by Steven Neil
‘She and Louis have a complicated relationship. There were arguments about money. She was made Comtesse de Beauregard and installed in a château, just outside Paris, but there were holes in the roof.’
‘The French nobility is a mystery to me,’ I said. ‘Can you inherit the title from your mother?’
‘I will become the Comte de Béchevêt on my twenty-fifth birthday. It is a gift from Louis. I consider it a farewell present.’
Finally, I was reminded that Harriet later married Captain Clarence Trelawney, a Cornishman serving in the Austrian Hussars, by all accounts.
‘The man is a charlatan,’ he said. ‘I have nothing to do with him.’
‘At least we can probably rule him out of your calculations,’ I said.
For the first time, the serious young man beside me relaxed his shoulders and the flicker of a smile played around his lips.
We talked on into the late afternoon. Martin seemed comfortable with horses and he came with me to deliver the teatime feed. It was my habit to do the last feed of the day myself. This gave me a chance to check on the horses’ well-being and to see if there were any changes to their behaviour, which might be a sign of a problem. Some horses whickered and whinnied, some stamped, some weaved. If they changed their patterns, I knew I needed to be on my watch.
When eventually we parted in Newmarket, I felt sorry to see him go. He went without asking the obvious question that hung in the air. He would come to his own conclusion about his father’s identity. I offered to help him further if I could and I wondered if I would see him again. I hoped I would.
Later in the evening, as I made my final check around the stables, I thought over the day’s events. I spoke the names out loud: Jem Mason, Francis Mountjoy-Martin, Nicholas Sly and Louis Napoleon. I thought about Martin and replayed some of our conversations. At one point, I asked him why it was so important to him to know who his father was. How could I have been so crass?
‘I am not just solving a puzzle,’ he said. ‘I am trying to find out who I am. Is that hard to understand?’
And what of Harriet Howard? What were her circumstances now and why was she putting her son, Martin Harryet, through this ordeal?
Two
Mystery Boy
Northamptonshire and Norfolk, England
1836
Tom Olliver doesn’t know he is going to make a new acquaintance out hunting in Grafton country, but he soon will. Tom arrives at the meet at Farthingstone early, well mounted on a strapping grey gelding. He is a short, muscular, broad-shouldered man with dark, alert eyes, a leathern complexion and a sharp jaw-line. It lends him a roguish look. His appearance, coupled with his reputation with the ladies, earns him the nickname Black Tom. When he is not racing, if the invitation comes to go hunting, he never refuses. Time spent on a horse, jumping fences, is never wasted as far as he is concerned.
Hounds arrive and the field moves off promptly at eleven o’clock. Carter, the huntsman, gets a fox away from covert and they make a good point over the meadows up along the vale behind Maidford, before their quarry goes to ground in some badger setts. Carter blows that funny doubled toot-toot on his horn to signal he is not for dallying with the terriers and cracks on.
It is a fine crisp day, with a frost along the top of the hedgerows. A pair of buzzards circles overhead, calling to each other as the mounted field canters up the headland towards Mantle’s Heath. The usual set is out: farmers and local gentry, alongside a few jockeys, like Tom. The Duke of Grafton is field master on his chestnut horse with the jagged white blaze. He has some guests from London and a party from the West Norfolk are staying locally and riding out on hirelings from Gibson’s yard at Weedon. A group of almost fifty riders kicks on, including a young fellow, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old, who Tom has not seen before, riding a coloured pony. He catches the boy’s eye as he jumps an awkward ditch off the Maidford road, rather than waiting to follow the field through the gateway. It runs through Tom’s mind that he is either brave or foolhardy. Given time, a day across Grafton hedges has a way of resolving that one way or the other, without the need for speculation, and Tom waits and watches to see what will happen.
