Ashworth Hall

by Anne Perry

  Emily leaned forward to say something, but Eudora spoke first.

  “The hunger was to do with the potato blight,” she said firmly. “And that was neither Catholic nor Protestant. It was an act of God.”

  “Who is neither Catholic nor Protestant …” Emily added in.

  “ ‘A plague on both your houses!’ ” Charlotte quoted, then wished she had bitten her tongue.

  They all turned to stare at her, eyes wide.

  “Are you an atheist, Mrs. Pitt?” Eudora asked incredulously. “You don’t follow Mr. Darwin, do you?”

  “No, I’m not an atheist,” Charlotte said hastily, the color burning up her cheeks. “I just think to watch two supposedly Christian peoples hating each other over the nature of their beliefs must make God absolutely furious and exasperated with us all It’s ridiculous!”

  “You wouldn’t say that, you couldn’t, if you had any understanding of what the real differences are!” Kezia leaned forward, her face filled with emotion, her hands clenched on her deep-wine colored skirts. “Great evils are taught: intolerance, pride, irresponsibility, immorality of all sorts, and the great and beautiful truths of God, of purity, diligence and faith are denied! Can there be a greater evil than that? Can there be anything more worth fighting against? If you care about anything at all, Mrs. Pitt, you surely must care about that? What else on the face of the earth can be as important, as precious, and worth living or laboring for? And if you lose that, what else is left that is of any value at all?”

  “Faith and honor, loyalty to one’s own,” Iona answered, her voice thick with emotion. “Pity for the poor of the earth, and the power to forgive, and the love of the true Church. All things which you wouldn’t understand, with your hard heart and your self-satisfied quickness to judge others. If you were to find a man who’ll watch the poor starve and tell them it’s their own fault, go look for a Protestant, preferably a Protestant preacher. He’ll talk about hellfire and light the coals while he’s speaking. There’s nothing pleases him so much, while he’s at his Sunday dinner, as to think some Catholic child’s starvin’, or makes him sleep so sweet as to believe we’ll all be freezin’ in a ditch when he’s driven us out of our homes and repossessed the land that was ours from birth, and our fathers’ fathers’ before that back to the beginnin’ o’ time.”

  “That’s a load o’ romantic nonsense, and you know it!” Kezia said, her pale eyes brilliant, almost turquoise in the light. “There’s many a Protestant landlord went bankrupt tryin’ to feed his Catholic tenants during the famine. I know that, my grandfather was one of them. Not a ha’penny did he have left when it was over. The famine was half a century ago. That’s the trouble with you, you all live in the past. You nurture old pains like you’re frightened to let them go. You carry around your griefs as if they were your children! Catholic emancipation’s a fact.”

  “Ireland is still ruled by a Protestant Parliament in London!” Iona spoke only to Kezia; there might not have been anyone else in the room.

  “And what is it you want?” Kezia shot back at her. “A Catholic Curia in Rome? That is what you want, isn’t it? That we all have to answer to the Pope? You want papist doctrine to be the law of the land, not just for those that believe in it but for everyone. That’s it! That’s the core of it! Well, I’d sooner die than give up my right to freedom of religion.”

  Iona’s eyes burned with derision. “So you’re afraid that if we get power, we’ll persecute you—just the way you persecuted us. Then you’ll have to fight for a Protestant emancipation, so you can own your own land instead of centuries of being at the mercy of landlords, so you can vote on the laws of your own land, or practice in the professions like any other man. That’s what frightens you, isn’t it? We’ve learned what oppression is, God knows, we had good enough teachers!”

  Eudora intervened, her face pale, her voice tight in her throat.

  “Do you want to live in the past forever? Do you want to spoil the chance we have now of ending the hatred and the bloodshed and creating a decent country, under Home Rule at last?”

  “Under Parnell?” Kezia said harshly. “Do you think he’ll survive this? Katie O’Shea put an end to that!”

  “Don’t be such a hypocrite,” Iona retorted. “Sure he’s as guilty as she is. It’s Captain O’Shea who is the only innocent one.”

