The Sleeping Sword

by Brenda Jagger

  ‘Stargate Meadows,’ announced Major Compton Flood, naming a stretch of land belonging to Sir Julian, not far from the Flood manor, and as Diana waited for her own horse to be brought she smiled at my mother-in-law and said: ‘Aunt Georgiana, won’t you come with us?’ knowing full well that only my presence prevented it.

  ‘Hardly, dear—’

  ‘Please,’ I said quickly. ‘If you would like to go, please do. I shall be perfectly comfortable.’

  But the Clevedon code did not permit the abandoning of one’s guests, even such tiresome city-bred creatures as myself who—in this glorious weather—did not ride.

  ‘No—no, dear. We shall be very comfortable together.’

  ‘Goodbye, mamma!’ called out Gervase, leaning down from the saddle to kiss her cheek. But if he made a deliberate attempt to slight me—and of course he had—then his effort was wasted, for I was incapable by then of resentment or jealousy or any human emotion at all. All that concerned me was that something inside my body appeared to be breaking and I needed peace and solitude, a corner in which to hide, and if possible to mend myself.

  They rode off. I turned, moved, went inside, my mother-in-law’s voice behind me still murmuring of the fine weather. And then the stone fireplace in the Great Hall which had seemed quite far away came suddenly towards me, or I to it, so that I put out both my hands to push myself clear of it and encountered nothing at all against my fingers.

  ‘Oh, my dear!’ Mrs. Barforth whispered urgently. ‘My poor dear!’ And as her strong, horsewoman’s hands took hold of me, I felt myself to be bleeding and understood I had started to lose my child.

  Chapter Twelve

  Perhaps I had expected her to be efficient, for she was accustomed to mares in foal, to hound bitches and their litters, and had none of the squeamishness of the city-bred. I had even expected her to be kind, or to go through the motions of kindness, since she had always tried to like me and had done her best to behave as if she did. I had not expected to believe in her kindness, to need it, had not thought I could cling to her in that desperate fashion, nor find such reassurance in her lean, firm hands. I had not expected to be so afraid, but in the half-hour before the doctor came I was terrified of death, assaulted by the rushing memories of all those thousands of women who every year must bleed away their lives in this fashion. I couldn’t end like this. Until not so very long ago I had believed I could never end at all. That illusion had faded, but even so I could not bear it to be like this, not now; and as the futility of it, the waste of it, reduced me to helplessness, she put her arms around me and held me gently but in a manner which conveyed her very definite intention of not letting me go.

  I suppose there was nothing the doctor could really do, and being accustomed to a country practice where there were no great fees to be earned, he said so quite bluntly, assuring me that nature, which had put me in this predicament in the first place, would now take its course. He would make me as comfortable as he could, and after that there would be some days in bed, how many he was not yet prepared to specify, and with proper rest and food I would soon be up and about again.

  ‘Beef tea,’ he said. ‘Herb tea. Red wine and raw eggs. Anything you like. If you believe it’s doing you good, then it probably will be. No reason to make a fuss. It happens every day.’

  And I was calmer after that.

  ‘My dear,’ Mrs. Barforth said, bringing me the hot milk and cinnamon I had requested. ‘I really didn’t know—’

  ‘I hardly knew myself.’

  ‘Gervase?’

  ‘No. I didn’t tell him. I wish there was no need to tell him now.’

  ‘Dearest, how can we avoid it?’

  ‘We can’t. Where is he?’

  ‘I imagine he must be at the Flood’s by now, for they will surely have invited him to dine. I have sent word.’

  But she must have known as well as I did that he would not come soon. She had also sent word to Listonby, for, not long after, I heard a carriage and there was my maid with my hairbrushes, my bottles of toilet water, my clean linen, a note from Blanche saying all that was needful, promising she would come when she could, telling me that Venetia, who would have come then and there, had returned to Cullingford directly after luncheon with Gideon. And unaware until that moment of how much I had been longing for Venetia, I was ashamed of the tears in my eyes and considerably annoyed by this strange new tendency to weep.

