Blake's Reach

by Catherine Gaskin

  But worst of all was the realization that these days Paul talked very little of the Indies.

  Jane performed the social round as Charles expected her, without protest, and sat at the head of the table when he bade people to dine with them. She found the business of entertaining grow easier with each occasion, and once the challenge of learning and mastering the niceties of it were past, it also began to bore her. She had none of the accomplishments that were admired in the drawing-room, and she soon began to accept the admiring attention of the men with the same calm as she took the icy politeness of the women. She recalled longingly the dawn rides to Old Romney, and the eager embrace of Paul’s arms.

  In spite of her hostility, Jane recognized that when Charles chose to exert himself, he was a charming and interesting companion. She learned many things from him in their daily contacts; his conversation was full of references to events and ideas she had never heard before, and when she found that he did not despise her ignorance, she learned also to question him, and then to listen. He held up to her a mirror of a culture she had not known existed. For the first time she heard the names of Rousseau and Voltaire, and the Encyclopedic and learned that the Revolution was not an idea brought into existence in a single day by the National Assembly. It was difficult to reconcile the fact that Charles, an aristocrat, knew and sympathised with the ideals of liberty. Sometimes when they were alone together he would read to her. In the cool of the orchard he would lie on the grass and read to her from the treasonable Tom Paine’s Rights of Man, and solemnly intone the clauses of the American Declaration of Independence. She gazed at him in awe and admiration, and would spend long hours staring unseeingly across the Marsh, puzzling the things he had said to her.

  Paul, who because of his knowledge of Louise de Montignot in Paris could afford to ignore the gossip that Charles would marry Jane, was still jealous of Charles’s learning and scholarship.

  ‘I’m a simple Englishman,’ he said bluntly to Jane, ‘and I don’t pretend to be a match for some fancy French philosopher.’

  ‘I understand only simple Englishmen,’ Jane replied. ‘And I don’t think Charles supposes himself a philosopher.’

  But it was one thing to hear Charles execute the graceful little minuets and gavottes on the harpsichord, and quite another to try to follow him as he put his horse to jump the dykes and fences of the Marsh. On a horse he was matchless, as if he and the animal had only one identity; William was lost in wonder and reverence of him. The three of them ‒ Jane, Charles and William ‒ became a familiar sight on the roads and in the hamlets across the Marsh. Wherever they went the labourers and the village women knew them, and acknowledged them with lifted caps and curtseys. A great many of them came forward to congratulate Charles on his escape; Jane was touched by the obvious sincerity of their words, and she also began to think of the escape as something miraculous. William began to identify himself closely with Charles, beaming with pleasure during these encounters, and taking the congratulations as being meant for him also. With the working people Charles unbent to a degree he never did in the drawing-rooms of the gentry; he was kind and leisurely in his speech, and talked with the children as well as their parents. After a short time there was nowhere they could ride on the Marsh that some ‘looker’ would not pause from his task of herding the sheep to wave to them, or the carpenter’s apprentice look up from his tools to smile.

  This Charles was familiar to her ‒ a companion, almost a friend, a hero to William, a master for Blake’s Reach, and someone to restore honour and dignity to the Blake name. The other side of Charles was known to her only by what she could observe and guess.

  At least twice a week he rode to Dover, sometimes more frequently. On occasion he would bid Turnbull come with him, and once Jane dared to question Robert about these visits.

  He shrugged, a weary gesture that already had the look of defeat about it. ‘Always the same object ‒ Louise de Montignot. He is pouring gold into the pockets of anyone who has even half-promised him some information or aid. But so far as we know she’s still in La Force, and he’s growing desperate … the news from France is bad …’

  Jane knew well enough what the news from France was; the whole of Europe was watching, unbelievingly, the events in Paris where the Reign of Terror was gathering force. When the news reached them at Blake’s Reach of the second storming of the Tuileries and the massacre of the Swiss Guard, Jane saw Charles come as close to desperation as he would ever be. In a frenzied need for action he saddled his horse and rode to Dover. When he returned next day it was with the news that the royal authority had been suspended, and the Royal Family imprisoned in the Temple.

