Julia and the Master of Morancourt

by Janet Aylmer

  The coachman let them down in the corner of the square, saying that they would find Pines, the grocers’ shop, along the road on the right in Fleet Street, and he agreed to be back with the carriage to pick them up in about an hour’s time.

  Pines proved to be a delightful emporium, with a tall bow-fronted window on each side of the stone entrance porch, and the date of 1780 engraved over the main door. Inside, several shop assistants were busy behind the long mahogany counter, serving customers and measuring out flour, sugar, and spices from the jars on the high shelves fixed to the wall behind them. As Mr. Hatton had told her, the range of goods seemed to be as great as in many much grander establishments in Bath and London. Julia chose the various purchases sought by Aunt Lucy, paid for them, and gave them to Martha to carry.

  It was after they had returned to the square and were looking in the windows of the other shops that Julia glanced across the street and saw Patrick Jepson alighting from the Bridport coach in front of the White Hart public house. Waiting for him on the paved sideway was the man she had been told might be his half brother, Frank. As she watched, the two walked away together and turned down the road past the Eight Bells Inn leading to St. Mary’s Church, and Julia lost sight of them just as Mr. Hatton’s carriage arrived for the return journey to Morancourt.

  Nine

  The next afternoon, Julia went with Mr. Hatton to visit the Whitakers’ farmhouse. This time, she had declined his invitation to take the reins of the curricle, on the grounds that she had no familiarity with the route.

  The farmhouse was situated much nearer to the sea than the manor itself, and lay low in a fold of the hills, so that the coast was not visible as they alighted and walked towards the front door. The house was built in roughly cut local stone, with the walls partly covered with a green climbing plant. It seemed that Mrs. Whitaker might have been expecting their arrival, for she opened the old oak door almost as soon as they had knocked.

  The ceilings inside were low, and Julia guessed that the house was the same age as the older part of the manor house at Morancourt. The sitting room smelt rather damp, and the paintwork and some of the floorboards were worn and in need of attention. The kitchen and scullery were small and dark, so that Julia did not realise for some moments that there were two small children there. The elder, a girl, she recognised from their visit to the school. The younger, a small boy, was playing on the floor with a little puppy.

  Mrs. Whitaker answered Julia’s unspoken question. “My mother looks after him in the village in the mornings whilst I teach at the school, Miss Maitland. Fortunately he is very good.”

  After looking around the rooms on the ground floor, Mr. Hatton commented, “Well, Mrs. Whitaker, I am very glad that I came, for it is clear that we need to have some work done here to make your kitchen brighter and easier to use. If you would like to ask Mr. Whitaker to take some measurements, I shall consult Miss Maitland, and we will make some suggestions to discuss with you both.”

  Mrs. Whitaker was delighted and asked them to look around the upstairs rooms as well, where Mr. Hatton made more notes whilst Julia talked to Mrs. Whitaker.

  “I thought that the children in the school were very neatly dressed.”

  “Thank you, Miss Maitland. Some have only one set of clothes, but most of the boys were given new neckerchiefs recently by a man in the village, which made them feel very smart!”

  Julia nodded, and Mr. Hatton paused for a moment whilst writing his notes to listen to this remark. After a few more minutes, they said a cordial farewell to Mrs. Whitaker and left the house.

  “Now,” he said to Julia, “if we went this way, we would go through the village, but the other way—let’s try that.” He handed her up into the curricle, and then took his own place and turned the horses along the other track. Soon they could see the sea on their right, and in the distance the roofs of some farm buildings straight ahead of them. Suddenly, Mr. Hatton pulled hard on the reins and brought the curricle to a halt.

  “What is it?” said Julia, startled by the abrupt action.

  “Look down there, Miss Maitland,” said Mr. Hatton very quietly so as not to be overheard by the groom standing on the footplate behind them. He pointed to the east towards the sea, and she saw that there was a well-worn route leading from the track they were following across a field down into a side valley.

  “I wonder where that goes?” said Julia quietly in reply. “It looks surprisingly well used.”

  “Not to the village, so maybe to the seashore. But,” he said, looking down at his well-pressed breeches and Julia’s neat dress and shoes, “neither of us is dressed for hill-climbing or mountaineering this afternoon. We can look another day, or at least I can,” and without further comment he took the curricle on and pulled up the horses at the end of the track, which stopped short of some more farm buildings by about a hundred yards. There again, there were signs of foot traffic from the end of the track towards the old structures.

  “Do you think that we have the beginnings of a mystery here?” Julia whispered.

  “Perhaps, or it could just be some of the labourers using the buildings as a shelter in wet weather,” he replied in an undertone, and he turned the curricle with a sure hand on the reins back

  onto the route that they had come, and on past the farmhouse again towards Morancourt.

  On Wednesday morning, the weather showed a partly blue sky, although a stiff breeze was developing off the sea beyond the crest of the hill. After settling Aunt Lucy in the salon with the help of Martha and Mrs. Jones, Julia fetched her warm white pelisse and her old boots and met Mr. Hatton at the front door, ready to walk with him across the park to the view that he had promised her beyond the hill. He was wearing a long black cloak with several capes over his day attire, as a protection from the wind.