  I no longer felt any pain. I was simply weary to my very bones, drowning in the weight of it, the effort of saying ‘No, thank you’ to offers of food and drink and nursing becoming so tremendous that I closed my eyes, not to sleep but to escape. And I supposed it to be far into the night when I heard the sound of hooves below me and Mrs. Barforth, hastily rising from her chair, hurried downstairs to meet Gervase who only later—much later I thought—appeared in the doorway, looking at me and trying not to see me with an expression I vaguely recognized.

  ‘Are you—all right?’

  ‘Yes. Quite all right.’

  ‘You should have told me—shouldn’t you?’

  ‘I wasn’t really sure. Do come in.’

  He came, gingerly, treading like a cat unsure of its ground, ready, I think, to avert his gaze from the many things around me and within me which he thought might alarm or disgust him. And abruptly I remembered when I had seen him like this before and pressed my eyelids together to shut away yet another onslaught of those feeble, irritating tears.

  ‘When did it start?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘No, I suppose not. I—I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes.’

  And I knew that, whether or not he wanted to take my hand, he would not take it, that he was as helpless now, faced with my pain, as on the day he had knelt beside an injured horse in the paddock just beyond this bedroom window, holding himself responsible for those injuries as now he was accepting the blame for mine. He was suffering and I knew it. Yet I was suffering too and his anguish, in my present weakness, did not console me.

  ‘They say you should rest.’

  ‘Yes—as much as I can.’

  ‘So—do I disturb you?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Grace—?’

  ‘Yes?’

  But, whatever it was that he wished to say, it could not be said. It may have been some expression of tenderness or self-reproach, the things one hopes a lover might say at such a moment. ‘I could not bear to lose you’or quite simply ‘I love you’. Very likely it was something like that, and anything would have sufficed. But it was beyond him. He swallowed hard, took a nervous step up and down the room, said nothing, and was very glad, I suppose, when he glanced at me, to find I had apparently fallen asleep.

  He came to see me the next morning very early, hovering once again in my doorway.

  ‘They say you had a good night.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grace—you don’t need me for anything, do you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then—look here—the thing is I’m supposed to be at the mill this morning.’

  ‘Then you’d better hurry.’

  ‘If you’d rather—?’

  ‘I’m all right. Your mother can look after me.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He crossed the room, possibly disliking the part of himself that could barely wait to be off; disliking, too, the effort it cost him to brush the back of his hand against my cheek. And because I was stung afresh by the memory of that dying horse and was yet again close to tears, I said tartly: ‘You’d do well not to keep your father waiting.’

  I heard his voice and his mother’s in the yard below and then, when my breakfast tray had been brought and Mrs. Barforth, coming in behind it, had persuaded me to a cup of hot, fragrant chocolate, she sat down beside me and sent the maid away.

  ‘You do know, my dear, that Gervase feels terribly to blame?’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Is he to blame? He says you quarrelled at Listonby and t
hat he was—difficult. But he did not realize—I did not realize—yesterday afternoon, that you were ill. We thought—’

  ‘You thought I was in a sulk.’

  ‘Oh, dear! And if you had been a sulk I wonder if I should be surprised at it, knowing how difficult Gervase can be? But to have inflicted that drive on you—and that walk to the bridge—’

  ‘I inflicted all that on myself, Mrs. Barforth.’

  ‘I wonder if you can convince Gervase of that?’

  ‘Should he ever ask me, I will try.’

  The doctor came soon after, expressing himself well satisfied, and then there came a note from Mrs. Agbrigg murmuring her regret both at my misfortune and my father’s absence in Manchester. But she would visit me herself that afternoon. Blanche too, I thought, might well stir herself to drive those few miles from Listonby and would perhaps bring Noel Chard with her. But I soon became aware, as the slow, sickroom hours passed, that I was simply waiting for Venetia.

