Compton Dando lay in a wooded vale with the river Chew running through it. For a small village, the population being a little less than four hundred, it was a busy place, with an inn, a bakery, the church, a blacksmith’s, a carpenter’s and a mill. By day there was an infernal racket from the copper mills at Publow and Woolard, the two closest villages along the river, and there were several small coal mines dotted all around the area. Although some of the local men worked at the mills or in the mines, most were farm workers like her father, and like him they supplemented their low wages by cultivating their own strips of land, keeping chickens and often pigs or a cow too.
Once through the woods, Nell made her way across the common. Fortunately the Rentons’ cottage was this side of the village; had it been right down by the church she might have been spotted by someone going into the Crown Inn.
An owl hooted from the big oak tree by the cottage, but that and the gurgling of the river down below were the only sounds.
‘Nell!’ Meg Renton exclaimed as she came through the door. ‘What brings you here so late?’
The tiny cottage was lit only by a single candle and the fire was just a dull red glow. A stranger coming in would assume Meg was all alone, but in fact it was full of sleeping bodies. Nell’s father was in the bed at the back of the room with Henry, the youngest child, in beside him. The other eight children were in the loft room above, reached by steep steps with a length of rope for a banister.
One of the things Nell had found hardest to adjust to when she first went to work at Briargate was that she couldn’t go to bed at sundown as she’d always done at home. Gentry stayed up late, but then they could afford dozens of candles and oil lamps, and they didn’t have to rise at dawn.
Yet her mother had never gone to bed with the rest of the family, even though she worked harder than anyone else. She would sit by the fire for an hour or two, with one candle. She said it was the only time she had a bit of peace.
Seeing her mother’s worn face in the candlelight, Nell felt a stab of remorse at burdening her with still more work. Meg was thirty-four, and ten children along with one stillbirth too had robbed her of the vitality and strength Nell remembered when she was small. Her hair was still thick and dark, but her once slender body had thickened and her face was becoming lined and saggy. The nightgown she wore was one of Bridie’s hand-me-downs, darned and patched flannel, so thin in places it looked as though with one more wash it would fall apart.
‘I’ve brought you a baby,’ Nell said simply, unable to think of a less blunt way of introducing Hope, and she took off her cloak and untied the shawl the baby was cradled in. ‘I knew you wouldn’t like to see her left at the church or the workhouse, and they were the only other choices.’
Hope stirred as she lifted her out and began sucking on her fist. As briefly as possible Nell explained how she came by the infant and that she needed feeding or she would die.
Meg silently unbuttoned her nightgown, held out her arms for Hope and put her to her breast without saying a word. It took a few seconds for the baby to latch on to her nipple; and it was only once she’d begun sucking in earnest that Meg spoke.
‘Your mistress should be ashamed of herself,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It is never right for her to expect that her maid should take responsibility for her wickedness.’
Afraid her father would wake, Nell pulled up a stool close to her mother and whispered the fuller explanation, including the fact that Lady Harvey thought her child had died. ‘She’s a good woman, you know that, Mother,’ she finished up. ‘Bridie and I couldn’t let her be disgraced, could we?’
‘Would she have spared a thought for you if you’d been in the same way?’ Meg asked, her lips quivering with emotion. ‘No, she’d have turned you out on to the parish!’
Nell shrugged her shoulders. ‘After what I’ve seen today I won’t let a man do that to me,’ she said.
A ghost of a smile played at Meg’s lips. ‘Just mind you remember that when you find a sweetheart!’ she said tartly. ‘But she’s a married woman! And she’s had learning too – what was she thinking of?’
‘Maybe he forced her,’ Nell suggested.
Meg tossed her head. ‘Who would dare force her?’
Nell had no answer to that. She didn’t want to think of Lady Harvey behaving wantonly with a man, but then she didn’t want to think this tiny baby was a result of force either.
‘Will you take her, Mother?’ she asked, and pulled the sovereign Bridie had given her out of her pocket.
