by Joan Aiken
And might have had even more, thought Ellen. But still, very likely Mr. Wheelbird had not done so badly for himself; at all events, he must make the best of his bargain.
“Is there any more news of Mrs. Pike’s son who escaped, Sue?” she asked.
“None, miss, not a word. Vanished clean away, he did; off to Ameriky, most likely.”
* * *
But that night there came news of Sim Enticknass.
At half past eleven, after Benedict had returned, reluctantly, to Petworth House, Sue appeared in the parlor with a troubled face to say, “There’s a young girl at the back door asking for ye, Miss Ellen. She says it be urgent. Will you see her?”
“Of course,” Ellen said, thinking that perhaps somebody was sick; but at the back door she found Selina Lee, her shawl and skirt soaking wet from a new gale that had blown up.
“Selina! Are you in trouble? Come in! What can I do for you?”
“I’m in no trouble, Miss Ellen, but I’m feared for your brother, an’ thought ye should know.”
“For Gerard? Why? He’s over at Valdoe with my sister.”
“No, Ellen, he’s over to Chiddester, after the Doom Stone,” said Selina. “And Sim’s there too, and he’ve been drinking. When he’s sober he’s sensible enough, but a drop makes him reckless-foolish.”
“I don’t understand! Who is Sim?”
“Why, Sim Enticknass, that was wed to my cousin Sheba.”
“You mean—Mrs. Pike’s son?”
“Ay—he that was in Winchester clink. He’ve been hiding with shepherd Bilbo on Lavant Down.”
“Oh!” breathed Ellen. Suddenly a great many things fell into place. “That was why that poor girl came to see Mrs. Pike—”
“Who wouldn’t help her. His ma cast him off. Well,” said Selina, “he were always a poor, no-account member. Shepherd Bilbo were good to him an’ doctored his hurt foot. We knew he was there, we Romany, as we knows most things, but we wouldn’t go after him furder. Leave him find his own way, Uncle Reuben said. Poor Sheba’s dead, and we’ve got the babby.”
“Sheba’s baby—I was going to inquire—”
“Your aunt Fanny took it.” Selina smiled briefly. “She took an’ nourished it till it was thriving; then sent us word. There baint much gets past your aunt Fanny!”
I will go and see her tomorrow, Ellen resolved. “But about Gerard?”
“Why, the Doom Stone. Everyone knows your brother be main set to dig it out, for to pleasure your pa.”
“Yes,” Ellen said, thinking how strange it was that the obsessional quest for this, to her, unimportant piece of carving should thus have been transmitted from father to son.
“And Sim, who was a stonemason afore the drink undone him, he’ve been working in Chiddester Church. An’ he told as how they were going to cover up the stone again tomorrow—the foreman said as ’tweren’t safe to shift it. So they are all there now, Sim and Bilbo and your brother; they reckoned to go in quiet-like after the regular workmen was gone for the day.”
“But in that case—good God, the men at work there must know—if they could not shift it—it is the most crazily dangerous escapade! How can Gerard be so foolish as to become involved in it?”
But, with a hollow heart, she could imagine how, because he had not accompanied her to rescue their father, he might be bent on proving himself in another way, on bringing home this trophy.
“Shepherd Bilbo went to try an’ dissuade ’em,” said Selina. “But Sim had drunk hisself obstinate and would hearken to none. He said he knew a secret way in, that one o’ the men had showed him. An’ if he got your dad’s reward, that’d set him on the way to Ameriky an’ rid shepherd Bilbo of his charge. So will you come, Ellen? Maybe you can make one or other of ’em listen to reason.”
“Give me five minutes,” said Ellen. “Sit by the fire, Selina; drink some milk.”
She flew upstairs, dressed in a warm old riding habit, cloak and hood, wrote a brief note to her father, and returned.
Sue, shocked and distressed, had already been to the barn and saddled Ellen’s pony. “I doubt riding’s the quickest way, Miss Ellen; and I do see you got to go; though it rives my heart, it do, that ye have to go out at such an hour, on such an errand. Wait, just, till I see Mus’ Gerald, won’t I give him a sorting!”