  Gervase, I calculated, would have reached Cullingford by eight o’clock, and even if he had gone straight to the mill, he or his father would have sent a note which could bring her here by mid-morning. Gervase would know I wanted to see her. She would know it. She would drop everything—naturally she would—and come. But one always recognizes the final moment when if something does not happen now, it will never happen at all. And struggling with a disappointment enlarged by physical weakness, I failed to notice the change in the weather and was surprised when Mrs. Barforth murmured: ‘I cannot think anyone will have set out from Cullingford today. The sky has been black in that direction since luncheon, and Blanche will not risk herself even from Listonby in this rain. I fear there is a storm coming.’

  ‘She could have been here by now.’

  ‘Who, darling? Mrs. Agbrigg? I doubt it, for if she set off at all she may have thought better of it, since she will wish to get home again.’

  ‘No—no—Venetia—’

  ‘My dear—oh heavens! is it Venetia you have been pining for?’

  ‘Of course it is.’

  Light and quick in all her movements, she got up from the window-seat and slipped her narrow hand into mine.

  ‘Dearest, I am so sorry. Naturally I should have sent a message to Tarn Edge first of all, I suppose. But I did not. She cannot have heard, unless Mrs. Agbrigg—which seems unlikely.’

  ‘But she must have heard. Gervase will have let her know.’

  ‘Gervase?’

  ‘Of course. He went to the mill this morning and must have arrived in time to— he may even have gone by Tarn Edge, surely? And his father, or Gideon—or Mrs. Winch—’

  And as my voice trailed off into those damnable, ridiculous tears, my mother-in-law looked, for just a moment, as if she might weep with me.

  ‘He did go to the mill, didn’t he, Mrs. Barforth?’

  ‘Oh, my dear, he may have done. That is what he said. Grace, if it eases you to cry, there is no shame, you know—no shame at all. I will not look, and I will never tell.’

  I slept for perhaps an hour, waking to a late afternoon sky black with rain, a wind, risen from the moor, howling in cold anger about the roof tiles. Mrs. Barforth was not there, my maid, Sally, sitting alone as close to the fire as she could, and for a long time I lay without speaking, staring at the small mullioned window and the desolate prospect it offered me of dark sky and naked, wind-raked trees.

  I was alive and would apparently remain so. My personal danger was over, and with its passing there was now room inside me for the despair I had so far held at bay, the terrible realization that what had oozed so painfully out of me yesterday afternoon and evening had been a human life, an individual, unrepeatable being, deprived by me of the future.

  Gervase might well blame himself for the distress he had caused me. I might blame him too. But I—who had known of my condition as he had not—had taken no care of it. I had attended the Listonby ball and had stayed up half the night, my body clamouring for rest, in order to demonstrate to Gervase that he had not succeeded in making me jealous. I had followed him here the next day in that bitter wind, enduring those bone-shaking miles, for the same reason. I had obeyed the demands of my pride and my self-respect, and in so doing had violated the most basic and most profound instinct of the bearing female. I had failed to protect my child. And grief for that child so overwhelmed me that I turned my face into the pillow and sobbed helplessly, dreadfully, releasing now the tears I had suppressed from all the other griefs of my life.

  But my maid Sally was accustomed to finding me rational and calm, and had so little idea of how to manage me in this extremity that her alarm in itself restored my composure.

  ‘Oh, my!’ she said, round-eyed with fright, ‘and Mrs. Barforth not here—’

  ‘Where is she, Sally?’

  ‘Oh—gone to Tarn Edge for Miss Venetia—or Mrs. Chard, as I suppose we must call her, although it never sounds right.’

  ‘Sally. She has gone to Tarn Edge herself—in this weather?’

  ‘So she has, ma’am, the weather being the cause of it, since nobody else could handle her horses in a storm, or should be asked to. That’s what she said, ma’am. She’ll be back before nightfall although its been night all day today, I reckon. Chicken broth she said you were to have for dinner. Shall I fetch it, ma’am?’

  I heard the storm break half an hour later, a great crack of thunder that shook the lamps and set the candles flickering, and then a great lashing of rain as if some floodgate had been opened directly above us.

  ‘Here it comes, ma’am.’ And there it was, the lightning flash that could induce panic in horses far less nervous and flighty than my mother-in-law’s, the wind, the blinding rain, the pitch dark, the rutted, pock-marked roads. I had not liked her and had believed she disliked me. Perhaps she did. But it no longer mattered. She had seen my need, had understood that Gervase had not supplied it, and so, recklessly but quite suddenly, she had gone herself. I was terrified for her, proud of her, more than ever ashamed of my tears.

