by Clare Flynn
Merritt waited outside, greeting his parishioners as they left the church.
Squire Egdon took his hand and pumped it enthusiastically. ‘Thank you, Nightingale. Excellent sermon. That’s what they need to hear. Encourage the vagrants and idlers to work harder and keep their thieving hands off others’ property. I particularly liked the way you spoke out against poaching. It needs to be stamped out and the perpetrators punished properly. Otherwise there’ll be no game left to hunt.’ He slapped the parson on the back. ‘Keep it up, Nightingale. Good work.’ The squire limped through the churchyard and heaved himself up onto his waiting horse.
Merritt stared after him, astonished, angry and ashamed. He also felt powerless. He had no real attachment to the religion he stood for, but he had genuinely begun to care for the plight of his flock. What was the point if landowners such as Egdon saw him as their stooge, their mouthpiece, twisting his words to their own ends? He turned to go into the vestry to remove his vestments and saw Hephzibah waiting for him, her back against the stone archway into the church.
‘Your sermon was well received this morning, Reverend Nightingale,’ she said.
Merritt wondered whether she was being sarcastic, whether she had overheard the words of the squire. He shook his head. ‘It seems that Squire Egdon took it as an endorsement for the game laws.’
‘People hear what they want to hear.’
‘You think so?’
‘I do. Most of the people here will have taken comfort from knowing that they are not alone in suffering and that God is with them. Even if it’s only for a few hours, you have given them a little strength.’
‘I wish that were true, but somehow I doubt it. I feel guilty that I’m telling people to put up with things they shouldn’t have to put up with. These people don’t need words and prayers. They need a fair wage – enough to feed, house and clothe themselves and their families. Is it right that they should resist the temptation to steal a rabbit running wild on the squire’s lands only to watch their children go hungry? Does God really think the squire’s right to hunt every last creature that happens to cross his fields is more important than their right to feed their families?’
Hephzibah stared at him. ‘You appear very disillusioned this morning. What’s brought this on?’ She gestured towards the last of the parishioners walking away down the lane. ‘You can’t right all the wrongs of the country. You can only try to help people to bear them.’
Instinctively he reached forward and took her hands between his. ‘Thank you.’ He dropped her hands and felt the blood rush into his face.
Hephzibah smiled. ‘I was rather hoping we might take another walk this morning. That is if you’ve nothing more pressing?’
Merritt was gratified to see that her cheeks appeared slightly suffused with a blush. He was already pulling his cassock over his head. ‘Give me one minute.’ He disappeared inside into the vestry, his heart pumping.
They headed through the churchyard and down to the canal. It was a cold day, with traces of frost still clinging to the hedgerows and the puddles on the path frozen over, but the sun was shining and the sky a deep blue. They walked in silence and he kept glancing sideways at Hephzibah as though afraid she might disappear. Their silence was a companionable one and as they walked on, Merritt felt himself relax.
‘Tell me what made you feel so discouraged this morning,’ she said. ‘Your sermon went down well with the whole congregation. Everyone was paying attention and I didn’t see anyone nodding off at all.’
‘Thank you – I suppose that’s a comfort. Not to bore one’s parishioners to sleep.’ His smile was rueful.
‘You preach very well, Merritt. Everyone can hear you. You have a voice that commands attention. You speak with authority and confidence. It makes people sit up and listen.’
‘You’re too kind.’
‘Not at all. I don’t believe in flattery. If I didn’t think it I wouldn’t say it.’ Hephzibah reached out and plucked a stray brown leaf off a tree and as she walked, she scraped off the surface of the leaf with her fingers leaving only the skeleton. ‘Why then were you feeling bad?’
‘There’s so much poverty in the village and no sign of things getting better. Before I came to Nettlestock I had no idea that people suffered so much.’ He told her about the visit of Mrs Budd, without naming the woman, and how he was powerless to do anything to help her when he was up against the collective judgment of the parish council and the Charity Organisation Society.