  His face was haggard, his eyes dull from lack of sleep; at night Jane heard his ceaseless pacing in his chamber. He left his food almost untouched. The long August days moved on slowly, and they gave up talking of the awaited storm that would freshen the still air, and lay the dust. Jane found what tasks she could to occupy her, but there were never enough to absorb her energies. Charles’s tortured face was always present to remind her of what hung in the balance across the Channel, and her own thoughts were never far from Louise de Montignot, and that strange, inexplicable statement of Charles’s that perhaps, in the end, Blake’s Reach would belong to her, Jane.

  III

  Charles nodded at Jane down the length of the dining-table, and for a moment the look of tight weariness his face had worn all day lifted. His smile was cynically amused.

  ‘I had a visit from the vicar of St. Mary’s this afternoon. I believe you know him ‒ the Reverend Sharpe who takes the service at St. Saviour’s?’

  ‘Yes …?’

  His long fingers plucked at the grapes on his plate. ‘He thinks it’s high time I proved to the parish that I’ve not succumbed to the wicked influence of my despised French relatives, and turned Papist.’

  She shrugged. ‘Laugh if you like, but to the people on the Marsh you are English, and you had best show yourself in an English church. The vicar’s right about that. No one expects the Blakes to be religious people, but they expect them to do what all the other Blakes have done before them.’

  ‘How stern you are, Jane!’ he mocked her. ‘And what a tyrant! You should be the mother of a large brood, and bring them all up to be good Blakes!’

  She hated him when he laughed at her. She glanced at his dark, lean face almost lost in the wavering candlelight, and thought that, with his thin mouth and black hooked eyebrows, he had a devilish quality about him. But afterwards, in the drawing-room, when he sat at the harpsichord and played the chorales he loved, his expression was peaceful and at rest. Jane’s heart was touched when she thought of the long months in prison, and the horrors he had seen and did not speak of, and she was glad that sometimes he could be at peace. They would sit wordlessly there for an hour and more, with only the thin plucking sounds of the harpsichord between them.

  On the next Sunday morning, wearing his finest coat and gold-buckled shoes, he walked up the hill to St. Saviour’s-by-the-Marsh. Jane and William sat beside him in the Blake pew, stiff and conscious of every eye fixed upon them. The word had gone around that Charles would attend this morning’s service, and apart from the villagers who packed the church, people from two parishes away had made excuses to visit cousins in St. Mary’s, and had come to stare at the man who had escaped from the hands of those Frenchies, and, as they believed, the jaws of death. Robert Turnbull, who had been bidden to take dinner at Blake’s Reach with them, had come early, and slipped into a pew at the back of the church.

  At the appointed moment Charles rose and went to the pulpit, and in his beautiful, sensitive voice, read the Lesson; he was a splendid figure standing there in wig and silk coat, his hands resting on the Bible that bore the Blake crest on its leather binding. His demeanour was perfect, humble and yet dignified.

  The vicar offered prayers of thanksgiving for Charles’s deliverance from the anti-Christs across the Channel, making it seem as if the God he praye
d to was also an Englishman. Then, before he began his sermon, he made the announcement that, in thanksgiving, Charles would present St. Saviour’s with a rose window for the south transept.

  For Jane it should have been a great moment, a moment of complete identification with a family and a way of life that had continued here for hundreds of years. Instead it was almost a moment of imprisonment; she felt the heaviness of those years upon her like a load. For an instant she caught a glimpse of her own self as she had been the first Sunday she had attended service here, saw the puppet she had been, playing the game that Charles now played. But he had gone much further. He would give a rose window to the church in thanksgiving for a return he felt no joy in. She glanced out over the approving congregation, and their red-cheeked country faces dissolved before her eyes. Instead she had a second’s vision of the congregation of wool bales and brandy casks she had herself addressed from the pulpit. But now she saw the softly coloured light from Charles’s new rose window streaming down on the smugglers’ congregation. She closed her eyes to shut out the vision.

