Secrets in the Mist

by Anna Lee Huber

  I rounded the desk and bent to grip his arm. “Come.”

  He allowed me to help him up and guide him through the door and up the stairs. I left him at his bedroom door, deciding he could make it to the bed himself, even if he fell into it still clothed. I hurried down the stairs and out the front of the cottage, wanting to distance myself from the confusing array of feelings that churned inside me.

  It took all of my self-control not to confront Mr. Ingles, the proprietor of the White Horse and our local postmaster, as I strode into the inn. I knew Father had gotten his latest bottle of brandy from the White Horse, just as he’d gotten all his other bottles, collecting his bribes for his silence about the local smugglers. But as much as I wanted to give Ingles a piece of my mind, the mortification I would feel at revealing the stark truth of my position kept me in check.

  I wasn’t dimwitted. I knew the villagers must have deduced our strained situation. They might not discuss it openly, at least not in front of me, but it was obvious from our unpaid bills at the shops and the ease with which Father could be bribed that we were living in reduced circumstances. Regardless, I could never speak up and remove all doubt, could never reveal my shame in such a public way, especially not to someone like Ingles.

  As a gentleman’s daughter, perhaps I should have been able to go to them and demand that they stop bribing my father, that they stop smuggling. Perhaps I should have been able to apply to them for help. But it was precisely that same difference in our social classes that prevented me from doing so. It would have been absolutely beyond the pale, and the very thought of doing so made me cringe in humiliation.

  So instead I glared at Ingles, managing to bite out as polite a request as I could manage for him to post my letter, and turned on my heel before my anger got the better of me. It was difficult. Especially with Albie Turner and Ralph Conner sitting at the bar watching me, two men who supported their families by working far too little not to be smugglers.

  The conflicting emotions of both defiance and despair crashed inside me. I wanted to threaten these men that I would inform on them to the Board of Customs, to make them feel for just a moment the fear and frustration I choked back daily, but we both knew I would never do it. As much as I hated the fact that some of their smuggled goods came from France—the country whose soldiers had been responsible for my brother’s death—I knew that stopping their enterprise would do far more harm than good.

  In any case, the small amount of contraband that was transported back and forth through Thurlton did little, if anything, to support Napoleon or his troops, but mainly benefited the small villages along the coasts of France and the Netherlands where they docked—villages as poor as Thurlton. Which was why I’d pretended it wasn’t happening for so long. I’d overlooked it because without the added income from smuggled goods, I wasn’t sure how many women would be forced to mend their tattered and faded dresses yet again, or how many children might go to bed hungry. I wasn’t sure I could live with myself if I caused such suffering, even if by tattling I would legally be in the right.

  Besides, even if I shut down the smuggling operation in Thurlton, the contraband would still find its way to London by another route. It would all be for naught. My petty vengeance might force my father to stop drinking, but for how long? He could always travel to the next village to obtain his beloved brandy. And my retaliation might only beget more, when the shopkeepers who had kindly refrained from demanding my father pay his debts suddenly reported them to the authorities.

  ~ ~ ~

  Several days later, I arrived home in the late afternoon to find Father waiting for me. Instantly I was on guard, for he so rarely had anything to speak with me about. I could tell from the slur in his raised voice calling me into his study that he was not sober, though the fact that he could string his words together without confusion suggested he was not completely foxed either.

  I took my time hanging my bonnet on the hook before crossing the hall. At the door, I paused to smooth my hands over my skirt and took a calming breath. “Yes, Father?” I asked, pushing the door wide.

  He waved a piece of paper at me. I could tell from the creases it was a letter.

  “What is this?” he demanded.

  My stomach dropped. I’d arrived home early every day from my visit with Kate at Greenlaws, hoping to intercept Mr. Fulton’s reply before Father quit his chamber, but today I’d been held up by Mrs. Tate outside the church in Thurlton. She wanted me to ask Mrs. Brittle to bake one of her strawberry trifles for the church’s anniversary dinner in two weeks’ time. The encounter had been awkward, considering we didn’t have the money to purchase the lemons or sugar needed for the recipe. Awkward enough to make me reconsider my decision to avoid the marsh path, even during the day. But the thought of the Lantern Man and his shadowed eyes unsettled me more.

