A Dangerous Undertaking

by Mary Nichols

  ‘I think we should have a school in the village, don’t you?’ Margaret suggested at one home. ‘Then the children could attend classes when they are not working and would not be absent from home so long.’ The mother looked doubtful and Margaret smiled reassuringly. ‘I shall speak to his lordship about it. And about these cottages. They really are in need of repair.’ She looked up at the thatch as she spoke; it was possible to see right through it. And the keen wind found its way between the walls and the window-frames.

  ‘My lady, I would not want his lordship to think I had been complaining…’

  ‘Of course he will not. Now I must go.’ Margaret ducked her head under the low doorway and went out into the snowbound street, glad to breathe fresh air again. The two footmen were waiting stoically. She smiled at them. ‘Have we anything left in the basket?’

  ‘Very little, my lady,’ one said, trying not to let her see him shivering. ‘One small package.’

  She reached in and took it out. ‘Then I shall take it. You may go back home.’

  ‘But, my lady…’ he protested.

  ‘I shall be perfectly safe. Now go.’

  They scuttled away, and Margaret stood for a moment before turning slowly to continue to the next house, which obviously belonged to the blacksmith. His smithy stood next to the house; its doors were open and she could feel the heat from its fire as she approached. The parson was leading his newly shod horse from the interior. He doffed his tricorne hat. ‘Good-day, my lady.’

  ‘Good-day, sir. I have been taking your parishioners a little of the bounty we enjoyed at the Manor yesterday.’

  ‘But surely, my lady, you have not been inside their dwellings? Heaven knows what noisome diseases are to be found there. And they are so dirty.’

  ‘No, they are not, they are simply poor.’ She smiled to mitigate the reproof. ‘Have you seen my lord?’

  ‘Aye, my lady,’ the blacksmith interposed. ‘He rode off down the fen road. I reckon he’s gone to inspect the new earthworks.’

  ‘Thank you.’ She turned to go and he called after her.

  ‘The snow’s pretty deep along there, my lady.’

  The new barrier had been occupying most of Roland’s waking hours for the best part of a week now, and she was interested in seeing it for herself. It was being constructed on the western outskirts of the village to divert flood water into the cut and thence, a few miles further on, into a tributary of the Great Ouse. She smiled wryly as she walked. He was trying to save those miserable hovels when in her opinion they were in no danger. He would do better to try and repair them and make them fit to live in. And she intended to tell him so.

  She found about twenty men, digging with a will, but no sign of Roland. After standing watching them for a few minutes, she turned away, intending to go home, but then realised she still had a packet of food in her hand. She undid the wrapping and discovered it was a large piece of bride-cake. She smiled and wrapped it again, before setting off along the fen road towards Sedge House. She would thank her uncle for the gown in person and offer him the cake as a small consolation for not being invited to the wedding-feast. Kate had been right; he could not be all bad, if he could think of sending her that gown and coming to the church to stand among the parishioners to see her married. She was momentarily put off by the thought of his dreadful guests, but decided they would surely have left as soon as the roads had been opened.

  She tried to keep to the tracks left by carts and horses and people’s snow-shoes, but in some places the wind had drifted the snow and she found herself floundering. The snow got into her boots and froze her toes, and before long she was wishing she had not come. She turned to retrace her steps. It was snowing again now; huge flakes filled the leaden sky and obliterated everything except the blurred shape of the church steeple. She plunged towards it, believing the road was straight. She had not gone far when she realised how wrong she was; the snow was very deep.

  She struggled on, almost crying with frustration and anger at herself. A heron flew low over her head and then a flight of swans, making for the open water. Penny had said they were lucky. Penny had been aghast at her insistence on going out alone, but she had never been protected by servants before and she had no patience with women who never stepped outside their homes unless accompanied by a maid and a couple of footmen. She had sent the footmen home; would that alert anyone that she was in danger? She doubted it.

