by Joan Aiken
He said, ‘Yes, she could have escaped, but she would not. She felt she deserved to die, for her transgression. And she would have stayed there and starved to death, and her bones would have remained unburied, and her spirit would have roamed as an exile for ever outside the Happy Hunting Grounds. It was a hard task for me to persuade her that she had a right to live – but in the end I managed it.’
He smiled affectionately at Changing Sky, and she smiled back at him with a look of such total devotion and trust that Hatty, clenching her hands under the table, thought: I do not even have the right to feel this pain. After all, he does not know that I read his letter to Aunt Polly.
He never committed himself to me in any way. Never.
‘And will you never be able to go back to your tribe?’ she asked the girl, who shook her head. ‘That is very hard.’
‘And she has an even harder task ahead of her here,’ Lord Camber said. He laid a protective arm round Changing Sky. ‘She has to learn to be a Duchess. For my poor old father died last night and it seems there is nothing for it now but for me to take his place.’
‘Oh, bless me, my Lord – I mean, your Grace,’ said Godwit. ‘That will be a stony row for you to hoe. But I’m sure we all wish you and your lady the very best of good fortune.’
‘Where did you get married?’ Mrs Daizley asked.
‘At a little mission church in the wilderness. And then, when we returned to Amity Valley, I found a message waiting that my father was gravely ill; and we were lucky enough to find a boat at Baltimore that was just due to sail. We had prosperous winds crossing the Atlantic, and I am glad to say that we arrived at the Chase in time for me to see my father before he died. Mrs Daizley, I have come to ask a very great kindness of you. And you are so good that I am sure I can rely upon you.’
‘Oh, of course, Master Harry – I mean your Grace. Anything I can do!’
‘Will you come back and be our housekeeper at the Chase? Just at present Anna finds it all rather frightening and huge there – but I am sure that with such a kind barrier as yourself against all the unknown and alarming people she will soon discover how to go on—’
‘Bless her heart! Yes, of course I will come,’ said Mrs Daizley. ‘That is – I mean – if Miss Hatty can spare me—’
She glanced appealingly at Hatty, who was looking at Changing Sky. The girl cannot be more than sixteen, Hatty thought. She had a thin face with high cheekbones, a fine straight nose and soft night-black hair. She wore a beautiful cloak of soft dark fur and had gold rings in her ears. Nonetheless she looked young and vulnerable. Sixteen seemed a perilously young age to travel to a foreign land and be elevated to a duchess. Of a sudden she raised her eyes and gazed straight at Hatty, who said, ‘Of course you must go to the Chase, Mrs Daizley. We shall manage very well here. After all, I can cook a cow-heel now, excellently well – or so Mr Godwit says!’
The thunder cracked again, and a new torrent of rain started beating down on the thatch and coursing over the windowpanes. Hatty was reminded of the untimely storm that had caused her to drop her sister Agnes’s tray of toilet articles. She said, ‘Excuse me. I should like to get something.’ And went upstairs to Camber’s study – now hers, she supposed, and looked lovingly about its disciplined untidiness. This is my place. Nonetheless she stood for a moment holding her head in her hands, as if it might suddenly rise and whirl away like a balloon.
Then she walked downstairs and handed Camber a pair of volumes bound in blue morocco leather.
‘I do not know if this is your first wedding present,’ she said, ‘but I do know that you will not receive one that is given with warmer good wishes and friendship.’
He opened the cover and read: ‘The Moon is Upside Down. A New Collection of Poems by Mr Anthony Bailiff. My dear Miss Hatty! I am overwhelmed! Am I the first recipient?’
‘Yes! The books only arrived two days ago. I suppose I must send some copies to my sisters – but I received only five free sets, and I have such a large family,’ said Hatty cheerfully, ‘that I hardly know where to begin.’
‘The rain is letting up,’ said Lord Camber, looking out of the window. ‘I fear that Anna and I must return to the Chase.’
XXV
The moment the Duke and Duchess of Dungeness had left the house, Godwit exploded, ‘Now isn’t that just like Master Harry! Inconsiderate! Never thinks of anybody else!’
