by Mary Mackie
* * *
Aunt Agnes had a new passion – women’s right to a vote – and in Cassie she had a bright and willing student. I, too, enjoyed political discussion. It was stimulating to envisage a future when a woman might emerge from her bondage and have a voice in her own destiny. When such talk flowed, my aunt and I found much to agree upon.
‘You two are so alike!’ Cassie said one day, smiling from her pillows. ‘I’m so glad we’re all still friends.’
By saying it, I suppose, she hoped to make it true.
Felicity found our discussions a waste of time and breath; the lovely Chloe, who had fallen in love, was happily content to submerge her own life in that of her future husband, and the three youngest of the Wyatt sisters refused to enter the argument.
‘Papa says we shouldn’t talk unless we know something about the subject,’ Kitty informed us loftily.
Poor Mr Wyatt, deserted by his sons and left with only womenfolk, couldn’t abide idle chatter. Perhaps that was one reason why he had taken up politics, to the extent of going canvassing for our local Member of Parliament, who was often a guest at his home. Mr Wyatt had staunchly supported the changes in the Poor Law but he was sympathetic to the farmers’ cause, too, and would always listen when I complained about the hares and the trouble the shooting gave us. I did not, however, foresee that his kindly, well-intentioned interest would one day rebound on me.
Niggling quarrels with Sir Arthur Devlin continued, most of them too petty to recall; I only remember that they kept Father in a state of constant tension and irritability, so that the men and I came to detest the very sound of the names ‘Devlin’ and ‘Ambleford’.
In the early spring of 1867, however, the problem escalated, with an incident that I do remember.
Sir Arthur, for all he constantly pleaded poverty, had bought two Turnbull steam-engines and various implements to go with them. He spent the winter playing with these new toys, so we heard. To fuel the engines he needed coal, which was carted from the railway in heavy wagons that chewed the lanes to ruts during the autumn, before the ground froze and snows came. When, at the thaw, one of his laden coal wagons splintered a wheel and spilled its load almost at our gate, Sir Arthur blamed Father for the bad condition of the lanes. Solicitors’ letters flew back and forth.
In the end, Geoffrey Devlin came over to Orchards. I happened to be at an upstairs window, watching men erect the new wrought-iron gate at our entry, when I saw Geoffrey arrive astride a fine hunter. I drew back behind the curtain, covertly watching as he walked his mount up the slope.
By the time Swift answered the door I was near the head of the stairs, keeping out of sight. I heard Geoffrey ask if Father was at home. Swift asked him to come in, and showed him into the front drawing-room.
Father, who was in the office, evidently refused to see Geoffrey. His voice got louder, until I distinguished words: ‘…got anything to say to me he can do it through my solicitor! I’ll not have him coming here and accusing me of…’
The better to hear what was happening, I was leaning over the banister rail when Geoffrey strode from the drawing-room. Startled, I must have made some small sound, or perhaps the rustle of my petticoats reached him. He looked up. He stopped. In the act of backing away, I stopped too, frozen as a mouse under a cat’s bright glare, a pulse throbbing heavily in my throat.
His mouth tightened with anger under his dark moustache, and then he was gone, striding for the office where I heard him say, ‘Mr Hamilton, I beg you to spare me a few minutes of your time. I’ve discovered what happened and I’ve come to offer you an apology.’
The office door closed. I heard no more. I leaned on the wall feeling weak and ill, my heart beating so hard and fast it near suffocated me – all because Geoffrey Devlin was nearby. Though I took care not to be seen again, I was watching from an upper window when he rode away.
At dinner that evening Father told us that Geoffrey had asked Ben Chilvers to take a look at the broken wagon wheel; in the carpenter’s opinion, the stopper in the wheel’s hub had been loosened, so that the wheel wobbled slightly, throwing great stress on the spokes. When he examined further, he found that, before they were splintered in the accident, the spokes had been partially sawn through.
‘You mean…’ Mama had paled, a hand going to her breast, ‘someone did it deliberately?’
We were in our familiar dining-room, the four of us, lamps glowing, the fire bright, the table full of good things to eat. We were safe in our house, in our dear West Norfolk. It seemed incredible that such unpleasantness could come so close to our haven.