  Head down, she struggled on, her one aim to reach the village. For a little while the going seemed to get easier and she thought she had found the road again. She stopped when she realised that she was only a few hundred yards from where the swans had come down. They were gracefully bobbing up and down on the water. She smiled and took a few steps towards them, unwrapping the cake as she went, ready to scatter it. Then there was an ominous cracking sound at her feet and, before she could do anything to prevent it, she had fallen through the ice and was up to her armpits in freezing water.

  The cold was so intense that it snatched her breath away and she could not even cry out. There was a current too, so she knew she must be in the cut, and it was pulling at the voluminous clothes she wore, dragging her legs from under her. She found herself being toppled and drawn under the ice, unable to do anything but snatch hopelessly at the edge of the ice to save herself. It broke away in her hand. She was numb with cold, but her head was still just above the water. She managed to scream at last, but it took the last of her srength and she found her grip on the ice weakening. Her hands slipped and the current swept her off her feet and continued to pull her skirts, forcing her down and under the ice. With one last desperate effort she lifted her arms and grabbed a tussock of reed.

  ‘Hold on!’ The voice seemed miraculously close at hand, but she dared not turn for fear of losing her tenuous grip. She decided she had imagined it, that she was dying and on her way to heaven. Her eyes closed and slowly the reed slipped from her grasp.

  ‘She’s gone,’ Henry said. ‘You can’t save her.’

  ‘Of course I can save her,’ Roland grunted, tying a rope about his waist and handing the other end to Henry. ‘Tie this to my horse’s saddle and, when I shout, move him off.’ He moved forward gingerly on to the ice and then lay down, spread-eagling himself to distribute his weight as widely as possible. Slowly he inched his way forward. The ice creaked and groaned, protesting. Margaret had disappeared, but her clothes must have been caught on something because the current had not carried her beyond the hole she had made in the ice; if it had it would have been impossible to find her. He reached out and grabbed a handful of her cloak, enough to bring her face above the water again. The ice cracked ominously, threatening to topple him in with her. She was far too heavy to lift out from that position and he cursed his wound, which had made him less than the powerful man he had been before it. Carefully he undid the rope about his waist and put it around hers. Then he raised his arm to signal to Henry Capitain. Slowly the horse took the strain and, inch by inch, Margaret was dragged clear. The ice broke all about her as she came out and he quickly wriggled back to safety before he fell in himself.

  ‘I don’t know why you bothered,’ Henry said, when Roland was once more on dry land and wrapping Margaret closely in his own cloak, thankful that she was still breathing. ‘You had a God-given opportunity to be rid of her and you go and do the chivalrous thing. I’m damned if I understand you.’

  ‘No, and I don’t suppose you ever will,’ Roland was breathing heavily, ignoring the pain in his side as he lifted Margaret carefully on to his horse and climbed into the saddle behind her. ‘Now stand aside; I must take my wife home before she freezes to death. I thank you for your assistance.’

  Henry laughed. ‘It was a pleasure. After all, it is not I who wants her dead.’

  Margaret, brought briefly to her senses by the jolting of the horse, could never be sure afterwards if she had really heard those words.

  She was so cold that even her brain was numbed, and she could do nothi
ng to help herself or protest when Roland lifted her off his horse and carried her indoors and up to her room, shouting for Penny to come at once with mutton-fat and hot mulled wine. In her room he stripped her of every vestige of clothing and began gently rubbing her limbs with smooth, powerful strokes which set her whole body on fire. The sensation was excruciatingly painful and, though she tried not to, she could not help crying out.

  ‘Good,’ Roland said. ‘You are coming back to life.’

  ‘Oh, my lord, what has happened?’ Penny came running into the room in answer to his summons.

  ‘You may well ask,’ he said grimly. ‘Why were you not with your mistress? I’ve a mind to have you whipped.’

  ‘No,’ Margaret whispered. ‘I would not let her go with me.’

  ‘We will talk about it later,’ he said, then to Penny, ‘You know what to do?’

  ‘Yes, my lord.’

