When I leave, I can barely heft the basket and over my shoulder is an old shawl, stuffed with cast-off stockings and a warm petticoat for Peg.
It grieved me to say goodbye to Mrs Lamb, with her soft double chin and kind heart. She is my only friend in London. In the whole wide world, for that matter. And soon she will be far away in York.
Walking down the street, I struggle to convince myself she is right about Peg and the mistress. If you are crippled there is only the poorhouse or the graveyard. Perhaps I am wrong and under that implacable whalebone Mistress Chalke does have something resembling a heart.
Yet my mind slips back to the night my friend Mary was taken away in the middle of the night, snivelling, to an unknown fate. That could have been me. Might still be me, if I am in the power of people who mean to take advantage of my being without friends or family. Why else was Mistress Chalke so anxious for my parents to be dead?
Chapter Seven
‘Miss?’
Peg hunches in the scullery doorway. At least she is not afraid of me now, though there is still that odd expression in her eyes when I catch her watching me. Almost as if she is sorry for me, though that can hardly be.
‘What is it?’
Hidden in a drawer is a clutch of eggs from the Buttermere pantry. Peg will get one while the mistress takes her afternoon rest.
‘Can I put this in the embers of the fire?’ She draws a bruised-looking potato from her pocket. ‘They are hard to eat. Raw.’
I have not liked to stare at how she struggles with food or ask what happened to her mouth. A terrible accident presumably. The one that crippled her.
‘Is it one of ours?’
‘Lord, no, Miss! I wouldn’t never steal from the mistress!’ She sucks in breath, as if to calm herself. ‘It was in the gutter when I walked through the market.’
‘To take home? For your supper?’
She nods, still anxious. Quick to fear. Even over what will be her meagre supper when she returns to some miserable room after her work. Why is Mistress Chalke so cruel? To a pathetic creature like Peg?
‘Of course, you may bake it in the embers. And take another from the pantry. I do not consider that stealing.’ I suspect the skinflint would not agree, but don’t care. That woman is as unbending as a poker and I despise her for it. ‘Come, Peg. Mistress Chalke never checks the vegetables.’
The old woman hobbles away and I rake the embers aside to position her potatoes where they will cook, but not burn. Though she does not know it yet, today will be a feast day for the poor soul. A fresh egg in milk in the afternoon. Two baked potatoes for supper.
Half an hour later, I hold my tankard out to Farmer Graham, who has already filled my jug and pauses, one eyebrow raised.
‘May I have a farthing’s worth more, please.’
‘Do the Chalkes not allow you milk?’
‘It is not for me.’ I dig into my pocket and glance at Peg, dragging the scrubbing brush across the front steps as if it weighs half a hundredweight. The wooden bucket contains only inches of water since she cannot lift a full one.
Farmer Graham fills the tankard. ‘Keep your farthing.’
‘I want to pay.’ I thrust out my hand.
He accepts the coin and it shines in his palm for a moment before going into his pouch.
‘The widow’s mite. You have a tender heart.’
I know the Bible story as well as he does and bridle, disliking him knowing how much the small coin represents to me. Yet I see he means no harm and he was going to let me have that extra milk for nothing.
‘If I am kind-hearted, it is my mother’s teaching.’
‘Then she will be proud of you.’
There is a pause, while I remember a long-gone life. A canary singing in a cage. The smell of my mother’s hair. How can I admit she rots in a paupers’ grave?
‘What is it like, living on a farm?’ I ask, instead. Life in the Chalke house is nothing but work and scolding, usually accompanied by a clip round the ear.
‘How do you imagine it?’
‘Not grey like the city and hemmed in by houses. Or noisy as a fairground with jostling carriages, horses and people.’
I half-close my eyes and try to picture it. There is an oil painting of the countryside in the book room, next to the locked library cases. It has a castle in the background and an arrogant-looking man posturing for the artist, a gun under one arm and a groom beside him restraining a black stallion. But such grand places hold scant interest for me.