‘What nonsense!’ Grace scoffed. ‘Why on earth would anyone go to such trouble to spill a load of coal? I can’t imagine why Mr Devlin took the least notice of anything Chippy Chilvers had to say. What does he know?’
‘He’s an expert with wood,’ Father said, and took breath to explain further but, glancing from Grace to Mama, decided against it. ‘Well, never mind. It’s nothing for you to worry your heads about.’
Later, however, he called me in to the office, asked me to sit down and, when he had got his pipe going, advised me to keep my eyes and ears open for signs of unrest and dissatisfaction.
‘Sir Arthur may still hold me to blame,’ he said, ‘but then he blames me for every ill that befalls him. His son has more sense. It appears that some trouble-monger is about, Rose. Someone whose purpose it suits to stir the feud between us and Ambleford. I don’t like to think one of our own men is behind it, but I couldn’t swear to the loyalty of them all, and there are enough malcontents around who might find amusement in this sort of mischief. Be on the alert, will you?’
It flattered and cheered me to be taken into his confidence – to be told, implicitly, that he needed me as his lieutenant. He had no one else. He couldn’t talk to Mama, or to Grace, not about this; he would have shared his worries with Victor, but Victor was no longer with us, and Johnny was too young. So he had turned to me. At last he had turned to me. How proud I was to be honoured with his trust.
But my joy was short-lived.
One April afternoon we were in a field of young beet, examining its recovery after rolling to consolidate the roots, when Father bent to pluck a tiny dandelion shoot that the hoers had missed. Holding it on his palm, he said abruptly, ‘By the way, I’ve engaged a new farm steward. He’ll be moving into Wood Lodge next week.’ With that he moved away, leaving me feeling as if I had been slapped.
I ought to have expected such an eventuality. As Farmer Pooley had said, young, single, marriageable ladies did not manage farms; unless forced by poverty, ladies were not supposed to work at all, except at accomplishments designed to pass time or to please a future husband. I saw the looks I got when I drove out alone, or rode Dandy about the lanes, or asked questions of the men, or the stock-buyers, or the solicitor. But still Father’s abrupt announcement hurt me.
I watched him pause and speak to the workers. He was limping slightly, easing his back as if it ached, his shoulders slumped where once he had stood proud with his head up and his eyes full of fire. I knew why he hadn’t told me about the new farm steward before – he had lost the energy for arguments. Yet he was only fifty-one. That wasn’t old, surely?
Six
The new steward, Ian McDowall, was a wiry Scotsman, affable enough at first meeting, with a ready laugh, crafty eyes and a pale freckled skin to go with his sandy hair. It seemed strange to me that he should have been available for work at the busiest time of year, and that his previous employer could have borne to lose such a treasure – his references were impressive. But Father said I was prejudiced against the man and it was not my place to question.
With his wife and two children, McDowall moved into Wood Lodge, which lay at the corner of the lane on the edge of Poacher’s Wood. The house had been empty for years until it was renovated as part of the prince’s improvements. After the agent’s remarks about untidiness, Father had set some men to trim its trees, plash its hedges and paint its wood
work dark green. I had naïvely thought he was going to offer the house to Ned Plant.
Soon fresh washing could be seen drying in the garden and the McDowall children walked to and from the new school built by His Royal Highness in West Newton. The lodge’s steps were scrubbed daily, its windows gleamed, with clean lace curtains backed by potted plants, and as spring advanced the flower garden bloomed in kaleidoscopic colours. Mary McDowall was evidently a worker, but when I called on her she did not invite me in; she was polite enough, but anxious to be getting on with her cleaning and polishing, her baking and making. Caring for her house and family appeared to be her sole interest.
In the village, Mary McDowall became known as ‘a quiet sort o’ mawther’, living her life almost as a recluse. The children, too, were subdued and nervy; they did not play out with the others. Neither they nor their parents seemed to encourage friendship.