  He stood aside so that the maid could approach the bed, where she set about covering Margaret in mutton-fat, working it all over her, before wrapping her in several sheepskin rugs and withdrawing.

  ‘It smells dreadful,’ Margaret murmured as Roland sat down on the edge of the bed, the cup of mulled wine in his hand. ‘I wonder you can bear to be near me.’

  ‘Oh, I can bear it,’ he said with a grin, putting his hand beneath her head to raise it and help her to drink. ‘It is a time-honoured method and I’ve been saved by it more than once myself…’

  She sipped obediently. ‘You’ve been through the ice?’

  ‘You would be hard put to it to find a healthy, adventurous fen boy who has not, some time or other, nearly drowned.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘We have a great deal of water.’

  She smiled crookedly. ‘Yes, so I have discovered.’

  ‘Do you know how near you came to drowning?’

  ‘Yes.’ She shuddered involuntarily. ‘I am sorry to have put you to so much trouble.’

  ‘It was a very narrow escape, my dear,’ he said gently, putting down the empty cup.

  ‘I know. I owe you my life——’ She stopped suddenly because he had turned away to look out of the window as if he could not bear to face her.

  The snow was still falling steadily; it would delay his departure again. So much for Charles’s theory that he could turn his back on her and the consequences of what he had done. He could not. ‘Where did you think you were going?’ he asked, turning back to face her.

  ‘I had a piece of bride-cake left and decided to take it to my uncle, but the snow was too deep and when I turned to come back I lost the road. Then I thought I had found it again…’

  ‘You were on the cut.’

  ‘I know that now.’ She shivered. ‘I don’t know what would have happened if you had not come along.’

  ‘I will tell you what would have happened; you would have drowned and your frozen body would have been washed out into the sea on the tide below Highmere Sluice. It was providential that I was riding along the drove looking for signs of a thaw, when I caught a glimpse of you through the blizzard.’

  ‘My uncle was there too, wasn’t he? I didn’t dream it?’

  ‘Yes.’ He was frowning again. ‘He said he was watching the swans through his spy-glass and saw you go through the ice.’ He didn’t believe Capitain’s story but, as he could think of no other reason why the man should be standing at his window using a spy-glass on such a day, he put it from his mind.

  ‘’Then I have him to thank too.’

  ‘I have done it on your behalf. You will not go down that drove again, whatever the weather, do you hear?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because it is not seemly. Your great-uncle’s companions are not people I would wish my wife to associate with.’

  ‘I thought they might have left.’

  ‘Mayhap they have, but doubtless others will arrive. You must not go there again.’ His dark brows were drawn down in a straight line, but she could not tell if he was worried or angry. She supposed she deserved a scold, and put a hand out of the sheepskin to touch his arm.

  ‘I am sorry, Roland; it will not happen again.’

  He picked up her hand and stroked it gently with his thumb before putting it back under the covers and tucking them round her. ‘You do not understand the fen, Margaret. It is our master… Oh, you may smile, but I assure you it is. It will punish anyone who tries to defy it, particularly someone who knows nothing of its ways. You must learn to respect it.’

  ‘You make it sound almost human.’

  He chuckled, dispelling his frown. ‘Perhaps it is; perhaps it is a deity, perhaps the devil, who knows?’

  ‘I had heard that fen people are superstitious, but I did not realise it applied to——’ She stopped, unwilling to make him angry again.

  ‘Someone like me?’ He managed to look sheepish. ‘Oh, I tell myself I am immune, but I have not lived in this part of the country all my life without seeing and hearing things which make it impossible for me to remain aloof. I am part of it, part of the fen, of the village——’

  ‘If that is so, why are the villagers’ cottages in such bad repair, with leaking roofs and broken windows?’ She paused, then hurried on before he could answer. ‘Roland, you cannot be ignorant of their condition.’