‘Eli! How can you say such a wicked thing?’ His grandmother was scandalized. ‘When you know his Lordship fair lives for others, and gives away every penny he can to the poor – and – and is so easy and affable to his inferiors—’
‘Yes! And look what comes of it! Look at the trouble he leaves behind him everywhere he goes. I wonder what kind of a hurrah’s nest there is this day in Amity Valley – I’ll wager he left all there at sixes and sevens—’
‘But he saved the life of that poor young thing,’ pointed out Mrs Daizley, dropping a sympathetic tear. ‘Think of it! Left alone to starve!’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said Godwit grimly. ‘He saves her life – but she can never see her own folk again. Even if she went back, they’d not take her in. And what kind of life will she have here – as a Duchess, for pity’s sake! I’ll lay the gentry round about and Master Harry’s kin give her a hard time – they won’t want to know her. An Indian savage! They’d sooner he’d marry somebody with a bit of breeding who’d bring money into the family. Why, even—’ He stopped abruptly.
‘’Tis true, she’ll be that homesick, poor lassie,’ ruminated Mrs Godwit. ‘But what else could he have done with her? If her own kin had cast her out? She’d be no happier in an orphanage – let alone they probably don’t have orphanages in those American lands. And he had to come home to his old Dad.’
‘She’ll be so lonely.’
‘Miss Hatty will go and see her and be a sister to her – won’t ye, Miss Hatty dear?’
‘Of course I will,’ said Hatty.
‘Miss Hatty!’ said Godwit indignantly. ‘Miss Hatty ought to be getting on with her poetry-writing, not visiting Indian maidens and cooking cow-heels. How is Miss Hatty going to manage when you are off at the Chase, may I ask?’
Mrs Daizley looked stricken. ‘I hadn’t thought of that,’ she said. ‘His Lordship was so pressing—’
‘But you’d like to go – wouldn’t you?’ said Hatty. ‘You’d like to be back at the Chase?’
‘I’ve a deal of old friends in the servants’ hall,’ admitted Mrs Daizley. ‘And, Miss Hatty, I’m sure I could find ye a stout girl who’d come and do all ye need done about the place.’
‘I’m sure you can. Thank you, Mrs Daizley. Though we shall miss you terribly.’
‘That we shall!’ said Mrs Godwit. ‘Who’s to rub me with camphor oil? And supposing I get sick?’
She stared at them fiercely. She was by now shrunken, wizened, lame – but still full of energy. She is eighty-nine, though, thought Hatty; how much longer can she go on? And she said, ‘I shall rub you, Mrs Godwit. I am an excellent sick-nurse. I have had a great deal of practice.’
Godwit’s eye met that of Hatty.
It is very singular, thought Hatty. Harry Camber’s eyes – no, I must learn to think of him as the Duke – his eyes each time they sought mine, were full of some terrible pleading question that I could not answer at all; but Godwit’s angry harassed look is somehow warming – he has had to deal with difficulties caused by Harry Camber before, he is not unused to this kind of situation.
‘I suppose there must be a grand funeral,’ she said ponderingly.
‘And quantities of relations invited from all over the country. And that poor girl will have to receive them all.’
I shall not be invited, she thought; but Lady Ursula and the rest of the Fowldes family will be there; gracious! what in the world will Lady Ursula make of Changing Sky? Now she has really lost Lord Camber, muc
h more than if he had died in the wilderness. But perhaps she never really wanted him? What did she want? I shall never know. Why did she write to Lucy Kittridge and say that I was to marry Sydney? What did she hope to achieve by that?
Hatty recalled the last funeral she had attended, that of Lady Pentecost, and Lord Camber’s warm, prompt, instinctive kindness with the poor hysterical daughter, and Lady Ursula’s scathing comments afterwards. It is impossible to enter into the minds of other people, thought Hatty. We can make maps of them for ourselves, and the maps are about as illusory and deceptive as those of old cartographers with mermaids and monsters. ‘Here be Dragons.’ For a moment she longed to be back in the library at Underwood Priors, peacefully browsing amongst its contents. But Barbara stole some of those and little Drusilla set fire to the rest. I have no right to grumble, I am comfortably provided with books upstairs. But will Lord Camber want them? They are his books after all. Still, no doubt there is a handsome library at the Chase – now he has command of all that plenty. Oh, how sorry I am for that poor child . . .