Carter’s confidence that he will soon find another fox is not misplaced. Almost as soon as he puts hounds into covert, a black dog fox jumps into the lane and slips down the hill along the gorse bushes. Hounds fly in pursuit with Skinner, the whipper-in, close on their heels as they go out of sight beyond the crossroads. Everyone follows in behind, clattering down the lane; sparks flying from the metalled hooves. Carter and the Duke see the line the hounds take and, cantering on, they go side by side at a wide hawthorn hedge and ditch off the lane. Both horses refuse and hit the hedge chest high, leaving the riders hanging around their necks in a rather ungainly fashion. There is much merriment and stifled sniggering from the onlookers, as the two foremost horsemen in the county struggle to regain their composure.
‘Can someone get a bloody gate open?’ shouts Carter.
Two riders trot along the lane about fifty yards, jump down from their mounts and make to open up the six bar gate. Meanwhile, the young man who Tom noted at the Maidford road spins his pony around, gives him a kick in the ribs with his spurs, lands him a hefty blow on the backside with his whip, jumps the hawthorn hedge and ditch off two strides, and goes off hollering and whooping down the hill like a demented cur. A nervous moment’s silence ensues as everyone waits to see how the Duke reacts. He has a temper on him and they never rightly know when it might emerge.
‘Who the blazes is that boy?’ he splutters.
It turns out no one recognises him. The regulars assume he is one of the guests and the guests assume he is one of the regulars. Carter breaks the tension.
‘Well, he can bloody well ride whoever he is. Best catch the bugger and find out.’
And with that, they all file through the gateway and gallop on after the mystery boy and the coloured pony.
After the escapade at Mantle’s Heath, there follows a great run up across the back of Everdon church to the ridge and hounds swing left-handed. The fox takes them over the bridges and across the sheep pasture at Fawsley. All the while, they are about two fields behind hounds and they can see the red coat of the whipper-in and the brown tweed of the new young thruster close behind. They are skimming the fences and what a lovely sight they make, moving stride for stride in perfect rhythm. Eventually, the fox retraces his tracks and hounds are stopped in the deer park. Carter counts in his pack and the “mystery boy’s” identity is about to be revealed.
***
Squire Joseph Gawen Harryet comes to his senses around mid-morning, having had a glass too many when the port was passed the previous evening. His wife is on hand to tell him his darling child has been missing since breakfast time – about the same time the hunting party left. Harryet blusters and shouts a good deal before the innkeeper offers him the use of his gig and pony, and Squire and Mrs Harryet set off on their search, first to Weedon and then, by way of the lanes and tracks, to Fawsley by about two o’clock. As they trot up the lane along the dog-leg bend by the church, the steaming field of around thirty remaining horses clank and jangle their way down the hill, past the hall, to meet them.
A minute earlier, Tom canters alongside the young fellow in the tweed hacking jacket.
‘Well ridden,’ he says, ‘though I think an apology to the Master might be well advised.’
‘And who might you be?’ comes the reply.
‘Tom Olliver. At your service.’ He removes his hunting cap and draws a low, wide arc with it, finishing at his horse’s quarters, while making an exaggerated bow.
As the field meets Harryet’s gig head-on, he stops, ties in the reins and stands up to survey the riders.
‘Elizabeth Ann, get down off that pony this instant,’ he booms.
Tom volunteers to lead t
he now-famous coloured pony back to his stable, which turns out to be Davy Gibson’s yard at Weedon. The “mystery boy” feels the sharp end of her father’s tongue.
***
Later, it is learned that when old man Harryet doesn’t appear at breakfast that morning, his daughter, Elizabeth Ann, more familiarly Eliza, realising her father’s absence, borrows some breeches and a hacking jacket from the innkeeper’s son, tags on to the hunting party heading to Weedon and rides on the back of the second carriage to avoid detection. Hanging back as the group mounts up and waiting for them to set off for the hack to the meet, Eliza presents herself to Gibson and asks for the horse Harryet had originally booked as a hireling.
‘We have no horse ready for you, young sir,’ says Gibson.
‘Harryet is the name. Be so kind as to find my horse straight away,’ says Eliza, in the lowest pitch she can muster, which still sounds like a strangled squeak.
‘We had a big hunter ready for a Mister Harryet, but we were told he wouldn’t be coming, so we turned the horse out in the field. He wouldn’t have done for you, sir, in any event.’
