by Mary Mackie
Her vehemence silenced even Eliza.
* * *
Since Jess’s thoughts were all of Reuben Rudd that evening, it was hardly surprising that he got into her dreams, too. She was lying entwined with him in the wood, under her coat, and they were both naked, happy to be so. But as he lifted himself to possess her his face changed – no longer Rudd but Merrywest. She felt the tearing pain as he forced his way into her. She screamed – and came awake with the echo of her cry fading across the attic room. Her body was running sweat, her hair damp, her flesh throbbing and her heart unsteady. She sat up, throwing aside the sheet, gulping cool air to calm herself. Was she never going to be free of her fear?
She became aware that Bella was calling. Throwing a woollen wrap around her, Jess hurried through the darkness to the child’s door and unbolted it. Bella was sitting up in bed, weeping with fright.
‘I heard something,’ she muttered, reaching to wind her arms around Jess as Jess sat beside her and held her, stroking her hair. ‘It was the ghost, Jess. The dead boy.’
‘Oh, now, Miss Bella—’
‘It was! It was my brother Harry. Kate told me about him. He threw himself off the roof in a fit of temper and now he prowls about the schoolroom at night. It’s true! Kate said it was true. That’s why they bolt my door, and lock the windows – because if I’m naughty he’ll come and get me and throw me off the roof, too. Oh, Jess… I heard him. I heard him call out!’
Wondering what other awful tales Kate had told the child to frighten her so, Jess hugged her and whispered calming words. ‘That was me you heard. I was havin’ a bad dream – yes, I have ’em, too, ’times. There en’t no such things as ghosts, Bella. I’ve been in the schoolroom in the dark, late at night, lots of times, and I hen’t seen nothin’. ’Sides, do he come, he’d have to get past me to get at you. That’s what I’m here for – to look after you. Never you fret, my darlin’. You’re safe as safe.’
Rocking and singing, repeating favourite rhymes, she soothed the child back to sleep.
Eventually, when Bella was soundly resting, Jess laid her down and, wide awake herself, went to the window, drawing back the curtain. The window was screwed shut – she’d found that out weeks ago and wondered about it. But maybe now she’d discovered the answer. If Bella had had a brother who had fallen to his death from the parapet outside, then maybe it was understandable that she was over-protected.
The night was dark, lit only by fitful stars behind skeins of drifting cloud. She laid her head against the window, feeling the coolness of the glass on her brow as she remembered the wood, and Rudd. Oh, Reuben, Reuben… where are you? How are you? Are you awake, too? Are you thinking of me? Before the image of Merrywest intruded, her dreams had been sweet.
A sound outside the door made her whirl and stare through utter blackness. A board had creaked. Boards often creaked, or mice scampered, or plaster shifted in the old house. Generally Jess paid no heed to such noises, but tonight she was on edge, and tonight she saw a flicker of lamplight form a pale mist between floor and door as someone went by. A moment later, straining her ears, she heard the faint snick of the schoolroom latch.
The ghost? Jess thought, but dismissed the nonsense at once. Ghosts didn’t carry lamps, or need to open doors. But no wonder poor little Bella was scared half to death, what with nurserymaids filling her head full of old squit, and folk wandering about at dead of night…
Moving as soundlessly as she could, she crept out of Bella’s room and through the darkened lobby. The door of the schoolroom was ajar, a cold draught of fresh night air blowing through it. Jess peered round the door, stifling an exclamation as she saw a tall female figure, lamp in hand, in the act of clambering through the window.
It was the squire’s wife, Lady Fyncham, known more familiarly below stairs as Lady Maud, or even ‘Mad Maud’ on occasion. Long hair flowed down her back, on to a dark wrap that hung loosely from her shoulders. Beneath it, she wore a long, voluminous, near-transparent nightgown that showed the outline of naked legs as she ducked out through the window and gained the leads where, every morning, Jess shook out the mats.
What was Lady Maud doing up here alone in the middle of the night?
As the mist of light faded from the room, Jess tip-toed as close to the open window as she dared. She could feel the night breeze on her face. To judge by the lamplight that faintly glowed in the darkness, the squire’s lady had gone to the far end of the parapet. Doing what? Jess couldn’t imagine.
