Lark Returning

by Lark Returning (retail) (epub)

  She shrugged. ‘By winter, or at the latest by early spring – when the snowdrops come again. It should be over by then. Will you help them? They’ll need your help.’

  ‘I’ll help them and I’ll help you. Have you any laudanum?’

  ‘I’ve poppy juice, that’s what I give other people.’

  ‘I’ll get you something better from Jacques. You won’t suffer, I promise you. Leave it to me.’

  She put out a work-hardened hand and laid the rough fingers on his wrist. ‘I trust you,’ she said.

  When Blaize asked Jacques for laudanum, his face expressed consternation.

  ‘But you’re better. You are a changed man. You’re not going to take laudanum are you?’

  ‘Of course not. It’s not for me. It’s for Alice in the abbey. She’s dying from the wasting disease and she has much pain. I want to help her.’

  Jacques looked sad. ‘I didn’t think she looked well. So many of the women here have that. I’ve never seen so many. Is it too far gone for hope?’

  ‘She says it is and I trust her judgement.’

  ‘Perhaps I could come and have a look at her. I’ve treated many cases and sometimes they last much longer than doctors expect.’

  ‘That would be good. Come with me tomorrow, she’s expecting me.’

  * * *

  The howdie and the French surgeon trusted each other. He held her hand and felt the beat of her heart. ‘You’re a strong woman,’ he told her. ‘You can fight this.’

  But she shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want to. I don’t want to be like my mother who fought and fought till she was screaming in agony at the end. I want to die quickly. I want to die with dignity.’ The two men looked at her and neither could think of an argument against that. She was a woman who embodied dignity.

  ‘Then I’ll help you die when the time comes,’ promised Jacques, and that was enough. For the rest of the afternoon the three of them sat laughing and talking beneath the pear trees in the sun, drinking her home-brewed beer from pottery mugs and talking about other things. Just before the Frenchmen were preparing to leave, there was a rustling of silken skirts on the steps behind them and when they turned, they saw a small, dark-haired girl in a full-skirted blue dress coming down from the ruined church aisle. She was carrying a basket covered with a white cloth and she was smiling.

  ‘Oh, it’s Miss Christian from the big house,’ said Alice, introducing the girl to the French prisoners. ‘She’s the daughter of Mr Glendinning, the man you’re building the wall for. You’d better get back to work or she’ll tell her father about you.’

  The girl laughed. ‘Don’t tease, Alice, of course I won’t tell. I think father’s stupid to want to build such a huge wall anyway. I don’t want to be cut off from the outside world.’

  As she spoke her eyes caught the eyes of Jacques and for a moment everyone in the small group felt the electric shock of understanding that passed between the two strangers.

  Standing up, he took her hand and led her to the chair beside Alice. ‘Sit down, Miss Christian, it’s so lovely here in the sun.’

  The colour rose in her face and she sat, spreading out her pretty skirts. ‘Yes, isn’t this a lovely place? The monks knew where to build, didn’t they? You said they planted those trees, didn’t they, Alice?’

  ‘Well, they’ve been here as long as any of us can remember and they were bearing fruit when my husband’s grandparents were alive,’ Alice said.

  Christian looked at Jacques again and told him, ‘The pears are beautiful, soft and sweet. No one around has fruit like them. They say the trees came from France.’

  ‘Like us,’ said Jacques, with a guffaw. ‘All the best things come from France.’

  Christian giggled and looked up at him from beneath her long eyelashes. In that instant they fell in love.

  * * *

  When the enthusiasm of the wall-building party began to wear off, they were chivvied back into action by Jacques and Blaize, both of whom did not want to lose the opportunity of returning to Charterhall with its twin attractions in the mansion house and the ruined abbey.

  Work was never going on for long before Christian rode up on her neat black cob or driving in her shining governess car. She would pause and lean down to talk to Jacques, who was as excited as a boy after she left.