  Father lurched to his feet, still flapping the letter in the air. “When did you write to Fulton?”

  “After our visit from Sergeant Watkins,” I replied cautiously, not wanting to rile him further.

  He lifted a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, a tactic I knew well. He was stalling for time, trying to recall. I’d informed him of the revenue men’s unexpected visit and the exorbitant fine they’d levied on us the evening after I’d mailed my letter to Mr. Fulton. Father had been drinking again, but he had not yet been insensible to his surroundings. But Father’s memory was not what it had once been, even sober.

  That, or he simply chose not to listen.

  I felt a sharp sting in my chest, a faint echo of the pain I’d once felt at the prospect that he didn’t care enough to attend his daughter.

  “He found your empty brandy bottle,” I reminded him. “He says we must pay—”

  “Yes, yes,” he replied impatiently, as if he’d remembered all along. “And so you wrote to Fulton and asked him to find someone to purchase our pianoforte?” His voice was incredulous and angry.

  I fisted my hands at my sides, wanting to lash out at him, but I knew from experience that doing so would only infuriate him further. Father had never hit me, but there were other ways to wound.

  “I don’t see that we have a choice.”

  He paced in front of the empty hearth, giving no sign he’d heard me. “So it’s come to this, has it?” He scoffed. “I can’t believe you would sell your mother’s pianoforte.” His eyes were hard and accusing.

  His words were like knives being thrust into my gut. “Do you think this is easy for me?” I implored in a voice raw with pain. “I had no choice. We have nothing else to sell.”

  “What about that landscape in the dining room?”

  “Gone.”

  “Then the Hepplewhite settee in the drawing room—”

  “Gone.”

  He faltered. “The Dresden shepherdesses…?”

  Did he pay attention to nothing?

  I struggled to keep the bitterness from my voice. “They’re gone, too.”

  He looked around him, as if seeing for the first time how sparse our surroundings had become. It was a testament to his preoccupation with drowning himself with drink that he’d not noticed before.

  “There’s still no need to sell the pianoforte,” he insisted in a calmer voice. “We’ll simply have to make do.”

  I lifted my hands in frustrated entreaty. “But how else will we pay the fine? We don’t have nearly enough ready money to cover it.”

  “We won’t.” He turned away and I heard the clink of glass against glass as he poured himself another drink. “We won’t pay it.”

  “Father, you do understand that’s not an option? If we don’t pay the fine, they’ll have you carted off to debtors’ prison.”

  “They’ll do no such thing.”

  I was stunned he could be so unconcerned about something so serious. “But Father—”

  “I’m the grandson of a viscount.” The leather of his chair creaked as he settled into it. “Sergeant Watkins can’t do anything to me.”

  He m
ight be the grandson of a viscount, but no one in his family was going to vouch for him, or pay his debts, or protest when he was thrown into the Marshalsea Prison. Or offer me a place in their household. Unlike my mother’s family, I had met my paternal grandfather and uncle, and I knew better than to expect anything from them, and neither would I want it. Even though I was barely five years old at the time, I recalled how much they had frightened me. I was braver at age twenty-one, but that did not mean I would be comfortable in their presence.

  I watched as my father tipped back his glass and drank. His throat worked as he swallowed greedily, eager to forget.

  “Might I see the letter?” I finally asked, recognizing it would do no good to press the matter now.

  Father flipped his hand toward the desk and I moved to retrieve it from where he had set it down to pour his drink. Then I slipped from the room before he could protest.

