by Tracy Rees
Whoever it is strides from the cottage in the direction of York. In a minute our paths will cross and I think briefly of hiding before remembering that anyone is free to think me a fright if they wish; I care not. It is very liberating. I squint, wondering if it is anyone I have already met. It is too slender for Jeremiah, who would be at work in his butcher’s shop now anyway. Indeed, it looks a little like Henry from here, but I see five-and-twenty Henrys on any given day, such is the extent of my preoccupation. So I keep walking and swinging my bonnet.
My bonnet flies from my grip; the ribbons are satin and my fingers are slippery with perspiration. Now I look even more preposterous, flinging my bonnet about the countryside. Thanks to a sudden, stray breeze it bowls towards the walker as though eager to meet him.
He snatches it up with a large smile, a smile I see a thousand times every day, and so I still do not realize, even when I am standing directly in front of Henry Mead, that he is truly here in Yorkshire.
‘Amy Snow,’ he says, looking at me in wonder, as though I am rare and precious and marvellous. I see anxiety and determination do battle behind his smile. ‘My God, it’s good to see you. I can’t be without you, Amy, so don’t ask it of me.’
Chapter Seventy-Three
‘Henry?’
All my self-castigation, all my fears for the future fall away. In that moment I am so happy just to see him that I feel I shall never want anything else, ever again. We look at each other for a long, charged moment and then I run into his arms.
‘Oh, Henry!’
As if my words were the cue he needed, he picks me up and swings me around and around.
‘I love you,’ he murmurs into my hair, the words muffled and gruff.
I am weak with love and relief. I feel as though tides are rolling through me. All I can say, over and over again is ‘I love you,’ and ‘Henry’. For five months now my life has been governed by words. The clues, the letters, what I could say and all I was forbidden to say. Now at last I can lay it all down and follow my feelings; I can surrender.
When he finally sets me down, I refuse to let go and stay clinging to him, my arms ecstatic to be reunited with the breadth of his shoulders, my face determined to stay buried in his neck.
This way is better than words.
Chapter Seventy-Four
The words come later, after we have returned to the cottage and Elspeth has supplied us with lemonade. She takes the children off to the fields and they protest mightily at being removed from this interesting stranger with the mischievous eyes.
‘However did you find me, Henry dear?’ I ask, kissing the hand of his that I am clutching in both of mine.
‘No thanks to you, my love,’ he supplies cheerfully.
‘I am so sorry. I was afraid to write to you and I did not know where to reach you. What if you had fallen out of love with me? What if you were too angry with me? I’m afraid I am not at all experienced in these things, which of course is why I have handled it all so badly. But I have written to you at last. Two copies! I have posted them this morning.’
He laughs. ‘I look forward to reading them, my beauty. Not in love with you? Foolish girl, that could never be. When you left, I was furious. But it was only because I was hurt, and feared I’d lost your affections. I did not know I could be such a boor, Amy. I am sorry!
‘I went to Richmond, for I did not know what else to do. I thought I did us a better service by securing an income and acting in faith than by chasing after you to York, with feelings still running high between us and you still perfectly unreasonable, my love.’
‘Henry!’
‘Yes, yes, perfectly unreasonable. And I still impatient and indignant and completely lacking in comprehension. Does that sum us up, do you think, Amy?’
I ruefully agree that it does.
‘It was hard to concentrate, you may be sure, for I wanted to bolt at every moment and leap onto a northbound train. But I stuck to my purpose and I secured the post!’
I kiss him in delight. ‘Well, of course you did! Oh, congratulations, that is splendid. And did you like the school?’
‘Very much. Mr Merritt is an amiable gentleman and the docile young ladies I saw hard at work in the schoolroom no doubt have a barrel of their own ideas tucked away behind their ringlets, which I long to hear and encourage. I shall be as subversive as possible, you may be sure! The building is very well appointed, and you know Richmond of course – a delightful place. I think I could do very good work there, although I shall give my firm acceptance only if you approve. I realize a great many things may have changed with you since last we spoke.’
‘Only that I am surer than ever that I want to be with you, Henry, and that at last I am free to be so. But carry on, please.’
‘From Richmond, I returned to Bath. I went straight away to Mrs Riverthorpe and demanded she tell me where to find you.’
I laugh at the very idea. ‘Lord, how brave you are! What happened?’
‘Well, she told me.’
‘Henry, no! That cannot be. She would never tell you! She would not tell me!’
‘I was exceptionally fearsome, my dear!’
I look at him sceptically.
‘Oh, very well, it was not quite that simple. I wore her down – I bored the information out of her, quite literally. I told her I refused to leave her house until she told me. Then I proceeded to talk – on and on, about how much I love you. You know how she hates that. She left the room. I remained.
‘She swept past an hour later, changed into one of her gaudy costumes – in truth, I have never seen anything like it – on her way out to a ball. I was still there. Oh, her face!’ He laughs helplessly. ‘I wish you could have seen it. Anyway, I followed her out to her carriage, talking all the way, and she slammed the door and rattled off leaving me halfway through a sentence. No matter! I had plenty more sentences! I knew where she was going – you know Mrs Riverthorpe, she won’t go to something that isn’t the talk of the town – so I went too.’