  “The way I read it,” Charlotte interrupted, “Captain O’Shea threw them together for his own political advancement. Which makes him as guilty as anyone, and for a less honorable reason.”

  “He didn’t commit adultery,” Kezia lashed out, her face flushed with anger and indignation. “That is a sin next to murder.”

  “And manipulating another man to fall in love with your wife, and then selling her to him for your profit, and when it doesn’t work, pillorying her in public is all right?” Charlotte asked incredulously.

  Emily let out a long groan.

  Eudora looked around the room frantically.

  Suddenly Charlotte wanted to laugh. The whole scene was absurd. But if she did, they would all think she had taken leave of her senses. Perhaps that would not be a bad thing. Anything might be better than this.

  “Have another crumpet?” she offered Kezia. “They really are delicious. This conversation is appalling. We have all been unpardonably rude and placed ourselves in positions from which we have no way of retreating with any dignity at all.”

  They stared at her as if she had spoken in tongues.

  She took a deep breath. “The only way would be to pretend none of it happened and start again. Tell me, Miss Moynihan, if you had a considerable sum of money, and the time to indulge yourself, where would you most like to travel, and why?”

  She heard Emily gulp.

  Kezia hesitated.

  The fire sank with a shower of sparks. In a minute or two Emily would have to ring for the footman to come and stoke it up again.

  “Egypt,” Kezia replied at last. “I should like to sail up the Nile and visit the Great Pyramids and the temples at Luxor and Karnak. Where would you like to go, Mrs. Pitt?”

  “Venice,” Charlotte said without thinking. “Or …” She had been going to say “Rome,” and then bit her tongue. “Or Florence,” she said instead. She could feel hysteria rising in her. “Yes, Florence would be marvelous.”

  Emily relaxed and rang the bell for the footman.

  Gracie had a very busy afternoon. She found Gwen continuously helpful, but it was Doll, Eudora Greville’s maid, who taught her how to make silk stockings look flesh colored by adding, to the washing a little rose-pink and thin soap, then rubbing them with a clean flannel and mangling them nearly dry. The result was excellent.

  “Thank you very much,” she said enthusiastically.

  Doll smiled. “Oh, there’s a few tricks as are worth knowing. Got plenty of blue paper, have you? Or blue cloth will do as well.”

  “No. What for?”

  “Always put white clothes away in a box or drawer lined with blue. That way they won’t go all yellow. Nothing looks worse than whites as ’ave gone yellow. Come to that, I s’pose you know how to care for pearls?” She saw from Gracie’s face that she didn’t. “It’s easy when you know how, but make a mistake an’ you could ruin ’em—or worse, lose ’em altogether. Like in vinegar!” She gave a wry little laugh. “You boil bran in water, then strain it, add a little tartar and alum, hot as you can stand. Then rub the pearls in your ’ands till they’re white again. Then rinse ’em in lukewarm water and set ’em on white paper and leave ’em in a dark drawer to cool off. Works a treat.”

  Gracie was very impressed. A few days at Ashworth Hall, paying attention, and she was going to be on the way to becoming a real lady’s maid. And she could read and write as well.

  “Thank you,” she said again, lifting her chin a little higher. “That’s very gracious of you.”

  Doll smiled, and something of the guardedness in her relaxed.

  Gracie would like to have stayed and talked longer
with her, learned more, but in displaying her own lack of experience she was inviting speculation as to why Charlotte should have such an ignorant maid.

  “I’ll make a note o’ that, for if any of our pearls should get dull or lose their color,” she said with aplomb. Then she excused herself and returned upstairs.

  However, she very quickly became bored, as there was nothing for her to do, so she decided to explore the rest of the servants’ parts of the hall. In the laundry wing, she found the maids relaxing and giggling together after a hard morning’s toil with steamy sheets and towels. One of the housemaids was ironing. The others, she was told, were carrying coals up to the dressing rooms to light the fires in time for changing for dinner.

  She saw Tellman walking across the yard back from the stable, looking grim. She felt sorry for him. He was out of his depth. He probably had not the least idea how to do his job; all the well-trained valets of the other gentlemen would be bound to notice it. She really ought to offer him a little help. At the moment he looked like a spoilt child about to throw a tantrum. She had found with Charlotte’s children, once they were out of the three-year-old frustration tempers, such incidents usually occurred because they felt somehow overlooked or unimportant.