She jumped back as a movement startled her. Then she stared in disbelief. Lady Maud had climbed up to the stone balustrade that guarded the roof. She was walking along it, very slowly, talking to herself, and weeping.
Fourteen
After she had scuttled back to her own bed in dismay, Jess remembered she hadn’t bolted Bella’s door. She daren’t go back for fear of meeting Lady Maud; so she lay awake, worrying. At last that board creaked again – there was just one, that you couldn’t seem to avoid however you walked – and the glow of light passed by her door as Lady Maud made for the family stairs. Having given her plenty of time to depart, Jess returned to Bella’s door only to find that the bolt was fastened, after all.
Next morning, one of the under-housemaids arrived to summon Jess to attend the mistress in her bedroom. ‘She’s in a mood! Mind yourself.’
Wondering what she had done wrong – had she been seen last night? – Jess went down.
Lady Maud sat at her dressing table having her chestnut hair brushed by her personal maid, Gresham. She was wearing a dressing gown of quilted satin whose pale pink colour made her white skin look grey and lifeless as, through the mirror, she regarded Jess with cold eyes.
All Jess could think of was seeing the squire’s wife parading on the parapet, talking to herself. Maybe she’d been sleep-walking, like Bella. Maybe it was a family trait. Maybe the dead boy had had the habit too.
Lady Maud’s harsh voice clipped out: ‘You left my daughter’s door unsecured last night!’
‘Milady, I—’
‘I know you did! I went up to check, as I frequently do – ah, does that surprise you? I won’t have my child harmed by your stupidity. Her door is to be bolted always when you leave her. Always! Do you understand?’
‘Yes, milady.’ Jess bit her tongue to stop herself from saying that it had only been for a few minutes. The least said about what had gone on last night, the better.
‘Then remember it. While Sir Richard and I are away in London, we expect our daughter to be safe here. That’s all. Now go away.’
Later, Sal Gooden told Jess that, before Bella was born, there had been a son and heir to Hewinghall – Harry Fyncham, a lively, bold little boy. One day he’d evaded his nursemaid and, laughing, scrambled out to the roof and up to the parapet where he’d danced in defiance of both his nursemaid and gravity. Gravity won.
‘He was killed,’ Sal added. ‘Well, that’s sixty feet or more. They say the nursemaid never got over it. No more hen’t Lady Maud. She don’t never talk about it, though, and there’s orders none of us should mention it, either, so don’t let on I told you.’
Jess was pleased to know, at last, what lay behind the tales of ghosts in the attics, and the reasons for bolted doors and nailed-shut windows. Not that she agreed with it. Locking Bella in and turning her into a nervous mouse, afraid of shadows, would not bring her brother back.
* * *
When Sir Richard and his lady departed to enjoy the London social season, their personal servants, including Longman the butler, accompanied them, but Mrs Roberts remained in charge of the house. Nursery life continued as usual, except that Nanny and Bella were spared their duty visits to the family drawing room and the whole atmosphere was more relaxed.
Gyp recovered from whatever had been ailing him, though he was never again quite so bouncy and inquisitive. He reminded Jess of Lily, whose bright gaiety had also wilted since Christmastime; she’d been so troubled at Easter that Jess still worried about her.
News
of Rudd’s progress filtered through to her. He was doing well; then he developed an infection and was real poorly, needing to be kept longer in hospital than expected. Jess fretted and wished she could see him, or write to him. Just to be in contact in some way, though she knew nothing could ever come of what she felt for him.
On one of her free afternoons she got a few necessaries together in a basket and set out for Rudd’s cottage. Cleaning was, after all, what she knew best, and someone had to do it – when he came home he’d have more to think about than scrubbing floors and cleaning cupboards, or so she would say if anyone discovered her. Her real reasons were something personal, between her and Rudd. Her heart believed that, even if her head reminded her that she couldn’t be sure. Maybe he was just a tease, using his smile and his easy ways to get round foolish women, but Jess didn’t believe it. Her instincts told her Rudd was good and true.
Leaving her basket on the edge of the woods, she called in at the rectory to collect Gyp and take him with her.
