‘Purchas. This is my little Jennifer who has been watching by your bed. And Charles Mattingley is back and asks if he may see you for a moment.’
‘Here?’ She was surprised to feel herself blush.
‘He says he must return to Oldchurch at once. Things are all at sixes and sevens there. He thought there might be something you needed.’
‘I’d like to see him. To thank him. He saved my life, I think. And, besides…’ There was something else; something terrible she had to face. ‘I need to know what happened…I can’t remember …’
‘Yes.’ A shadow crossed the tell-tale face. ‘Jennifer, fetch Cousin Caroline Mamma’s best dressing gown, the one with the swansdown trimming. And my brush and comb. If you won’t mind me making you a little tidy, my dear? I’m afraid…Your poor hands. But I think you should see Charles Mattingley.’
‘Please.’ The shadow still loomed at the back of her mind. ‘Was it last night?’ she asked.
‘No, the night before. You slept all day yesterday. There’s glorious news, my dear, a great victory for our fleet.’ But her hand flickered to the knot of black ribbon pinned at her breast.
‘A victory? But you’re in mourning?’
‘Nelson’s killed,’ said Mrs Purchas. ‘The whole country is in mourning.’
Caroline’s bandaged hands shook so much that she was glad to let Mrs Purchas comb out the tangles in her hair and adjust the swansdown-trimmed gown round her shoulders.
‘There,’ she said at last. ‘You’ll do, child. I’ll send Mr Mattingley in, and Jennifer shall stay with you for company.’
‘Thank you.’ Quick tears sprang to her eyes at this instinctive kindness. ‘I’d like that.’
‘Nelson’s dead.’ She had seen the black band on Mattingley’s sleeve. ‘And I owe you my life. I do thank you.’ She held out her hand to him and he surprised her by kissing it, gently, through the bandages.
‘Your poor little hands,’ he said. And then, ‘Yes, a glorious death, at the moment of victory. Just what he would have wished. But it was the news of that victory that set things aflame at Oldchurch. Word came up the Channel in a fishing smack. Bowles and his gang suppressed it, set it about that Nelson was beaten. It was their last chance, and they knew it.’
‘Chance?’ she asked. ‘Gang? The smugglers, you mean?’
‘Worse,’ he said. ‘Much worse. Traitors. They had committed themselves so far to Bonaparte that there was no turning back for them. Had you not wondered why the walls were strengthened but the Martello Tower neglected? Oldchurch was to have been the rallying point for the French army of invasion, the base for its march on London. When they heard of the French fleet’s defeat, the conspirators decided to seize the town, hold it, and hope for a rescue from France. I doubt it would have come, but it would have been a terrible blow to British morale, and a bad time for the women and children of Oldchurch.’
‘That’s why Mr Bowles bought the carriage,’ Caroline said. ‘He meant to send Mrs Bowles away.’
‘Very likely, but it all happened too fast. Too fast for him, too fast for us. The news only came on the evening of Guy Fawkes Day. And the traitors had it first. It was all improvisation…panic. On our part too, I am afraid.’ He was leading up to something.
‘My husband,’ she said. ‘What happened to him?’
‘I am so very sorry.’ He put a hand on her bandaged one. ‘He is dead. The soldiers arrived just too late to save him. I am so sorry, Caroline.’
The memory she had been fighting had leapt on her, whole and horrible. ‘I knew it. It was him I heard…that scream…that…’
‘Don’t…Try not to think of it. He had been happy; think about that. They let him lead the procession, make the speech. I had a man there, he could do nothing, but he told me your husband had no inkling of danger, not until the very last moment, when he was to throw the effigy of the Pope on the fire, and they surrounded him. Then he knew…then he screamed…He was excited, my man said, enjoying himself. Until then…You must think of it as a hero’s death, a martyr’s. He died because of his fame, because of his poetry…They could not afford to let him live, a witness against them.’
‘I killed him,’ she said dully.
