by Erica Brown
After careful scrutiny of the collection of bottles and boxes, he found the one he was looking for, took out the stopper, and poured its contents into his own bottle, which was of a different colour and type. Once that was done and the bottle was back in his pocket, he filled the empty one up from the jug of water conveniently left on the tray.
Just as silently as he’d entered, he let himself out of the room.
* * *
Home, thought Tom Strong, gazing at the forest of chimneys that sprang from the roof of Marstone Court and could be seen for miles around.
The house itself was surrounded by over two hundred acres of parkland and occupied the Avon Valley below Leigh Woods, looking towards the new colonnades and crescents that were springing up all over Clifton.
‘Glad to be back?’ asked John the coachman, a jovial man with a round, red face, and an equally round wife.
Tom thought carefully before answering. He always did. If things weren’t said right, they could easily be misconstrued, like giving orders on a ship.
‘It’s good to see Bristol again.’
‘I s’pose you’ll be seeing the Reverend Strong first?’
This question needed less consideration. ‘Unless anything more pressing occurs, I shall indeed see the Reverend. There’s little time to spare.’
‘Back to your ship that quick, are ye?’
Tom thought of the last time he’d seen Jeb. He smiled sadly. ‘Has there been some miracle in my absence?’
The coachman looked uncomfortable that a question was now being asked of him. ‘No,’ he said, frowning.
‘Then I think we can agree that it’s the Reverend who has little time to spare.’
The coachman sighed. ‘He’s a good man. He don’t deserve to be suffering.’
‘No,’ said Tom. ‘He doesn’t.’
The comment affected Tom enormously. He would not be captain of a Bridgetown packet if it hadn’t been for the Reverend Strong. He would not be well fed, well clothed and the adopted member of a wealthy and powerful family of sugar barons if it hadn’t been for Jeb, and yet, somehow, he’d never been able to show his gratefulness like other people did. He’d always felt like second best, an afterthought following the disappearance of Jeb’s real son. Because of that, his discourse with Jeb was always terse, even rebellious, and yet Tom loved Jeb. He just couldn’t put his feelings into words.
Sheep scattered as they got closer to the house. For a brief moment, Tom thought he saw a thin figure bound through the trees with them like some latter-day Pan. He assumed a shepherd was herding the sheep with a view to leaving the parkland for a nearby meadow. The parkland grass was now quite short, so the sheep would not be needed for a while. He thought he heard a dog bark, presumed it was a sheepdog, though it seemed a little high-pitched for such a large dog.
‘Is the shepherd local?’ he asked the coachman.
‘What shepherd?’
Tom explained. The coachman pulled up the horse, and the stiff springs of the wooden-bodied chaise bounced to a halt. Both men peered across the parkland towards the trees where most of the sheep seemed to be congregating.
There was nothing.
‘Just a shadow,’ said Tom. ‘I’ve been at sea too long.’
The coachman urged the horse forward. Tom leaned back into his seat, his eyes closed and his hands clasped behind his head. There had been a figure and a dog, and if it wasn’t a shepherd, it might be a poacher. There were plenty of rabbits on this estate to feed an army and he’d no objection to them taking a few.
The coachman cleared his throat as if about to say something. ‘I’m a simple man with few vices, but I wonder if…’ He cleared his throat again.
Tom thought about helping him out, but decided to stay silent.
‘I was wondering if… you was off into Bristol sometime…’
‘And you want to come?’
‘Well…’
‘I know a nice little tavern, a bawdy house where the women have milk-white bosoms and the softest hands you’ve ever—’
‘Oh no! No!’
The coachman’s big, round eyes seemed to grow to the size of saucers at Tom’s teasing.
‘A fight,’ he said, his face as flustered as his words. ‘I like a bit of fisticuffs, you know, and don’t mind putting on a shilling on you, Captain Tom, if I’ve got one to spare. I just wondered…’
‘I’ll let you know,’ said Tom, and thought he heard a dog yelp before the park returned to silence, broken only by the rustling of the trees.
* * *
A fire blazed in the nursery grate and steam rose from a row of collars, cuffs and handkerchiefs draped over a high brass fender.