‘Meadows full of ripe corn. Cows grazing a field of buttercups. Trees as big as houses. Ducks on a pond, with ducklings bobbing behind.’
Something like a smile lights his face and despite the lines at the side of his mouth I see he’s probably not as old as I thought. Perhaps twenty-five or thereabouts.
‘The reality, after the winter rains, is mud with my cows still in their byre, knee-deep in tired straw. Hopefully, they will stay healthy until they are led out for the spring grass. But if we have a hot summer, the grazing could suffer and their milk dry up. There is always something to go wrong on a farm.’
I didn’t think him capable of such a long speech. At least, not to me.
‘It can be like your fairy tale,’ he relents, seeing my disappointment. ‘But more usually there is mud and a deal of hard work.’
I nod: familiar with hard work. He must get up even earlier than I do, to drive into the city each morning. It still surprises me he does not employ a man to do the round for him since his clothes and wagon are prosperous. He is educated. And he has a farm.
‘You would like my cows,’ he says. ‘Some are mischievous while others are meek as spinsters in a church pew.’ He holds up strong hands: tanned by the weather and calloused from the use of reins. ‘They do not care for me to do the milking, but on occasion must make the best of it. Though they will try to knock over the milking pail or give me a sly kick.’
I rest the milk containers by the freshly swept steps and move to pat his horse’s nose, loving the warmth of her breath on my stroking hand. Peg has finished her half-hearted scrubbing, swept the suds away and trailed back down to the kitchen.
‘Peaseblossom trod on me last week. A cow weighs nearly half a ton. Have one stomp on your foot and you know about it, even if you are wearing a stout leather boot. I was hopping on one leg, in a temper. Like a bee, cross at being trapped in a bottle. Till I saw the humour in it.’
I cannot help smiling at the picture he paints. He is not solemn after all.
‘She has an odd name.’
‘My cow is named for a fairy. In a play by William Shakespeare.’
‘Did you tell your fairy off? Give her a whack?’ There is a riding crop on the wagon with a battered silver fox’s head that looks as if it might have belonged to his father.
‘She merely switched her tail and looked sideways at me. Like a young miss who has trodden on her dancing partner.’ A proper smile lights his face. ‘My animals all have stories attached to their names. Our Berkshire sow is Aphrodite. Because of her complicated love life and numerous children. She farrowed nine piglets only last week. My other horse is called Hercules.’
‘Does he have a clean stable?’ I ask, which provokes a brief bark of laughter.
I bite back a wish to say how I would love to see all this. But my place is in a kitchen not a farmyard. ‘Do you have lambs?’ I ask, instead. April is the time for such life-affirming creatures.
For a moment his face looks again as it did that first morning. Stern. Closed.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I will not have lambs on my farm.’
He turns abruptly back to his horse.
‘Walk on, Calypso. There is milk to deliver.’
The horse clops patiently towards the next house, harness jingling, her master at her side. Perhaps tomorrow I will ask him about that play, for although he can be moody, he is clearly a man who enjoys books and stories and I decide I like him. Even if, for some reason, he has an aversion to lamb
s.
Later, Peg settles into the ladderback chair and stretches thin ankles towards the fire. She grasps the tankard in both hands, raises it to her mouth and gulps.
I have done as Mrs Lamb suggested and beaten an egg into the milk, even sneaking a scrape of sugar from the loaf. Peg will get one a day until they are gone.
‘Slowly,’ I say, touching her arm. ‘That will be rich for your stomach.’
She pauses, the rim of white around her mouth reminding me of Puss after she’d had her nose in a bowl of cream. There are what look like tears in her rheumy eyes and I wonder when someone last did her a kindness.
‘You been good to me, Miss.’
‘Take time to enjoy it. We will have ten minutes by the fire before getting the washing out of soak.’
She cradles the tankard in thin hands, like something precious. To her, of course, it is precious. Food is life.
‘How did a nice girl like you end up here?’
‘My mistress heard yours wanted a maid.’ I shrug, as if I do not care. ‘She was going to York and couldn’t take me with her.’