‘Nonsense. You must not think like that. You had saved his life once already, as a matter of fact. That sedative draft old Peabody gave him was poison, you know. I think they must have let out too much of their plans at one of those drunken gangsters’ dinners of theirs…They tried to frighten him into secrecy, then decided he was not to be trusted. I think so long as he was in Oldchurch, aware of them all around him, he kept mum enough, but when he went to London he felt safer.’
How much he knew. ‘At the club,’ she said. ‘I remember Mrs Bowles saying something…Oh, poor Mrs Bowles, what has happened to her?’
‘Oldchurch is a sad town this morning. I’m not sure which I pity more, women like Mrs Bowles, whose husbands were killed, clean and quick in the fighting, or those whose men survive to stand trial for treason.’
‘Can I go back there? Perhaps I could help…’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s like you to want to, but you’ve done enough. You’re to stay here, to rest and recover with these kind cousins of yours.’
‘I wish you would explain about them,’ she said. ‘Mrs Purchas talks in riddles.’ She looked quickly at Jennifer, but the child had lost interest in the conversation and drifted away to gaze out of the window.
Mattingley laughed, and she thought it a marvellously reassuring sound. ‘I expect she finds it awkward enough in all conscience,’ he said. ‘She was a Miss Gurning, you know, one of the Quaker banking family. Dick Purchas married her as his second wife…Oh, twenty years ago, something like that, but they have lived very retired down here. I don’t suppose she has ever got used — as you and I have — to the wicked ways of the ton.’
‘I’ve not had much choice, have I?’ said Caroline bleakly. ‘You’re telling me, Mr Mattingley, that I am related to Mr Purchas through my mother?’
‘She is his niece, his sister Julia’s child. She was a wild one, Julia Purchas. I remember the stories from when I was a boy. She fell in love with an American cousin, also called Purchas, though I think he spelled it differently, who rescued her from the mob during the Gordon Riots. Her family had him thrown into the Tower, tried to make him marry her, but he was married already. A romantic tale…’
‘And she was my grandmother?’
‘Well, yes. A very great beauty.’ His tone was apologetic.
‘And my grandfather?’
If he had looked unhappy before, he looked wretched now. ‘Are you sure you really want to know?’
‘Yes. I have wanted to all my life.’
‘I can understand that. Well, your grandfather…It turned out that Julia Purchas had had an affair when she was very young, with another American, a connection of the American Purchases, Francis Mayfield. She hoped to marry him. I’m afraid he behaved very badly.’
‘Frances,’ she said. ‘My mother.’
‘Poor child. She had a sad enough time of it, by all one hears. Born and brought up in secret, any old how, then planted in her uncle’s household just when he was marrying his American love. No wonder if she has not always kept the line. It’s an old, sad story, and Purchas asks me to tell you that he would as soon forget it, and your grandmother, who died abroad, many years ago. You are to forget the past and be his cherished cousin, if you will.’
‘I can hardly forget my mother.’ Caroline glanced at the child by the window and thought sadly that she must not stay long in this kind household. There was so much to be faced, so horribly much. ‘And poor Geraint.’ How seldom she had called him that. ‘Your man is sure he did not know what was happening until the last moment?’
‘Quite sure. He was enjoying himself, leading the procession. Happy. Hold on to that. In fact,’ he hesitated. Then, ‘I think I will tell you. My man thought Mr Tremadoc had been given something…a sedative perhaps? His speech hardly made sense.
Just a lot of rambling exclamations. A sad end for that remarkable man.’
Oh, poor Geraint, she thought. His last speech, and he had nothing to say because I was not there to write it for him. She would write a canto of The Downfall of Bonaparte. About Nelson’s death. It would serve instead of the last speech he could not make. Death and victory. She would have to pretend it had been written before, of course. There was going to be a great deal of pretending…A tear gathered in each eye.
‘Ah, poor Geraint,’ she said. ‘I am afraid I did him nothing but harm.’
‘You made a man of him. I’d never have believed the man I knew in town could write that powerful poetry, those remarkable sermons.’
‘You heard him preach? Mr Mattingley, I understand nothing. I thought you were on a mission to St. Petersburg.’