  I retreated to my chamber, sitting on the edge of my bed to read it. Mr. Fulton wrote that he had found a buyer for the pianoforte, and if it pleased me he would come the day after next with a pair of hired men and a cart to retrieve it. Fortunately, he had not mentioned my request that he advise me on how to contact my mother’s father, referring to it only as “that other matter.” Perhaps he had sensed my desire for secrecy. In any case, his discretion turned out to be prudent.

  I was surprised he’d found someone to purchase the pianoforte so quickly, but I wasn’t about to question our luck. Instead I dashed off a reply and slipped out of the cottage and down to the village to post it before Father could stop me.

  Chapter 9

  I

  dawdled on my way home, not eager to return to the strained silence of Penleaf Cottage. The sweet scent of roses beckoned me toward the lychgate leading into the churchyard. I followed the path toward the narrow, battered stone façade of Church of All Saints. Its stolid Norman simplicity and thatched roof somehow seemed more fitting to the bleak landscape surrounding it than the profusion of bushes and flowers the women of Thurlton so lovingly maintained along its pathways and around its perimeter. Like a worn and wind-beaten old man, no amount of ornamentation could hide the pockmarks and patches time had wrought on the building’s craggy surface, not even the porch and arched doorway added in the late fifteenth century, complete with angel-carved spandrels.

  I veered to the right of the building, passing beneath the cool shade of a pair of yew trees. Near the stone wall marking the churchyard’s eastern border sat my mother’s and my brother’s graves. I stood before them as perhaps I’d done hundreds of times since their passing. I often dallied over their gravestones on Sundays following church service, avoiding awkward small talk with the other parishioners, who could not have failed to note my father’s perpetual absence. Mrs. Brittle and I usually arrived just before the bells chimed to begin worship, and having kept her from chattering before the service, I tried to wait patiently while she did so after. I could have walked home without her, but it somehow seemed lonelier to travel that mile alone after church, especially when I knew others were gathering together to share Sunday dinner.

  I puttered around their graves, as I did now, pulling wayward strands of grass or arranging at a more pleasing angle the petals of the flowers I planted there from time to time. When the churchyard buzzed with conversation after Sunday morning worship I felt uncomfortable, ever conscious of the eyes that might be watching me. But in the softening light of early evening, with the hum of insects and the rustle of the wind through the trees all there was to break the silence, I could sense the peace that so often eluded me.

  I tossed aside the piece of grass I’d plucked from in front of my brother’s gravestone and sat back on my heels. I wondered as I had so many times before whether my mother and Erik were together in Heaven. Whether they looked down on me and saw my troubles, or whether they had ceased to care, forgetting me much as Father had.

  I’d heard about how the Papists sometimes prayed to the Virgin Mary to intercede on their behalf. I knew it was sinful, or so Vicar Tilby said, but I couldn’t help but wonder if it was so wrong to hope for such a thing. I wondered if I prayed to Mother or Erik whether they would intercede on my behalf. But perhaps they weren’t even listening.

  Pressing my hands to my thighs, I prepared to rise to my feet when I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. Someone was behind me. I wasn’t sure how I knew. I hadn’t heard them move or inhaled their scent on the breeze. But somehow I sensed their presence, as sure as the grass beneath my knees.

  Instantly, I couldn’t help but think of the Lantern Man. He had dogged my thoughts and my steps for days as I pondered when and where he would appear next. My scalp near the base of the shortened tendril of hair from where he had clipped the end seemed to tingle in remembrance of his actions just a few short days ago.

  But on this long summer day it was still hours from dusk, and we were several hundred yards from the edge of the marsh. The Lantern Men had never ventured this far afield before, nor in broad daylight. And although I didn’t doubt he would be so bold, it seemed like an unnecessary risk. Especially when I already lived deep in the marshes with only an old woman and an inebriated father unable to prevent him from doing whatever he wished.

  My mind shied away from the possibility, unwilling to contemplate how precarious my situation truly was. Instead, I pushed myself to my feet, determined to face whatever was behind me before my imaginings became worse than reality.