Selina had a hardy, shaggy gypsy pony and the two girls rode fast out of the town, along the two-mile stretch of road that led to the rampart of the Downs.
“How did you ever discover all this, Selina?” Ellen panted as they walked their horses through the winding village of Duncton.
“Us Rom gets to hear most things. My uncle Reuben were in Chiddester doing a bit o’ business wi’ the landlord o’ the Dolphin and Anchor; an’ he see Sim in the tap, all lit wi’ drink an’ hopefulness; so followed and saw ’em go down the undercroft.”
“Perhaps no harm will come of it,” said Ellen, trying to put herself into a hopeful frame of mind. But she thumped her pony to hurry him as they approached the daunting climb onto Duncton Down.
The night began to pale, just a little, as they reached the summit. But the wind blew as hard as ever, and the rain stung their eyes. When they surmounted the second ridge, which was known as the Top of Benges, the sky had become perceptibly lighter in its eastern quarter, on their left; at the edge of the flat land ahead they could faintly distinguish a thin silver stencil which was the line of the sea.
“Now you can just about see the owd church spire,” said Selina, pointing half right. “Stand out thirty mile off, that do.”
A wild and ragged dawn was beginning to break as their ponies, glad of the favoring slope, cantered at a fair pace down over Open Winkins, past Molecombe and Waterbeech. We may be able to have breakfast with Eustace and Eugenia later, thought Ellen; how relieved Eugenia will be to hear that Papa is going to change his will. But I shall never be able to feel the same way to her as I did.
They had lost sight of the spire as they rode through the beech copses on the seaward slope of the Downs; but now, from the flat farmland, they could see it ahead like a fingerpost, standing against the brightening sky.
And then, as they approached Burnt Mill, a terrifying, a portentous thing happened. Ellen, eagerly looking ahead at the steeple over her pony’s ears, saw the whole structure vanish from view, downward—like a sword pushed into a scabbard. One moment the slender point was there—next moment it was gone, and only the stump of tower remained in view.
* * *
By the time they reached West Street a huge crowd had gathered in the precincts of the Cathedral. It was still very early in the morning, but evidently the news had spread fast; the sound of the collapse must have been enough to shock many people out of sleep. They were lined up, silent, twenty deep, along the iron railings around the grass plat.
“We’ll niver get through,” said Selina, but Ellen had seen the Bishop near the west door; he was directing emergency operations with ladders and ropes. Giving her pony’s reins to a boy, Ellen thrust her way to the front of the crowd and managed to attract the Bishop’s attention.
“Ellen Paget? Heavens, child, what are you doing here at such a time?”
“Oh, sir—I am terribly afraid—my brother was down in the undercroft with two other men!”
The Bishop looked aghast and disbelieving.
“Child, how can he have been? I myself made sure that the Cathedral was locked at a quarter past one last night, when all the workmen came out. The spire had been giving great anxiety—they were working on it—”
“A friend of my brother’s knew a secret way in!”
The Bishop made a gesture of despair, then turned and shouted to the men who were gingerly attacking a colossal pile of crumbled masonry. A great gash had been torn through the center of the church when the spire telescoped down into the nave—the surprising thing was how lit
tle damage had been done to the transept or the ends of the nave.
“Watch out, lads, there may be men under there. Take the utmost care!”
Sick with suspense, shivering with cold, Ellen watched as the men lifted stone after stone from the mountain of rubble.
Hours passed like minutes.
“Child, why don’t you go to the Palace?” the Bishop said. “Blanche will give you something to eat—”
“Oh no. I couldn’t go. I must stay—”
A shout from the men working.
“He’ve broke through!”
The Bishop hurried away.
It seemed hours longer before a slow procession emerged—twelve men carrying three improvised stretchers made from builders’ planks. The bodies on them were shrouded with dust sheets.
The Bishop came back, very slowly, to Ellen.
“My poor child. What can I say, but that he is in God’s keeping?”
