‘They wouldn’t care,’ said Caroline wearily.
‘The Duchess would. Right down fond of you, the Duchess is. Well, you was always a better daughter to her than those girls of hers. Who read aloud to her when her eyes were bad, that’s what I want to know?’
‘I enjoyed it,’ said Caroline with truth. ‘But, please, Tench, don’t go plaguing the Duchess with my troubles. I am afraid from what Mr Tremadoc tells me she has enough of her own.’
‘In debt again, is she? Poor lady, I never saw anyone so took advantage of!’
Dr Peabody called that afternoon, and was closeted with Tremadoc for some time in the small front parlour he used as his study. Emerging at last, he had Barrett show him into the garden room where Caroline was sitting, trying to work. ‘I’ve been trying to talk sense to that brilliant husband of yours, Mrs Tremadoc. Had you not noticed how he has been overworking himself?’ His tone made it a reproach.
‘I am afraid he overtired himself on his trip to London.’ She was sitting with the light on the good side of her face. ‘And of course his poem does present great problems, now that he has almost reached the present day.’
‘A grave responsibility,’ said the doctor. ‘Combined with the masterful sermons I hear about it is enough to burn any man to the socket. You must take better care of him, ma’am, a great deal better care. We cannot afford to lose our men of genius. He is talking wildly, I should tell you, quite wildly. I have prescribed a sedative, which I urge you to make him take.’
‘A sedative? Not, I hope, containing laudanum.’
‘Oh, very mild, very mild indeed.’ It was not quite an answer. ‘And I have urged him to let that pushing publisher of his go hang for his next canto. He must take a little holiday, ma’am, a little rest, a little relaxation. You will know best how to persuade him of this. I leave it all in your capable hands.’
‘Thank you,’ she said dully.
To her relief, Tremadoc seemed to have taken the doctor’s warnings very seriously indeed. In fact, she found herself wondering just what Peabody had said that left him looking almost frightened.
‘Absolute rest,’ he told her. ‘The doctor says I am to have absolute rest. He is shocked that things have come to such a pass with me. I said that you and Comfrey between you are pressing me too hard about my magnum opus. There is to be no work on it until Peabody has seen me again and given permission. I do not propose even to tell you which way my thoughts are turning. Oh — and another thing.’ Carelessly. ‘Peabody is anxious about my nightmares. My sleep is not to be disturbed. You will be so good as to remove your effects to the guest chamber until I am better. I hope you will not mind it too much. I am to keep my room for a week at least; no guests; no distractions. Oh, the pains and penalties of genius!’
Concealing her relief at this edict, Caroline tried in vain to persuade him that if he was to be nursed in his room she would need Tench to help her.
His banishment of Tench and Jenkins was irrevocable. ‘I’ll not have servants about me I cannot trust.’
Tench was in tears again when the couple left next day. ‘We are going straight to Chevenham House,’ she told Caroline. ‘In hopes of work there.’
‘I’ll give you a note for the Duchess, Tench, but, mind, you are to say nothing more than that Mr Tremadoc has overworked himself and is resting under the doctor’s orders.’
‘As if he ever did anything else,’ said Tench. ‘You take care of yourself, ma’am, my love, and look after that eye of yours.’
Caroline smiled ruefully. ‘No gadding for me for a while. You will not mention my accident at Chevenham House, Tench.’
The Hastings curate was to do Tremadoc’s Sunday duty so she could put away the sermon about steadfastness in face of danger that she had been trying to write, and let herself rest while Tremadoc did. He had given strict orders to Barrett that no guests whatever were to be admitted and at first this was a relief to her, since she did not wish to have to keep explaining about the ‘accident’ to her eye.
A week later, with the bruise almost gone, she decided that the time had come to face the world again. It was a bright October morning with dewdrops sparkling on cobwebs in the garden where she walked every day. But today, it would be good to get out of this house that now seemed to smell of sickness, and to tell Mrs Bowles about her anxiety for Tremadoc, who seemed to get worse instead of better. She put on her bonnet and warm pelisse and picked up a shopping basket. Perhaps some fresh fish from Oldchurch Bay would tempt Tremadoc’s dwindling appetite.
