The Smallest Man

by Frances Quinn

  I’d told them why I had to leave France, that first day when I arrived. I couldn’t bring myself to recount the whole story; I missed Arabella so badly that I couldn’t let myself mention her name. But Jeremiah knew well enough how Crofts could be, so I didn’t need to reveal the content of the taunts.

  ‘He always did know how to get under your skin,’ he said. ‘If I’d have been there, I hope I’d have turned you away from the whole foolish idea. But I know you well enough to be sure you’re telling the truth: you never meant for things to go the way they did. So let’s have no more talk of murder, and punishment. It was an accident, and that’s that.’

  All the same, I knew that if I hadn’t killed Crofts, I’d have been safe in France, and they’d be safe too. Which gave Sukie all the more reason to resent my presence, and the danger I brought with me.

  She was one of those people who’s perpetually in motion, no sooner finishing one task than she began another, and though the cottage was a good size, I always seemed to be sitting where she wanted to clean, playing with little Michael where she needed to sit and sew, and generally getting under her feet and on her nerves. At first I tried to make myself useful by helping with the household work, but I was cack-handed at most things, and Sukie’s pursed lips when I got her spinning in a knot or dropped the butter on the floor told me I wasn’t improving the situation. And if I attempted to chat, she’d answer, politely but very briefly, and then go back to whatever she was doing. I tried to tell her, more than once, how grateful I was to them, but each time she cut me off, saying:

  ‘It’s Jeremiah’s wish, and that’s good enough for me.’

  A kind of unspoken agreement grew up between us though, that when Jeremiah came home, he would never hear anything to suggest we hadn’t spent the day in perfect amity, and at night when he and I talked, she would sit with her sewing and join in now and then as though we were all old friends.

  Being starved of conversation during the day, and having no contact with the outside world except for the odd startled rabbit on my brief evening walk, I was avid to hear just about anything Jeremiah had to tell, even though it was about people I’d never clapped eyes on. There was a stable boy who had a mysterious rash (Jeremiah had great forebodings about that, but it disappeared as suddenly as it came), an undergroom who was enjoying a dalliance with the blacksmith’s wife and, from time to time, stories about the new master of the estate, Sir Peter, a wealthy merchant who lived alone with his son.

  ‘His wife died having the boy, you see, and then both his daughters, they’ve married into old Kent families – happy enough to have his money, but not so keen to keep up the family connection,’ Jeremiah explained. ‘Tom the coachman told me even their servants laugh about him – over at Barden Hall, they call him Sir Peter Moneybags. But he’s a decent enough master, treats us all fairly, so it makes no difference to me where his money comes from.’

  ‘How old is the son?’ I asked.

  ‘Fourteen or fifteen, I’d say. Not a bad lad, for all that his father’s spoilt him. He’s high-handed in his manner, but as I said to you many years ago, you can tell what a person’s like by the way they are with horses. He’s one of those people who just understands them, and they understand him. To tell you the truth, I think he sometimes wishes he could work down there in the stables with us.’

  ‘And earn a groom’s wage, instead of raking in money in his father’s business?’ said Sukie.

  ‘Money’s not everything, my love,’ said Jeremiah. ‘Look at me, here, with the three people I love best in all the world, under the same roof. I’ll grant you the circumstances aren’t what I’d have chosen, but I’m better off than that lonely man counting his money up at the big house. That I’m sure of.’

  Sukie didn’t answer, but judging by the vicious way she stabbed her needle into the stockings she was mending, I think it was fair to say she wasn’t convinced.

  * * *

  The only thing I was allowed to do to help around the house was to amuse Michael. While Sukie was scrubbing the table so hard I thought it might wear away, or slicing a mountain of cabbage to pickle for the winter, I would take him by the hand and walk him round and round the parlour, his bandy steps getting steadier all the time, or sing him songs and pull faces that made him laugh and try to copy me. He was a lovely child, always babbling happily – I wondered where that came from, given Sukie’s parsimony with words and Jeremiah’s tendency to see a lead-grey lining in every cloud – and I enjoyed spending time with him. But when, during the morning and afternoon, Sukie laid him in his crib to sleep, or on the days when she took him with her to market, I had nothing to do but sit and think, and my thoughts weren’t happy ones.

  Whatever Jeremiah said, it was my stupidity and pride that had caused Crofts’ death, and the nightmares I still had about that morning in the forest often hung over me during the day. I thought about the queen too. She must be half mad with worry over the news from England, and I’d added to those anxieties; she’d be expecting to hear from me by now, and I knew she’d be worried that something had happened to me. Or worse, perhaps she’d believe I’d abandoned her just when she needed her friends. But there was no way to get a message to her; it would be dangerous even to try.

  And of course I thought too of Arabella, even though I had no right to. If Henry had been true to his plan, they’d be married now, perhaps even with a child on the way. I didn’t like the pictures that thought painted, but I couldn’t keep them out of my head; it was like when you have a cracked tooth and you’re driven to touch it, over and over again, even though it cuts your tongue.

