by Stella Riley
‘Well, Mistress? Are you hurt?’
The crisp voice, edged with impatience, made her jump. She tried to speak, found her throat too dry and swallowed.
‘No.’
He nodded. ‘Good. Then I hope you’ll accept my apologies on behalf of the garrison. Such incidents are as distasteful to us as they must be to you and we do our best to prevent them. Unfortunately, it isn’t always possible.’
‘N-no. I can see that.’ She realised that she ought, in common courtesy, to thank him but his manner made it difficult. She drew a deep breath, stepped away from the wall and recoiled nervously as her foot encountered something unexpected.
‘The contents of your basket,’ offered the remote voice, helpfully. ‘I hope nothing is damaged. Allow me to help you.’ This as she stooped hurriedly to pick up the small, carefully-wrapped packages that littered the ground at her feet.
‘Oh no – please – there’s no need. I can manage,’ she said disjointedly. ‘They’re only samples of damask for Mistress Welchman at the cake shop.’
The Captain retrieved a parcel that had fallen at some distance from the rest and dropped it into the basket. Then he picked it up and held it out whilst waiting for her to rise.
She did so a little unsteadily and took it gingerly from him.
‘Thank you. And th-thank you for arriving when you did. I’m very grateful.’
‘I’m happy to have been of service,’ came the cool reply. ‘But, if you’ll take my advice, you won’t use this particular short-cut when you are alone. And a wise maiden doesn’t smile at soldiers even when they are sober. It leaves you open to misinterpretation.’
‘I didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘Smile. I only said ‘Excuse me’ – so they’d let me pass. But they d-didn’t.’
‘So I saw. It might be more sensible on any future occasion, not to speak to them at all.’
‘I was being polite,’ she murmured defensively.
‘But they took it as something rather different,’ returned Justin dryly. ‘You will do better, therefore, to eschew courtesies of any kind. That way, you’ll be saved from annoyance and I from the trouble of administering a reprimand. I trust that makes the position quite clear?’
She nodded, overcome with a sense of guilt that was all too familiar and a feeling of mild resentment that was not familiar at all.
‘Good. Now, you said you were going to the cake shop, I think. Where is it?’
‘Just around the corner, in Parson’s Lane. At the sign of the Unicorn.’
A swift smile suddenly transformed the shuttered face.
‘Yes? Well, that sounds appropriate. And, to keep it that way and absolve the honour of His Majesty’s army, I’ll see you to the door. Come.’
‘It’s all right,’ she said, alarmed. ‘It’s only a step. And you were going the other way. Please don’t trouble yourself.’
The smile disappeared and was replaced by exasperation.
‘It’s no trouble – but I’d quite like to do it today, if you don’t mind.’
So she fell reluctantly into step with him, silently praying that no one she knew was watching. Justin glanced down at the ugly white cap which was all he could see since she was walking along with her head bent, presumably in an attempt not to be recognised. Amusement stirred again. Neither Potts nor Danvers was particularly intelligent but if they’d seriously expected to charm so much as a smile out of this girl, they must have been even more drunk than he’d supposed.
They emerged into Parson’s Lane and, as if she’d somehow caught his thought, the girl said hesitantly, ‘Those men. What will you do to them?’
‘In the end, very little,’ he replied, with a hint of grim humour. ‘But I doubt you’ll find them making the same mistake again.’ He stopped outside the cake shop. ‘And here we are, safe and unsullied. Your servant, Mistress.’ Then, turning on his heel, he strode back the way they had come.
She stared after him for a moment, before almost running into the shop to complete her errand. It was not until later, when she was half-way home, that she remembered how unicorns are supposed to meet their doom and thus understood the previously obscure implications of the Captain’s remark. Shuddering, she wondered if all Cavaliers were equally shameless.
Home suddenly took on an entirely new complexion and became almost a refuge. She sped towards it on quickened feet.
~ * ~
TWO
‘Abigail!’ Rachel Radford’s voice held its usual note of complaint. ‘Where on earth have you been till now? You should have been back an hour ago.’