‘You’re welcome to him,’ Eliza said. ‘He en’t nothin’ but a pest.’
‘It’s no wonder he don’t thrive, with your bile alluss pourin’ over him,’ Jess returned.
Eliza merely stuck out her tongue; then as Jess was leaving she came after her to the door to say, ‘By the way, somebody been axin’ after you.’
By the time Jess looked round she had her face under control. ‘Who’d that be?’
‘Some chap. Reckoned he’d met you in Hunst’on a few month back. You in the habit of givin’ strangers your address? Do Rudd know about it?’
‘I hen’t given nobody my address,’ Jess denied hotly. ‘What’d this chap look like?’
Eliza shrugged. ‘Can’t say I noticed. He wan’t nothin’ special. Hen’t you seen him, then? Well, that must be two, three week ago now. I ’spect he’ve found other company.’
‘Just as well,’ said Jess. ‘He sound like a chancer to me.’
But as she moved on, with Gyp trotting beside her on his lead, her heartbeat was unsteady. Someone looking for her? Who could that be? Matty, maybe? Or someone much less welcome?
She continued to fret about it until she arrived at Rudd’s cottage, when all other thought was banished by the strange, eerie quality of the silence. The breeze had dropped, so that even the trees seemed to be holding their breath. No dogs came barking down the path; the pheasant pens were empty. And the cottage’s curtains were all pulled across, as in a house where death had entered.
Rudd was dead? – the thought made her stop, her stomach like cold lead. If he had died in that hospital… She shook herself, taking long draughts of air to calm her stupid heart. Of course he wasn’t dead. That kind of news would have spread into every corner. Still, she didn’t like the way the cottage felt. What was more, as she discovered when she tried the door, it was securely locked. Where Jess came from, nobody locked a door. Do that and someone would soon want to know what you were hiding. Who had locked Rudd’s cottage? And why?
As she stood on the doorstep wondering what to do, a voice behind her said, ‘He en’t at home.’ The underkeeper Obi approached the gate, peering at her. ‘Oh, that’s you, miss. I din’t reckonise you.’ He dragged off his cap, hair flattened all anyhow across his brow.
‘D’you have any news of Mr Rudd?’ she asked.
He stared at her with flat, colourless eyes, as if trying to work out what she had said. ‘Mr Rudd fell out a tree. He’re in th’infirmary.’
He knew even less than she did.
When Jess asked if he had a key to the cottage, he produced one from under a flower-pot by the pump.
‘Thought you might be one o’ them thievin’ warmints come to do more mischief,’ he said as he set the key in the lock. ‘Let me catch ’em and there’ll be a fine to-do. From now on, I s’ll come by here reg’lar. If they do do any more o’ their nonsense, I’ll do ’em!’
He unlocked the door and showed her what he was talking about – furniture upturned, rugs thrown about, flour and sugar scattered from the cupboard, butter smeared on linen. There were flies and ants everywhere. In the front room the armchairs had been slashed, the bookshelf toppled and the books torn. It made her so angry she could have wept.
‘If I’d a known… I come to clean up, but this…’
Upstairs, drawers had been emptied, the bed stripped of the clean sheets Mrs Obi had put there, the mattress tossed to the floor.
‘Have the constable been here?’ Jess asked.
‘Sir Richard sent for ’em, fust thing this morning, when I went and telled him about it. They reckon some poacher done it – prob’ly Jim Potts, I told ’em.’
‘Jim Potts? Oh, surely—’
‘Or one of his kind. Keepers en’t wery popular hereabouts, as I do have cause to know, bor.’
Jess was hardly listening; she gazed with despair at the ruination of Rudd’s home, planning how to clean up the mess and get things shipshape again. ‘Would your wife do the washing?’ she asked.
‘I ’spect she will, do I ax her.’
So Jess collected all the soiled linen and bundled it inside a sheet. As she was tying the knot, she saw a button on the bedside mat. Now, how had that got there? Last time she’d been here she’d shaken all the mats and swept every inch of this floor.
The button was made of silver metal, stamped with a trellis pattern, with a wavy edge that might have been cut by a tiny biscuit-cutter. There must be hundreds like it, but the sight of it gave her a turn because her father had had a Sunday-best waistcoat with buttons just like this. If he and Rudd had similar taste, maybe that was a good omen.