‘So did the world, as it was meant to.’ He laughed. ‘You can have no idea of how I sweated over my letters home. If you had been in town, you would have heard how the Duchess complained of my long silences and unsatisfactory dabs when they came.’ A hint of colour along his cheekbones told her that this was an uncomfortable subject for him. And no wonder.
‘She does not know?’
‘Indeed not. You know as well as I do that what Chevenham House knows today, the world knows tomorrow. Of course, it will all come out now, and my usefulness is ended. But I’ll never regret having exposed that nest of perverted traitors in Oldchurch.’
‘Perverted?’ But it was what she had felt.
‘An ingrown community of petty tyrants. Little men who would be masters in their own houses, who got together at the Oldchurch Club and encouraged each other in their mean little cruelties. And boasted to each other when once the drink had gone round a few times. If their wives could have heard them, I think every woman in Oldchurch would have packed up and left. A set of dirty, grown-up schoolboys, telling tales. My man used to come home sick from those meetings. Sick with disgust.’
‘Your man?’
‘We had to have a man in the club, but he never reached its secret councils as your unfortunate husband did. Lucky for him. He is alive to tell the tale. He saw the perversion, but only had hints of the traitors who were using the men of Oldchurch.’
‘Bowles?’
‘I am afraid so. And that he must have given himself away to your husband in one of their drunken sessions. And of course the fact that Mr Tremadoc was becoming such a public figure made him doubly dangerous. To begin with, Bowles thought he could frighten him into silence, but, forgive me, he must have decided that there was no relying on Tremadoc. So first he tried slow poison at the hands of Dr Peabody, which you and I foiled between us, and, when that failed, set up the “accident” in the procession. And planned to kill you that night, too, for fear of what you might have learned. I wonder how he meant to make your death seem an accident.’
‘I was to have been caught up in the procession, like that poor girl last year.’ She told him about the forged note.
‘Thank God you saw through it, Caroline.’ He rose to his feet. ‘I must go back to Oldchurch, but before I go, tell me you forgive me for failing to save your husband. It will be on my conscience to my dying day, but saving Oldchurch had to come first. I do beg you to see that. If Bowles and his gang had been alerted by Tremadoc’s absence, by any kind of alarm, they would have cancelled the procession and closed the town gates at nightfall as usual. Long before the soldiers could get there. It would have meant the full horrors of a siege and the whole consequent shock to public opinion. As it is, the whole business is to be hushed up. No one will ever know how nearly Oldchurch came to yielding itself to Napoleon. If only the troops had been quicker, riding from Hastings…I had thought they would arrive before the procession reached the quay, but the fog delayed them. Can you forgive me, Caroline?’
‘If I can forgive myself,’ she said. ‘I can most certainly forgive you. After all, you did save my life, though I still do not understand how you came to do so.’
‘You still don’t see it, do you?’ His smile stirred something that might have been her heart. ‘I hope you will forgive me for this too.’ And, as she watched in amazement, he seemed to bend forward and crumple in on himself. One hand went out to grasp a chair as if for support; the other shoulder was hunched up. ‘You have to imagine the wig and the concealing forest of grey whiskers,’ said John Gerard’s deep voice.
‘Dear God! It was you all the time!’
‘And very happy your visits made me.’
‘But it’s impossible,’ she exclaimed. ‘John Gerard had been living in Oldchurch for years. He was an established figure when I got there.’
‘And very scared I was that you would see through me at once with those clear eyes of yours. But think a little, Caroline. Think how often, before, I was out of town on one party of pleasure or another.’
‘Yes, the Duchess always used to say…’ Caroline stopped, blushing crimson.
‘That I kept a country mistress. Of course she did. And, on the other hand, my character as a recluse protected me in Oldchurch. An occasional crusty appearance at church was enough to keep it up. My man turned away callers. In fact, I had only been John Gerard for two years or so when you came there. The Preventive men reported some very odd goings on around there after the Peace of Amiens. It had always been known as a smuggling port. Used to be one of the favourite haunts of the notorious Hawkhurst Gang. But this was more. This smacked of treason. When the war broke out again, I happened to mention to a friend that I meant to enlist. It was no time to be playing the fop in London. And, besides, I wanted to get away…and yet, there were reasons why it was difficult.’