‘I’m sorry.’ The girl closed the door and advanced slowly into the stuffy gloom of the shop. ‘I tried to be quick but Mistress Welchman —’
‘You let her keep you gossiping, I suppose,’ said Rachel, incisively. ‘Then ran through the streets like a hoyden, if the state of your hair is any indication. Really, I don’t think you have the remotest idea of properly modest behaviour or industry – or even what is due to your brother’s position in the town. This is an honest, God-fearing household and it’s time you stopped acting like a child before you shame us all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Abigail again. She put her basket down on the edge of the polished trestle and added placatingly, ‘She chose the most expensive one.’
‘Not there!’ Rachel snatched up the basket and put it on the floor. ‘It will scratch the surface. How many times must I tell you?’
Abigail repressed a sigh and looked silently down at her hands.
‘Well? What are you waiting for? There’s the table to be set for supper and Betty to be watched if she is not to burn the meat. Do I have to tell you everything?’
‘No, Rachel. Of course not.’ Abigail turned dutifully towards the door which led to the rest of the house.
‘And make sure you tidy your hair before Jonas sees you. I don’t know how you manage to get so untidy. Have you ever seen me with my hair falling down my back?’
Her hand on the latch, Abigail turned slowly back.
‘No,’ she said. And it was true.
Tall and elegant, her fair hair drawn back with an immaculate smoothness that Abigail could never achieve for herself, Rachel was an object-lesson in neatness. She was also deft, efficient, well-versed in all the domestic skills and - were it not for the severity of her expression – beautiful. A person, in fact, to whom it was impossible not to feel inferior and hard not to envy.
‘No,’ sighed Abigail again, escaping unobtrusively through the door.
She looked in on her mother before going upstairs and felt guilty all over again for what Rachel would call time-wasting but the feeling fled at the smile that greeted her and she responded ruefully, ‘Am I really very late?’
‘A little, perhaps. Did Rachel scold you?’
‘Yes – but it was my own fault. I should have come in the back way.’
Alice Radford sighed. She tried very hard not to dislike her daughter-in-law but it was not easy and she frequently wished that Jonas had chosen a less formidable girl … one whose warmth might have softened his own unyielding disposition instead of echoing and strengthening it as Rachel did. The house had been cheerless enough when her husband had been alive but now it was a tomb.
It was not for herself that Alice minded. Rachel was always civil to her and it was only proper that she should assume the running of the house; but it didn’t seem fair that Abby should be constantly criticised and harangued for faults that were not really faults at all, until she spoke of coming in through the back door like a servant. It had begun to seem, thought Alice sadly, that Abby’s life was going to follow the same joyless pattern as her own. And that was a pity.
Abigail watched the once comely face settle into lines of familiar anxiety and came quickly across the room to kiss her mother’s cheek.
‘It’s all right,’ she said, ‘Don’t worry. I’m used to it now – and I daresay Rachel doesn’t mean half of what she says. Where’s Sam?�
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‘Upstairs, checking the stock. Jonas thinks there was a mistake in the last delivery – and he’s probably right. This war upsets everything. I don’t know how we are to avoid ruin.’
‘By selling cloth to the garrison?’
‘Abby!’
‘I know. But everyone else sells them things so I don’t see why we shouldn’t. They just double their prices.’
‘And wait months for payment, no doubt,’ said Alice. ‘No. Jonas will never do it.’
Abigail’s eyes grew thoughtful.
‘Oh … I don’t know. He might.’ And then, quickly, ‘But I must run. He’ll be in soon and I haven’t even combed my hair – let alone laid the table for supper.’
Alice smiled. ‘I’ll do the table. Rachel needn’t know – and it will be interesting to see what she finds wrong with it. You just go and tell Sam to put away the book he’s doubtless spent all afternoon reading before Jonas catches him.’
A few minutes later, Abigail entered the attic store-room to discover, without surprise, how well Alice knew her children. Samuel showed no sign of mercantile activity. Instead, he was seated, chin in hand, on a box by the window, his head bent over the open pages of a slim, leather-bound volume that was almost certainly nothing that Jonas would have approved of. Abigail smiled and flicked the door-latch with her finger.