She put the button deep in her pocket, for safety. But she kept thinking about what Obi had said. Was Jim Potts a poacher? Had he done the damage here out of spite?
* * *
A few days later, Jess sat knitting under a tree in an arbour of the gardens behind Hewinghall. On a small patch of lawn Bella played in the sunlight with a kitten that had appeared from the stable.
Lately the laundrymaids had been all of a twizzle over a new recruit to the gardens, a newcomer to the area, young, presentable, and – what was most important – still single. Jess fancied that the figure she could see hoeing the flower beds beyond a blaze of azaleas must be the man in question. She couldn’t see much of him, but he looked big and strong. Not that Jess was interested. The only man she thought of in that way was Reuben Rudd.
She went on knitting, keeping an eye on Bella, dreaming about Rudd. In the back of her mind she was aware of the gardener coming closer, but she took little notice of him. ‘Look, Jess!’ Bella squealed.
She had taken off her straw hat, dangling its blue ribbons for the kitten to play with. It had leapt up and caught its claws in the satin, hanging there, but as Jess looked up she saw it drop, safely on all fours, and get distracted by a passing butterfly. Kitten and Bella went chasing after the flutter of bright wings.
‘Miss Bella!’ Jess called. ‘Do you now put on your hat, else—’
From behind a rose bush only a few feet away, the gardener straightened himself, looming against the brightness of the sky. She threw a hand to guard her eyes, peering at a face framed by the brim of a big, battered hat.
‘Well, Jess,’ he said flatly. ‘Are you goin’ to say “Hello” this time, or do you have more bullies to set on me?’
She jumped to her feet, spilling her knitting. ‘Matty! What… What’re you doin’ here? If someone see you—’
‘They won’t pay no regard. I now work here. Didn’t ’Liza tell you?’ His usually placid face wore a truculent expression.
Jess flung a hand to her buzzing head. ‘’Liza? Eliza Potts?’
‘That was her and Mary Anne as told me where you were.’
‘What? Was that you at the rectory axin’ after me?’ Relief made her angry. This last few days she’d been worrying herself silly about that. ‘Blast, Matty—’
A voice from the distance roared, ‘Henefer! Get on with your work, bor!’ and at th
e same time Jess realised that Bella’s laughter was fading into the distance.
‘Meet me tonight,’ Matty said urgently as she turned to look for the child. ‘On the path to the beach. Past Park Lodge. I’ll wait there. We’ve got to talk, Jess.’
For the rest of the day Jess was in a puckaterry. She questioned Sal Gooden and learned that the new gardener was lodging in the village – with Jim Potts’s aunt. Since Jim Potts also had lodgings in the same cottage, the head gardener, Mr Sparrow, was trying to find a more suitable place for his new recruit.
‘Anyhow, why’re you so interested?’ Sal wanted to know.
‘Just nosey,’ said Jess.
‘Oh, yes? Then why didn’t you ax him yourself this afternoon – I was doin’ out the Chinese bedroom, and I seen you from the winder, flirtin’ with him.’
‘All that way? And through them trees?’ Jess retorted. ‘You know no more about it than a crow do about Sunday, Sal Gooden.’
She returned to the nursery in an even worse mood. What was Matty up to? How had he come to Hewing in the first place? And how on earth had he managed to get mixed up with the Pottses?
Nanny gave permission for Jess to go out that evening, on condition that she didn’t leave until Bella was safely asleep. But Bella, sensing her mood, started putting on her parts, refusing to eat and being as disagreeable as she knew how.
When eventually Jess escaped, however, the midsummer sun was still hanging above the horizon. With its light blazing into her eyes, she walked down the west drive, towards the handsome cottage called Park Lodge, where the old butler lived in retirement. He was pottering in his flower-filled garden and peered shortsightedly at Jess, bidding her, ‘’Evening, young woman.’
‘Good evenin’, Mr Tomalty,’ Jess replied, comforted by the thought that his eyes were so bad he wouldn’t be able to identify her. Not that she was doing anything wrong. It was just that she felt guilty, even though she was only going to meet her own brother!