‘I’ve got too many children already,’ Meg said, but she was already looking down at Hope with the same tender expression that Nell had seen her give her own babies. ‘We’ve got no room; it gets harder to feed them all each week. If I take her, a week or two from now Lady Harvey will be off to her parties and balls without a thought for anyone but herself and I’ll be left struggling.’
Nell nodded, for she knew her mother was right. Until Nell went to Briargate she knew nothing of how the gentry lived. They were just the folk in the fine clothes who sat in the front pews at church, or those her father doffed his cap to as they rode by on their sleek horses. She was so excited when the Reverend Gosling arranged for her to have a position at the big house that she didn’t think for one minute she would miss living here with her family, or that her work as a servant would be a hundred times harder than the chores she’d done at home.
In fact for the first year she was at Briargate, she cried herself to sleep every night, for it was do this, do that, every waking moment of the day. As scullery maid she did the very roughest work, scouring pots, scrubbing floors and laying fires, at everyone’s beck and call. At home there was love, laughter and chatter along with the work; her mother cared if she had an aching back or a cut finger or was just tired. Her father would take her on his lap in the evenings and say she was pretty and clever. She got none of that at Briargate.
She learned to cope with it all eventually. Slowly she climbed the ladder to parlourmaid. Now there were only Baines, Mrs Cole, Bridie and Cook above her, she didn’t do rough work, and even had free time to sit with a cup of tea and chat to Cook or Bridie.
But the best time of all was her weekly afternoon off, and the one Sunday in four when she came home after the morning service at church. Her family might be poor but they had pride, dignity and big hearts.
‘I’ll do my best to see you don’t have to struggle.’ Nell held out the sovereign again. ‘This is what I got for helping and Bridie will see you get more. I’ll make sure she gets James and Ruth taken on at Briargate too. That will help.’
Silas, Nell’s father, believed himself to be a fortunate man. When he’d had a couple of pints of cider he was prone to boasting that he had the best wife a man could have, ten happy, healthy children, and that this cottage was in the prettiest spot in the whole of Somerset.
Yet the fact remained that however hard Silas worked they lived from hand to mouth, and in periods when he had no work, they were often hungry. Matthew, who at fifteen was the oldest of Nell’s brothers, was also a farm labourer, so he brought in a regular wage. But James and Ruth, who were fourteen and thirteen respectively, still hadn’t yet managed to find permanent work. After them came Alice, Toby, Prudence, Violet and Joe, from nine down to two and a half, and finally baby Henry, who had just recently had his first birthday.
‘I counted on keeping Ruth home to help me with the little ones, but Alice is good with them too,’ Meg said wearily. ‘Oh, Nell, you’ve been such a good girl. It’s never right you should have this thrust on you.’
Nell thought how selfless her mother was. If she agreed to take the baby, she would love it and care for it just as she had all of them, and Nell had no doubt that in a week or two she would probably have almost forgotten that she hadn’t given birth to this one. But that didn’t make it right to take advantage of her kindness.
‘It isn’t me who is getting this thrust on them,’ she said. ‘It’s you, Mother. You can ask m
e to take her away if you want. It’s a big thing I’m asking of you. But if you agree I’ll do everything I can to make it easier for you. I promise you that.’
Meg reached out her hand and caressed her daughter’s cheek wordlessly. It appeared little Hope had had her fill, for she gave a contented little sigh and let go of the swollen nipple. Meg put her down on her knee and ran one finger affectionately around her chin as she studied her. ‘She’s a pretty little thing,’ she said at length, looking back at Nell. ‘I doubt she’ll be much trouble to me and your father. So you go off to bed, Nell, you look fair worn out. She’s mine now.’
Chapter Two
1838
‘Just because I’m a girl and smaller than you don’t mean I can’t climb trees just as good as you!’
Nell smiled to herself at the loud and indignant claim coming from the far side of the wood. At six years old, Hope had a reputation in the village of being an angel, but in fact she could be a little devil, especially when it came to proving to boys she was as daring as they were.