The dark head jerked up and round as he stumbled to his feet. Then defensiveness gave way to relief and he grinned sheepishly.
‘I wish you didn’t move so quietly. You scared me half to death,’ he complained. ‘I thought it was the Ice Queen.’
‘Shh!’ Abigail glanced over her shoulder. ‘One day you’ll call her that and she’ll hear you.’
‘So? I don’t much care if she does.’
‘You will when she tells Jonas. And, talking of Jonas – do you realise what the time is? I hope you’ve counted those wretched rolls.’
Samuel shrugged. ‘Of course. It didn’t take five minutes. And you’d better be ready for ructions at supper because we’re twenty ells of worsted short.’
‘Oh no. Are you sure?’
‘Yes. What’s the matter? It’s not your fault.’
‘I know.’ She managed a wry smile. ‘But it will put Jonas in a bad mood and Rachel is bound to tell him how long I was going to Mistress Welchman’s and —’
‘And he’ll be unpleasant,’ finished her brother simply. ‘Yes. I know. But it’s only words, after all. You shouldn’t let them upset you.’
‘I know. And I try not to – I really do. But it isn’t just Jonas, is it? It’s loud voices and angry scenes and never knowing what to say to people. Why am I such a coward, Sam? You must despair of me at times.’
Samuel came carefully through the racks of merchandise, his twisted foot dragging lightly along the floor.
‘Don’t be silly. How could I? Being scared of Jonas doesn’t make you a coward – he’s enough to give anyone the shudders. And we’re a pair, aren’t we?’
They were – and in many ways – for, with only a year between them, they had always been each other’s closest companion.
Samuel’s lameness was not a barrier to physical activity for he had made sure, with sheer agonising work, that it should not be … but it was a barrier between him and other boys of his age; and this he had never had the inclination to overcome, preferring the company of his sister or of books. In quiet defiance of Jonas [who considered the ability to do more than read, write and count superfluous and thought most books the devil’s own invitation to idleness] Samuel read anything he could lay his hands on and, at seventeen, had managed to beg and borrow a surprisingly broad education.
It was a shame, thought Abigail, as she hurriedly tidied herself to go downstairs, that the war had made it virtually impossible for him to attend a university; but, if the war hadn’t stopped him, then Jonas most assuredly would have … so perhaps the idea had never been more than a pipe-dream.
She peered at herself in the tiny mirror above her washstand and sighed. Jonas said that a larger glass was unnecessary for the purposes of neatness and would only lure one into the sin of vanity. And that, she reflected wryly, might well be true if one was fortunate enough to have anything to be vain about. Sadly, that did not apply to her - for, though there was nothing actually wrong with her face, it did seem to be easily forgettable. Captain Ambrose, for example, would probably have the greatest difficulty in recognising her again for she didn’t think he had really looked at her even once. But that, she supposed, ought to be counted as a blessing.
The little wayward curls that Rachel had so objected to were now strained tightly back under her cap in the forlorn hope that they would stay there but the effect, though properly neat, was not a significant improvement. It was tempting to wonder if the fault lay in her colouring … but that was mere folly. Everyone could not be fair; and Sam, whose eyes and hair were as night-dark as her own, made nonsense of the theory by being as vivid as she was pale.
She stepped sharply back from the glass, suddenly aware of the trend her thoughts were taking. Truly, it seemed that perhaps Jonas was right. It was just a pity that the undeniable absence of one sin was but the gateway to another. And was vanity really any worse than envy?
She arrived at the table just in time to take her place with the rest of the family and, though her narrow escape from lateness drew a reproving frown from Rachel, nothing was said of it because Jonas was speaking.
Of moderate height and spare, angular frame, Jonas Radford looked exactly what he was; a well-to-do merchant whose deep religious fervour bordered on fanaticism. His black hair was cropped short, his clothes were of the best quality but completely sombre and his face, though ascetic and proud, was dominated by a pair of burning dark eyes. He was, in fact, an extreme copy of everything his late father had been. And Abigail had never been anything but afraid of him.