Her thoughts ran about like ants.
‘You are tired and moithered, Miss Hatty,’ said Godwit kindly. ‘And, lord knows, there’s enough to bother ye. But, look, the storm is well ended now – why don’t ye step outside for a breath of air?’
‘A good idea,’ sighed Hatty.
The Thatched Grotto was not restful just then: Mrs Daizley pottered about, murmuring to herself, concerned with the items she might want to take to the Chase, and those she must replace. ‘And they have some grand big copper cauldrons in the kitchens there, but no proper pastry-room. I must talk to his Grace about that – and take my own rolling-pin, Godwit will have to make her another—’ while Mrs Godwit could be heard disapprovingly listing the names of all the aunts and cousins, such as Lady Ursula Fowldes, who could be expected to darken the life of the new young duchess.
Hatty and Godwit strolled away from the house, up the long tree-bordered slowly ascending path which led to the top of the hill where she had once walked with Lord Camber.
No: twice. And the second time we saw my father out with the hunt. Poor Father. He never did get to be Master of Foxhounds, and that is all he ever really wished for. I have been far luckier than Father already, for my wish was granted: I have had a book published. And I am only nineteen! The pride and glow of that will never go away. When I was a child I thought that life went up continuously to a peak, getting better and better all the way. Now I know that was just a childish fancy. There are small peaks – that walk with Harry Camber was one – and then we come down from them again. But memories are like leaves – he said that once – they fertilize the ground on which they fall . . .
During this stroll – alongside of her thoughts – she had been discussing with Godwit various repairs that needed doing in the house.
‘We must get Sid Thatcher to come and mend the hole those wasps made. And the rain barrel is beginning to rot.’
‘I have the money from my publishers,’ said Hatty. ‘We are rich.’
‘In the old days, Master Harry would have mended that hole,’ grieved Godwit. ‘He was a rare thatcher. But he’ll be too busy now, clearing up all the old Duke’s topsy-turveydom. Like father, like son.’ Suddenly he chuckled. ‘Fancy getting paid for writing poetry! You might as well pay birds for singing!’
Hatty laughed too.
‘Aren’t I lucky? Paid for what I like doing best.’
They came to the bench at the top of the hill.
‘Too damp to sit on, after all that rain,’ said Godwit. He took off his jacket and spread it, and they sat on that. After the rain the air was very clear and they could see Underwood Priors in its valley, and Bythorn Chase on its hill. I wonder what Harry Camber and Changing Sky are doing now, thought Hatty, and, far away, the spire of Mansfield church.
None of them will come to see us. How peaceful that will be.
Godwit said: ‘I’m a bit bothered, Miss Hatty.’
‘Why, Godwit?’
‘With Mrs Daizley going – and my old gran not likely to last many winters longer – with just you and me in the Grotto, that’s going to lead to talk. I’m afraid, Miss Hatty, it seems to me – that if you want to stay on here—’
‘Which I most certainly do—’
‘I can’t see any other way out of it but for you and me to get married.’
‘But, Godwit,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing in the world I should like better.’
He laughed his soundless laugh, his eyes flitting from side to side.
‘Then,’ he said, ‘you’ll have to learn to call me Eli.’
‘Nonsense! Godwit suits you perfectly well! I shall stick to that.’
XXVI
Letter from Lady Barbara du Vallon to Miss Hatty Ward
Dear Miss Ward:
Rumour has it (in a letter from Winship – nobody else writes to me from the Priors) that you are now married most demeaningly to a butler or valet or some such, but I daresay Winship has it wrong so I shall continue to address you as Miss Ward. Our friend M. Marat had a narrow escape recently when an army of three thousand men was sent into the Cordeliers’ district to arrest him for his critical pamphlets against the government. Fortunately our other friend, a Monsieur Danton, was able to delay the officers until Marat had time to escape through the back door. So he is still at Liberty, I am happy to say. Miss Ward I hear (through my husband, who still reads the English Journals when he can get hold of them) that you have had a book of poems published with great critical acclaim. Although under a nom de plume he recognized some that he had read before. He sends his congratulations and so do I. As you must now be rich, I should be greatly oblig’d if you could send us a trifle of money, since Marcel at present receives very little remuneration for his revolutionary activities, 10 L. would be most acceptable. Fortunately, living is cheap here, there is a restaurant not far from our lodging where, for six sous, you can get a meal of roast lamb, lentils, bacon, salad, cheese, and a carafe of red wine. So your 10 L. will go a long way. Thank you for reminding Winship yet again about the chemises which she has now sent.