  She would—or so I hoped—have reached Tarn Edge before the storm. Naturally she would not set out again but would spend the night there and return with Venetia in the morning. Even if she was foolhardy enough—magnificent enough—to make the attempt tonight, neither Mr. Barforth nor Gideon would allow it. And knowing full well that both mother and daughter were magnificent enough—mad enough—I prayed that my father-in-law had indeed been there to prevent them, straining my ears at the same time for the sound of their carriage.

  ‘She is gone in the cabriolet, ma’am.’

  Dear God! such a light, flimsy equipage, a young man’s carriage stripped down for sport and speed.

  ‘They are saying in the kitchen, ma’am, that there is a tree struck by lightning on the Cullingford road—quite blocking the way, ma’am.’

  ‘They seem very well informed, in the kitchen.’

  ‘And if the river rises, ma’am, as it usually does, there will be no way to get across and every chance of her wheels bogged down in the mud.’

  ‘Sally, I don’t really care to know what the kitchenmaids are saying.’

  ‘Will you take chicken broth, ma’am?’

  ‘Yes—and I would like anybody who is able-bodied in that kitchen to go out with lanterns to make sure she is not bogged down by the river.’

  But there was no need for it. I heard the horses, the burst of welcoming laughter, the gruff voice of her groom trying to hide his thankfulness, those tears again—which I had determined to control—welling up behind my eyelids as the door flew open and the room came alive with the exuberance of Venetia, soaked to the skin and frozen to the marrow, but glowing once again with the simple, joyful excitement of being alive.

  ‘Darling, I am too wet to kiss you, for there is no sense in coming all this way just to give you pneumonia—and how lovely you look! That must be the wrong thing to say, but it is quite true. Oh dear, Grace—how terrible! How sad! The poor little baby! But I have come to cheer you
, not depress you. Thank goodness father was not home from the mill when mamma came to tell me—nor Gideon. Well, now that I am here they may be angry with me for coming through the storm, but I am here and they can hardly fetch me back again. I shall stay, of course, until you are well.’

  And, knowing the answer, I did not ask her when she had last seen Gervase.

  There were more visitors the next few days than Galton had seen in years, my father the most frequent among them, although his visits were less satisfactory than I had hoped. My mother had miscarried, I remembered, several times before my birth and several times after, undermining her health in her determination to give him the son he had not particularly desired, and it troubled him so much to see me like this that he could hardly contain his distress. Yet, since Jonas Agbrigg had believed all his life in the rigid control of emotion, he did contain it, permitting himself to do no more than press my hand and say quite tonelessly: ‘There is no hurry, you know. You are still young enough, and for my part I cannot subscribe to the theory that a woman’s worth is measured by her fertility. And as to this instinct of maternal devotion we hear so much about, I imagine a woman may lavish that kind of thing equally well on a dog.’

  And because I knew he was really saying ‘I love you, Grace. For my sake, don’t put yourself in danger again’, I smiled and murmured ‘Yes, papa.’

  Aunt Faith came often; Uncle Blaize, pleading the excuse of business, although in truth he was ill at ease at Galton, which was, after all, his brother’s house, sent me out-of-season flowers obtained, I knew, at great effort and expense. Grandmamma Elinor, being in the South or France, was not informed, but my grandmother Agbrigg sent me pages of good advice, while my grandfather, the Mayor, came himself from Scarborough and spent a day at my bedside, entertaining me in his broad, West Riding accents with reminiscences of his younger days. Mrs. Agbrigg, whose visit I had not welcomed, came once, assured herself with her usual, smooth efficiency that everything was being properly done and thereafter, with unexpected tact, allowed my father to come alone, sending with him some nourishing and invariably delicious concoction she had made herself. Blanche came, accompanied by both Dominic and Noel, although her husband, who was easily bored, soon rode off on business of his own, leaving his brother—his natural second in command—to take Blanche home.