‘Ma’am?’ Barrett emerged from his cubbyhole by the front door and stood in her way. ‘The master said there was to be no going and coming.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ She looked at the little man in amazement.
‘No going out, he said.’ Barrett took a step forward as if to intercept her bodily.
‘I never heard such nonsense in my life. You have misinterpreted you orders, Barrett. Don’t let it happen again.’ For a moment their eyes met and locked, then he took a step backwards.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sure.’
It was the Duke’s daughter, she thought, before whom his eyes fell.
Outside in the street, she made herself walk slowly, taking deep breaths of crisp autumn air, angrily aware of an accelerated heartbeat. Absurd to have let the little man actually frighten her with his obstructiveness. Absurd? Looking back on the odd little scene, she felt an extra dimension to it. Was it her overheated imagination, or had the whole house been somehow listening, waiting for the outcome of the strange moment of conflict? If Barrett had actually obstructed her, would Japrisot have emerged from the kitchen? And taken her side? How very strange, how frightening to be thinking like this.
Mrs Bowles greeted her enthusiastically but, she thought, or was this her imagination at work again, with a touch of surprise. ‘I’m so very glad to see you feel able to leave your husband, my dear, and sorry to hear he is no better. What is the matter, do you think?’
‘Dr Peabody says it is overwork.’ She managed to keep her voice neutral.
‘That’s just what Bowles thinks. Too brilliant by a half, and doesn’t know his own strength. So you’ll just have to be wise for two, my dear. Now, have a glass of my elderberry wine and tell me what you think of the news.’
‘News?’ Caroline was glad to sip the sweet, strong wine. ‘Do you know, Mrs Bowles, I have hardly thought of it all week.’ She had missed her usual visit to John Gerard’s library, unwilling to let him see her bruised face.
‘Of course not,’ said Mrs Bowles approvingly. ‘And all the better for it. No use crying before the milk’s spilt. But I can tell you, Bowles has the darkest fears for our safety. He thinks Nelson a beaten man already and expects daily to have news of either a victory for Villeneuve, or, what might be even worse, a new mutiny in our fleet. It is no wonder your husband does not feel able to go on with that brave poem of his. I understand that he is resting absolutely?’
‘Oh, yes.’ Had Mr Bowles told his wife to ask the question? Why was her mind running away with her so today? She thought she would call at Gerard’s house on the way home and ask if she might borrow his most recent newspaper.
He welcomed her with obvious relief. ‘I was really beginning to think of taking Mahomet to the mountain and paying a call on you. Your husband is not well, I understand, and, if I may say so, you look fagged to death.’
‘I am a little tired. And, yes, my husband is not well. I must not stay more than a minute.’ She was oddly tempted to tell him about that curious little moment of confrontation with Barrett. Absurd. A wailing woman talking of imagined troubles. ‘But I long to hear what you think of Lord Nelson’s chances,’ she went on. ‘I have been calling on Mrs Bowles and her husband is very gloomy indeed. He seems to expect either defeat for Nelson’s fleet or mutiny.’
‘Does he so?’ He thought for a moment, then: ‘Mrs Tremadoc, I wish you would take your husband to London. To consult a doctor there, perhaps? To visit your family? En
tirely between ourselves, I do not place much confidence in Dr Peabody’s ministrations.’
‘No more do I.’ She was glad he had brought the matter up. ‘In fact, I have been wondering if the sedative he left for my husband has not actually been making him worse.’ Oddly enough, she had hardly formulated this thought even to herself before, but here it was, sharp and clear in her mind.
‘Have you indeed? Well, if I were you, I would most certainly wish to get another opinion. And in the meanwhile, I would almost be inclined to discontinue the draft. Dr Peabody is an elderly man. I would not wish to take medicines he prescribed.’
‘My husband would never agree.’
‘Need he know? How does he take the draft?’
‘With quassia bitters. You mean?’
