A Dangerous Undertaking

by Mary Nichols

  She woke one night from a deep sleep to find Roland gone from her side. Before she could wonder what had woken her, she heard the sound of shrill cries coming from along the passage, followed by footsteps and a door banging. It seemed to be coming from the Dowager’s bedroom and Margaret, wishing to help if there was something wrong, left her bed, put a dressing-gown on over her night clothes and crept along the passage towards her ladyship’s room. As she reached it a high-pitched shriek convinced her there was something very much amiss, and she pushed open the door to see Roland and Hannah struggling with the old lady.

  ‘Hush, Grandmama, hush,’ Roland said, pushing his grandmother back on to the pillows. ‘There is no one here but Hannah and me. Go back to sleep.’ He nodded to Hannah, who went to a table and fetched a cup of dark liquid which he took and held to his grandmother’s lips. She gulped it greedily, then sighed and looked up to see Margaret, in her floating gown, standing in the doorway. She shrieked. ‘I told you so. There she is. There’s the witch.’

  Roland looked round and saw her too. ‘Go back to your room, my lady.’

  ‘Can I not be of help?’

  ‘No. Go at once.’

  His tone brooked no argument and she went back to bed, lying awake, listening, but there were no more noises and, before she knew it, she had fallen asleep again. She did not hear the soft click of the door-latch or Roland’s footsteps as he crossed the room to look down at her tousled head; she did not know, until she woke next morning, that he had gone back to his own room rather than disturb her again.

  She rose as soon as she woke, without waiting for her breakfast to be brought to her, and hurried to join her husband in the morning-room. He looked up in surprise, but said nothing except, ‘Good morning, my dear. I am sorry you were disturbed last night.’

  ‘Oh, that’s of no consequence.’ She helped herself from a chafing-dish and sat down opposite him. ‘How is her ladyship this morning?’

  ‘Quiet again, though I fear she will not long be with us.’

  ‘Roland, I am concerned for her. She takes far too much laudanum. I am sure it is that which makes her confused.’ It was not only Lady Pargeter who took opium; the villagers used white poppies grown in their own gardens to concoct their insidious medicine. ‘Could you not find something else to soothe her?’

  ‘No, she has taken it all her life; it is too late to make changes now. It comforts her and that is reason enough to give it to her.’

  ‘But it is killing her.’

  ‘How dare you, madam, how dare you accuse me…?’ There was a gleam in his eye, and a dull red spot on each cheek, which told her she had gone too far.

  ‘I am not accusing you. Why are you so touchy? I am simply saying——’

  ‘Then I wish you would not. Do you think I wish my grandmother dead or would do anything to hasten the day? My God, Margaret, do you take me for a monster?’

  ‘No, of course not.’ She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. ‘I am obviously distressing you. I beg your pardon.’ She walked to the door with as much dignity as she could muster, glad that she had her back to him and he could not see her tears.

  She went to the schoolroom, but there was only a handful of children there, being examined by the Reverend Mr Archibald on the Scriptures. He was pleased with their progress, although he had a few strong words to say to Christopher Gotobed about his tardiness in arriving at church the previous Sunday.

  Margaret smiled; she knew the boy liked to take his dog for a scamper across the meadow and sometimes he forgot the time and was late back.

  ‘Young people are no great minders of time,’ she said with a smile, when the children had been sent home for their dinner and they were tidying up the books. ‘And, without timepieces, it is extraordinary how seldom they are late.’

  ‘That is why we have a bell, my lady,’ he said, though he smiled. ‘A bell for school and bells for church.’

  ‘Yes, of course, though I sometimes think the people have in-built clocks that tell them the time. It is a sort of instinct.’

  ‘The sun is a clock, my lady, and there is a sundial on the village green, put there by an ancestor of his lordship, just to remind people that their time on this earth is short and they should make the most of it.’

  ‘They are a very superstitious lot, aren’t they?’ she said, deciding he was the best person to talk to about it. ‘More here than in other parts of the country. In London, they throw spilled salt over their left shoulders, but that is about the extent of it. Here, their whole lives seem to be governed by the need to keep evil spirits at bay and encourage the good ones.’

  ‘You are making a study of such things, my lady?’

  ‘I am interested. Do people still believe in witches?’

  ‘Oh, yes, indeed, and always will.’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, my lady, but I have had an enlightened education, as I am sure you have.’

  ‘Why do the people of the Fens believe in omens so strongly, even the most devout church-goers?’

  He put the pile of books he was carrying on a shelf and turned to smile at her. ‘Their lives have always been hard, my lady, especially in earlier times, before the fens were drained. They had to be tough to survive. Their livelihoods depended on what they could glean from the water—fish, fowl, osiers for baskets, reeds for thatch—and the water was a hard taskmaster; it was muddy and putrid, freezing cold in winter and full of pestilence in summer. The people were victims of disease and ague and it is small wonder they turned to folklore and superstition to make their lives more bearable. In order to avert the disasters which overtook them all too frequently, they would believe in signs and omens. They would try to set aside portents of evil with good-luck charms and incantations.’

  ‘Surely they could have turned to the Church?’