Nell was on her way home for her afternoon off, and guessed her youngest brothers Joe and Henry were getting the rough side of Hope’s tongue.
‘It ain’t because we don’t think you can’t climb the tree. It’s cos of your dress. You get it torn and there’ll be hell to pay.’
Nell chuckled at Joe’s diplomacy; he almost always found some way to divert his fiery sister.
‘Then I’ll take it off,’ Hope shouted back at him. ‘Henry! Undo the buttons!’
‘Hope!’ Nell yelled out, aware that hen-pecked Henry would do exactly as Hope ordered.
Nell imagined Hope’s dismayed expression on hearing her older sister’s voice coming from the wood, and it made her laugh aloud. She knew that by the time she got through the wood to the children, Hope would be sitting down as daintily as a duchess, eyes wide with pretend innocence.
She was the prettiest little girl Nell had ever seen. Hair as dark and shiny as black marble, with a curl to it too. Her eyes were like dark pools fringed by impossibly long lashes, and her skin was perfectly smooth and clear.
Everyone in the family had dark hair and eyes: folk in the village often described a person as ‘dark as a Renton’. Their looks were commonplace, though, their skin sallow and their hair coarse. Nothing fancy about any of them.
But Hope made folk turn their heads to look at her. She had a dazzling smile, a gaiety and enthusiasm that would make even the most sober of people laugh. She wanted to talk to everyone; when she was as young as four she’d stand at the gate greeting anyone that passed by. Even the Reverend Gosling, who was normally so aloof, always stopped to speak to her.
Meg and Silas had never once even momentarily regretted taking her on. She had been an easy, placid baby who would smile and gurgle all day long, and almost from her first week with them, the family’s fortunes did seem to improve.
Just as Nell had believed she was a fairy child, so did many others. They saw soon after her birth that the Rentons’ cottage roof was miraculously rethatched, and that Ruth got taken on as a laundry maid at Briargate, and James as the undergroom. Meg and Silas couldn’t tell anyone, not even their older children, that this change of fortune was the result of Bridie’s influence, and so, in the absence of any other explanation, people liked to think it was some kind of magic.
Nell was no longer so inclined to believe in fairies or magic. But then, the last six years had been eventful ones, and her horizons were no longer limited to the village. She had visited Bath, Bristol and London now, been to mansions four times the size of Briargate, and, prompted by Mr Baines, she read the newspaper most days.
She now understood why most working men felt aggrieved with the government. All the laws seemed to be made to protect the wealthy – only men of property could vote. The Corn Laws and the enclosing of common land squeezed the poor and forced many to leave the rural areas to go to the cities and try to find work. But the hardships these people had endured in their own villages were mild compared to the ones they found in cities. Overcrowding, filth, disease and desperate poverty forced men, women and children into crime, and the punishments if they were caught were incredibly harsh.
Nell was also less inclined to put such implicit trust in her master and mistress since Bridie’s death from pneumonia just two years after Hope’s birth. She caught a chill through sitting up in the rain beside the coachman on the long ride home from London to Somerset. No one dared remark openly that it was less than gallant for both Sir William and one of his young male friends to be inside the coach with their ladies, while an elderly maid had to brave the elements outside. But Nell was deeply shocked by such callousness, and it made her realize that the gentry held no real affection for their servants; they saw them as mere packhorses who would be worked till they dropped and then replaced.
Since Hope’s birth, Nell and Bridie had become very close, and Bridie had taught her many accomplishments to enable her to rise beyond being just a parlourmaid. Thanks to her, Nell knew how to dress hair in the latest fashions and to sew daintily, and had learned the skills needed to be a housekeeper. Bridie had also taught her how to deal with a mistress who relied on servants for everything, yet rarely acknowledged their value.
Bridie’s death hit Nell very hard, and she wept when Lady Harvey told her that she’d left Nell her savings, almost twenty pounds, saying that Bridie had confided in her that she’d come to think of Nell as her daughter.