‘You needs to get away.’ Peg licks her lips. It is unusual for her to speak unless spoken to and I stare, remembering the gossiping maid with the nose.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Find another place.’
‘I will. At the end of my year.’
Peg studies the dregs in her tankard. ‘The old bitch would skin me alive if she thought I was warning you. But you needs to be gone before then.’
‘Why?’
‘Because they are wicked, that’s why. Young maids in their charge comes to no good.’ She looks up and her eyes are bleak holes. ‘But I won’t say more. Just make sure you gets another place before the spring.’
I lean forward, busying myself poking at the fire and refusing to give way to fear. It would not help me. But nor will ignorance. What does Peg know, that she is afraid to talk about? And what am I to do? Ignore two warnings?
Chapter Eight
It scares me. Thundering at the front door when Mistress Chalke and I are alone in the house, close to midnight, with the master dining late with friends. Then, when I recognise his voice and open up, I nearly faint.
‘Master!’
His hat and wig are gone. His coat is filthy. Blood oozes through the silver bristles on his head.
‘I was set upon…’
He slumps against the wall as I slam the door and shoot home the bolts. It is pitch black outside and I worry that his assailant might be near.
‘We must call the watch, sir. And a surgeon.’
I glance up the stairs, surprised Mistress Chalke has slept through the noise.
‘Nay, girl. Let me get my breath.’
‘But you are bleeding, sir.’
He shakes himself upright. ‘Is the kitchen fire still lit?’
‘It is. And I can stoke it to a blaze in a moment.’
‘Then help me downstairs. We can manage without calling any interfering sawbones.’
He leans heavily on me as we stumble to the basement, the stink of his coat ripe in my nostrils. What has he been doing walking the streets at this hour?
‘Was it a footpad, sir?’
He collapses into the kitchen chair. ‘There were two of them. With cudgels.’
‘Let me call the mistress.’ I light one of the kitchen’s tallow dips and put water to heat. ‘She will want to know what has happened.’
‘More likely she will abuse me. For not paying a link boy.’
The chair scrapes the stone flags as he stands again.
‘Help me out of this.’
As I ease the coat from his shoulders, I see his waistcoat has lost its buttons. It is my favourite. The colour of egg yolk, its texture silky to the touch.
He sees my glance and frowns at the damage.
‘You must mend this tomorrow. There are spare buttons on a dove-grey velvet upstairs in the bottom of Charles’s old wardrobe.’
As I place warm water and a cloth before him, he empties his pockets onto the table, including his gilt snuff box.
‘The scoundrels threw my possessions in the gutter, like rubbish.’
‘Yet took nothing?’
‘Quit chattering. Tend to my head.’
He winces as I clean the gash and I notice the glint of his signet ring. What footpads would ignore gold?
‘They kicked me with their great boots after I fell.’ His fist slams the table. ‘Were I twenty years younger, wearing my sword, I would have skewered them.’
‘You are sure I shouldn’t call the watch?’
‘To what purpose? The brutes will be the other side of London by now.’ His voice turns petulant. ‘Get me some burned wine. That should set me to rights.’
‘Then I must rouse the mistress. For the wine cupboard key.’
He leans forward, making the chair creak, and hooks a brass key from the pile on the table. Slaps it into my hand.
‘Go up to my Chinese cabinet in the book room and pull out the central drawer. In the space behind is a leather pouch full of keys. Bring the one tied with black ribbon. It is a duplicate of hers.’
The Chinese cabinet is the thing I admire most in that room because of the figures in strange costumes inlaid in the black lacquered wood. There is a river with two people on a hump-backed bridge, lovers perhaps, picked out in mother-of-pearl. A willow weeps from the sloping shore, with a building that might be a temple in the distance and a long-legged bird circling above. The lady holds a curious-looking umbrella and the couple look to be whispering beneath it. I would love to know their story.