Yours B du V.
Letter from Tom Ward to Ned Ward
Dear Brother:
It seems a long Time since word passed between us. I hope that you are in Good health and well on the road to become a Captain. I myself hope to be promoted Captain in a month or so; meanwhile the———th has been drafted into Bedfordshire for the winter so, as the distance was not too great, I took the opportunity of riding over to visit our Cousin Hatty at Wanmaulden & can give you News of her. Well! She is married to a fellow called Godwit who used to be Lord Camber’s batman or something of the sort. (Lord C is now Duke of Dungeness, I suppose you may know that.) Hatty and this Godwit seem to be happy together as the Day is Long, living in an amazingly ugly cottage in the midst of a forest. He told me he had always loved her since the day he first set eyes on her when she was sent from our home in Disgrace for conniving at your clandestine meetings with that Slut, Nancy Price. I suppose you know N.P. is now married to our Brother Sydney? It seems S. went to see her in London to caution her against any Hopes she might have of marrying you, and she contriv’d to get her claws into him. I know she came into 10,000 L. when her uncle died & Sydney got wind of that no doubt. Brother, you are well quit of that designing Hussy and our brother Sydney will doubtless be well served for his interference. Talking of Legacies I will tell you a Joke. You know our great-aunt Winchilsea died two years ago and left us each a Bible. Well it seems she also left a Fortune and Sydney’s partner Saul Brabham had the handling of it. Well, it seems the old girl had took a fancy to our Cousin Hatty (who put a posy by her bedside or some such Token at Maria’s wedding when H was but a little thing). The old Girl never forgot, and left her fortune to Hatty, but only on condition that she got wed before the age of 21 – it seems Aunt W was in favour of girls marryi
ng before they grow too opinionated. But Hatty was not to know about this. If she did, or if she failed to marry, the cash was to go to a Sailors’ home. Sydney knew about the Bequest but he never told us for fear we should make up to Hatty and snatch the prize which he had marked for himself. So is he not well paid in his own coin? There’s for you! He told me none of this until news came of Hatty’s marriage – he was in a rare Tweak about it. I am happy for our Cousin, who still does not know her Good Fortune since she will not be 21 until next year. She is a Good Girl and always used to help me with my Euclid and Latin irregular verbs. Well Adieu my dear brother and send me a line when convenient. Here’s Hoping our paths may cross before too long.
Lt Thos Ward.
Letter from Mrs Fanny Price to Mrs Harriet Godwit
Dear Sister:
This comes to thank you for the 10 L. but pray do not send any more, as Sister Agnes says I am not to accept any more gifts from you since you have disgraced the name of our family by your Shocking Misalliance and Mrs Norris has told me that your name is never to be mentioned by us ever again. My daughter Fanny, who had Harriet as her middle name, is not to use it & I grieve to say that Mrs Norris has forbidden me even to speak of you to the children. So no more now & this is to say Goodbye from your sister Frances Price.
Letter from Sir Nicholas Bertram to Miss Sarah Ward
Dear Sal:
Laid up for a week with a sprained ankle (squash) I’ve been amusing myself delving about in boxes of papers which Henshawe brought down for me from the Mansfield Park attics. Came upon a most interesting trove. Did you know that our great-great-aunt Harriet Ward was the poet Anthony Bailiff (the one that the B.B.C. Third Programme did weekly readings from a couple of months ago)? What an interesting ancestor we have! I am going to try to find out more about her life. She died, it seems, at an early age. What a pity! Maybe there would be the makings of a T.V. programme, what do you think?