‘Can’t you convince them otherwise?’
‘I have no more influence in Nettlestock than the King of Siam. They see me as an outsider and resent my interference. Besides, they may be right about the woman and if I’m being honest I can’t say I’d blame her if she was sharing her bed with her lodger. If it helps her put bread on the table and stay a bit warmer at night... and she must be lonely losing her husband. Now I’ve shocked you, haven’t I?’
Hephzibah tilted her head on one side. ‘Not at all. I don’t believe in judging people. Particularly those whose circumstances are harder than our own. It must be desperate having to live like that, worrying where the next meal will come from. What will happen to her?’
‘She has a twelve-year-old daughter who works at the whiting mill. No doubt the eight-year-old will join her there next. When I raised that with the board they accused the mother of being lazy and suggested she take in washing and mending. She has a ten-month-old baby. How can she manage doing laundry? It must be hard enough getting her own washing done.’ He kicked at a clump of grass. ‘I wish I could help people like her more. I go every week to visit the workhouse up the hill in Mudford. Some of the stories I hear up there are shocking.’
‘Perhaps you could take me with you there one day?’ She touched his arm.
‘You’d visit the workhouse?’
‘Yes. I’d like to see for myself what it’s like. Once a month I have a Wednesday afternoon free. Might you be able to take me then?’
Merritt was taken aback. ‘Are you sure? You must have better ways to spend your free afternoon than going there.’ He wanted to say riding lessons with the squire’s son but decided against it. ‘And I warn you, some of the poor souls there are desperate cases.’
Her expression was serious. ‘I want to go. And it might make me feel more grateful for my own lot. There may even be something I could do to help.’
‘Very well,’ the parson said, trying to control the delight in his voice. ‘I will have to seek permission from the guardians. I’ll tell them you’re new to the parish and interested in finding out about the good work done there.’
They walked on, the low winter sun making the frost on the ploughed fields sparkle. Eventually, he summoned up the courage to ask her if she had begun her riding lessons.
‘Mr Egdon kindly gave me a lesson. I think I was a disappointment to him as a pupil. I lack the natural gift of horsemanship. It would require a lot of practise to bring me to a level approaching competency.’
Merritt swallowed, wishing he hadn’t asked, as he imagined Egdon spending hours with her to help her improve.
‘Besides,’ she added, ‘Mr Egdon spends very little time in Nettlestock. If he is kind enough to give me another lesson when he next returns, I am likely in the meantime to have forgotten everything he has so far taught me.’
Merritt looked away so she would not see the smile on his face. He suggested they take a path through a copse of trees that bordered the grounds of Ingleton Hall. As they entered the wood, they passed a fenced section with signs warning off trespassers. A faint groaning sound was coming from the other side of the barrier. They stopped to listen.
‘Over there,’ said Hephzibah, pointing towards a thicket. ‘Someone must be hurt.’
The fence was rotten in one place and had collapsed so there was a way through. Merritt pulled aside the overhanging branches and they stepped across the broken fence and went deeper into the woods. Under a large elm tree a man lay writhing in pain o
n the ground, his arms grasping the trunk of the tree and one leg twisted underneath him. A pair of dead rabbits lay beside him. As they approached, his expression changed from agony to terror.
‘Please don’t tell Squire Egdon. I’ve five children at home and a sick wife. I had no choice. They’re all hungry. Please help me.’
Nightingale dropped to his knees in front of the man and eased his leg out from under him. It was stuck in a rusting gin trap. Merritt examined it as the man screamed in pain.
The parson turned to Hephzibah. ‘Can you hold onto his shoulders and try to keep him steady while I see if I can get him out of this?’
Addressing the man, he said, ‘This is going to hurt badly for a moment, but I’ll soon have you free. What’s your name?’
‘Peter Goody.’ The man’s voice was barely a whisper, then he gave another agonised groan.