  As they made their way together on a rough track alongside a boundary wall leading towards the hill, Mr. Hatton suddenly said, “Do you know Dominic Brandon well? I have heard many things about him—not all of them good. Is your mother very anxious that he should be a serious suitor for you?”

  “Perhaps. He is not the only young man she favours. I really prefer not to think about him.”

  “There are many other young gentlemen in Derbyshire who you might prefer?”

  “Do you include your brother in that?” Julia replied.

  “Jack? No, I cannot see you marrying him. Chalk and cheese, that would be. But, if that did ever occur, I would not be able to watch you living together.”

  That is very close to making me a declaration, thought Julia.

  “I hope, Mr. Hatton, that you are not trying to organise my life for me?” she replied, trying to speak lightly.

  “I’m afraid that I cannot avoid some degree of self-interest in the matter, Miss Maitland.”

  She had been looking straight ahead during this exchange, but ventured a sideways glance, to find that his green eyes were regarding her with an expression that she could not quite fathom.

  “I do wish that I had known you for longer, Miss Maitland, as you do the Brandon family. I sometimes find it very difficult to make out what you might be thinking.”

  “I have not sought to deceive you, sir. There are few people in the world, I have found, whom I can really rely on and trust—my father is one, and my youngest sister, Harriet, another. And I believe that I have trusted you to tell me the truth from the beginning of our acquaintance. That gives so much ease, does it not?”

  He did not reply and, after a short interval of silence, she went on. “Emily Brandon is also someone I can rely on, although I sometimes find that she is easily diverted when I am trying to get her to take matters seriously.”

  He laughed out loud. “I agree, for I noticed in Bath that she always said exactly what she thought, whoever was around to hear her. But she is a pretty girl with a pleasant personality, and certainly attracted a great deal of attention from young men wherever she went.”

  Julia was annoyed with herself to fee
l a tinge of jealousy at his comment, which was quite irrational, since everything he had just said about Emily was true and confirmed her own perceptions.

  Then he added, “But you are unique, Miss Maitland, in my experience. I have never met anyone in my life before whom I have liked and admired so much.”

  Julia blushed to the roots of her hair and could not think of anything to say.

  During this conversation, they had been walking closer and closer to the crest of the hill. On their right there were ridges at intervals across the slope of the ground, creating narrow pathways.

  “What are those, Mr. Hatton?”

  “Lynchets—they are called strip lynchets. Some people say that they arose over time by ploughing the ground. Others take the view that they were created deliberately many years ago to prevent the farmers and their stock from slipping down the slope and to reduce the erosion of the soil. They are quite common in this part of Dorset.”

  “Some of the ground above the edge of that lynchet looks as though it has been ploughed recently,” observed Julia, “so perhaps they are still in use.”

  They continued to walk further up the hill for a few more minutes. Then, just before they got to the top of the slope, Mr. Hatton asked her to stop walking.

  “Now, Miss Maitland, please trust me. Shut your eyes and allow me to take your hand and lead you these last few steps.”

  Julia did as she was bid, and the touch of his hand in hers made her pulse race as he led her slowly forward and then stopped again.

  “Now you may look.”

  Julia opened her eyes, expecting to see the sea. And she could, some way in the distance, perhaps two miles away. But what really caught her attention was what was in the foreground.

  For there, about a hundred feet in front of her, was a ruined building built in the same golden yellow stone as Morancourt, glowing in the sunshine. On one side there was a circular building like a castle keep, with parts of the top broken and missing. Behind it, a line of lower outbuildings went in the direction of the sea.

  On the other side, there was another substantial tall L-shaped building. To the left, she could see some damaged stained-glass windows with arched tops set in the lower part of the rougher stone wall and, on the right, there were straight walls pierced by arrow slits here and there. But between the keep and that building there was an arch, with a small central section missing. It was the passerelle that she had seen in the library picture at Morancourt.

  Julia exclaimed with delight and turned to find him smiling at her with such a happy expression that it made her heart sing.

  “Do you like the abbey, Julia?” he said.

  And she had replied in the affirmative before she realised that he had used her Christian name and, from his expression, he had himself become aware of that at the same moment.

  He took her hands in his, without saying anything, and then very gently took them up to his lips and kissed them, before releasing her fingers. Julia found herself almost overcome by the emotion that she felt at the pleasure of his touch, the urge to reciprocate, and his silent confirmation of how he felt about her. She could not trust herself to look at him, but stood by his side looking at the view and thinking her own thoughts for quite some time.

  At last, when she was confident of some control over her voice, she ventured, “Can you tell me something of the history of the abbey?”

  There was a pause before he replied, and Julia wondered if he, too, was finding it very difficult to control his emotions.

  “A little. The site was originally occupied by an old castle—nothing grand, but a stronghold nevertheless—hence the circular keep. Later the site was given to an order of French monks, who came from Morancourt, and they extended the buildings to create their abbey, and lived happily enough here for two hundred years. But in the 1530s, King Henry the Eighth dissolved and closed all the monasteries, so that he could raise money from selling their buildings and land. Either that, or the abbey and the village were raided for slaves.”

