“Oui. An old man, you say? I am sorry I am unable to help mademoiselle find her father.”
He spoke with a heavy accent, and she had to strain to understand him. She wondered if he thought she was asking for her father. And the same time she felt as if he was probing her for some reason. It had occurred to Amy that in England your speech and your accent told the listener not only what part of the country you hailed from but also your station in life. She wished that she was better at accents so that she could have imitated Effie. Amy knew she didn’t sound like a maid and rather suspected the folks she had spoken to about the old sailor, knew her speech did not agree with her clothes.
But this Frenchman would be different. To him she was a maid and a wench of humble station. When she worked through all this in her mind, she blushed. Was he trying to take advantage of a simple country maid? He was a Frenchman, after all. Embarrassed she tried to change the conversion and blurted out the first thing that seemed to be appropriate.
“I just met another Frenchman yesterday. You’re the second Frenchman I’ve met in two days.”
He looked at her strangely.
She almost squirmed wondering how he would take that and again resorted to blurting out the first thing that came to mind.
“Do you know him?”
“Mademoiselle, there are millions of Frenchmen. I doubt it very much, bonne journée.”
She watched him march determinedly into the Tabard Inn, then she turned back slowly to the patient Pansy and the trap.
What should she do next? None of the coach passenger had seen the old sailor, but he could not have disappeared. It is possible he was resting in some shady recess when the coach passed by. There were a number of possibilities and if he was out there slowly wending his way towards London or whatever his destination might be, she had to find him and talk to him. Amy knew that she must go down the London Road until she found him.
She urged Pansy south on the London Road. The young horse, perhaps weary of standing around, took off at a good clip. Even though Pansy’s enthusiasm soon wore off she still galloped at a goodly pace. After the passage of some time, a milestone standing its lonely vigil by the side of the London road told Amy she was ten miles south of Stockley-on-Arne. She glanced at the sky where the clouds had mostly taken their leave allowing the sun to shine upon the soggy land below.
Amy shook her head a little from side-to-side. It was lunchtime and she would be missed for certain now, even if they hadn’t notice her missing before this. What should she do? Where was the old sailor? She should have caught up with him by now. Her family would begin to worry about her. Especially, would Emma worry. She always confided in Emma. She regretted not confiding in Emma this time. Amy felt miserable and guilty as she directed the trap onto some grass at the side of the road.
She was abruptly wrenched out of her pall of misery by an approaching horseman. It would seem strange a maidservant sitting in a trap at the side of the road. She didn’t want a stranger inquiring after her welfare, so she urged Pansy to go on at as fast a clip as she could get out of her, at the same time Amy pulled her bonnet down so it would cast a shadow over her face. It was just possible that a horseman here might be a local who may recognize her.
As they were passing one another she kept her head and bonnet so low that she could only see the rider’s boots. After they passed one another, she gave a sigh of relief. But her relief was only for a few moments. The rider must have turned around because he came alongside her.
“Why if it isn’t our charming Lady Amaryllis.”
She would recognize that voice and sarcasm anywhere.
“Are we out for a pleasant afternoon stroll?”
She yanked her bonnet up until it was on the back of her head and looked defiantly at her interrogator.
“No Sir Benjamin, we are on an urgent and important task.”
“Ten miles from home on a road seething with highwaymen and brigands?”
“I fail to see this road seething with anyone.”
She very purposely looked around.
“They hide in the shadows, and behind the trees and bushes.”
Amy felt the fire arising within her. She spoke slowly and emphatically.
“I will devour any highwayman who should try and accost me.” She paused and then continued in a more thoughtful vein. “Besides what brigand would accost a scullery maid.”
“That is a good point. Perhaps one who is curious why a scullery maid, as you put it, would be riding in a lady’s carriage. Which does raise an interesting question. I realize, Lady Amaryllis, that it is none of my affair, but I have this fatal failing. My sad affliction is a malignant curiosity that, fight it as I may and much as I seek help, I have yet to be cured of. I keep asking myself, why would a gentle young lady be out riding a trap with its top down in a bedraggled dress that appears to be that of a scullery maid.”