  Once or twice, when she did not come, he would be anxious and short-tempered with his workmates and asked Blaize to find out from the family in the abbey if they knew what had prevented her from visiting him.

  Christian and Jane had become friends although the difference in their stations of life meant that the friendship had to be concealed from her father. Christian, a motherless girl, enjoyed visiting Alice in the abbey, and often walked back from these visits with Jane, talking about the things that concerned young women of their age.

  She was very curious about Jane’s engagement to Jock – when would they be marrying? Where would they live?

  ‘I don’t want to think about a wedding now,’ said Jane. ‘My mother’s sick. If anything happens to her, I’ll be needed at home to look after my father and brother. Jock understands. He says he’ll wait.’

  She did not tell Christian or anyone else that she was not eager to marry because her heart was by now entirely given over to the unattainable Blaize. He still came to the abbey several times a week, and as she watched him comforting her mother, her love for him deepened even more. He had completely forgotten his misery and hatred of confinement now that he had something else to occupy his mind.

  Christian glanced at Jane’s sombre face and said, ‘Perhaps you’ve noticed how much I like Jacques. And he likes me too, I know that. He’s asked me to marry him and he wants to come to speak to my father. I wonder what Papa will say?’

  Jane had her doubts about this, for Mr Glendinning was the worst sort of mindless patriot, a loud bellower against Boney, and she could foresee that Jacques would have a hard time convincing him that a Frenchman, an enemy, even one who was a surgeon from a respectable family, was a good prospect for the hand of his daughter. Christian also had a brother who would not take a tolerant view of her wanting to marry a Frenchman either. Like his father he adopted conventional attitudes and, though he had no intention of risking his own neck in the fighting, could sound as belligerent and anti-French as the most fearsome fighting man.

  ‘When’s he coming to ask your father?’ she asked.

  ‘Soon, very soon, when I think the time’s right,’ said Christian, who was under no illusion about how easy her father would be to win over. But she held a trump card. Her father doted on her and was continually anxious about the state of her health. Like her mother, Christian Glendinning was a consumptive – the dread disease had killed her mother shortly after she was born – and her childhood had been plagued with outbreaks of feverish illness, some of which had looked like being her last. But since they had come to live at Charterhall, Alice had been treating Christian with various potions and cordials which seemed to have worked and set her on her feet again. There had been no recurrence of the disease for the last two years, and now everyone hoped that she was cured for she was a pink-cheeked and healthy-looking eighteen-year-old. From time to time, however, if she became too excited or upset, her cough would start again and old Glendinning would fly into a panic. He would do anything rather than upset Christian.

  * * *

  It was a magnificent summer that year and during the first two weeks of August the sun shone brilliantly so that the corn ripened golden in the fields, giving promise of an early and abundant harvest. Farm people all seemed to take a rest just before the harvest ripened, preparing themselves for the rigours ahead, and it was during this time that the French prisoners in Melrose decided to hold a fête to celebrate Napoleon’s birthday on the fifteenth of the month.

  There was to be music, and stalls selling the things that the men had spent the winter making – straw hats, ships carved out of bone, toys, paintings, intricately designed boxes with deco
rations made from straw. Many of the men did not receive any money from France and the sale of these gew-gaws gave them some money in their pockets.

  All the prisoners were very excited about the fête and invited local people who had become their friends. One of the Frenchmen, a rich merchant’s son from Bordeaux whose father sent him the princely sum of one hundred livres a month, announced that he would pay for a dinner to be laid on after the fête, to which each prisoner could invite a friend. Jacques invited Christian and Blaize asked if any of the Cannons would like to come as his guest.

  Adam Cannon refused. ‘I’m not a one for fêtes,’ he said, and his shy son standing behind him nodded his head in agreement. They would have felt awkward and out of place at a gathering with people they considered to be their social superiors. But Jane longed to go and her mother saw the disappointment on the girl’s face at her father’s words.