“Dead?” Ellen could hardly articulate. The Bishop bowed his head.
“One of the other men—the gray-haired one—had thrown himself over your brother to protect him. But it was a vain attempt—”
“Was he—were they very much injured?”
“No. Slater thinks they were suffocated, poor fellows, by tons of dust and grit. What possessed them to do such a thing? Ah well, no use to ask. Do you wish to see your brother, my child?”
“No—no. Not now. Not yet… And—and the Doom Stone?” Ellen asked in a shaking voice.
“Crushed to powder—as was its fellow, which had been left in the nave. My child—your poor father! I will come and visit him later—”
“Thank you—thank you, sir. I—I must go home, to be with him.” Hardly aware of what she did, Ellen left the Bishop and made her way back to where Selina still waited beside the horses.
* * *
“Papa: I have some dreadful news for you. It is about Gerard.”
Thank God that Benedict was with her; close beside her, holding her hand.
Mr. Paget heard the short tale in silence, with a puzzled frown on his face. Then he looked down at his interlocked fingers, and opened them, as if letting go something that he had held for too long.
“Dead? Gerard dead? And Bilbo too? And the other man? The innocent…punished with the guilty?”
“Bilbo tried to save Gerard—”
“Bilbo…” Luke seemed to have gone a long way back in memory. “Why do I remember that name? There was something…about a hare?”
He lay against his pillows as if his large frame had lost the strength to remain upright. After a few minutes, during which neither Benedict nor Ellen spoke, he said slowly, “Now they are together.”
“Gerard and his friend?” ventured Ellen.
But Luke’s gaze had gone past her. He went on, thoughtfully, to himself, “Both my sons. And their mother. She said… No one will ever be so close again. But I think…I think that I too…”
Sighing a little, he turned his head away from the pair at the bedside. His hands relaxed. Two or three minutes passed.
Then Ellen said in a frightened whisper, “Benedict? He isn’t breathing?”
Benedict said gently, “His heart is broken.”
Clasping her arm, he led her out of the room.
Order Joan Aiken’s first book
in the Paget Family Saga
The Smile of the Stranger
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Note to Reader
Readers who think they recognize Madame Beck’s Pensionnat in Brussels are not mistaken; in 1854, Madame Beck sold the goodwill of the establishment to her cousin, Madame Bosschère.
On the twenty-first of February, 1861, the spire of Chichester Cathedral did fall straight down into the center of the church. Nobody was hurt. At a cost of £60,000, the tower and spire were later rebuilt under the direction of Sir Gilbert Scott. Previously, Sir Christopher Wren had tried to protect the spire with an ingenious pendulum and had advised shortening the nave and erecting a classical facade, which had, however, not been done. Perhaps that was just as well.
Read on for more of the Paget Family Saga
The arrival within sight of St.-Malo was an occasion for joy. They stopped for the night in the small fishing village of St.-Servan, where, for a wonder, the inn they chose proved clean and comfortable. And on that evening her father dictated his last paragraph to Juliana, concluded his final peroration, and announced with a sigh, “There! It is finished. And I fear a weary work it has been for you, my pet! You have been an angel—a rock—a monument of forbearance and industry. How many pages of manuscript?”
“Six hundred and two, Papa,” she said faintly.
“Hand me a sheet of paper, my love, and I will make it six hundred and three by adding the title page.”
With a weak and shaky hand he dipped his pen into the standish, and wrote in staggering letters: A Vindication of King Charles I, by Charles Elphinstone. Then, underneath, he added, “This work is dedicated to my Dear and Dutiful Daughter Juliana, without whose untiring and faithful help its completion would never have been achieved.”
“Oh, Papa!” Reading over his shoulder, Juliana could hardly see the words; her eyes were blinded by tears.
But then he somewhat impaired her pleasure by depositing the unwieldy bundle of manuscript in her arms, and observing, “Now, as soon as you have made a fair copy, Juliana—a task that should prove easy and speedy once we are at your grandfather’s, for there will be no household duties to distract you from the labor—the book may be sent off to my publisher, Mr. John Murray. How long do you suppose the copying may take you, my love? Could you write as many as ten pages an hour?”