‘You had an invitation?’
‘Of course not. But this is where a history of mischief-making comes in exceptionally handy. I got myself all dressed up – you should have seen me! You would have swooned, I expect. I shimmied in through a window, swaggered about the place until I happened on Mrs Riverthorpe and made a great many more protestations of my love for you. Oh, she was not content to have her evening of grand company and salacious gossip interrupted, you may be sure!’
‘I am sure! You were lucky she did not have you thrown out.’
‘Oh, she did! I was there but five minutes before they flung me through the front door and threatened me with arrest. No matter. I was waiting for her at Hades House when she got back.’
‘And I can imagine what sort of time of night that was!’
‘Indeed. I believe Gus and Ellen thought I had taken leave of my senses for the duration, but I had the bit between my teeth. Mrs Riverthorpe is a stubborn old bird and tough as nails, but I am in love, and that gives me the upper hand every time when it comes to irrational endurance. Anyway, the long and the short of it is it took me a week to wear her down, and I am not sure she will ever be glad to look on me again, but I am here and we are together again at last, and I want to tell you that I am sorry, heartily sorry for everything I said before you left. Do you forgive me, Amy?’ He looks at me so solemnly, and lifts my hand to his lips.
‘Henry dearest, I forgave you the instant I had left you. I’m sorry too. I am so long accustomed to secrets and solitude that making you part of my life just then suddenly seemed impossible – and I ran away. But now I will tell you everything, if you will also forgive me.’
‘It is already done and never was needed. So . . . are you really free now? You have learned Aurelia’s great secret?’
I nod, my eyes shining. Freedom at last.
‘You need not tell me, Amy, if it does not feel right. You need never tell me if you do not wish to.’
Bless him. I can see how
he burns to know.
So I tell him.
*
We sit and spin dreams together, just as we did in Bath, except that now I need not censor what I say. Now I will not be sent off to some strange city at a moment’s notice. It is as though a vast purple thundercloud has moved off from above me, taking with it all the tension from the air and a headache I hadn’t known I suffered.
We sit close, heads bent together in the sunlight, until we hear the grassy thrumple of Joss’s cart in the lane. He sizes up the situation in a glance.
‘Amy, have you dispatched my wife and children so you may entertain your lovers again?’ He leaps to the ground and throws the reins over the horse’s head. ‘I jest, of course! Sir, you must be Henry.’
‘No, sir, I am Randolph Boniface,’ replies Henry with a worried expression.
I swat his arm. I am sure there will be no peace when these two become acquainted.
Chapter Seventy-Five
Before we leave York, I light a fire in my room, even though it is June and so hot that every window in the cottage must be open else we could not breathe. I have known for some time that I must do this. I take all of Aurelia’s letters and I burn them.
First of all, those early letters, full of desperately constructed lies – the anxiety they concealed and the anxiety they caused. I watch them blaze, blacken and vanish. And then the clues in the treasure hunt, one by one. I read Aurelia’s final words to me for the very last time.
This is goodbye at last, little bird . . . I can call you ‘little bird’ no longer . . . I love you . . . Now and for ever . . .
It seems impossible, still, that the immense part she has played in my life is at an end. Yet so it is.
‘Goodbye, Aurelia,’ I murmur. ‘I love you too. Thank you, dear friend, for everything you have given me.’
I watch as all her words and all her secrets turn to ash, taking with them as they crumble the truth of Louis Capland’s parentage. It is the story of one small life – so cherished, so loved and so vital – obscured for ever.
My own chronicle, too, I set alight. I take the pages that I have covered with heartache and memory, and a sizeable sheaf they make. It is all here, my life to date: nights in a scullery and days by a stream; a great friendship and a painful loss; exile and a quest. My history, my hopes and my heartache. Questions – some of which have been answered and some of which may never be. They flare and flourish. And suddenly they are gone.
I say my farewells not only to the treasure hunt, not only to Aurelia, but to this whole part of my life: seventeen years, begun in snow and ended in flames. I shed my misfortunes in the fire; they do not define me. And in this way I claim another blank canvas on which to paint my identity – and my future.
For it is as Aurelia said: death is one thing, but life is quite another.
Chapter Seventy-Six
Twickenham, April 1849
An announcement appears in the Twickenham Herald that Mr Henry Mead of Hertfordshire and Miss Amy Cardew of Twickenham are to be married on the twenty-ninth of that month. And duly we are.
I am married from Mulberry Lodge, where I have spent the intervening months. I wear a striking gown of bridal silver with a stole of pale-green silk, embroidered with forget-me-not. The reception is held in the garden, from whence guests may easily stroll to the river. Edwin Wister gives me away in the local church and Madeleine is my matron of honour. Little Louisa, now five, does sterling service as flower girl; Michael is an usher.
The ceremony is attended by assorted Meads and Crumms, by the Caplands of York, by Mrs Ariadne Riverthorpe, resplendent in saffron silk and yellow diamonds, and by the entire Wister clan, of course. The number of Wisters at Mulberry Lodge remains unchanged; Constance gave birth to Caroline Aurelia in January (a month I am determined to learn to love), by which time Madeleine had already left home. She became Mrs Renfrew in the autumn. My joy at being there for both events may be readily imagined.