The Duchess, she thought. Or had he half wanted to get away from her?
‘In the end,’ he went on, ‘before I could enlist, I was approached very secretly on behalf of the Home Secretary. Asked to go down to Oldchurch and find the traitor. I found a whole nest of them, and no proof…I only wish I had been in town when the Duke decided to give your husband the living there. If I could have put in a word with the Duchess before he had settled on it…But you know what he is like when once his mind is made up. That was a bad, unchancy time. When did you get my letter, Caroline?’
‘Too late,’ she told him. ‘But I’ll always be grateful.’
Chapter Eighteen
Caroline insisted on getting up next morning. Anything was better than lying in bed, alone with her thoughts. Tremadoc had died horribly; her fault. Her friend John Gerard was Mattingley, the Duchess’ lover. She had lost both her husband and her friend. It was disgusting to find herself thinking that Tremadoc’s death had left her blessedly free, though without either home or income, but it was a fact, and must be faced. And so must her mother’s history. Her host, bluff Dick Purchas, had greeted her with great kindness and urged her to make her home with them as long as she wished, but she sensed that he did so against his real wishes, or perhaps his wife’s.
She understood this better when she met their sons. Francis and Richard were fair-haired giants in their late teens, chafing at the restraints of university life, and longing for action and military glory. Failing that, they were more than ready to plunge into love with the romantic figure she presented, and she could almost see them doing so. It would have been comic if it had not been so inconvenient. She would have liked to stay and rest in this friendly house, with its garden looking out over the downs, and with little Jennifer for her devoted companion and slave. But she knew that the house was not really friendly to her, and since Mattingley had told her about her grandmother, she could, sadly, understand why not. She thought a great deal about her mother these days as she rested and grew stronger. What a forlorn childhood it must have been. Thinking of her own happy one at Llanfryn, she felt suddenly grateful to her mother for arranging for her. And then, inevitably, wondered if it had really been Frances Winterton or her kind friend, the Duchess. Mattingley’s kind friend the Duchess.
She wrenched her thoughts away to Jennifer, to whom she fe
lt truly a cousin. She could have done so much for her. The child was bursting with ideas and instincts that were quite alien to her kind, busy, houseproud mother. If only she could stay, become her friend…But in this happy house she felt the shadow of her mother and grandmother lying over her darkly. Her hosts would be glad to see her go. And anyway, she told herself, she must get back to work on The Downfall of Bonaparte, which she meant to finish as Tremadoc’s memorial. And this was not a house where women were expected to spend their time reading or writing. Now that she was better, there was no fire in her bedroom, and composition was impossible in the public rooms, with Mrs Purchas bustling about, with Jennifer eager to sit at her feet, and Francis and Richard always on the look-out for ways to serve her.
She had promised Mattingley that she would stay where she was for the moment. Indeed, there was not much else she could do, and she was deeply grateful to him for finding her this asylum, where she felt herself growing stronger every day. He had undertaken to write to Chevenham House about her plight, explaining that he would in fact prefer to do so, granted the complete secrecy that must cover the disaster at Oldchurch. She was grateful for this, too, though she did not share his conviction that the Duke would instantly make provision for her. How had she made the Duke so completely her enemy?
Francis brought her first letters to her a week later, having met Charles Mattingley’s messenger in the village. ‘His master sends his kind regards, and hopes to call on you shortly.’ He repeated the man’s message. ‘They are all to pieces in Oldchurch still, by what the man says. Oh, Mrs Tremadoc, he told me about your husband! What a man! What a hero! We did not understand that he had been killed in trying to save his friend Mr Bowles who had slipped and fallen into the fire. I am afraid those processions at Oldchurch are little better than drunken orgies.’ He sounded suddenly like his mother. ‘But your husband; what a hero! What a loss to his country:
‘“He is a man whom all the world must mourn,
A vanished hero, never to return.”’
The Lost Garden (The Purchas Family Series Book 5) Page 27