‘Take deep breaths, Mr Goody, and try to count to ten. It will soon be over.’
Hephzibah knelt behind the trapped man and gripped his bony shoulders as he shivered in fear and shock. Merritt wondered how long he’d been trapped. The parson stood up and carefully edged the trap upright. The man let out a blood-curdling scream as the angle of the bar twisted his trapped ankle. Merritt found the spring and stepped on it, releasing the jaws of the trap from the man’s leg.
Visibly relieved but still in terrible pain, the poacher said, ‘Don’t tell the squire. Please don’t tell him. He’ll send me to jail. We’ll lose the cottage. What’ll happen to my family? I beg you. Don’t tell him.’
‘It’s not you who should be jailed, Mr Goody. It’s the squire himself – or his gamekeeper. Setting traps for men has been illegal for years – maybe this one has been lying here forgotten – but that doesn’t mean the gamekeeper didn’t have a responsibility to find and remove it. He must have known where the traps were set. I’ve a mind to report this to the magistrates.’
‘Don’t do that, sir. Please. I beg you. They’re all in it together. They’ll have me up before the assizes for poaching.’
‘Stealing a few rabbits is nothing compared to maiming a man.’
‘They don’t see it that way, vicar.’
Hephzibah moved around to kneel in front of the man and rolled up the bottom of his torn trousers. His leg was a bloodied mess. She reached under her skirt and tore a strip off her petticoat and mopped at the blood. ‘I don’t think the trap has penetrated the bone but his ankle could still be broken.’ She looked up at the parson who nodded.
‘All right, Mr Goody,’ he said. ‘Let’s get you upright and see how bad the damage is.’
With Merritt on one side and Hephzibah on the other, they helped him to his feet, but his left leg immediately buckled under him.
‘You won’t get far on one leg. You can’t hop all the way back to the village. We need to get some help.’
‘Can you fetch Dan Flowers? He and his son will help me get home. He lives in the cottage next to the forge. He’ll not let on to anyone what’s happened.’
Merritt looked at Hephzibah. ‘I’ll go,’ she said. ‘You can’t risk being involved. Better that you stay here with Mr Goody.’ And before he could object she was running back towards the towpath.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Lucy Locket lost her pocket
Kitty Fisher found it;
Not a penny was there in it,
Only ribbon round it.
(Traditional nursery rhyme)
Peter Goody was weak and exhausted when Hephzibah arrived back at the scene with the smithy, Dan Flowers, and his son, a lad of about eighteen who looked as sturdy and strong as his father. The pain was etched into the poacher’s face. Hephzibah stood beside Merritt, watching the two men half-carrying Goody, his arms draped around their shoulders and his feet dragging along the ground.
‘He’ll be lucky if that ankle isn’t broken, but either way the flesh is cut so deeply that he won’t be working again before the summer, poor devil,’ Merritt said, shaking his head. ‘And the rust on that gin trap could poison his blood.’
The diversion back into Nettlestock to fetch Dan Flowers, caused Hephzibah to be fifteen minutes late for luncheon. Her fears of the squire’s displeasure were unfounded, as when she arrived at the house she discovered Richard Egdon was out – lunching at the home of his friend, Lord Maltravers.
It was fortunate that the squire hadn’t been at home that afternoon, as Hephzibah knew she would have found it hard not to rage at him for his inhumanity and neglect in leaving mantraps lying around the estate. She made a mental note to keep to the paths and the open meadows and avoid the woods and she would tell Ottilie to do the same.
It had been hard for Hephzibah to concentrate lately, her thoughts returning always to the continuing absence of Thomas Egdon from the Hall. There had been no more riding lessons and the smart new habit hung untouched in her wardrobe like a silent reproach. The visits to the ruins, and to view Thomas’s racehorses training on the gallops, had not materialised and Hephzibah forced herself to acknowledge that his attention had been fleeting and she had been forgotten by him as soon as he was away from Nettlestock.