  She said, ‘Well, I wouldn’t mind going but this pain’s worse and I don’t think I could stand up very long. What about taking Jane as your guest, Blaize? She’d like to go to the fête and she could come back here before the dinner if she wanted, but since Miss Christian’s going, she might be able to come back with her.’

  He thought that was a good idea. It was a nice way of repaying the family for all their kindness to him so he said eagerly, ‘Yes, Christian’s going in her governess cart. Her father won’t go, of course, but he said she could if she took her aunt along as chaperone. She’ll bring Jane as well. Leave it to me, I’ll organize it.’

  Jock did not want Jane to go to the French celebration but she told him that she was only attending to keep Christian company. ‘She can’t go unless her aunt and I go with her and I know she wants to. She likes a party, does Miss Christian.’

  If he thought it unlikely that Old Glendinning would want his daughter to go to the fête with one of his bondagers, Jock said nothing. He knew there was no point in trying to stop Jane doing something she had set her heart on.

  * * *

  The old packman knelt down on the stone paving of the abbey aisle and slowly untied his bundle, carefully laying out things for Jane and Alice to look at. Jane had known him since she was a child and, when she was small, had been very frightened of him in his black clothes and with the enormous hat pulled down low over his face. Now that she was grown up however she recognized him to be harmless, just an unwashed old man who carried gossip from house to house and farm to farm around their corner of the Borderland. He was their local newspaper really, because he called in every month or so, full of stories about who had married, who had died and who had given birth to a baby, usually out of wedlock according to him.

  ‘You’re going to the French party for Boney’s birthday, they tell me,’ he said to Jane. ‘You’ll be needing a grand frock for that.’

  She looked at his dirt-engrained face and wondered how she could bear to wear anything that came out of his greasy sack, but when he stepped back and displayed his stock, her breath was caught in her throat because there, on the top of the pile, was the exact piece of material she had dreamed of. It was pale green satin with a soft sheen and she knew that it would look magnificent on her.

  Alice saw her eyes on the material and glanced at the packman, who had also noticed which piece attracted the girl.

  ‘That’s a piece of cloth fit for a lady,’ he said. ‘You’d look like the Queen of Sheba in that. But it’s not cheap. It’s a shilling and sixpence a yard.’

  A bondager’s wage was eightpence a day and when she heard the price, Jane’s face fell. She needed at least five yards. Where was she going to find seven shillings and sixpence? Even her father did not earn that in a week.

  The other materials were plain cottons sprigged with flowers, like the pieces the Cannon family usually bought to make Jane’s headcloths or her print blouses. She could not go to the fête in a dress made of that.

  ‘I don’t think I’ll go to the party after all,’ she said suddenly, standing back from the packman’s display.

  Alice looked surprised. ‘Why not? You were very keen this morning.’

  ‘Oh, it’s going to take too long to make a dress and I don’t know anybody over there in Melrose. I’d feel awkward.’

  ‘There’s a lot of folk going,’ wheedled the packman. ‘The family from the farm up the hill will be there and so will Miss Christian. I’ve just sold her a fine piece of lace to make a stole.’

  Jane walked towards the door. ‘I can’t go,’ she said.

  Alice looked at the packman. ‘What price did you say that green material is?’ she asked.

  ‘One shilling and sixpence a yard, but I’d let you have it for one and threepence if the lassie really wants it,’ was the reply.

  ‘I’ll take it,’ said Alice. ‘Just wait here till I get the money.’ She disappeared into the house, where Jane heard her rattling about, taking coins out of the hiding place in an old stone jar on the mantelpiece.

  She rushed in after her mother and said, ‘Don’t waste your money on me, Mother. I don’t want to go, really.’

  Alice turned in the shadows near the window and Jane saw that she looked very tired. ‘But I want you to go and I want you to have that green dress. I’ll help you make it up. You’ll be as fine as any lady there – but Jane, remember that you’re playing with fire. Just remember that.’