  “Beginning to find your way around, Mr. Tellman?” she said cheerfully. “I never bin in such a big place before, an’ I don’t even ’ave ter bother wi’ outside.”

  “Well I do,” he said tartly, looking sour. “If we do get any trouble it won’t be blacking boots an’ carrying coals they’ll be thanking me for!”

  “You shouldn’t be carrying coals,” she said quickly. “You’re an upper servant, not a lower one. In fact, you are one of the top ten, so don’t let anyone take advantage of you.”

  His face twisted with disgust. “One of the top ten! Don’t be ridiculous. If you spend your time waiting on other folk and taking orders, you’re a servant, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “It most certainly is not!” she said indignantly. “That’s like saying if you’re a policeman it’s all the same whether you’re a senior detective wi’ knowledge and cleverness or a rozzer wot walks the beat carryin’ a lantern an’ don’t know a robber from a priest less someone shouts ‘Stop thief!’ ”

  “But you’re at other people’s beck and call,” he said.

  “An’ you in’t?”

  He started to deny it, then met her blunt, candid gaze and changed his mind.

  “An’ if yer don’t know wot ter do, I’ll find out for yer,” she said generously. “You don’t want ter look like yer don’t know yer job. I’ll show yer ’ow ter brush a gentleman’s coat proper, an’ ’ow ter take orff spots. Do yer know Ow ter get grease orff?”

  “No,” he said grudgingly.

  “An ’ot iron an’ thick brown paper, but not too ’ot. Lay it on a piece o’ white paper first, an if it don’t scorch, it’s a’ right. If that don’t ’move it all, a little bit o’ clean cloth an’ spirit o’ wine. If’n yer get stuck, come an’ ask me. Don’t let ’em see as yer don’ know. I’ll find out for yer.”

  She could see from his face that he resented it profoundly, yet he could appreciate the point of her argument.

  “Thank you,” he said between his teeth, then turned and walked into the house without looking back.

  She shook her head and went on with her explorations.

  She was in the stillroom when she saw Finn Hennessey again, his dark head and slender shoulders unmistakable. He stood with a grace unlike anyone else’s.

  He turned the moment he heard her step, and his face lit up with pleasure when he saw her.

  “Hello, Gracie Phipps. Looking for someone?”

  “No, just discoverin’ the ’ouse, so I know where ter find things,” she replied, delighted to have encountered him, and yet now tongue-tied for something sensible to say.

  “Very wise,” he agreed. “So am I. Funny isn’t it, how we work so hard for days preparing to come, and when we’re here, at least today, there’s almost nothing to do until dinner.”

  “Well, at Orne I ’ave children ter care for as well,” she said, then realized that categorized her as a maid of all work, and wished she had kept silence.

  “Do you like that?” he asked with interest.

  “Oh yeah. They’re pretty much obedient, an’ ever so bright.”

  “And healthy?”

  “Yeah,” she said with surprise. She saw the shadow in his face. “Isn’t children ’ealthy where you come from?”

  “Where I come from?” he repeated. “The village my mother lived in, and her mother before her, is a ruin now. It was abandoned after the famine. There used to be close to a hundred people there, men, women and children. Now it looks like the tombs of a departed race crumbling back into the earth.”

  She was genuinely shocked. “That’s terrible. Yer ma married an’ moved then? Din’ she ’ave no brothers wot stayed there?”

  “She had three. Two of them were evicted when the land was sold and the new landlords put it to grazing. The third, the youngest, was hanged by the British because they thought he was a Fenian.”

  She heard the pain in him, but she did not understand the story. She was perfectly familiar with poverty. The London streets in some areas could equal anything Ireland could offer. She had seen children starved, or frozen to death. She had been cold and sick often enough herself before she had been taken into service by Pitt.

  “Was a wot?” she said quietly.

  “A Fenian,” he explained. “A secret brotherhood of Irishmen who want freedom for Ireland, to rule themselves and follow our own ways—those of us that are left. God knows how many that is. We’ve been driven from the land by greedy landlords till there are only ghost villages left in the west and the south.”