“I—I should rather doubt that. Papa,” faltered Juliana—even her stout spirit was a little daunted at the prospect ahead, for the book was more than twice the length of any of his previous works. “For the first hour it is very well, but—but presently one’s hand begins to tire! However, you may be sure that I shall do it as speedily as may be. You cannot be any more eager than I am to see it on its way to the publisher’s. Only think! Instead of having to ask the British Envoy to undertake its dispatch, you may be able to travel up to London and leave it with Mr. Murray yourself.”
“So I may,” agreed her father, coughing.
At this moment they were startled by a tremendous noise of shouting, the clashing of sabers, and musket shots in the street outside their bedroom window.
“Mercy! What is it? What can be happening?” exclaimed Juliana in dismay, running to the window to look out.
“Have a care, my child. Do not let yourself be the target for a bullet. If there is a disturbance, it is best to stay out of sight.”
But Juliana, reckless of his warning, struggled with the stiff casement, pushed it open, and hung over the sill.
“It is a mob,” she soon reported.
“As usual,” commented her father, who was lying on his bed. “Pray, dearest—”
“Men in red caps shouting, ‘Down with the foreign spy!’”
“You do not think it is us they are after?” he said uneasily. “Are they coming this way?”
“No—no—they have got hold of somebody, but I cannot see who it is. Yes, they are bringing him this way. They are all dancing and yelling—it is like savages, indeed!” Juliana said, shivering. “They are shouting, ‘To be the Tree, to the Liberty Tree! Hang him up!’”
“Poor devil!” said her father with a shudder. “But there is nothing we can do.”
“Oh!” exclaimed Juliana in a tone of horror next minute. “It is the man who was so kind to you in the diligence, when you were sick! Oh, poor fellow, how terrible! How can they be such monsters?”
“Which man?”
“Why, our fellow traveler in the coach from Rennes—the Dane or German, or whatever he was, who gave you the cordial and was so kind and
helpful when I was in despair because you seemed so ill I feared you were dying. Oh, how can they? I believe they do mean to hang him!”
“Well, that is very terrible,” said her father, “but I fear there is nothing in the world we can do to hinder them.”
Juliana thought otherwise.
“Well, I am going to try,” she asserted, and without wasting a moment she ran from the room, despite her father’s anguished shout of “Juliana! For God’s sake! Come back! You can do no good, and will only place yourself in terrible danger!”
Running into the street, Juliana saw that the mob had dragged the unfortunate victim of their disapproval some distance along, to a small place, where grew a plane tree which, for the time being, had been garlanded with knots of dirty red ribbon and christened the Liberty Tree. Toward this the wretched man was being dragged by his red-capped assailants.
“Spy! Agent of foreign tyrants! Hang him up!”
The man, who had struggled until he was exhausted, was looking half stunned, and as much dazed as alarmed by the sudden fate that had overtaken him. He was a tall, thickset individual, plainly but handsomely dressed in a suit of very fine gray cloth, with large square cuffs and large flaps to his pockets, and a very high white stock which had come untied in the struggle. His hat had been knocked off—so had his wig—revealing untidy brown hair, kept short in a Corinthian cut. A noose had been slung round his neck, and the manifest intention of the crowd was to haul him up and hang him from a branch of the tree, when Juliana ran across the cobbled place.
“Citizens!” she panted. “You should not be doing this!”
Luckily her French, due to a childhood in Geneva, was perfect, but it seemed to have little effect on the crowd.
“Mind your own business!” grunted one of the three men principally in charge of the operation, but another explained, “Yes, we should, Citizeness! The man is a spy.”
“He is not a spy—he is a doctor! And a very good doctor! He gave some medicine to my father that cured him of a terribly severe spasm. And my father is an important professor of Revolutionary History. Think if he had died, what the world would have lost. But this man saved him! Think what you are doing, Citizens! France cannot afford to lose a good doctor! Think of all the poor sick, suffering people!”