Tonight, however, something had clearly occurred to please him for he accorded Abigail a nod that was less taciturn than usual and forbore to catechise Samuel on the state of the stock-room. With an aspect almost benign, he waved them all to their places and folded his hands to recite the Lord’s blessing.
Some ten minutes later when this was over, Rachel served him liberally with roast meat and said, ‘You spoke of news, husband. Won’t you share it with us?’
A tight, unaccustomed smile touched Jonas’s thin lips.
‘Indeed, indeed. And it is news worthy of great rejoicing. On the second day of this month, the Lord God saw fit to smite the Popish, Malignant enemies of this kingdom in such force that it is doubtful if they will ever recover.’
‘There was a battle?’ asked Samuel.
‘Not just a battle,’ corrected Jonas. ‘An Apocalypse. A glorious victory over evil - a triumph of righteous, Godly men over wantonness and vice. So the Lord awaked as one out of sleep and, like a giant refreshed with wine, He smote his enemies in the hinder parts and put them to a perpetual shame.’
‘And where,’ asked Samuel, prosaically, ‘did all this happen?’
‘At a place called Marston Moor, just outside the city of York – which has now been saved from its own iniquity.’
‘God be praised,’ murmured Rachel. ‘Do you think that this will shorten the war?’
Jonas’ fingers curled around his tankard and the satisfaction deepened in his eyes.
‘I do – for there is more. Our stout fellows in the North have done greater work than to inflict a mere territorial defeat. They have vanquished, once and for all, the mainspring of our enemies’ hopes. The Wizard Prince – that hell-spawned foreigner whom the devil protects and no bullet can kill; that devourer of children, ravisher of women, destroyer of towns and soul of unnatural vices – is now disgraced and finished. His cavalry were smashed and he preserved his own worthless life by taking shelter in a bean-field. And, as for his familiar – the beast that has struck terror into grown men and been the subject of sermons in church – it is now no more than a dead dog. It was foun
d on the field … a true token of the Lord’s favour.’
Unpleasant sensations were taking place behind Abigail’s serviceable blue bodice and she quietly laid down her knife. She caught Samuel’s eye, saw her own distaste mirrored there and then sat staring down at her hands, hoping to escape notice.
As always, she had reckoned without Rachel.
‘Is there something amiss with the food, Abigail?’
‘No.’ Abigail looked up quickly and her fingers moved instinctively towards her discarded knife. ‘There’s nothing wrong. I – I’m just not very hungry.’
‘If you dawdled less, perhaps you would be,’ came the sharp response. ‘Of perhaps it was Mistress Welchman’s cakes that delayed you this afternoon and are now spoiling both your appetite and your ability to be pleased by your brother’s tidings?’
‘No.’ Turning a little pale, Abigail withdrew her hand again to the safety of her lap where its trembling could not be seen. ‘No.’
‘No?’ frowned Jonas. ‘Is that all you can say? What is the matter with you? I think we are entitled to an explanation.’
Abigail’s mind was already gripped by the paralysis that always took possession of it at moments like this. She could neither tell the truth nor frame a convincing lie … and a blank refusal was unthinkable.
‘I expect,’ remarked Samuel calmly, ‘that, like me, Abby finds it difficult to celebrate over the remains of a dumb animal.’
Jonas’ gaze swung round to encompass him.
‘That dumb animal, as you call it, had the powers of Satan behind it.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Samuel, provocatively cheerful. ‘If that were true, how come it’s dead? No. The only powers it had were the ones that our armies endowed it with in order to excuse their own failures.’
‘Sam!’ whispered Alice, her anxious glance flicking from Rachel’s set face to Jonas’ angry one. ‘Apologise to Jonas at once.’
‘Was I rude? I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to be.’
‘No,’ cut in Rachel acidly. ‘You meant to do exactly what you did – divert our attention from your sister’s shortcomings.’