  ‘Of course I am not,’ he said curtly. ‘But you forget I have only lately returned home. There has been no time——’

  ‘No, I do not, but you have been home long enough to set the men digging ditches when it would be far more to the point to rebuild those hovels they live in. I feel guilty that I am warm and comfortable and have more than sufficient to eat when they are in such straits.’

  ‘The "ditches", as you call them, are very necessary. As soon as the snow melts, there will be floods, and we must be prepared. It is more important than a little thatch falling off a roof.’

  ‘To save your fields.’

  ‘To save their livelihoods. Without their work in the fields, they would be in worse straits. The houses will be repaired as soon as the dyke is finished. The men understand that and so do their wives. Now, you will not interfere in what does not concern you, is that understood?’

  ‘Very well, but what does concern me? There seems little point in learning to keep house when I am not expected to stay beyond a year.’

  ‘Then you may do as you please.’ He stood up abruptly and moved away from her, unaccountably annoyed that she had reminded him of the transient nature of their relationship. ‘Within the rules laid down.’

  ‘That means I do nothing,’ she said flatly.

  ‘Have you no needlepoint or reading matter?’

  ‘Of course, but I want to do something useful. I thought I could set up a schoolroom for the village children. Let me do it, Roland, please.’

  He smiled crookedly. She looked more than ever like a kitten—a drowned kitten—with her little pointed chin and big violet eyes and hair stuck to her scalp. He could never bring himself to drown a kitten, however unwanted; he would always try to save it. It had been his natural instinct to rescue her from the ice and he knew he would always do all he could to keep her safe, but it made nonsense of his reason for marrying her. It was all very well to talk of the death of a stranger, but this woman was no longer a stranger; she was a warm and generous human being who had already shown how much she cared for those around her, even that reprobate uncle of hers. The guilt which had been tormenting him ever since she’d arrived on his doorstep, exhausted and with bleeding hands, had become unbearable. Whatever happened, he must protect her, but how long could he go on defying destiny? He reached out and smoothed her hair back from her forehead. ‘Of course, my dear, when you are fully recovered. Now I can hear Penny coming with warm water to wash that grease off you. After that, you are to rest.’ He stood up and made way for her maid, who had arrived with a steaming jug of scented water.

  Margaret submitted to being washed, and dressed in a lavender-scented robe, and took the dose of physic Penny put into her hands before leaving her to sl
eep off the effects of her ordeal. Margaret didn’t want to sleep; she wanted to lie there and think of Roland. His hands had been gentle as they had coaxed the life back into her limbs, and his eyes had had a worried look as if he really cared what happened to her, and yet his words had been brusque, almost harsh. He was a strange mixture of domineering male and tender lover… She checked her thoughts hastily. How could she think of him as a lover? He had given her no cause for that, not even when he had been gently rubbing her bare flesh. His hands had set her limbs on fire and not all of it because of the icy water, but he had not been in the least roused. He was as cold a fish as had ever been pulled from the fens.

  Not even the combined efforts of Roland and Penny could keep Margaret in bed longer than a day, and she was up and about by Christmas Eve. The snow had stopped but there had been no thaw; everywhere was blanketed in white and no one could get into the village from outside. Nor could anyone leave. Roland was still at home and would be until after the festivities. There was a great flurry of preparation in the kitchen but there was little she could do there but get in the way. She turned to leave, and from a window saw two of the menservants carrying home the yule log and greenery from the little copse of trees on the far side of the village, accompanied by a crowd of ill-clad children, dancing along on the hard-packed snow, apparently oblivious of the cold. They reminded her of her intention to start a school, and she went to the kitchen door to meet them.

  ‘Come into the warm, children,’ she called out to them. ‘I want to speak to you.’

  They looked doubtfully at each other and came forward reluctantly, but when they realised she only wanted to give them marchpane and cordial they held out their grubby hands and started to smile.

  ‘What are your names?’

  ‘I’m Christopher, this here’s Ben and that’s Jenny.’ The boy, who must have been about ten years old, pointed to the girl in the group, who held a toddler by the hand. ‘And the baby’s Tilda.’