‘Well, find me something else and be quick about it. I am Squire Harryet’s son and he wishes me to hunt in his place. We are guests of the Duke and I am keeping him waiting. And you, sir, are keeping me waiting.’
Gibson smiles and calls his groom to saddle up Hotspur. Minutes later, the groom leads out a coloured pony, which plunges and bucks on the end of a lead rein.
‘Is that the best you can do?’ says Eliza.
‘Hotspur will take you anywhere and jump any fence off any stride,’ he says, ‘if you can ride as well as you can talk.’
Eliza gives him her version of an imperious stare, vaults onto the pony and canters off down the track from Gibson’s yard, without a backward look.
There is great amusement as the full story of Eliza’s acting performance emerges and variations of the tale, with all manner of embellishments and attributions, begin to circulate among hunting folk in the Midlands from that moment on. Elizabeth Ann Harryet makes her inaugural impression and it is the first story of a series about the wild, red-haired girl with the waspish tongue who can outride any man. Tom is embarrassed to say he is probably responsible for a good many of them.
***
Eliza stays silent all the way back home to Aylsham, where she shuts herself in her room and refuses to eat. Back in Northamptonshire, the Duke of Grafton sends his first footman to ascertain where the Harryets stayed on their visit, which turns out to be the Plume of Feathers in Weedon. He then instructs him to drop into the hostelry to make enquiries about their address in Norfolk. Armed with this information, he sends his estate manager on a trip to find out more about the family and, in particular, the daughter.
Squire Harryet is not speaking to his daughter. She wouldn’t answer even if he was. As his wife Elizabeth Mary points out, however, he only has himself to blame. Eliza has been indulged since birth and her father is reluctant to punish what he sees as her “spirit”. Nevertheless, he is at a loss to know what to do with her. She cannot be contained at the local school and she has seen off three governesses in quick succession in the last year. The most recent incumbent still resides at the county asylum, near Norwich, pending further assessment. Even the squire himself admits his daughter “jiggers his nerves” and the hangover he inflicted on himself when staying at Weedon is hardly an uncommon occurrence. Eliza’s mother is the only one, it seems, who has her measure, but the constant fighting wearies her and she confesses she is “at the end of her tether”.
When the invitation comes, a few weeks later, to visit the Duke of Grafton at Euston Hall, near Thetford, Squire Harryet thinks one of his neighbours is playing a trick on him. He has been the butt of jokes ever since his daughter’s adventure with the Grafton pack and he is not a little sensitive to the unwelcome fame his family has attracted. While the Duke has his hunting estate in Northamptonshire, the ancestral home of the Duke’s family, the Fitzroys, has always been Euston Hall and the fourth Duke splits his time between the two estates and his London residence in St James. Eventually convinced of the veracity of the coat of arms on the invitation and the accuracy of the signature, Harryet sends an obsequious acceptance. He is, not to put too fine a point on it, somewhat down on his luck. Living beyond his means, courtesy of excessive drink and gambling, has resulted in some drastic changes. The Harryets have already moved from the main farmhouse to a smaller farm cottage, land has been sold off and the bank is threatening foreclosure on what remains. Whatever the Duke has in mind, there is no doubt that Harryet senses salvation, in one form or another. Quite why he thinks this so strongly he is not able to explain to his wife, but on the day of the journey from Aylsham, via Norwich to Thetford, it is fair to say no one has ever travelled more hopefully.
Three
Education
Aylesbury and the Isle of Wight, England
1837
Dairy Farm Cottage
Shepherd Lane
Aylsham
My dear Eliza
I know you will hate us, but it really is for the best. It is very fortunate that we have a kind benefactor who has taken an interest in your education and is paying all the fees for your tuition and boarding. It is something your poor, dear parents simply could not afford to do. As you well know, there are few such schools for girls and this is a rare opportunity. I hope that you will learn a great deal at Carisbrooke. Please work hard at your lessons and do your best. I hope that one day you will be able to see the value of what has been provided and will be grateful.
