriate it. ‘Five guineas between us, perhaps?’
‘If you want to throw your money away! And that reminds me, it’s high time you wrote to your father again. So far as I can reckon, this living brings in little more than £600 a year. How is a man to live on that? No wonder if the county have not come calling, when they must know we cannot afford even to keep a carriage and return their calls. And no hope of a curate, either, though, thank God, we seem to brush along well enough without one.’
She smiled at him a little wryly. ‘Have you any suggestions for next Sunday’s sermon, my dear?’
‘Only that the less you hint about last night’s doings the better. Mr Bowles had a word to say about that, too. The girl was Chapel, luckily, and not even from this parish. They have sent her body — and her bastard — back where she came from, and that’s an end to that.’
Shockingly, it was. The events of that Guy Fawkes night were shrouded in a conspiracy of silence. If there was any mention of the girl’s death in the national press, Caroline never heard of it. The only visible result was the burnt Martello Tower, and the bright new shop the men of the town were decorating for Mrs Norman, which she was soon able to fill again with books from the generously subscribed collection. And for Caroline, her weekly visits to Mr Gerard’s library. To her relief, he had tactfully suggested a time when he would not be using it himself, so that she was free to pursue her researches alike for the poem and the sermons without his noticing what she was doing. When she was ready to leave, with a borrowed book under her arm, she would be summoned to the front parlour, where he awaited
her with madeira and biscuits.
The conversations that followed were as helpful for her sermon writing as the library itself. His was a strong and well-stocked mind and she soon recognised that he was as starved for conversation as she was herself. It seemed to her extraordinary that he should stay in this dead little town beside the marsh when the world was presumably his to choose from. He was a Whig, too, totally out of place in such a Tory stronghold, and it was an enormous comfort to her to be able to talk freely about politics and the progress of the war again, to question him about the newspapers she was now able to read in his library. Her only fear was that he might recognise his own influence on Tremadoc’s sermons, but this was unlikely as he only went to church very occasionally.
He appeared on Christmas Day, very upright in a front pew, and she was glad she had based the sermon on her memory of one that Mr Trentham had preached the last year she was in Wales. She had cried as she wrote it, and remembered him, and Giles, whom she had loved in her childish way. What had become of Giles, she wondered, and almost wrote to Sophie in the hopes of learning something. But it was all too far away, too long ago.
Chevenham House, too, was remote as a dream. She did not even know if the family had spent their Christmas there or at Cley. Mr Coutts had sent her a banker’s draft for £10, ‘With the compliments of the Duchess of Cley,’ but there had been no word from either the Duchess or her mother. The Duke’s ban on communication with her must still be in force, she thought, and tried not to hate him for it. Only Blakeney must have defied him. Her one Christmas parcel was a beautifully bound volume of Cowper’s Poems inscribed from her loving brother, Blakeney. Writing to thank him was the most difficult thing she did that winter and gave rise to a new batch of sonnets.
It was a rough winter on the windy marsh, with little fear of invasion and the Martello Tower still growing at its snail’s pace. The town walls, on the other hand, had been completely repaired and the gates strengthened, and sometimes, lying in bed and listening to the wind howling round the windows, Caroline was almost glad to remember that somewhere, down in the cellars where she had never been allowed to penetrate, there was an escape route to the world outside.
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 22