Amy pulled on the reins and pulled the trap to a halt. She fought back tears which were more from frustration that anything else.
“I’m looking for an old sailor and I cannot find him.”
“That,” said Ben, “would most definitely not have been my first guess. Although since I am conversing with Lady Amaryllis perhaps it should have been.”
Amy looked at him at sniffled.
He looked closely at her. “I hope you’re not going to cry. Although if you do, I’m rather good at consoling young maidens.”
“I do not need consoling—consolation—and I’m not going to cry,” she said sniffling.
He looked at her again with that irritating smile and cocked eyebrow.
“Would you like me to turn the trap around and accompany you home?”
She sniffled her consent. Ben dismounted, led Pansy, turning the trap around so it pointed north. Then he looped his horse’s reins around the dash rail.
“May I accompany you home?”
He started to get into the trap.
“I appreciate your kind offer to help me,” said Amy demurely, “but do you think it is proper for you to ride in the trap with me? We have no chaperone.”
“No, but I’m not sure it is proper for you to be out on a lonely road that is, or so I am told, infested with cutthroats and thieves.”
As Amy didn’t protest, he took the reins and they slowly made their way in the direction of home. In truth she didn’t know what to say, or more accurately, she didn’t know what she wanted to say. Besides, it occurred to her she maybe should tell Ben why she was looking for an old sailor.
“Sir Benjamin, you may wonder why I am looking for an old sailor.”
“I perhaps would if I was told that by any other young lady, but I am talking to Lady Amy, so I just accept it and go on with my life.”
Amy ignored his sarcasm, also noting he had called her Amy and not Amaryllis. With Ben that was always a favorable sign.
“And perhaps you may be wondering why I am wearing Effie’s best dress.”
He looked her up and down. “Is it still her best dress?”
“If it’s ruined I’ll buy her another. But it will likely be fine after it dries. I know men are ignorant about such things,” she said, a little of the old impishness trying to poke its way into the conversation, “but servant’s dresses are not like those worn by ladies of our station. Our dresses have to be taken partially apart so that the fabric portions that are washable can be laundered and the decorative parts cleaned by other means, then the dress is sewn back together.”
“That’s why I like to wear peasant clothes when I’m painting, digging graves for rhododendrons, or rescuing fair maidens from a watery death.”
“You do? I seem to remember a fair maiden sinking below the waters whom you didn’t try to rescue.”
“I have my code of chivalry. If the waters the fair maiden is sinking below are eighteen inches or less, I tend to just watch. But putting that aside, I believe you were about to tell me a tale of an ancient mariner being pursued by a gentle lady in scullery maid�
�s clothes.”
He looked up at the sky. “Please wait a minute.”
Ben swung down out of the trap, and quickly raised the top of the trap. As he secured the three prop nuts on each side he hummed somewhat under his breath.
“She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie,
Comin’ thro’ the rye!
Amy looked at him with some irritation. She couldn’t make out what he was singing, but was pretty sure it must be insulting in some way.
“What are you singing?”
“Oh, just a little song by the Scotch poet, Robert Burns. You have heard of Burns?”
“Yes I’ve heard of Robert Burns.”
In a much louder voice he continued his serenade.
“O, Jenny’s a’ weet. poor body,
Jenny’s seldom dry:
She draigl’t a’ her petticoatie,
Comin thro’ the rye!
Ben swung up onto the seat of the trap and looked at her with a big grin. Then he took the reins and urged Pansy forward on her trek back to Stockley-on-Arne. The allusion in the song was not lost on Amy. She was silent for a few moments, then with her eyes narrowed and her face tight, she shared her opinion of the song.
“Mr. Burns seems to have some strange ideas, and I find his song most indelicate, not to say absurd.”
“In what way?”
“Well...” She paused. “What does draigl’t mean?”