Nell guessed that Bridie had used the word ‘daughter’ to convey the hidden message that the money was for Hope’s continuing care, and to charge Nell with keeping their secret for ever.
Lady Harvey had never once spoken of the birth, at least not to Nell, but it was clear by a heavy sadness in her during the first two years that she thought about it often. She would rally herself when her husband was home, but as soon as he left again to attend to his business interests in London she would sink back down into grief.
Nell expected that Bridie’s death would bring her low again – after all, the older woman had been with Lady Harvey throughout her life. But somewhat surprisingly it didn’t, and just after the funeral she asked Nell if she would like to be her personal maid.
That was the one and only time Lady Harvey ever gave any indication that she remembered Nell’s part in the events of that night two years earlier. Even then she didn’t speak of it outright.
‘You are the only person who could take my dear Bridie’s place,’ she said, taking Nell’s hand in hers and squeezing it. ‘You have proved yourself to be as loyal as she was, and this is my only way of showing my appreciation.’
As Bridie’s death had made Nell look at her mistress with some cynicism, her first thought was that this was mere self-interest rather than a reward. But it was a step up the ladder, and in her first year as a lady’s maid she travelled widely.
On her first trip to London, as the coach trundled through the city, Nell saw for herself how much worse it was to be poor there than back in Somerset. Hordes of ragged, barefoot children, their faces pinched with hunger and cold, thronged the filthy streets. She saw cold-eyed hussies with most of their breasts exposed standing around on street corners, and guessed at their occupation. Many people the worse for drink, both men and women, lay slumped in doorways of dilapidated hovels.
Then in 1835 Lady Harvey gave birth to Rufus, the long-awaited son and heir.
Nell was not present at the birth, this time an experienced midwife and a doctor from Bath were in attendance. Rufus was small but robust with a fine pair of lungs, and as blond, blue-eyed and fair-skinned as both his parents.
No wetnurse was brought in – Lady Harvey fed him herself, and her joy and Sir William’s affected the entire household. Nell was happy for them too, but at the same time she couldn’t help but consider the differences between the life Hope would have and that of her younger half-brother. But when Lady Harvey asked Ruth, Nell’s younger sister, to be Rufus’s nursemaid, she felt a kind of smug
satisfaction that at least both children were being brought up by the Renton family.
For the first four years of Hope’s life, fortune had smiled on Nell’s family. With mild winters, good harvests, and the older children and their father in regular work, it was a time of relative plenty. There were no more babies and Meg often said she thought she was now too old for childbearing. Although the cottage seemed even more cramped when everyone was home for a visit, it rang with laughter and joy.
But the happy times ended abruptly when Prudence and Violet, aged only nine and eight, died of scarlet fever. The Reverend Gosling said they should get down on their knees and thank the Lord that Joe, Henry and Hope were spared, for it usually took the youngest. But Nell at least was convinced that the other children had been saved by her mother isolating the two sick ones in the outhouse before the younger ones could become infected.
Child deaths were all too common – one in three babies died before their first birthday – but that didn’t make it any easier for her family to come to terms with losing Prudence and Violet. That was two years ago now, but they still mourned the girls, and often when Nell went home unexpectedly she’d find her mother crying. Yet Hope, with her loving and affectionate nature, helped. Meg often said that if it wasn’t for her she couldn’t have borne it.
As Nell had predicted, no one had ever suspected that Hope was not a true Renton. Even the older children, on coming down the morning after her arrival to find a new baby in their mother’s arms, had just accepted that she was their sister, for all the other babies had arrived without any fanfare or fuss. Silas would sometimes wink at Nell when an effusive neighbour remarked how much Hope looked like him, but neither he nor her mother ever spoke of how she had come to them, not even when they were alone.
Yet Nell still worried that as Hope got older, people would note her grace, the clearness of her skin, her slender limbs and delicate features, and see her as the thoroughbred she really was.
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