All these thoughts receded into the background when the news of the Queen’s death at Osborne House reached Nettlestock a few days later. Victoria had been monarch for longer than any of the occupants of Ingleton Hall had been alive. At eighty-one, with sixty-three years on the throne and having been in ill health since December, it was not surprising that Victoria should have died, but so durable had her reign been that people found it hard to believe that this was indeed the end of an era. Her death, and the accession of her son Edward to the crown, made little real impact on the residents of Nettlestock, who, after observing the day of mourning on February, 2nd went on with their lives as usual.
The spring of 1901 arrived more quickly than Hephzibah had expected. It was hard to believe that she had now been at Ingleton Hall for almost nine months and it would not be long to the anniversary of her parents' death. Since she had laid the law down to the squire, his behaviour had been exemplary. He was as crotchety as usual, showed no inclination to moderate his drinking or his aggressive stance to his son, but to Hephzibah he was courteous if distant. While she was relieved at his remoteness, she did not feel the same about Thomas’s. He was absent more than he was present at Ingleton Hall and she found herself thinking of him all the time he was away. The riding lessons resumed whenever he was home and Hephzibah’s abiding fear of horses was outweighed by her excitement at being tutored by him. She had graduated from the lunge and was riding in the parkland around the Hall with Ottilie. She found herself grateful to poor worn-out Bess, whose advancing age meant she moved in a slow and stately manner while Dandie trotted along happily beside her. Hephzibah wondered if she and Ottilie should swap mounts but realised that her greater weight would be an added strain to the old mare. Ottilie, for her part, never complained, evidently still fearful that her father might change his mind about her horse’s fate.
Hephzibah’s newfound interest in horse-riding, and bad weather over the winter, meant that her request to accompany Mr Nightingale on one of his monthly visits to the workhouse had not yet taken place. It could wait until the weather improved. The workhouse wasn’t going to disappear.
One day in April, Hephzibah sat in the small drawing room, reading and planning Ottilie’s lessons for the rest of the week. Ottilie was in bed with a slight cold. The parkland had been shrouded in mist earlier but as she finished, Hephzibah noticed the sun had burnt off the fog and the grounds around the house shone in the sunlight. The temptation to go outdoors was irresistible. She picked up the book she was reading and went to fetch her coat – she would find a spot to sit and read outdoors.
She followed a path that ran behind the house, running behind the back of the stables and outbuildings. She had never been this way before. Someone had been burning cleared undergrowth and there was a pile of still smouldering ash. The smell of the embers was in the air, mixed with a peaty smell where
someone had been turning the soil over for spring planting. The path went past a row of compost heaps and a collection of near-collapsed old wooden sheds, then petered out as the ground sloped away. There was a collection of dense trees at the top of the incline. Hephzibah was about to turn back when, on a whim she moved through the clump of trees. She had expected that this would be one of the boundaries of the estate but instead found a grassy slope in front of her, stretching down towards meadows on the other side of a ha-ha. Just before the ha-ha she saw a small, domed building resembling a Grecian temple. It was bathed in sunshine and she decided it would make a good sheltered spot to sit and read.
The building, some kind of eighteenth century folly, was screened by the trees from the pathway and the house, so she had not noticed it before. Her approach was angled towards the back of the structure, which was closed in, and she could just make out that the front was open and supported by a row of columns, looking out towards the water meadows.
As she drew near, Hephzibah heard a noise coming from inside the structure and thought at first it was a wounded animal. She rounded the corner and recoiled in shock. Sir Richard Egdon was naked from the waist down, his trousers around his swollen ankles and his fat white buttocks pumping backwards and forwards as he grunted like a pig. Wrapped around the squire’s girth was a pair of legs, clothed in woollen stockings. Hephzibah took less than a second to take this in, before retreating and running as fast as her legs could carry her, back the way she had come. When she reached the safety of the stable yard she leaned, panting against the wall, struggling for breath and overcome by shock.