  * * *

  Where the road narrowed at the old gateway of the town, Blaize and Jacques waited in the doorway of an alehouse and when Christian’s governess cart came briskly round the bend, they stepped forward to greet their guests. Jacques seized the bridle of the pony while Blaize put out a hand to help the women down.

  Christian, soft and feminine in pale blue satin with her lace stole over her shoulders, stepped down first. Then her sour-faced aunt in black alpaca that must have felt hot and stuffy on the warm August day, bustled down carrying various wrappers and parasols in case Christian was too hot or too cold. It was when he put out a hand to help the last passenger out that Blaize started with a surprise which he could do nothing to conceal. He had never seen Jane dressed in anything but her bondager costume and when he thought of her, he saw her as a rural seventeenth-century milkmaid in the voluminous striped skirt, white apron, heavy boots and face-shading hat over the patterned cloth which always concealed her hair. He had never seen her bareheaded and today she was transformed, like a character from a fairy tale. The dress she and her mother had stitched together was made of cheap material but it was in a deep shade of sea green that made a bold contrast with her golden hair, and its low-cut neck showed her fine shoulders and the tops of her milky breasts to their best advantage. The folds of satin loosely draped her tall body, hinting at the points of her hip bones and the soft swell of her belly. It was the glorious hair that fascinated him most of all, however. It was very thick, piled up on her head but with softly waving tendrils that had already escaped at the sides of her cheeks and down the back of her neck.

  Tucked into a comb behind her ear was one of the sweetly scented, tightly furled white roses that grew beside the ancient graves in Charterhall abbey grounds.

  He bowed gravely as if to a queen, and equally gravely she stepped on to the cobbled street. Without speaking, she took his arm and they followed the others up the little hill to the square where lines of stalls were set out and crowds of people were wandering about. Flags were strung from house to house and a group of musicians was already playing on a dais outside the Masonic Rooms in the high street.

  As Jane turned the corner, her hand gently resting on Blaize’s arm, she gave a gasp of surprise and delight at the sight.

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you asked me,’ she told him with a dazzling smile lightening her face.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ he replied in his most courtly manner, his surprise at her transformation still evident. He felt as if he were escorting a stranger to the party.

  It was so easy to see that Jacques and Christian were deeply in love. They never left each other’s sid
es all afternoon and looked lovingly into each other’s eyes, whispering softly. When the dancing began they took the floor together as if they were unaware of anything except the other person. Each touch of the hand, each brush of the skirt seemed to have an electric effect on them. They caused a good deal of head-shaking gossip among the other guests.

  When some of the townswomen had seen Jane arrive they had tut-tutted among themselves at the unseemliness of farm women being invited to the party. They knew who she was because from time to time, or on fair days, she went into town to do her shopping. Jane however was unaware of their disapproval for she was glowing, sparkling, carried away with the delight of the fête. In her green gown, with her hair loosely tumbling, she made a majestic figure and more than one man stared at her with frank and open admiration. Her escort however looked stunned, and as several old beldames of the town watched, he put out a finger and gently touched one of the freckles on Jane’s cheek. She flushed at the touch of his hand.

  ‘You are – how do you say – tache de rousseur,’ he said softly. ‘Tache de son – with the sunshine. I’ve never seen you without that big hat and the headscarf before.’

  ‘You mean I’m freckled. That’s why I wear the scarf and the hat. You can’t work outside and not be freckled, you know. I hate those freckles. I’ve got them all over – even in places that the sun never touches.’ She sounded defensive.

  He laughed. ‘But they are magnificent, they make you look as if you are golden. You look like the goddess Juno. I’m sure she was freckled too.’

  ‘I’ve tried everything to get rid of them – I rub myself with rosemary oil and ointment made from cowslip flowers, but nothing works. I hate those freckles. I wish I had a milky-white skin like Christian’s.’

  They both looked across the square to where Christian and Jacques were dancing, their eyes fixed on each other’s face.