‘I suggest a substitution. Excuse me a moment?’ He left the room and returned after a short interval with a medicine bottle that looked exactly like the one she had at home. ‘You will need to arrange an accident to the label,’ he told her. ‘But that should be easy enough. It is quite harmless, of course. A placebo, merely. But I wish you would persuade Mr Tremadoc that a trip to town would do him more good than anything.’
‘I’ll try.’
The ‘accident’ to the label, and substitution of the bottles was easy, but her suggestion of a trip to London met with a petulant negative.
‘You wish me to brand myself a public coward? To run away from the invasion coast in the hour of crisis? Never! And you’re not going, either! Your place is at my side, to nurse me back to health. Dr Peabody called while you were out on the gad in town. He was shocked not to find you at my side, and not best pleased with my condition. You are to double the dose of my medicine, if you please.’
She did so, breathing a sigh of relief for the successful substitution, and was delighted to see his condition begin a steady improvement as the second week of October dragged by and the town of Oldchurch bent before rumour and counter-rumour like a cornfield in an uncertain wind.
It was extraordinary, she thought, cutting across the graveyard on her way home from Mrs Norman’s library, that all the rumours in town seemed to be bad. It was not a question of defeat or victory, but of defeat or mutiny. If things were the same all over the country, England was in dire straits indeed, but the newspapers Gerard now sent in to her when he had finished with them did not suggest this. The King had gone to town for the first time since his return from taking the waters at Weymouth, held a council at the Queen’s House and prorogued Parliament, which hardly seemed the action of a monarch threatened with imminent invasion. And, besides, it seemed increasingly probable that much of Napoleon’s invasion army really had marched east from Boulogne in August to go into action against the new coalition of Austria and Russia, backed by British funds.
‘So how can they invade?’ Caroline asked Mrs Bowles. ‘Even if our fleet were out of action, they would need an overwhelming superiority of numbers in order to make a landing good in the face of our defences.’
‘So long as those were manned,’ said Mrs Bowles gloomily, pouring more elderberry wine. ‘It is not only in the fleet that there is talk of mutiny, my dear. But enough of that. How is your husband, love? Does his improvement continue? Mr Bowles was asking about him only this morning.’
‘He is much better, I am glad to say. The nightmares have almost ceased, and he is eating again. He even talks of attending the Oldchurch Club next week, though I hope I will be able to persuade him not to do so.’
‘The meeting before the Guy Fawkes Day procession is always a lively one,’ agreed Mrs Bowles. ‘Not perhaps the ideal function for a convalescent’s first appearance in society, though I know Mr Bowles is hoping your husband will be able to attend.’
Tremadoc insisted on going to the dinner, and in fact he was so much better since he had unknowingly stopped taking Dr Peabody’s medicine that she did not think the outing could do him much harm. Lying awake in the guest room at the front of the house, she heard him return very late indeed in company with Bowles who, by the sound of things, was having to support his staggering steps.
They paused under her window, and she heard Bowles speak, low and with emphasis. ‘Remember, not a word to anyone…and most particularly not to Mrs Tremadoc. It is to be complete surprise, mind you. A complete surprise.’
‘Surprise,’ Tremadoc giggled. ‘She’ll be surprised, I promise you. Never did value me as she should. I’ll surprise her, don’t you doubt it.’ His words were slurred, and she was relieved to hear the front door open below and know that Barrett had waited up for him. Presently, she heard Barrett help him laboriously upstairs and into bed and lay in her own, grateful to be spared the struggle of getting him undressed.
Guy Fawkes Day dawned with more than a hint of fog in the air and Caroline, leaning over the garden wall to probe the grey mystery that was usually her view of marsh and sea, hoped very much that the fog would hold and cast a damper on the procession. She shivered, chilled by the damp air and memories of last year and the girl who had plunged to her death in the river. Visiting Mrs Norman later in the morning, she found her making preparations almost as if for a siege.
‘I’m staying at home this year,’ she said. ‘My nephew’s coming to be with me. He’s my heir; lives in Hastings and thinks nothing of our Guy Fawkes doings.’