“Dragged.”
“If this Mr. Burns had any respect for his readers he would write in English, but I suppose we must accept that some people are uneducated and cannot speak good English.”
“Robert Burns grew up as a poor farmer’s lad, but he is educated and can write very good English.”
“Then why is he writing poems that people cannot comprehend?”
“A lot of people think highly of his poems.”
“What people?”
“He is very popular in Scotland.”
“Well, you know what Samuel Johnson said about the Scotch. And why would she be always wet from walking through a field of rye?”
“Actually, there is a river called the Rye near where Robert Burns lived when he was younger. But he doesn’t capitalize the word rye in the song, so I suppose it is the grain he is referring too. Why is she wet? I suppose it’s because it rains a lot in Scotland. May I ask a question? Why are you wet?”
“I knew you couldn’t resist asking that question.”
Amy was glad Ben was taking the discussion in a new direction. She felt she had been led on the wrong side by her irritation with Ben, or more accurately his sarcasm, and she felt guilty about that. She knew his sarcasm, if it could properly be called that, was an attempt at male humor, and that he meant no harm.
She was also uncomfortable at the direction the conversation had gone, that is, her part of it, because she harbored no animosity towards the Scots.
“So Sir Benjamin Anstruther you are wondering why my petticoat is all dragl’t and wet. Well,” said Amy opening her eyes as wide as possible and eyeing him strangely, “I will tell you. What you are about to hear will leave you amazed, terrified, and dumbfounded.”
She laughed. And then in a more serious mood she told him of the events of the last twenty-four hours. She told him of the old sailor who brought the pouch. She told him of the old Bristol newspaper, the letter with its abrupt and enigmatic ending, and the locket with the picture of the baby that Emma insisted looked just like Amy. But she did not tell him of her visit to Hillfield House and her conversation with the Frenchman who said his name was Pierre.
So intent was her account of the events and why she was trying to find the old sailor, that it was only when they arrived at the stables at Sibbridge House that she realized she had come home with a young gentleman and no chaperone.
“If anybody asks, Ben, Sir Benjamin, tell them you just arrived and give them the impression that we didn’t arrive together, without lying, of course.”
“Of course.”
As he spoke, old Hubert came out of the stable. Had he seen them arrive together? She realized that the reins to Ben’s horse were still wrapped around the dash rail.
“Oh, hello, Hubert, Sir Benjamin just arrived.”
“What do you think of the weather, Hubert,” asked Ben jovially.
“Unseasonable weather. This here weather reminds of the spring of ’74. Or wasn’ it 1773? Be strange weather, indeed it be. Twenty years ago this year. Rivers swollen. The Arne overflowed its banks it did. Threatened Stockley, it did.” He looked gravely at the sky. The muted sun made his grizzled face a landscape of ravines and rills. Hubert was lost in his memories. “Praise the Lord and spare us from that comin’ agin this year.”
While Hubert was lost in his soliloquy and did not seem to be paying any attention, Amy unwrapped the reins of Ben’s horse and dropped them to the ground. Freed from its tethering, the horse started to wander away just as Hubert pronounced his brief benediction. Ben quickly grabbed its reins which snapped Hubert back to the present. As Ben strolled away, Amy followed him until she felt they were too far away for Hubert to hear. As they paused she saw Hubert take Pansy and the trap into the stable.
“Ben?”
He looked at her.
“Emma and I paid a visit to Hillfield House yesterday afternoon.”
He looked at her questioningly.
“We thought you were home. It is obvious you were not. We encountered a man there that we had never seen before. He was a Frenchman.”
“You met...?”
Ben paused looking very uneasy. He seemed to be searching for the right thing to say. It had not been Amy’s intention to trip Ben up, but it worked out that way. She was about to take a cue from Ben’s awkward pause, and tell about meeting his new secretary Pierre when he suddenly continued.