  Chapter Fifty

  As autumn turned into winter, our forced companionship became even more uncomfortable, both for me and for Sukie. During the summer, with vegetables to tend in the garden, she could get away from me for a while, and I from her. But with the November winds whistling round the cottage, we were shut in together all day long, and the hours until Jeremiah came home seemed endless.

  One such day, towards the end of the afternoon, I was sitting beside Michael’s crib, amusing him with silly rhymes; normally he was asleep at that time, but he had the beginnings of a cold and it had made him fractious. Sukie was stirring a pot over the fire, and the set of her shoulders told me I was irritating her, so I stopped talking. She lifted the cooking pot from the hook and put it on the table next to me, but just then Michael realised the game was over, and let out a wail.

  ‘Now see what you’ve done,’ said Sukie, and as she gestured to Michael, her hand caught the handle of the pot and tipped it towards the crib. She screamed and I threw myself down, pushing the crib out of the way just as the steaming broth poured out onto the floor where it had been. It splashed my arm and even through my thick shirt, it was scalding hot.

  Sukie grabbed at the overturned pot, dropping it with a yelp as the metal burned her hands. Michael was bawling in earnest now and she tried to pick him up but cried out as her hands touched his skin; I saw then that they were red and already blisters were forming. Remembering what my mother used to do for burns, I grabbed the bucket we used for washing. She was pale and shaking as I held her hands in the water.

  ‘It could have killed him,’ she kept saying, over and over. ‘He’s so little, it could have killed him.’

  ‘Michael’s fine,’ I said. ‘It didn’t touch him.’

  She wouldn’t be reassured though, and the only way I could make her keep her hands in the water was to undress him and show her that every inch of his skin was unblemished.

  Just as I was dabbing comfrey juice on her poor hands, Jeremiah came home.

  ‘What’s happened?’ he said, his wide eyes taking in the two of us, the stew all over the floor, and Michael’s red and tear-stained face. ‘You’re hurt—’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Sukie, with an uncharacteristic wobble in her voice. ‘And Michael’s fine. Thanks to Nat.’ She turned to me. ‘You saved his life.’ At that she burst into hysterical sobs, which set Michael o
ff again. Jeremiah’s face told me he’d never seen Sukie in this state and he wasn’t quite sure what to do, but he took her in his arms and patted her back as though she was a horse, while I picked up Michael and tried to soothe him.

  ‘What happened?’ asked Jeremiah again, as Sukie sobbed into his ribs.

  I told him only part of the story; he didn’t need to know she’d been snapping at me when she knocked the pot over.

  It was only then that she turned to me and said, ‘I didn’t even ask. Are you hurt?’

  I rolled up my sleeve; there was a red patch the size of an apple, and I could feel it burning still.

  ‘Make him a cold poultice,’ she said to Jeremiah. ‘Plenty of comfrey.’

  By the time she’d finished supervising his clumsy positioning of the poultice, Sukie had regained her normal demeanour and before long, having realised she couldn’t hold the broom, she was issuing instructions on cleaning up the stew from the floor:

  ‘Don’t leave any scraps trapped between the flagstones. And look there, Jeremiah, you’ve missed a bit.’

  But as I went to climb the ladder to bed that night, she stopped me and said,

  ‘I never thought I’d say this. But thank goodness you were here.’

  * * *

  Sukie’s hands were slow to heal and for a good three weeks she couldn’t pick anything up without pain. In the normal run of things, someone on the estate would have volunteered a daughter to help out for a while, but of course we couldn’t have anyone in the house so, very much against her will, she had to let me take over some of her everyday tasks. I was a willing pupil – it was good to have something to do – but not an especially talented one.

  ‘How did the good Lord make men’s hands so clumsy?’ she would say, as I hacked the peel off a turnip, nearly losing a finger in the process. My first attempt at making small beer met with the comment that we’d be as well to drink water straight from a ditch, and when I glanced up from scouring the cooking pot with sand – which I thought I was making quite a good job of – she rolled her eyes and said:

  ‘It’s just as well you weren’t down in the kitchens at Whitehall. You’d have been out on your ear the first week.’

  One afternoon, while I was chopping up carrots for a stew, she asked me how I’d come to be at the palace; she hadn’t been there back then and it seemed Jeremiah had never told her that part of my story. The question took me aback; as I’ve mentioned, Sukie wasn’t one for chatting and I couldn’t remember her ever asking me anything that wasn’t a strictly necessary question related to our daily life. But I think the rest of her was so unaccustomed to sitting still that her tongue just started going instead.

  ‘My father sold me,’ I said. ‘To the Duke of Buckingham. You won’t remember him, but he was very well in with the king.’

  ‘He sold you? What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I say. He took eleven shillings for me.’

  ‘Were your family very poor then?’

  ‘We were fairly poor, yes, but that wasn’t why. He wouldn’t have sold my brother or my sister. He wanted rid of me, that’s all.’

  It was so long ago, and so much had happened since, but still, saying those words made me feel like that boy again, left at the door of the big house with a pat on the head.