Mama
Carisbrooke School
Isle of Wight
Dearest Mama
You are quite right. I hate you and Papa more than you can possibly imagine. Please don’t think that I will ever be grateful. The whole place is beastly. I will probably die of pneumonia and you will be to blame.
Eliza
***
Tom Olliver and Jem Mason meet at the bottom of a ditch. Not a ditch by the edge of a field, that is, but the ditch in front of a steeplechase fence. It is at the Aylesbury racecourse, a bright May afternoon, with skylarks spiralling into the air across the water meadows and a buzzing crowd up from London on the hillside. They are both riding novice horses in the last race and they take off a whole stride too soon, coming to the third last fence and fairly whack the boards on the way up. They twist in the air, deposit both riders in the ditch, come down the other side and gallop off. Jem, seeing Tom is unconscious, drags him sideways off the track. Allen McDonough, following on a good twenty lengths away, matches their fall, only, this time, his horse lands in the ditch where Tom had lain and catapults him right over the top of the fence, to land about six yards down in the mud. Will Pope follows him at a similar distance on old Madgwick’s bay gelding, jumps ditch, horse and McDonough and canters in to win by a distance from only one other finisher. Tom comes to his senses a few minutes later, with the metallic taste of blood in his mouth and his head pounding like a farrier’s hammer.
Tom always says that Jem saved his life, because when half a ton of horse lands on you at full pelt, there is usually only one result. Jem makes light of it.
‘You’d have done the same for me, Tom,’ he says. ‘We are learning our trade. You have to know how to fall, to know how to win.’
***
While young Tom Olliver and Jem Mason make their way in horse racing in England and worry about where their next winners will come from, there are weightier matters concerning the politicians of Britain and Europe. In Britain, Queen Victoria accedes to the throne on the death of William IV. Victoria is just eighteen and there are doubts that she will be up to the task. There are those who think that the monarchy itself is under threat. In France, King Louis Philippe is just about holding the monarchy in place. The July Revolution of 1830 gives France its “King of the French”, bu
t after a brief honeymoon period the French become rather lukewarm about his reign. As usually happens in France, apathy eventually gives way to outright dissatisfaction and Louis Philippe survives several assassination attempts.
Waiting in the wings is twenty-nine-year-old Prince Louis Napoleon, son of the former King of Holland and nephew of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte. The King of the French doesn’t take the Prince very seriously. The year before, Prince Louis arrived in Strasbourg with a contingent of armed supporters. He expected to be carried on a wave of public support, all the way to Paris. Unfortunately for him, the great French public seemed unaware of their role in this popular revolution and the Prince and his conspirators were arrested and exiled.
The British Government takes a keen interest in events across the English Channel. It is twenty-two years since the British and their allies finally defeated Napoleon Bonaparte and banished him to Saint Helena. Relations between Britain and France have been uneasy ever since. Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, receives the news of Louis Napoleon calmly and discusses it with the home secretary, Lord Russell.
‘It was a shot across the bows. No lasting damage is done. The King has given Louis a slap on the wrist and sent him to America. I think he will regret his leniency. The young pretender will learn from this, no doubt.’
***
On the Isle of Wight, Elizabeth Ann Harryet’s residence at Carisbrooke School, “dedicated to the refinement of gentlewomen”, is proving a challenge to everyone. The school is an imposing, mainly limestone set of buildings with sandstone ornamentation. Rumoured to have been an old military hospital but derelict for many years before the present owners embarked on their project, it marks a new development in education and something of an experiment, based on the principles of Mr Pemberton’s Gough House establishment in London – an attempt to put girls on an equal academic and social footing with boys and a response to the demand from wealthy, military and diplomatic parents, serving the British Empire overseas, to have their daughters, as well as their sons, educated in England. The buildings have an austere presence and this is reflected in the disciplinarian tone set by the principal, Mr Ridley, a former military man himself. Eliza’s end of term report from the deputy principal, Mr Dalziel, to Mr Ridley, marked For Your Eyes Only, reads thus: