Jane and the Stillroom Maid jam-5

by Stephanie Barron

  It was cooler here beneath the trees; curlews called from the green shadows, and a cloud of midges danced before my eyes. I observed an arc of sunlight just ahead — an opening out of the forest — and there, in the lee of a large shrub, crouched a young woman.

  She wore a mulberry-coloured gown of India cotton, and her hair was loose about her shoulders. She had set a large willow basket on a convenient stump, and was busily gathering berries from the shrub. I stopped short some thirty paces from her position and studied her. Something in her aspect was familiar, even at this distance; and then she turned her head, and I saw the wine-dark stain upon her cheek.

  Tess Arnold’s sister.

  “Hello, there!” I called out, and stepped forward with my sunshade raised.

  She stood up, and bobbed a curtsey, waiting in silence until I should have passed. If my decision to greet her — she, whose dress and entire figure proclaimed her my social inferior — caused her any astonishment, she did not betray as much in her countenance.

  “Pray tell me,” I attempted, with a little gasp of exertion, “whether this is the way to Penfolds Hall?”

  “So it be,” she returned, in a voice entirely without affect.

  “And is it very far? I fear the heat is most cruel today.”

  She stared at me, taking in my close bonnet, the gloves, the folds of my muslin gown, and my stout boots. She was thinking, no doubt, that her own simple attire should be much cooler.

  “Jus’ a ways on, miss.”

  “Thank you. I am most obliged.”

  She bent towards the tangle of branches once more, and I knew myself dismissed.

  “That is an elder,” I observed of the shrub she was busily harvesting, “and not good for eating. What use do you find for the berries?”

  Her hands arrested, she stared at me. “Doesn’t Tha’ know? Poultice for burns.”

  “Indeed? That is a remedy that has not made its way to the south. We use an infusion of elder flowers for feverishness and a sore throat; or the bark, when mixed with a little butter, is useful for healing sores. The berries we leave to the birds.”

  “Tha’s the lady from th’ Inquest.” She straightened, and rubbed her hands carefully on her skirt.

  “And you are Tess Arnold’s sister.”

  We studied one another an instant. Her countenance was less stony; her curiosity, I should judge, was piqued.

  “What is your name?”

  “Jennet.”

  “Very well. I am Miss Austen. Are you also a stillroom maid?”

  “I know the ways of simples.” She searched my face, clearly troubled in her mind. “Tha’s been lookin’ o’er the ground. Where she was killed. Wha’ fer?”

  “A gentleman of my acquaintance has confessed to murder. I do not believe he killed your sister. Do you ever recall her mentioning a Mr. Hemming?”

  “George Hemming? A course. We’ve known ’im twenty year or more.”

  “And known him rather well, I should judge.”

  Jennet shrugged, her expression inscrutable. “Did for old Master — and his last Missus, until they died. Almost one of the family, Hemming were. It’s never ’im as says he shot our Tess?”

  She read the answer in my eyes. Her own closed abruptly. “I’d made sure t’were Danforth.”

  “Why?”

  The eyes flashed open. They were dark blue, I noticed, the colour of flags by the riverbank. “He’s a Mason, in’t ’e? An’ Tess were carved up like a new lamb. They Masons be done fer all sorts of evil. Murdering babies. Burnin’ ’em on an altar at midnight. But never none of their own. It’s the common folk as suffer, when evil walks the land.”

  “Wherever did you hear such a story?” I exclaimed. “Mr. Danforth burning babies, indeed! A man who has lost his own children!”

  “It’s a judgement,” she declared, “them little’uns. They went to they graves in torment, on account o’ ‘is sins! Tess said so. She knowed it. That’s why she were killed. She’d been watchin’ they Masons right here, above the Dale.”

  “Here,” I repeated, much struck. Was it possible that Tess Arnold had made a habit of creeping out to spy on her betters, wearing gentlemen’s clothes?

  “The altar be somewhere in the rocks above the Dale,” Jennet said darkly, “and Tess told me of the babe she saw them take, and how it were crying as if its heart would break. Two weeks before she died, t’were, and when I heard her blood were spread upon the crag, a traitor’s death, I knowed the reason why.”

  “You said nothing of this at the Inquest,” I observed.

  “I want nothing wit’ thy justice.” Jennet spat upon the ground. “Tha’ thinks yon Michael Tivey cares fer Law? Him what was always sniffin’ like a dog at our Tess’s heels? Bringin’ her medicines, givin’ her books, simperin’ and smilin’ and saying, ‘Eh, Mistress Tess, tha’s lookin’ mighty fine the mornin’!’ And her laughin’ up her sleeve all the while, and never givin’ him as much as he wanted. The Snake and Hind’s no court o’ law. Michael Tivey called our Tess a slut and a wanton when he wasn’t hangin’ by her bodice-lace.”

  “And what did Andrew Danforth call her?”

  Jennet drew breath sharply and bit her lip. “Don’t you go speakin’ against Mr. Andrew. He’s more a friend to us than anyone up t’a Big House, and always were.”

  “And yet your sister lost her place because of him.”

  “Tess? Dismissed on Mr. Andrew’s account? Go on!”

  So she had not known the particulars of her sister’s disgrace.

  “It’s just like Haskell to think the worst of our Tess,” Jennet muttered. “Her what’s known Mr. Andrew from a child. Who else should play with the boy, I ask you, in such a great lonely place? And the old Master dying like he did, and his second Missus, too! Our moother thought that Master Andrew would fair run mad with grief. We all done what we could, to make him happy again. Our grandfer, him what’s been gardener up t’Hall these fifty year and more, right took’m under his wing. And then Andrew’s broother come home, and sent him off to school—”

  Tess Arnold, the playfellow of Andrew Danforth. Naturally it should be so. I had forgotten that they had been children together. But a vast deal of ground must separate the maid and her master, once the child was grown to a man.

  “He’s a very charming gentleman,” I observed.

  “Aye — and so good-humoured! Full o’ jokes and teazing, Mr. Andrew is.”

  “Jokes and teazing. And — playacting, perhaps?”

  “Aye.”

  “Is it possible, Jennet, that Mr. Andrew persuaded your sister to wear Charles Danforth’s clothes?”

  The girl took a step backwards. “Why should he?”

  “I don’t know. Can you think of a reason why she was dressed as a man? Another joke, perhaps? An attempt at playacting?”

  Jennet turned her head away and reached for her basket.

  “Mr. Andrew is also a Freemason, Jennet. Like his brother.”

  She did not answer; but her limbs were rigid with fear. She had revolved the idea already in her mind. For no one should wonder as Jennet why her sister had worn a man’s clothes.

  “Would Andrew think it a joke to bring Tess to the Lodge, arrayed as a gentleman, under cover of darkness? Could your sister have died, Jennet, by way of a mistake? A bit of teazing gone wrong?”

  Her eyes, when she turned back to me, were ablaze with pain and anger. Not only Tess Arnold had been fond of her playfellow; this girl with the ugly stain across her cheek had yearned for years in silence, and watched as Master Andrew escaped the Penfolds estate, and grew into a man, and considered of her no more than he should an old piece of drugget beneath his feet.

  “Did Tess tell you where this meeting place was — the place in the rocks where the Masons gather?”

  She shook her head.

  “Might she have told anyone — a friend perhaps, another girl in service at the house?”

  “She’d have told me if she told anybody,” Jennet said
defiantly; then some of the anger drained from her frame. “Our Tess were close-mouthed. But happen it’ll be in her book.”

  “Her book? — Tess could read and write?”

  Jennet’s head came up with a dangerous pride. “Tha’ thinks we’re all simple as the remedies we make? Tess knew her letters. She kept a book, she did, all filled wit’ writin’. Receipts for ills, and the days she gave ’em out. The names of the ones as paid her.”

  A stillroom book. One received, perhaps, from her mother before her, a veritable history of life and death at Penfolds Hall. “And have you looked into it, Jennet?”

  The young woman averted her gaze. “I don’t have Tess’s learning.”

  And her mother was blind.

  “But you possess the book.”

  All that was visible of her face was the wine-dark map.

  “If you showed me it, Jennet — we might read it together.”

  The young woman did not reply. Silent tears were rolling down her cheeks; and with a sensation of pity, I saw that at least one person in the world had truly loved Tess Arnold, and deeply mourned her loss. I reached out a hand, but stopped short of touching Jennet. Such containment — such inward suffering — commanded respect.

  “I am no Michael Tivey,” I told her, “and all I seek is justice for your sister.”

  “And a noose for Mr. Andrew,” she whispered miserably.

  For the Carrying-Off of Freckles

  Take an ounce of lemon-juice and a quarter of a dram of distilled elder-flower water. Bathe the skin with it five or ten minutes, and wash afterwards with clear water, night and morning.

  — From the Stillroom Book

  of Tess Arnold,

  Penfolds Hall, Derbyshire, 1802–1806

  Chapter 17

  The Stillroom Book of Penfolds Hall

  29 August 1806, cont.

  JENNET ARNOLD LED ME SWIFTLY DOWN THE NORTHERN slope of Miller’s Dale, speaking not a word, while I struggled to keep her in view and abandoned all attempts to shelter my complexion with the tedious sunshade. Where the line of distant fields met the sapphire arc of sky, I could just make out a cluster of buildings and a church spire — Tideswell, I presumed. Well before it, rising from the fields like a fortress, were the stone walls and many courtyards of a great house. This was no country gentleman’s manor, with a modest gabling and an upper storey half-timbered; this was a Norman keep, hallowed by centuries of upheaval endured. At the first sight of its noble outlines I stopped short, arrested and open-mouthed. I had possessed no notion that Penfolds Hall was such a grand old pile. From its appearance it might have been formed in the time of the Black Prince, and survived the years of Tudor Wars. It had gloried in Elizabeth, and sheltered Charles I; it stood silent while Cromwell’s armies marched like so many ill-clad ants over the landscape, and felt its crenellated towers crumble under the reign of Hanover. Regarding the estate, with its vanished moat filled in by time, I had an idea of the first John d’Arcy, heir to the Earl of Holderness, plotting a Glorious Revolution by its hearth-stones.

  It was clear, moreover, whence arose the local legends. However venerable those halls spread out below me, they wanted the appearance of happiness. What had Lydia Danforth felt, as she watched her babes die in the stony fastnesses? And felt her own spirit ebbing with last winter’s snows, into the bitter ground? Had she loved Charles Danforth enough to face the rumours of ill-fate — and been defeated at the last, so that not even love could survive her children’s graves? A chill hand clutched my heart, as though merely to gaze upon Penfolds Hall was to suffer a sort of petrification; I swallowed hard, and forced myself onwards in Jennet Arnold’s wake.

  THE HOUSE’S APPEARANCE OF COLD DESERTION WAS immediately belied, however, upon achieving the kitchen gardens.

  It was through these Jennet Arnold led me — down a well-trimmed grass path, between rows of trellised beans and lavender past its bloom; along solid hedges of box and rosemary, their fragrant arms entwined to keep the rabbits from the root plants — turnips and onions, carrots and potatoes. There was an admirable glass-paned conservatory, where tomatoes and melons and lemon trees basked in captured warmth; pears and quinces were trained against the main house’s walls; and every kind of herb ran riot in a knot garden outside the servants’ door.

  Here, the sunlight fell in a golden wash, and two bright-cheeked young maids were gossipping and laughing with the mending under an apple tree. They fell silent and looked askance as we approached; the sound of singing drifted towards me through the kitchen’s leaded windows. “Greensleeves.”

  “Come thee through to the stillroom, miss,” muttered Jennet, with her basket of elder over her arm. “That’s where our Tess’s book’ll be found.” She skirted the herb garden and pushed open a small side door set into the Great House’s walls, waiting for me to follow her example. I broke off a branch of lemon balm, crushed the leaves, and held it to my nose. All the joys of my girlhood at Steventon — the long morning hours rolling down the grassy slope in company with my brothers — rushed upon me. I breathed deep, and closed my eyes.

  “It’s jus’ through here, miss,” Jennet called in a low, insistent voice. I tossed aside the lemon balm, aware of the girl’s urgency. She feared discovery — from Mrs. Haskell, probably. I stepped quickly to join her, and entered the cool dimness of Penfolds Hall.

  We were standing in a stone-flagged corridor, low-ceilinged and flanked with simple plaster walls; the bones of the house were evident in the branching stone architraves that supported the upper storeys. This was the ground floor of the house, reserved for every sort of function except those of elegance and refinement: here there would be the kitchens — and I doubted not there were two, one for winter and one reserved for the airiness of summer; here were the washrooms, with their great tubs and mangles, the heavy irons ranked upon the shelves; here the offices and sitting-rooms of the housekeeper and the steward, where accounts were settled, rents paid, and country news exchanged; here, the pantries for china; the entrance to the wine-cellars; the storerooms for every sort of goods procured from England and abroad.

  And, of course, the stillroom that had been Tess Arnold’s particular province.

  Jennet peered over my shoulder towards the far end of the corridor. The clatter of pots and the shrill voices of several women suggested that beyond lay the kitchen.

  “… a quantity of ash for the soap-making, and now’s all spoilt fra’ the rain. If another of they teacups goes missing, Sarah, ah’ll have it fra’ tha wages …”

  The maid grasped my arm, and pulled me quickly through a doorway.

  It was a surprisingly small space for the size of the household — a room perhaps twelve feet by ten, lined with shelves and marble counters. Jars of preserved vegetables and fruits, of jams and cordials and candied peel, winked brilliantly from those shelves with all the enticement of a jeweller’s cases. A large sink stood under a window, and an iron stove beside it; a scarred oak table ran the length of the stone floor, with fragrant bunches of herbs depending from the ceiling overhead. One hard wooden chair was tucked into a corner, perpetually unused from its neglected air; and a remarkable cabinet — at least as tall as myself, and filled with rank upon rank of square, iron-bound drawers — dominated the wall opposite to the door. Labels, penned in neat script, had been affixed to each shelf and each drawer of the cabinet. I crossed to where it stood, and peered at several. Betony. Myrrh. Elixir of Roses—

  “Here it be,” Jennet said, and handed me Tess Arnold’s stillroom book.

  I held in my hands a quarto-sized ledger, bound serviceably in linen; most of the pages had already been cut.[11] She had kept her records in the same neat script as her labels, rather more crabbed due to the dearness of paper and a native economy. I turned the initial pages with care, and observed that the dates commenced in 1802.

  “I thought your sister entered into service at the age of twelve,” I remarked to Jennet. “This ledger encompasses only the past four years. Are there
earlier volumes?”

  She shook her head. “Tess only learnt her letters when she were seventeen. That’s when the Mistress coom to Penfolds, and set up her school.”

  “The late Mrs. Danforth?”

  “Aye. Full o’ ideas she were, ‘bout us and our letters. Those as wanted to learn, might. Our Tess was up until all hours, most nights, working on her copybook. She had the sharin’ of it with two others, and didn’t get the time of it she should; but happen she were quicker’n most.”

  “I see. And so she commenced this ledger four years ago — when she would have been about twenty.”

  “Our Tess knew the remedies Mam taught her by heart,” Jennet said frankly, “but she reckoned it’d save a good deal o’ trouble if they was writ down. So she asked the Mistress for this book, next time Master went to Derby; and the Mistress were happy to give it. The Mistress set a good deal o’ store by our Tess and her healing ways.”

  “Did she, indeed?”

  “T’were Tess got her the boy,” Jennet said frankly.

  “The boy?” I repeated.

  “Little John d’Arcy. Him what died last spring. No more’n two he were, and a fine, strong lad afore the convulsives got ’im. Apple of Master’s eye.”

  Charles Danforth must be called the Master now, though she had spoken of him so bitterly in the hills above Miller’s Dale. The boundaries of Jennet Arnold’s world, I thought, must be contiguous with the extent of Danforth’s fields.

  “Your mistress bore a son because of Tess’s remedies?”