The four children born to Sir Emmanuel Strong and his second wife, Verity, were sitting stiff-backed around the table in the middle of the room. They sat silently, hands folded in their laps, willing themselves to be still, but gradually losing the concentration to do so.
‘I’m cold,’ whispered Rupert, afraid that Mrs Grainger might hear him.
‘So am I,’ exclaimed his sister Caroline, who was eleven years old and the eldest. ‘I’m going to warm myself.’
Rupert and Arthur gasped in astonishment. Their younger brother George, springy curls falling around his face, began to cry.
‘Shush, Georgie,’ said Rupert, keeping his voice low. ‘Mrs Grainger will hear you.’
At the mention of Mrs Grainger, the governess, George’s despair deepened. He sank off his chair to the floor, his legs splayed out from beneath the green calico dress he was wearing.
Mrs Grainger was responsible for teaching them everything from their basic ABC to a smattering of French and a little drawing. She had a round face, small eyes and a mean mouth and wore dresses of stiff fabrics like serge and bombazine.
‘I wish Peters was still here,’ said Arthur, who was only three years older than George and had only discarded wearing the same dress George was presently wearing, some two years before.
‘Well, she isn’t,’ snapped Caroline as she leaned over the fender, rubbing her hands before the glowing coals.
‘Poor Peters,’ Rupert muttered.
Their last nurse had lasted at Marstone Court for only six months and they’d loved her. They’d also loved the nurse before that, and the one before that again who had lasted a shorter time than the other two had done. All the nurses were called Peters, firstly because it was easiest for the children to remember one name and thus have a sense of continuity and security, and secondly, busy, wealthy people like the Strongs had neither the time nor the inclination to learn new names. The original Peters had been nurse to Horatia and Nelson when they were children.
None of the more recent Peters, those employed as nurses to the children Lady Verity had produced, were any good at all, according to Mrs Grainger, who hadn’t even been at Marstone Court when the original Peters had been nurse.
‘Slack and lazy,’ she’d exclaimed when Caroline had asked her why the last Peters had left. ‘We can’t have slack and lazy people looking after the children of quality folk.’
Caroline had wanted to point out that Mrs Grainger had said the same thing about the last two. It occurred to her that she’d said the same thing about the ones before that, though she couldn’t quite remember. She’d been younger then and, besides, being too outspoken might mean being locked in the attic, Mrs Grainger’s favourite punishment, where old furniture, carpets and paintings were stored. The room was thick with dust, had shuttered windows and rough wooden floors. Only Georgie had escaped the attic so far, but the day would come, Caroline told herself. Georgie would do something wrong and Mrs Grainger’s beady little eyes would twinkle wickedly and a cruel smile would warp her fat face. Caroline wasn’t sure how she would protect Georgie from Mrs Grainger. Sometimes she considered telling her parents, but Mrs Grainger was clever. Caroline could almost hear her now.
‘And who are your long-suffering parents likely to believe? An upright adult adored by her younger charges, o
r a spoilt girl in need of having the birch across her backside.’
Much as she’d like to believe her brothers would back her up, Caroline knew that Mrs Grainger would make sure they didn’t. When trouble threatened she would be overly kind to them, buying their silence with bull’s-eyes she kept in a bag in her pocket. Then she’d school them in a little ditty that they were to sing at the top of their voices as they marched down the stairs to see their parents in that magic hour between five and six o’clock in the afternoon:
Mrs Grainger makes us work,
At my sums I do not shirk.
Just to please her gives me joy,
She says I’m a clever boy.
What else could her parents believe of a woman who inspired such songs of praise? During the periods when a nurse was in residence, the cruelty ceased. Only in the schoolroom had Mrs Grainger continued to hold sway and she’d been clever. Her favourite punishment had become the attic rather than the cane because it showed no trace, but sometimes her temper got the better of her. George’s sobbing was getting louder.
‘Come on, Georgie. Stop crying.’ Rupert got behind his brother, tucked his hands under the boy’s armpits and heaved him back on to the chair.