  ‘The churches were often some way off, and in winter inaccessible and, when they were not, ten to one the incumbent was absent. Because he did not like the pestilential atmosphere, he would visit his flock infrequently.’ He sighed. ‘The witch-hunters of a century ago thought to eradicate witches with purges and hangings, but that did no good, and in more recent times we have tried to replace the superstition with education, a love of God and a faith in His goodness, but the beliefs are so deeply ingrained that we have only partially succeeded.’

  ‘Do you know anything of the enmity of the Pargeters and the Capitains? It seems to go back as far as the Civil War.’

  ‘I had heard something of it. That sort of thing was particularly prevalent in this area at that time because Oliver Cromwell was a local man and East Anglia was at the centre of hostilities. People who had, until that time, lived happily side by side became mortal enemies; things were said, threats made, evil deeds done, and it was easier to blame those in the pay of the devil than one’s own weakness.’

  ‘Do you think that is how it started? It seems very foolish to me.’

  ‘So it is. The feud has been handed down from generation to generation, so that even the people who perpetuate it cannot remember how it started. Stories grow up around it and are added to with every telling. It is unfortunate, in a way, that old Lady Pargeter has lived to be such a great age. She is only two generations removed from the original trouble and she grew up hearing about it, but now, perhaps, it will die for want of telling.’ He smiled suddenly. ‘The two families are united now in you and his lordship; that is surely a good sign.’

  ‘An omen, sir?’ Margaret teased.

  He laughed. ‘Touché, my lady.’

  ‘I do hope you are right, but my husband is less sure.’

  ‘Then you must have faith enough for both of you.’

  He bade her good-day with a smile and left, as he had come in, by the garden door, and Margaret turned her attention to preparing the following day’s lessons, but she could not give her mind to it and reluctantly gave up.

  Something had to be done to ease the dreadful tension in the house, or everyone would turn as mad
as old Lady Pargeter. It was like a great stormcloud poised for a crack of thunder to release its power, or a keg of gunpowder waiting for a fuse to blow everything sky-high. Much as she loved him, she did not know how she could go on living with a man who was under so great a mantle of darkness that it obscured his reason. Perhaps she ought to go back on her bargain to stay a year and leave Winterford at once, for Roland’s sake. To give him peace…

  But before she could speak to Roland the Dowager Lady Pargeter died.

  Kate and Charles came down for the funeral, which was attended by the whole village and many dignitaries from Ely and Huntingdon. Although it was a sad occasion, Margaret was very pleased to see Kate; she seemed to bring a breath of sanity to the house, and they spent some time laughing and chatting and bringing each other up to date on what they had been doing. Kate was saddened by her grandmother’s death, but she was pregnant and so pleased with herself over it that she could not mourn for long. She and Charles stayed two days, and the old house came to life for a time, but sank into gloom the minute they left. Roland seemed to take their departure as a signal to disappear himself for hours on the fen.

  Margaret assumed he had a problem to wrestle with and until he had solved it he had to be alone, but she could not stop herself wondering if it had anything to do with her. Had his grandmother’s death reminded him of their bargain? Would he send her away at once? It would break her heart into a thousand fragments if he did; whether he loved her or not, she could not face life without him. She held her breath, waiting…

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE days passed, one upon the other, growing longer and warmer. Roland did not mention leaving himself, nor asked Margaret to leave, and she began to relax, to hope for a reprieve, especially as he seemed to enjoy making love to her. Each time they seemed to find new ways to delight each other, fresh sensations to add to those that had gone before. She was a flower opening to the sun, each perfect petal unfurling to reveal the nectar that would quench the thirst he had for her. The night belonged to them, the lovers, but the day, as far as he was concerned, was for remorse and guilt and shame, not because he loved her but because he knew it was inevitable that she would be hurt by it.

  She spent her days with the school—though that was very poorly attended now that there was work for the children to do on the land—and going for long walks, always accompanied by Penny. She explored the old footpaths, once the only routes through the fens but now high above the surrounding fields that sprouted with new corn. She never ceased to wonder at the hard lives the fen people must have led before drainage had brought the land under the plough and prosperity to the farmers, and only wished more of it could be spread downwards to the people who really did the work. Roland did his best; his cottages were now sturdy and weatherproof and his workers had a little land of their own to grow vegetables, fatten a pig or keep a milking cow. But they were first and foremost wildfowlers, fishermen—fen slodgers, they were called, as much at home on the water as they were on the land. They caught tench, pike, eels and otters, and hunted snipe, moorhens, ducks and geese. Their barges, called fen lighters, towed in gangs of five or six, carried cargoes of coal, peat, grain, vegetables, stones for the road and passengers, towed along the haling way by heavy horses. She came to admire these hardy fen people more and more. Roland, for all his wealth and position was one of them. If only she could understand him!

  Every day, as she moved among the fen people, she learned more about their ways and their strange beliefs, until she almost began to believe them herself. There were tales of ghosts and fairies and strange flickering lights out on the fens which had no human source, and no one dared go out when they were about, so Mistress Coulter told her. Two of the Coulter children were ill and, because their mother had to stay at home to nurse them, she had lost her wages. Margaret, who had remonstrated with the farmer who employed her to no avail, had taken a basket of food to supplement the barley gruel which was all Mistress Coulter could afford for her large family. She had stayed to talk, encouraging the woman to tell her about the fenman’s superstitions.