I did not take to McDowall. He was almost too willing; he had a habit of appearing suddenly, as if he had crept up silently, waiting behind corners, and though he was nothing but respectful in front of Father I often detected hostility in his eyes when he glanced at me. Probably he resented my interference – as I resented his. I felt that he had usurped Victor’s place, and mine.
That year the hares were more numerous than ever, in the woods, on the fields, even in the garden. Every time I went out of doors, one or more of the little beasts would scamper for cover, leaving some plant half chewed. In common with our men, I began to sympathise with poachers, and to dislike the arrogant ‘velveteens’ – Sandringham’s army of green-coated gamekeepers.
I made some remark about the hares to McDowall one day, and he looked at me in amazement. ‘You didna’ imagine they all bred in Norfolk, surely? Lands, lassie, the prince buys live hares by the score, and has them brought here. Everyone knows that.’
As ever, he managed to make me feel like an ignorant female: I hated being addressed as ‘lassie’ in that patronising way. However, as I discovered, ‘everyone’ did not include my father. When I told him about the importation of hares he sighed, ‘I thought it was strange that they were breeding so prolifically.’
‘But isn’t it a shameless breach of the game agreement?’
‘Yes. But I’m tired of trying to fight the big house. I feel like Canute, ordering the tide to stay back. The prince refuses to hear what he doesn’t want to hear. And his minions – when they deign to listen – only fob us off with words and half promises.’
‘But if we don’t do something our profits will be way down! We have a right to compensation.’
‘I know that!’ he snapped. ‘Don’t try to teach me my business, girl. You know nothing about it.’
‘I know more than you’ll admit!’ I returned. ‘I know as much as McDowall. Oh, why did you have to employ him? I was doing the job, wasn’t I?’
My answering back always made him angry. ‘Farming’s no job for a—!’ the roar choked off as breath caught in his throat and set him coughing – the loud, hacking, wrenching cough that made me wince for him as he held his chest, pain tearing at his lungs. He sank into his chair, gasping for breath, swallowing thickly, pallor spreading under weathered skin that suddenly seemed stretched across his bones.
‘You’re ill,’ I said worriedly, laying a hand to his clammy brow. ‘Shall I send for the doctor?’
‘No.’ Roughly he brushed my hand away and leaned his head in his hands. ‘No, it’s just my cough. It catches me wrong at times, that’s all. Don’t fuss me, Rose.’
‘But—’
He lifted his head to glare at me. ‘I said don’t fuss me! Go and… go and do some sewing. Or practise at the piano – heaven knows you need it.’
To relieve my sore feelings, I went for a long, hard ride, along the lanes and through woods still fresh with early summer. Waves of the ubiquitous hares fled from me at every turn, their bobbing tails mocking me.
Somewhere ahead, distantly at first, and at irregular intervals, a gun cracked – someone shooting rabbits, I guessed. After a while I came out of the trees on to the edge of Sandringham Warren. The landscape of gorse scrub, sandy banks, bracken, bramble and blueberry was pock-marked with rabbit holes and bounded by plantations of pine. Fifty yards from me, the Prince of Wales stood by a cluster of hazel bushes, accompanied by one of his keepers carrying a game bag and spare guns, and one of his aides holding two horses. His Royal Highness was taking aim, but my arrival startled his quarry and several white tails bobbed frantically. The gun spoke, but the rabbits all safely vanished underground.
‘Damn it all!’ the prince complained loudly, turning to shout at me, ‘What d’you mean by charging around like that? Completely ruined my shot. Well, don’t just sit there. Come over here. Can’t talk to you from a mile away, girl.’
I slid down from the saddle and, leading Dandy by the rein and wishing I had been more cautious, picked my way across the heather scrub. Perhaps this meeting was fortuitous. I had been thinking for some time that if only the prince knew what a bother his hares were becoming he might do something about it. His land agent was evidently unable or unwilling to do so.
His Royal Highness had put on weight. At twenty-six he was portly in tweed knickerbockers and sack coat, his deerstalker cap pulled low over his eyes so that he peered out at me from under its peak, eyes narrowed in his bearded face, the broken gun over his arm. The equerry beside him moved closer, murmuring something which made the prince shrug irritably and say, ‘I know. I know. I recognised her at once.’ Then his face changed, his smile beamed out like sun after rain. ‘My dear Miss Hamilton! What an unexpected pleasure to find you here!’