‘Don’t let us down, Georgie Porgie,’ he said, mopping the wet eyes with his handkerchief. ‘You know what Mrs Grainger is like.’ George did indeed know what Mrs Grainger was like and immediately burst into more copious tears.
‘Come on,’ said Rupert once he’d settled Georgie into his chair and had climbed back on to his. ‘She’ll be back soon and she told us not to move. We’ll get one hell of a whacking if she knows we have.’
‘You shouldn’t say that word,’ said Caroline. ‘It’s not nice.’
Rupert pushed his dark curls back from his shiny forehead and said proudly, ‘Tom says it all the time.’
‘I know he does, but that doesn’t make it nice.’
Rupert wasn’t giving in. ‘Would it be better if we said heaven of a whacking instead?’ He stressed ‘we’. Tom was the person he admired most in the whole wide world. He told him tales of the sea, spoke eloquently of the places he’d been to, the people he’d seen. Rupert longed to escape into the big wide world, the one that existed beyond the close confines of the nursery and Marstone Court. Unusually for boys of his age, he was actually looking forward to being sent away to school, possibly to Queen Elizabeth’s in Bristol, though he’d like to go a lot further. Although only eight years old, he had already made his mind up to be a sea captain when he grew up. With sails unfurled and beating before a trade wind, he would sail the world and see all the wonderful places Tom Strong had told him about.
Unwilling to surrender to Mrs Grainger’s will, Caroline sauntered to the window and looked out. They were on the fourth floor of the house, just beneath the attics. The best thing about the room was the view. Acres of rolling grassland, trees in the park and, beyond the wall, the fertile ground that was Ashton, where plump cattle grazed and wild ducks and geese waded on the marshy land towards the river.
The nursery was self-contained. Everything the children might need was up here – except their parents. It would be bearable if it weren’t for Mrs Grainger. Despair settled on each child and they might have remained silent and still if a scrabbling, scratching sound hadn’t come from the chimney.
‘The sweep!’ exclaimed Caroline who spent a lot of time gazing from the window. ‘I saw him arrive before breakfast. He’s come to sweep the chimney up in the attic for our new nurse.’
‘Why doesn’t she have Peters’s old room?’ asked Arthur, the second oldest son.
‘I don’t know,’ Rupert shrugged, then ran to the fireplace and tried to peer up the chimney.
The other children gathered round as the noise continued, louder now as if someone were trying to kick their way through the wall.
‘Will his brush come out?’ Arthur asked. He was normally the quietest child, but his curiosity was aroused.
‘He doesn’t use the big brush in this part of the chimney,’ Caroline explained. ‘It’s too narrow and has bends in it so he sends his boy up with a hand brush. I expect he’s stuck.’
Rupert turned pale. ‘Do you think they will get him out?’
Caroline didn’t answer. Like him she was gazing wide-eyed at the fireplace, feeling fear for the boy and relief that it wasn’t her stuck up the chimney with just a small brush and dead starlings for company.
Chapter Seven
Down in the drawing room, Lady Verity Strong tugged at the bell pull beside the glass doors that opened out on to a promenade bounded by a curving balustrade and Grecian style statuary.
‘That noise,’ she shouted, holding her head with both hands. ‘I can’t stand it!’
The sound filtering down the chimney seemed to clang in her brain. Eyes closed and hands covering her ears, she strode up and down the room, side to side, to the door that opened on to the main hallway, and back to the double glass doors that led out to the balcony with a view of the gardens beyond.
She was almost at screaming point. Why didn’t someone come?
‘Hurry, girl! Hurry!’
It was Edith who entered, a plump, common type who mostly attended to the Reverend Strong’s needs, cleared up the mess from his bed or the sodden sheets of her youngest son, George. She appeared to be carrying something that smelled of horse dung and mouse droppings.
Verity wrinkled her nose. First the din from the fireplace, and now this. ‘Where’s Soames?’ she demanded.
Soames was her personal maid, an upright person with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes either side of a thin nose with pinched nostrils.