“You met Henri? Yes he’s a French businessman. He’s here to discuss some matters of trade with me. As you know, my family’s deeply involved in trade. But of course, we never engage in it here, but he was in some rush over an urgent matter and I sent him a message to meet with me at Hillfield House. Which reminds me, I must be going now to meet with Henri.”
As Ben rode off at a gallop, she rounded the corner and walked towards the front door. Amy had many questions. Foremost was why Ben lied to her. Who is the Frenchman? With the horrors going on in France and Madame Guillotine claiming a tragic army of victims that was a question that was most pertinent. Frenchmen and Frenchwomen too, came in but two kinds, the butchers and those who fled the butchery. Which kind is the Frenchman, and what is he doing at the country house of Benjamin Anstruther? Who is the Frenchman? What is the Frenchman? Why does Ben have him at Hillfield House, and what is the Frenchman’s real name?
So wrapped in thought was Amy as she mounted the front steps that she was startled back to reality by a familiar voice.
“Well, sister Amy, I see you are feeling better. Mother noticed you were missing at lunch, and so I explained to her that you were feeling a little out of sorts and could not come down to eat. Mother hoped it was nothing serious. I am glad to see you have apparently recovered. Now, we will go to your room and talk.” Emma hesitated. “But we must talk quietly. Someone is looking for me.”
Chapter 10
The next day, just after lunch, found Hubert rescuing his beloved marigolds from intruders. He was dressed better than normal and kneeling on a leather apron because the ground was still damp. Beside him lay three sad little skinny weeds that had just ventured upon life and found themselves yanked out of the ground before they had any chance to grow.
The marigolds, because Hubert was again saving his beloved marigolds, did not look as if they needed saving. Having recovered from their ordeal of the last two days, they stood robustly with their shining faces looking ready to deal with any puny little weed on their own.
“Good afternoon, could you take the reins of Ganges.”
The voice was that of Sir Benjamin Anstruther. Old Hubert looked around and seeing Ben h
e struggled to get to his feet.
As Ben looked on, his attention was drawn by a girl’s voice from the front door of Sibbridge House.
“Sir Benjamin!”
The lilting voice belonged to Mattie, who had just emerged from the house followed by the gangly youth. Ben handed his horse’s reins to Hubert and waited as Mattie avoided the coach parked in front of the house and approached him with dainty little steps and the youth stumbling along behind her. Ben marveled at how uncoordinated her companion was.
She looked up at Ben with a smile and then seemed to see Hubert for the first time.
“Hubert! You should not be working on a Sunday,” she reprimanded and immediately turned back to Ben with a smile that exuded a hint of triumph.
“Sir Benjamin, this is Lazarus Throckmorton.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Mr. Throckmorton,” said Ben with great charm.
Mattie looked pleased and then introduced Lazarus to Ben, who had the impression that she was trying to imply that she had landed a specimen that was superior to a Benjamin, which was fine with him as he found her a nice but simple girl.
“P...Pleased to meet you, Sir Benjamin,” stuttered Lazarus. “D...Didn’t we meet at the ball.”
Ben wondered if the youth really didn’t remember that Ben broke into his dance with Amy.
“I believe we did, Mr. Throckmorton,” said Ben with an enhanced formality.
Then Ben turned and smiled at Mattie. There was something about the smile she didn’t understand.
“I am showing Mr. Throckmorton our spring flowers. Mr. and Mrs. Throckmorton are kindly paying us a visit after church.”
As she turned to leave, a thought seemed to occur to her. “I did not see you at church this morning, Sir Benjamin.”
“That is indeed true.”
Then a serious expression wafted over her face.
“You are not a follower of Mr. Wesley?”
“No I did not attend church with the followers of the Reverend Mr. Wesley.”
“You’re not a...”
“No I am not. I did not attend church with anyone this morning. Please forgive me if I seem rude but if you would excuse me Lady Mathilde, I wish to have a brief visit with your family.” And looking at the gangly youth, who did indeed appear to have a tiny drop of drool escaping his lips, Ben smiled.
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