  “Driven where to?” She tried to imagine it. It was the only part of his story which was outside her own experience.

  “America, Canada, anywhere as’ll have us, where we can find honest work, and food and shelter at the end of it.”

  She could think of nothing to say. It was tragic and unjust. She could understand his anger.

  He saw the compassion in her face.

  “Can you imagine it, Gracie?” he said softly, his voice little more than a whisper. “Whole villages dispossessed of the land and the homes where they were born and where they’d labored and built, driven out with nowhere to go, even in winter. Old men and women with babies in arms, children at their skirts, sent out into the wind and the rain to fend for themselves any way they could. What kind of a person would do that to another creature?”

  “I dunno,” she answered solemnly. “I in’t never met no one as’d do nothing like that. I only know landlords wot throw out a family ’ere or there. It in’t ’uman.”

  “You’re right about that, Gracie. Believe me, if I were to tell you all Ireland’s ills, we would still be here long after this weekend party is over and the politicians have gone back to London or Dublin or Belfast. And that would be barely the beginning of it. Poverty’s everywhere, I know that. But this is the slow murder of a nation. No wonder it rains in Ireland till the very earth shimmers green. It must be the angels of God weeping at the suffering and the pity of it.”

  She was still picturing it in her mind and trying to work her way through the sadness when they were interrupted by Gwen coming in to find some of the ingredients for making “Lady Conyngham’s lip honey.”

  “How do you do that?” Gracie asked, ever eager to learn.

  “Take two ounces of honey, one of purified wax, half an ounce of silver litharge and the same of myrrh,” Gwen answered obligingly, happy to share her knowledge. “Mix this over a slow fire, and add any perfume you care for. I’m going to use milk of roses. It should be up on that shelf.” She nodded to a point just above Grade’s head. She smiled at Finn Hennessey, and quickly he opened the cupboard and passed the container down to her.

  She flashed him a warm glance and looked disposed to remain a few moments longer. Gra
cie considered standing her ground, then decided it would look childish. She excused herself and went off, but wondering if he was watching her or if he had already lost himself in conversation with Gwen.

  At the corner of the corridor she could not resist turning her head, and felt a soaring of her heart to meet his eyes and know that his mind was still upon her.

  * * *

  Dinner was a very stilted affair to begin with. None of the women had forgotten the bitterness of the conversation over afternoon tea, and both Charlotte and Emily were dreading a similar scene.

  Fergal Moynihan arrived looking grim, but maintained a very formal courtesy with absolute, almost studied equality towards everyone.

  Iona McGinley looked beautiful in an intense way. She had chosen a very dramatic gown of blue, almost purple, and it made the skin of her neck and shoulders look very white and fragile. Charlotte had been told Iona was a poetess, and looking at her now she could well believe it. She seemed a figment of some romantic dream herself, and a curious, faraway smile played about her lips as though she were more often dreaming than thinking of the mundane politeness of a dinner party.

  Piers Greville sat in his own little island of happiness. His parents were both fully occupied trying to behave as if the company were at ease and making small talk about innocuous matters.

  Kezia also looked very fine in an utterly different manner. It would have been difficult to find two women more wildly in contrast than she and Iona McGinley. She wore a shimmering aquamarine gown with delicate embroidery asymmetrically down one side. Her shoulders were rich and milky smooth, her bosom very handsome. Her fair hair caught the light, and she seemed almost to glow with the richness of her coloring. Charlotte saw a flicker of appreciation on Ainsley Greville’s face, and on Padraig Doyle’s, and was not surprised.

  Charlotte had dressed with Gracie’s help. She wore one of Aunt Vespasia’s gowns, not the oyster satin—she was keeping that for the most important occasion—but one in a deep forest green, very severely cut, which was a great deal more flattering than she would have supposed. It all lay in the cut of the bosom, the waist, and the way the skirt draped over the hips and under the tiny bustle, most fashionably reduced from previous years. She saw a flash of admiration in the eyes of more than one of the men, but more satisfying than that, a swift glance of envy from the women.