  After the service Charles lingered just as she had done, playing out the ritual of the handshakes and the greetings, accepting the congratulations. William was close by his side, enjoying the occasion, performing his same courtly little bow; Jane joined them, but her smile was set as if she were a wax doll, and her hand resting in the vicar’s was like lead.

  Robert Turnbull was with them as they set off down the hill. After the meal he walked with Jane among the rose-beds, where the blooms were dusty and faded, turning brown at the edges.

  Jane paused, and nodded up towards the church. She said bitterly, ‘Well ‒ we’ll yet see the King’s Pearl spent on silk bed-hangings and a window for the church. Was it for this the Blakes have kept it all these years?’

  Robert shrugged. ‘I wonder how Charles intends to pay for it? However ‒ it was a nice gesture and it makes the people happy even if it never comes into being. Well …’ he glanced across at Jane, ‘it was a great sight to see all three Blakes at service this morning. You’re making the family respectable, Jane!’

  ‘Respectable …!’

  ‘Once,’ he went on, ‘they were full of adventure and spirit ‒ even perhaps, nobility. Now they’re merely respectable! Not a good change!’

  Abruptly, to avoid replying, she bent and put her face close to a crimson rose, breathing in its dusty fragrance, which meant the end of the summer.

  Three

  Paul stood on the shingle at Barham on a night early in September, and blessed his good fortune. The night was calm, but dark, so dark that although he could hear the creak of the rowlocks, he could not see the boats that were pulling away from the Dolphin’s side. The first of the cargo was coming ashore, and from all the information he had gathered, he knew that no Preventive Officers or Dragoons would bother him this night. The cargo was a rich one, the biggest he had so far brought across, and he had chosen Barham for the landing because of the speed with which the cargo could be handled here. He smiled to himself in the darkness; along with the contraband goods the Dolphin had also brought two passengers, who had not only paid handsomely for their passage, but once they touched the shingle, would be no further responsibility of his. Refugees fleeing from The Terror in France were the best kind of cargo to carry; they gave no trouble and their passage money didn’t need to be reported to Charles or Turnbull. They were always worth the risk involved in taking them aboard in a French port.

  He heard the scrape as the first boat touched the shingle. With a swift order to the waiting cart-driver, and the eager crowd of women, he moved forward.

  As he expected, the first boat carried, among the kegs and the oilskin packages, the two passengers. Paul wasn’t in the least interested in their identities or their persons; the captain of the Dolphin, Joe Shore, would have collected their passage money before the vessel weighed anchor in Le Havre. All Paul wanted now was to get them on their way, so that their presence wouldn’t hinder the loading-party.

  He watched them, two dark figures climbing stiffly from the boat, moving with the timid movements of people unaccustomed to the sea. When they reached the shingle they sood close together, staring about them in a kind of helpless bewilderment.

  He spoke to them in clipped tones. ‘Messieurs …!’ They turned expectantly. ‘I have a cart waiting to take you to Folkestone. From there you may easily arrange transportation to wherever you wish to go.’

  ‘Merci … merci beaucoup!’ The words were spoken dully, as if the ordeal of escape and the sea voyage had left the speaker unnaturally submissive. The second man, however, gestured to hold Paul’s attention.

  ‘Monsieur … I beg you …’ His English was heavily accented, but understandable. ‘I have to reach a town called Rye … The captain, he told me it is near here.’

  ‘It will be possible to arrange your journey from Folkestone to Rye to-morrow,’ Paul said coldly. ‘I have only one cart and it must take you both to the same place. Now if you will …’

  ‘One moment, Monsieur! It is of extreme urgency that I reach Rye as quickly as possible ‒ a matter of life and death.’

  ‘Whom do you wish to see in Rye?’ Paul said.

  The man gestured violently. ‘From there I must seek a gentleman called Charles Blake … lately arrived here from France. I am instructed that he lives close by that town. I must reach him! I repeat, Monsieur, it is a matter of life and death!’