  Witches, she was informed, were afraid of iron and water, so each cottage had an inverted horseshoe nailed to the door, an iron implement under the doormat or a jug of water in the hearth to stop them coming in through the chimney. Fairy-stones—flints picked up from the fields and riverbanks which had a hole through the centre—were worn round the neck or hung over stable doors to bring good luck. But bad luck had its own omens—a clock that suddenly stopped, a bird tapping on the window, a falling picture, a ticking spider, a coffin-shaped piece of soot hanging in the chimney, a blazing fire with a black coal in its centre, called a ‘fire-hole’. And the most dreaded of all was a big black dog, the size of a small calf, called Black Shuck. He had bright yellow eyes—sometimes only one—which glowed in the dark and he would spring out on a lonely road and then disappear before the terrified watcher could blink. ‘He foretells death, my lady,’ Mistress Coulter told her.

  Margaret smiled a little nervously as she bade the woman goodbye and left the little reed-thatched cottage, musing on what she had been told. If Roland had been brought up surrounded by such tales, no wonder he held so fast to them, though if you were forever trying to encourage good luck or warding off evil you would have little time for anything else.

  Roland’s reaction, when she recounted her conversation with Mistress Coulter over the dinner-table, was to smile. ‘She is one of the more gullible of the villagers.’

  ‘Then you do not believe in these omens?’

  ‘It depends. Three things you must watch out for—a dead donkey, an out-of-work parson and a contented farmer. The first two are rarely seen and the last one never.’

  ‘I will remember that.’ Margaret was relieved that he could make a joke of it. Was that a sign that he was over his own fears? She smiled at herself; now she was the one looking for omens.

  Sometimes, when she was out in the village, she saw Nellie, hurrying with her shopping, and once they even came face to face. The girl carried a heavy basket of provisions, far more than Margaret would have deemed necessary for two people, and she assumed that her great-uncle had more visitors, though they never came to the village. Margaret smiled, prepared to be friendly, but Nellie turned away and hurried off in the opposite direction.

  ‘She can’t look you in the face, my lady,’ Penny said. ‘She’s an evil one.’

  ‘No, Penny, not evil, misguided perhaps. Now let us go home; his lordship will be worrying about us.’

  For once Roland was not worrying about her, at least not about her whereabouts. He was in his library, pacing the floor, with a letter in his hand. It had come, the imperious command he had been half expecting from Susan. It had been written in London where she and her parents were to be in residence for several months. Why had he not kept his promise to come to her in London? Why had he not written since Christmas? He was breaking her heart with his neglect of her. ‘You must come at once,’ she had written. ‘Papa is giving a ball for me and I expect you to be there. Oh, I cannot wait to see you again. If you do not come, then I shall come and find out for myself what it is that holds you so firmly in the country when you could be with me. I shall not like to do that because there is so much going on here, so many balls and routs and visits and so many fashionable young men, but I can think of nothing but you and so I am determined.’ There was more in like vein, but he could hardly bear to read it. That she had even addressed a letter to him was proof enough that she considered she had a claim on him; young unmarried ladies simply did not write to gentlemen. He wondered vaguely if Sir Godfrey and Lady Chalfont knew about it and how long it would be before someone told them of his marriage. His behaviour would be decreed that of a scoundrel by every right-thinking person; he would be a social outcast and, worse, his position at court would be rescinded, his judicial authority in the county undermined. The only way he could avoid that was to make Susan understand why he had done it, to tell her the truth.


  He heard Margaret come in, chatting to Penny as she went upstairs to change out of her walking-clothes. He folded the letter, put it in a drawer of the escritoire and left the room to find his wife.

  She was sitting before the mirror in her bedchamber in an undress gown, having her hair brushed by Penny. A green silk overdress lay spread on the bed, together with a cream petticoat and white silk stockings, ready to be donned when her toilette was complete. He strode over and took the brush from the maid’s hand. ‘Leave us.’

  Penny scuttled away and he stood behind Margaret with the brush in his hand. She looked up at him in the mirror. ‘Is anything wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all. May a man not visit his wife in her boudoir?’ He began brushing her hair, making long, smooth strokes down the length of her tresses, wondering how to begin.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ she said, almost purring.

  He lifted her hair and kissed her neck and then wished he had not, because she raised her arm and put her hand behind his head, drawing him closer, making him feel more wretched than ever. ‘I have to go to London.’

  So it had come; the thing she dreaded most. He was going to leave her as he had said he would. The fact that he had made her his wife in deed as well as name meant nothing at all. He had simply been passing the time in dalliance. Her hand dropped to her lap. ‘When?’

  ‘Almost immediately.’ He could not bear to see the hurt in her eyes; he had to do something to mitigate it. ‘Would you like to come too?’ It was a rash thing to suggest but he was rewarded with a brilliant smile. ‘I have business affairs to attend to, but they will not take all my time…’