I hurry to do as I am bid, glad to show how much better I am than the useless Susan. I cannot get the warnings I have had out of my head, but the house was a disgrace. I would have given notice to the girl myself if I had been in charge of her.
And that business about being falsely transported could have been invented by an ignorant woman keen to make mischief. As for Peg, there may be something wrong with her head, as well as with her teeth and leg.
When I reach the book room, open the door and locate the hidden pouch, I tip its contents onto the desk and extract the one with the black ribbon. As I replace the others, each tied with a loop of coloured silk, I wonder what they fit.
The best silver is under lock and key in the cellar, so what do the Chalkes keep hidden up here?
I snatch a glance at the bookcases, but the titles through the glass all seem to be in foreign languages and tell me nothing. The desk will be the place to look, but a quick tug at a drawer confirms it is locked.
The poker has been heating in the fire and when I get back to the kitchen, I break nibs of sugar from the loaf and drop them into a pewter tankard with cloves, adding grated nutmeg and cinnamon. Then I pour in the claret and some honey. When I plunge in the glowing iron, it spits like an alley cat and the aroma reminds me of Mistress Buttermere’s Christmas punch bowl.
‘Give it here.’ Master Chalke snatches the tankard and gulps, smacking his lips and letting out a satisfied-sounding belch. ‘By God, that’s better. Now I will go up and try for sleep.’
He heaves himself to his feet, but pauses a moment, a large hand coming to rest clumsily on my head. ‘You are an obliging girl, Hannah. I like obliging girls.’ Then he belches again and wipes his mouth. ‘You will have a coin for this night’s work. Tomorrow.’
Mrs Lamb said there might be vails for me here, either from visitors or my employers. Small gifts of money for being extra helpful. And I need to squirrel away as much as I can, in case I am forced to leave before the end of my term.
That pat on my head was the first kind gesture I have had in this house. Yet I cannot help wondering where the master has been and why those ruffians would beat, but not rob him. Might it have been a grudge of some kind? But what dealings would a gentleman have with men who wear rough boots?
I need to uncover the secrets that are hidden in the book room along with Master Chalke’s writing. The ones
Susan gossiped about and Peg is so afraid of. But at least I now know where the keys are kept.
Chapter Nine
‘You will think I have no manners.’
Glancing up from my brimming pitcher I must look puzzled, for Farmer Graham bends towards me. He is a good foot taller than I am.
‘When you asked about the lambs.’ he says. ‘Yesterday.’
‘I shouldn’t stick my nose in other people’s business.’
‘On the contrary, it shows a girl who cares. I was churlish. Encouraging you to ask about my farm, then being rude when you did so.’
‘It is not a kitchen maid’s place to question people.’
‘But you are a cook and housemaid.’ His lips form a faint smile. ‘Not just a kitchen maid.’
‘Even so…’ I should get on with my work, but I am intrigued by his farm, away from the city.
‘Your mention of lambs brought everything back.’ He gazes past me, over the rooftops towards the leaden sky. ‘My twin sons wanted one to hand-rear. I had heard a farm across the valley had orphans, so I rode over one afternoon. My neighbour was growing clover and turnips for his animals and I was persuaded to spend the night so we could discuss farming matters.
‘Then I took the lamb home next morning, tucked into the front of my old riding coat. It seemed content enough against my warmth and I was picturing the joy it would bring my boys.’ He shakes his head. ‘But when I reached Broad Oak everyone had the fever. Edmund. Henry. Even Elizabeth, my wife.’
The furrows beside his mouth have reappeared and I see that the look in those dark eyes is sorrow.
‘It was over quickly. The lamb died, too. Poor creature. Nobody had time to tend it properly.’
Death is everywhere. Nobody is safe, from the greatest in the land to the least. Mrs Lamb told me that even our king’s mother perished from ruptured innards. The preachers teach acceptance, but it is hard to see any plan to it. I remember my surprise at how much father’s death affected me. More in some ways than losing my mother, though he was a disappointed man with an irascible temper and I had adored her. Perhaps it was desolation at being alone in the world.
The Servant Page 4