  It was only Robert who stood several feet away next to a weathered, leaning gravestone, watching me with a curiously unguarded expression. There was regret and uncertainty stamped across his features, and also something akin to tenderness. It was different from the warmth I had once seen reflected in his eyes when he looked at me, but no less potent, considering how unprepared I was for it. My stomach dipped, and I wasn’t sure I didn’t wish it had been the Lantern Man behind me instead.

  I brushed the grass from my knees, stalling for time, hoping Robert would once again veil his thoughts from me. He dropped his gaze as he wove between the gravestones separating us, and when he lifted it again much of what I had seen stamped there was gone.

  I inhaled shakily. “How long were you standing there?” I asked, still wondering why I hadn’t heard his approach.

  “A few minutes,” he admitted. The corners of his mouth curled upward in chagrin. “I didn’t want to disturb you.”

  I nodded.

  An awkward lull fell between us as we turned to look at Erik’s grave. We had both said everything that needed to be said to each other about my brother and his best friend long ago, and yet standing there discussing something else seemed inappropriate somehow. As if we were disrespectful of his memory. Or perhaps it was the knowledge that upon Erik’s death what we had once been to each other was no longer true.

  Robert cleared his throat. “Walk with me?” he asked, offering me his arm.

  I linked my arm through his, grateful for the excuse to escape our uncomfortable situation.

  Rather than turning me toward the lychgate and the street, he led me deeper into the churchyard. We wound our way between gravestones, the grass soft beneath our feet as we passed through the shadow cast by the church. The air was heavy with the scent of roses, delphinium, and cornflowers, a sharp contrast to the boggy musk that perfumed the breezes in summer at Penleaf Cottage.

  I couldn’t help but wonder at Robert’s presence here. Or was our encounter merely a coincidence? I was trying to decide how to ask him when he answered for me.

  “Vicar Tilby wanted to discuss the church’s anniversary celebration. Greenlaws is donating a roasted hog for the dinner,” he explained, tilting his head down to me as he’d done since he’d turned fourteen and grown a head taller than me.

  I felt a tingle of something—a memory in my muscles. The feel of his arm linked with mine, the sight of his head angled toward me, almost but not quite brushing my temple. The sensation was at once familiar and foreign; it had been so long s
ince we’d simply strolled this way, side by side, with no destination in mind.

  He shook his head. “I hadn’t expected the vicar to be so anxious about this dinner. But then again, it’s not every day that one celebrates a building’s 600-year anniversary.”

  I, too, had been surprised by how much our normally easygoing vicar seemed to be fretting over this celebration, until I’d overheard Mrs. Harper gossiping outside the White Horse.

  “Archdeacon Soames is rumored to be attending.”

  Robert’s eyes met mine in understanding.

  “And the bishop as well,” I added. “Though that seems less likely.”

  “Well, that would explain the nerves. Having one’s superior watching over your shoulder cannot be enjoyable.” His lips twisted. “Especially when that man is Archdeacon Soames.”

  As affable as Vicar Tilby was, Archdeacon Soames was not. He scoured everyone and everything with a critical eye, determined to find fault, even in babies. He rarely made visits from neighboring Raveningham, but I supposed it was too much to hope he would miss out on the pomp and ceremony of a 600-year anniversary.

  “I suppose the children’s games will be more subdued, then?” Robert asked.

  “I imagine so. And the barrel race cancelled.”

  He laughed suddenly. “Do you remember the year Erik decided to climb inside Carter’s barrel on Bonfire Night?”

  I smiled. “After he’d snuck a glass or two of Mrs. Ingles’ special punch?”

  “And Carter’s face when he crawled out of it at the end of the street.”

  I started to giggle. “Poor Erik was so sick he couldn’t even hide what he’d done from Father.”

  “As far as I know, no one’s tried riding in a barrel since.”

  Our laughter filled the churchyard, and as it faded I couldn’t help but speculate. “I imagine Ingles won’t be serving his special punch at the anniversary celebration either.”