‘I’m glad.’ Caroline suppressed a pang of envy. It was odd how much she disliked the idea of spending Guy Fawkes night alone in the house with Barrett, the rest of the servants out of earshot in their wing beyond the green-baize door. Over their early dinner she tried in vain to persuade Tremadoc not to join the procession and recognised with a touch of self-scorn that she actually wanted him to stay at home for her own sake. But he was adamant, and, when she pressed him, angry.
‘This year I have a duty to go.’ He was important about it. ‘I must leave you.’ The clock in the hall struck the hour. ‘I’m to join Bowles and the others at half past.’ He left the table and a few minutes later she heard his voice raised in fury upstairs and hurried to see what was the matter. He was in the big bedroom, all the drawers of the tallboy pulled open. ‘My surplice!’ He turned on her in a fury of haste. ‘What has happened to my surplices?’
‘You intend to go in your vestments?’ She looked in amazement at the black clothes that lay ready on the bed. ‘But you’ll be known!’
‘I am to lead the procession! I remember how you grumbled last year that it was a pagan survival. Well! This time the Church Militant will be in the lead. I am to throw the figure of the Pope on the fire. I am to represent the Church Triumphant. And here I am likely to be late because you cannot even keep my linen in proper order!’
‘I suppose Jenkins…’ she began, aware of Barrett hovering behind her.
‘Of course! Fool of a man. Where would he have put them?’ He was pulling everything out of the drawers, throwing it on the floor in his feverish haste.
‘If I might be of assistance?’ Barrett glided past her and opened the hanging part of the closet, to reveal the surplices hanging there like ghosts in the fog-laden air. ‘Let me help you dress, sir? You will not wish to keep the procession waiting…’
‘No indeed! Thank you, Barrett. That will be all, Caroline.’
Thus dismissed, almost as if she were the servant, Caroline retreated to the garden room and was surprised to find Japrisot awaiting her there.
‘There is talk in the town, madame,’ said the Frenchman. ‘Talk of disaster to Milord Nelson. Wild talk. It will be a very bad night, I think. You should persuade Monsieur not to march with the procession.’
‘I only wish I could,’ she said wearily. ‘I’ve done my best…’
‘What the devil’s all this?’ Tremadoc must have finished his dressing at lightning speed. ‘Get back to your quarters at once, you rascal, and, you, Barrett, make sure that there’s no more tittle-tattle going and coming tonight.’
‘I’ll do that, sir.’ Barrett ushered Japrisot out of the room and returned a few minutes l
ater carrying the key to the servants’ wing.
‘That’s right!’ Tremadoc snatched it from him and pocketed it. ‘That takes care of them. Now you!’ He turned to Caroline as if she were an intruding stranger. ‘I want to see you safe in your room before I go.’
‘I wish you would reconsider,’ she said. ‘Japrisot says there are alarming rumours going about town. About a disaster to Lord Nelson.’
‘What did I tell you? But if he has been defeated, as I have no doubt he has, all the more reason for a show of patriotism here in Oldchurch.’ He pulled himself upright. ‘I go to do my duty. Out of my way, woman!’
Chapter Seventeen
The key had been removed from the lock of her bedroom door, and the bolt did not work. How long had this been the case? Absurd not to be sure, but she had never had cause to check on them before. Tonight, with the door to the servants’ wing locked and its key in Tremadoc’s pocket, she would have liked to be able to lock herself in.
Ridiculous, of course. Her imagination was overworking itself again. But she propped a chair against the door before she moved over to open the shutters a crack and peer out into the heavy darkness of the square. The fog had thickened again at dusk, and the lamp over the passage by the church showed only as a remote blur of light. No wonder neither Tremadoc nor Barrett had troubled about the fact that tonight she was sleeping at the front of the house. But it was odd, just the same. Frightening? As if what she saw no longer mattered? More than ever she wished that John Gerard had been at home when she called at his house on her way back from Mrs Norman’s, ostensibly to ask if there was any news of Nelson’s fleet.
But his man had told her that his master had received an urgent summons to town, and left at once. ‘He said he would be back tomorrow, ma’am. And to give you this, if you was to call.’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 25