‘Beg yer pardon, ma’am…’ Edith began, ‘but Charlie’s – sorry – Prince Charles ’as been brought back again. There’s a man at the back door…’
The bundle Edith was carrying leaped from her arms and scampered across the floor towards Verity.
‘Prince Charles! My darling.’ Displaying greater affection for the dog than she did for her own children, Lady Verity swooped as low as she could in her condition, and lifted the little brown and white spaniel up from the floor.
‘My darling,’ she wailed, as the dog wagged its tail and licked her face. ‘My best, most beautiful darling!’
Edith dropped a swift curtsy. ‘Begging your pardon, ma’am, but there’s a man outside. ’Twas him that found it and he noticed there’s a reward—’
‘Give it him,’ Verity snapped, her attention wrapped up in the dog. ‘Tell Cook to take it out of the nursery budget. Two sovereigns, wasn’t it? Give him three.’ She hugged the little dog close. ‘My darling Prince is worth it, aren’t you, my sweet? Now, you really must stop running away, you naughty little dog.’ She kissed the creature’s nose and cuddled it like a baby.
Hiding a smile, Edith turned to go, meaning to head for the kitchen and demand of Cook the reward for the return of the little dog.
But Lady Verity hadn’t finished with her.
‘I want it stopped immediately.’
Edith was flustered. ‘Er… what exactly do you mean, Madam?’ she asked, afraid the mistress of Marstone Court might be referring to the frequency of her dog’s vanishing, and the fact that it was always Edith who brought him back.
‘The noise! That dreadful, thudding, scratching noise.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ said a relieved Edith and went on to explain. ‘If you remember rightly, the new nurse is to have the old room up in the attic and the chimney needed sweeping.’
‘He must do it quietly.’
‘Sorry, ma’am, but it’s the sweep’s boy you see. He’s gone and got ’imself stuck.’
Clutching the dog to her bosom, Lady Verity slumped into a chair. She was bloated, ungainly and unreasonable. Her confinement was near and she was paler than normal.
‘I think that’s very careless of him. He should consider his customers’ sensibilities and get himself a smaller sweep. Obviously this one’s got far too big for the job. Now go downstairs and
see that the matter is taken care of.’
Edith dropped another curtsy. ‘Yes, ma’am.’
What was Lady Verity actually asking her to do? She could hardly tell the sweep that he wasn’t to come back until he’d found himself a smaller boy. What would they do with the one stuck up the chimney? Never you mind, Edith, she thought, you’ll think of something when you get there.
But first she made her way to the kitchen. Cook counted the coins into Edith’s outstretched hand.
‘Is it the same man who found him?’ she asked Edith.
Edith saw the suspicion in her eyes. ‘He might be. Dirty sort he is, but then, dirty people all look the same to me.’
After pocketing the coins, she made her way to the dining room. This was the oldest part of the house and its fireplace was a monstrous construction of white marble, a monument to wealth and the sugar trade. Figures with African features, their bodies bent almost double with the weight of the mantelpiece, gazed into the room.
A vast sheet had been spread over the floor. Dust covers protected the furniture, which had been moved away from the fireplace and closer to the windows.
The sweep, his moleskin trousers tied with string ‘Yorks’ just below the knees, was bending into the fireplace, his head up the chimney.
‘I said it was best to stick to cleaning the main chimneys. That one up top ain’t been used for years. And bit of a narrow opening. That’s why I sent him in this way. It’s a long climb, but there’s a bit more room in this grate. My boy’s a bit chubby, you see. Gets it from his mother’s side of the family, I’m told.’ He added, ‘He’s an orphan and been with me a long time now.’
Mouth pursed and brow furrowed, Duncan the footman stood with his hands clasped behind his back, eyeing the sweep with the utmost disdain. Dealing with tradesmen was not usually one of his duties.
The sweep’s head reappeared. ‘He’s up there somewheres,’ he said apologetically. ‘There’s bits of old flue branching off from the main ’un.’ He shook his head dolefully. ‘I said it ’ud be blocked. I said them old flues were dangerous. But,’ he sighed heavily and bent for his long brush, ‘we’re going to have to get him down.’