  “Slaves?” exclaimed Julia.

  “Yes. Pirates from northern Africa regularly raided coastal villages in northern Europe for many years—Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, and other countries—to find white slaves to be taken back.”

  “I knew nothing of that.”

  “Many people have forgotten, but it is said that thousands of men and women were taken over the years from the coastal villages in Devon, Cornwall, and Dorset, and that the trade continued in some areas until the early part of this century.”

  “What would have happened to those unfortunate people?” said Julia, shivering at the thought.

  “Some became labourers, perhaps in quarries, or building palaces for the rulers in cities such as Tunis. Or they were taken to be galley slaves, condemned never to set foot again on land, and the women were sought after as concubines. The wealthy amongst them were held for ransom. Whether the monks were taken as slaves, or whether the abbey was sold off by the King in the sixteenth century, local history does not say. But the monks did abandon the abbey here at Morancourt, and eventually the manor house was built further away from the coast, out of sight of the sea.”

  “When did the raids stop?”

  “Much of the trouble came from Tunis, Tripoli, and Algiers, Algiers being the worst. That city was bombarded from the sea by our sailors in 1804 to try to stop the invasions. The American navy also assaulted the city, to prevent their ships that were trading with Europe from being boarded by the pirates. And many nations in Europe paid bribes to the North African rulers to call off their boats or seek their slaves elsewhere.”

  “I had no idea about such things!” exclaimed Julia.

  “However, since Napoléon’s blockade in the English Channel during the past few years, the invasions along the south coast have had a different character—smugglers—some call them free traders—bringing in contraband goods that cannot be obtained at present from Europe by any legal means.”

  He then led her by the hand underneath the arch to view the abbey from the other side and to look into several of the buildings that were more robust, and then out again to look down at the view of the coast and the sea.

  “I do intend to renovate the manor house at Morancourt, but my long-term plan is to live here in the abbey. It has, as you can see, the most wonderful view and there is a track to the village down there on the right, which could be improved to be the main access. My late godmother was very fond of this place, but she did not feel justified in spending very much money on it. I hope, one day, to live here with my family.”

  Julia did not reply; she was busy thinking how she would love to live in the abbey. If only she could persuade Mama that would be a much happier outcome than any marriage with Dominic Brandon.

  Mr. Hatton broke into her thoughts. “Now, Miss Maitland, we could go back the way we came, or, if you prefer, we could turn left here and go through the woods, which you can see over there, where we would be more protected from this wind.”

  “Let’s go through the trees,” said Julia.

  As they walked along a path towards the woods, the sun disappeared because a dark cloud was fast advancing on them from the sea.

  “We are going to get wet, Mr. Hatton, but perhaps it will be less damp under some of the trees than if we were walking in the open.”

  “Yes,” he replied, “but we must be glad that you have your pelisse, and I my cloak, as some protection.”

  As they had anticipated, they only walked for a short distance through the woods before the rain began to fall, first lightly as a shower, and then with increasing weight, until it was so torrential that they had to take shelter under a particularly dense tree. It was only when they had paused there for a short while that Mr. Hatton suddenly put his finger to his lips and said, very quietly, “Listen! Can you hear anything?”

  Julia strained to see if she could discern a noise above the wind in the trees and the sound of the rain hitting the leaves. Yes, he was right, she cou
ld hear low voices, the sound of feet, and the rattle of something metallic.

  Suddenly Mr. Hatton pulled her back behind the trunk of the tree, then between the shrubs in a hedge and below into a narrow ditch beyond. He pushed her down out of sight and laid next to her, spreading his black cloak over them both to conceal her light-coloured clothing. Then he clasped her close in the narrow space and whispered to Julia softly to be quiet, and she found herself shaking, though whether from fear or delight she could not tell.

  The sounds were coming nearer now, and through the shrubs of the hedge she could see several dark figures moving steadily ahead along the path, some carrying boxes and others with pairs of tubs or barrels linked by lengths of wood bent by the weight of the contents into curves resting on their shoulders. One of the figures was carrying a metal box with a chain attached, which clanked as he walked along the track, with his boots squelching in the mud.

  “Come on now, young Jem,” said a voice in a local accent. “Stop making so much noise with that box, and just follow me as fast as you can.”

  There was a muttered reply that Julia could not make out as the figures passed just above where she and her companion were hiding, their feet making the leaves and twigs rustle on the track.

  It seemed a long time to Julia before they had all passed, and the sounds began to recede into the distance. There must have been at least six men, perhaps ten, each carrying something heavy.

  At last the rain eased and Mr. Hatton whispered in her ear, “I think that they have all gone, and we had better be on our way.”

  He helped her gently to get to her feet, and Julia brushed her dress clear of some of the leaves and most of the earth attached to her skirt. Then he took her arm and helped her up out of the ditch, through the hedge, and back onto the rough track.

  Neither of them spoke for the first two hundred yards; they walked as silently as they could along the path until the trees in the woods began to give way to more open ground, and then they found themselves well below the ridge of the hill and looking down the slope towards the manor house at Morancourt.