  ***

  To-night the lights of Warefield House were visible far beyond the park that surrounded it. Of all nights this was the one on which Paul had least wanted to approach the house where he had been born. To-night all the families of the gentry living in or on the fringes of the Marsh were gathering here to celebrate the coming-of-age of James Fletcher’s eldest son and heir, Harry. From the bonfires that blazed in the grounds, and the smell of roasting pork and the garbled shouts that carried to him on the wind, Paul knew that James’s tenants were also making the most of the occasion. There were precious few times, Paul thought, that his brother’s tenants ever got a free glass of ale from their landlord.

  But the very fact that this was a night of celebration had made it impossible to send anyone else. There was a message to be delivered to Charles Blake, and he was here, somewhere among the guests who thronged James’s hall and drawing-room, and spilled into the garden outside, and even went to mingle with the tenants round the roasting-pits. As little as he wanted to appear on James’s estate to-night, where he was most certainly an uninvited guest, Paul could think of no one who would be less conspicuous here than himself. He knew the back passages and staircases of the house intimately, and two of the menservants here gave him occasional service as porters when there was a cargo coming in ‒ this, of course, being regarded as none of Sir James’s business. If he could find one of these men, it would be simple to get a message to Charles to meet him in an upstairs room. Paul knew that all the local magistrates and the military officers of the surrounding countryside would be among the guests; it would have been extreme folly to have allowed an emotional Frenchman, who had been robbed of all discretion by his anxiety and exhaustion, to appear in this assembly. There was no telling what the Frenchman would have blurted out, and perhaps not only the landing-place and the name of the vessel he had come over on be revealed, but Charles’s name linked, even indirectly with the smuggling trade. And where Charles’s name was linked, so inevitably, must Jane’s be.

  As he approached the back of the house, Paul slipped from his horse, and stood waiting within the heavy shadow of the trees. For some minutes he studied the activity in the kitchens and servants’ quarters, which were clearly visible through the lighted open windows. One by one he identified the servants, and watched their movements as they hurried back and forth between kitchen and dining-room. He grimaced with distaste as he plotted how he would creep, like a thief, into his brother’s house.

  Down on the shingle at Barham he had struggled with himself before makin
g the decision to come here. It would have been simple to pretend not to hear the urgency in the Frenchman’s plea, and tell himself that to-morrow would have been soon enough for Charles to know what news had come for him from France. He would have to admit now to Charles that he had been bringing over refugees, and receiving payment for them without Charles’s knowledge, and it would have been much easier to do this anywhere but here under these circumstances.

  But the Frenchman had said ‘a matter of life and death,’ and the name he had whispered to Paul on the shingle at Barham had been that of Louise de Montignot.

  II

  The music and the laughter and the voices had been too much for Paul, and almost without a choice in the matter he found himself walking softly along the upstairs passage towards the gallery and the great staircase. He knew he was drawn here by only one thought; with good luck it was possible he might catch a glimpse of Jane.

  Once the fireworks display had started on the terrace, entering the house had been easy enough. He had waylaid Shelby, the man-servant, in the stone passage between the kitchen and dining-room, and had despatched him to find Charles, and conduct him discreetly to one of the disused nursery rooms. But for Paul the wait in that bare, dusty room had been too long. When the fireworks were over, and still Charles had not come, he had succumbed to his own desires. One sight of Jane would be enough ‒ just one, he told himself.

  He crouched in the corner of the gallery where the shadows were deepest, and searched the lighted hall below. The guests were streaming back in from the terrace now; they made a moving mosaic of textures and colours ‒ silks, velvets and satins in every colour he could name. And there was Jane at last, in blue silk, with her brilliant hair like a flame above it. He saw her white shoulders and bosom which the gown revealed, the sway of her body as she moved, and he knew that there were many other men down there who looked at her as he did. He pressed his face against the wooden balustrade, sick with the knowledge of his love and desire, sick with the frustration of being unable to walk down those stairs and claim her before this whole company. He tried to look away, tried not to hear her laugh or to see the movement of her hands as she opened her fan. On one side of her walked his nephew, Harry, on the other was a man he did not recognize, in the uniform of a captain of the Royal Navy.