And now I am Mrs Amy Mead. It seems that my wintry identity has thawed altogether, from Snow to a name I am pleased to fancy invokes summer – for who ever thought of a winter meadow?
When it came to placing the notice in the Herald, we chose a name that ensured there would be no written record of Amy Snow. Anyone who ever knew aught of my parentage could never find me now. But I am long reconciled to that.
I have, after all, obliged the Vennaways. Amy Snow is quite, quite lost, vanished like a melted footprint.
Epilogue
Hatville Court, May 1848
The road back to Hatville is long and straight. It strikes me as laughably symbolic. My daughter was right about one thing. Women may be reared to be virtuous, innocent and pleasing but there is no reward for it in this life.
I do not know why I went to Bath to find Amy Snow. At any rate, it was fruitless, like so much in my life. I return still burdened with my secret. It is not such a sensational secret: the world is not transformed for the keeping or the sharing of it. ’Tis merely that loose ends chafe.
The roofs of Hatville are visible on the horizon above the trees, although some miles remain of this road that does not curve or yield. I remember the Bible story about walking the straight way, the narrow way, never deviating nor meandering; it is what I have done. All my life.
It is what I tried to teach Aurelia, but she would not learn. I am as mystified as ever about my daughter. I do not know how she came to be born of Charles and me, for she was nothing like her father and, except in appearance, nothing like me. I was a very great beauty.
Once, the fact gave me such pride and pleasure. Of all my sisters I was the brightest and best. The eldest of seven girls, all born within a year or two of one another. I scarce had time to draw breath and look into my mother’s eyes before a sister came screeching into the world, then another and another . . .
When I married, I never doubted that I would produce a brood of children. Charles and I were both awash with siblings and I was young, strong and healthy. ‘A man’s dream,’ he told me on our wedding night. As he ripped open my corset, I turned my face towards the wall.
*
My first pregnancy, seventeen months after marriage, was the most wonderful thing that could possibly have happened. When I told my husband, he snatched me up and whirled me around in a boyish, joyful way. He looked at me with a tenderness I had never seen before.
Parents, his and mine, rained congratulations upon us and I could feel the collected sigh of relief. There would be an heir to Hatville after all.
Perhaps no child could survive such a mighty weight of expectation. At any rate, mine was lost two months later in a flurry of blood.
There are no words to describe what I felt then.
It was scarce a month before Charles resumed his conjugal visits, though the doctor bade him wait longer. My body and spirits were ravaged and sagging. Four months later I was again with child. This one stayed with me only four weeks. In any case, I could not feel for it what I had felt that first time.
Then a new possibility suggested itself to me, a new life to dread. Instead of worrying that I would never conceive, I worried that my body would be put through this endless cycle of hope and loss, hope and loss, on and on throughout the years. Even if I did birth a child, one would not be enough and so it would begin again. That was the first time I started to feel that my life, perhaps, was not a bearable thing.
Two more years, and two more children vanished before I could grasp the reality of them. One stayed for two months and one, cruelly, for five. Four sons or daughters, but I never saw one face. Vanished. Melted away as though they had never been and I thought my suffering heart must break.
And then, the miracle. It happened six years after my marriage – six years during which the Vennaways senior believed their line was fatally compromised. I conceived again and this time, month after month after secret, silent month crept by; Aurelia was born. My child!
Charles despaired that she was a girl but I would not change
one thing about her, not even that. As a baby, she was a true cherub: ruddy gold curls, a mouth as pink and sweet as a kiss and wide violet eyes that never changed colour or faded.
She looked just like me. In her I saw all my second chances. She was so lively, pleasing and merry that she reconciled her grandparents to her sex to some considerable degree. Despite everything, I had succeeded in changing our situation. A girl, at least, could be married, and a girl such as this could be a treasure indeed.
Yet we continued trying. I conceived again and again, as if my body had learned, from Aurelia, that it could indeed do this thing. The day Aurelia brought Amy Snow to the house, mewling, blue and hideous, my seventh pregnancy since Aurelia’s birth had recently ended.
When Amy was laid before me on the Indian rug, wrapped about in my daughter’s sky-blue cloak, I was already weary, wretched and stretched taut to the utmost degree. Perhaps that is why all I could think as I looked at the babe was, ‘My son would not have been so unappealing. Why is that child here instead of him?’ I could find no compassion in my heart. I believe it was all wrung out of me. After all, small lives, dead before they’d begun, were commonplace to me.
*
Amy Snow was a thorn in my side in my side from the beginning, contaminating Aurelia with her unsavoury birthright and the offensive ease with which she slid into the world. Marriage, love, duty, within the best families, are not like that. They are hard. Hard fought for, hard come by and hard.
I knew the fact that she was found on our estate prompted talk. The gossip was all that she was Charles’s love child, placed on Hatville snow to shame him, but I knew the truth. The shame was intended for me.
Everyone speculated about Amy, my fanciful daughter most of all. But the truth was that no one knew where Amy came from apart from her mother. And me.