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Ten. My mother tried to talk him out of it, but she couldn’t.’

  ‘I’m sorry to speak ill of your father, but that was a wicked thing to do.’

  I didn’t answer. She looked down at Michael, playing by her feet.

  ‘I couldn’t let this one go off and live with strangers like that.’

  ‘Well, you won’t have any reason to.’

  She was quiet for a minute, watching Michael trace shapes on the floor with his finger.

  ‘I worried when I was carrying him. That he might, you know… be like Jeremiah. Jeremiah worried about it too.’

  She looked up.

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me – in my eyes, Jeremiah is the handsomest man in the land. But I know he had a hard time of it, being a bit different from other people. I suppose it was that way for you as well.’

  ‘Sometimes it was.’

  We both fell silent for a bit then, but for the first time, it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. And when we sat down to our dinner and the stew proved to be as salty as seawater, she never said a word.

  Chapter Fifty-one

  By the time Sukie’s hands were healed, I’d improved my household skills, and once she was back in charge of her kitchen, I was allowed to help with a few tasks – ‘the ones even a child couldn’t do wrong’. It made the days pass more quickly, and helped to turn my thoughts away from all I’d left behind.

  In the first weeks after I arrived, we’d all been jumpy; the slightest noise outside would send me up the ladder to the loft, and when we sat down to eat, Sukie never took her eyes off the window. But by the beginning of winter, we’d all grown more used to our strange situation, and though we were still careful always to keep an eye on the window during the day, once darkness fell there seemed no need to worry; the cottage was out on the edge of the estate and nobody ever came near at night. So when, one evening as we ate our dinner, we heard the thunder of horses’ hooves approaching, it took us so much by surprise that for a moment we just looked at each other. Then the horse stopped right outside, and Sukie hissed, ‘Hide! Now!’

  I scrambled up the ladder and dragged it in behind me, as there came a thumping on the door and a voice shouted, ‘Jeremiah!’

  ‘It’s Sir Peter,’ whispered Jeremiah. ‘What shall I do?’

  ‘Open up, man!’ shouted the voice outside.

  I looked around me in panic, even though I knew the tiny space contained only me, a straw mattress and some bedding.

  Nowhere to hide.

  Fists bashed on the door again. Jeremiah’s long legs crossed the floor in two paces, and the door opened.

  ‘You’re needed at the stables,’ the voice said. ‘It’s that bloody Arab stallion. It’s gone mad, and my son’s trapped.’

  * * *

  I waited until the sound of hooves disappeared before I climbed down the ladder. Sukie was standing with Michael in her arms, looking at the table. I followed her glance, and saw what, in our panic, none of us had thought to hide: three half-finished plates of food. My stomach turned over: if Sir Peter hadn’t been in such fear for his son, it would have been obvious that there was someone else in the house.

  ‘He was standing right there,’ said Sukie. ‘If he’d seen…’

  She was shaking. I made her sit down and cleared away the plates; neither of us had the stomach to finish our dinners. I started to say I was sorry for putting them in danger, but she glanced at Michael, and shook her head.

  ‘He understands more than you think these days.’

  When Jeremiah came back, we found out what had happened. Sir Peter had bought a new horse for hunting; it was big, and powerful, and he’d banned his son from riding it.

  ‘But the boy’s not used to the word no,’ Jeremiah told us. ‘When we’d bedded the horses down for the night and left, he sneaked into the stables, thinking to take it out and prove he could master it.’

  ‘What happened?’ asked Sukie. ‘He said the boy was trapped?’

  ‘He let it get between him and the door of its stall. It reared up, and he got a bad kicking. And then the poor lad was there for over an hour before anyone realised he was missing.’

  ‘Is he all right now?’ I asked.

  ‘He couldn’t move his legs, they had to carry him into the house. The master said he thought it was a break, but I’ve seen broken legs and they don’t look like that. The boy had no pain. He just couldn’t move.’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t look good.’

  Sukie stood up and checked that Michael was asleep in his crib, then poked the embers of the fire.

  ‘Gave us all a bit of a fright,’ she said, with her back to us both. ‘Him coming her
e like that.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I should never have put you in danger by coming here. I think, tomorrow, I should go.’

  ‘Go where?’ said Jeremiah. ‘Nat, it’s not safe for you out there, you know that. We couldn’t live with ourselves if they took you, could we, Suk?’

  Sukie gave a little shrug, which Jeremiah seemed to interpret as agreement.

  ‘We’ll have to be more careful, that’s clear,’ he said. ‘But you’re staying here.’

  * * *

  I didn’t argue with Jeremiah, but I didn’t change my mind either. I was scared at the thought of leaving, and I had no idea where I might go. But I’d brought this danger on myself. They’d done nothing and they didn’t deserve to be living in fear because of me. So two weeks later, when the moon was full and I’d have the best chance of finding my way, I waited until I heard Jeremiah’s rasping snores, and crept down the ladder. Carrying my boots, I padded across the floor and put the note I’d written for them on the table.