‘I fear it was more a case of my stumbling across you, sir,’ I said with chagrin. ‘Please forgive me for—’
‘Oh, nonsense, nonsense. What’s a rabbit or two between friends?’ He turned to the man beside him for agreement. ‘Eh, Hamilton?’
‘Indeed, sir.’
To my astonishment, the equerry was my youngest uncle, Captain Henry Hamilton. It was some time since I had seen him and in the interim he had grown luxuriant Dundreary whiskers that puffed out either side of his jaw, though the rest of his face remained clean-shaven. He bore a fraternal resemblance to my father in colouring and feature, but he was eighteen years younger, and decidedly more handsome.
This was the first inkling I had had that Uncle Henry had been transferred to the prince’s household.
Seeing my expression, His Royal Highness burst into laughter. ‘She didn’t know you, Hamilton! Damn me, don’t you keep your family informed of your whereabouts?’ His amusement increasing, he slapped my uncle’s shoulder, adding slyly, ‘Getting as bad as me, what?’
His look invited me and the keeper to share the joke, which of course we did – one did not offend the heir to the throne by openly finding his humour in poor taste, though I couldn’t help but remember stories about his unsuitable friendships and the way he neglected the sick princess. One had only to glance through the pages of Punch to know all the gossip.
‘Well, Miss Hamilton,’ the prince said, pleased with himself. ‘And what are you doing out here without a chaperon? Pretty young woman like you shouldn’t be out on her own. What do you say, Hamilton?’
‘I’m sure any young lady is quite safe on your estates, sir,’ my uncle murmured.
‘Even so. Even so…’ He gazed at me speculatively, gleaming eyes narrowed. ‘I’m surprised your father lets you out, Miss Hamilton.’
‘I think he’s given up trying to train me to convention,’ I said ruefully, which made him laugh again.
‘Like to kick over the traces, do you? I like that in a woman. Like a girl with a bit of rebellion in her.’ That was probably why he had fallen in love with Alexandra of Denmark, I thought. ‘Sir, may I ask… Is Her Royal Highness’s health improved? We’ve all been so concerned for her.’
He drew gravity round him like a veil. ‘Ah, yes. My dear wife and I have been touched by the messages of goodwill that have come from all o
ver the kingdom, many of them from our beloved Norfolk. Be assured that the princess is recovering, Miss Hamilton. It goes slowly, I fear. She was very ill, you know.’
‘Yes, sir, I know. And I’m very glad to hear that the news is good. I hope to see her at Sandringham again before long. Sir, since happy chance has brought me into your company, would it be in order for me to speak to you about—’
‘Rose,’ Uncle Henry intervened sharply, his expression warning me not to stretch the prince’s patience too far. ‘His Royal Highness is here for a private day or two, alone, to recoup his strength before returning to his duties. I trust you’re not going to be so thoughtless as to bother him with matters of business.’
I recognised the rebuke, and felt ashamed of myself. ‘Forgive me. I didn’t mean…’
‘That’s what Mr Beck is there for,’ Henry said. ‘Yes, I know. But Mr Beck—’
‘Rose!’
I subsided, shrugging uncomfortably. ‘I… I’m sorry.’
‘So I should hope. You forget yourself.’
The prince was trying to look stern, though the twinkle in his eyes betrayed him. ‘I think we should see that she makes proper amends in order to earn forgiveness. What do you say, Hamilton? Shall we insist that she joins us at dinner on Saturday?’
I gaped at him, aghast. ‘Oh, but—’
‘You can’t refuse,’ he told me blithely. ‘It’s a royal command. Your uncle here will come and fetch you, and be your partner. No harm in that, surely? It’s only to be a small party. Very informal. Just a few close friends. As it happens, we need one more lady to make up the numbers. Don’t we, Hamilton?’
My uncle agreed that that was true, and so it was arranged. How could a mere farmer’s daughter refuse an invitation from her future king? I rode away in a daze, hardly believing what had happened. Grace would be livid with jealousy. And what would Father say?