Chapter 26
W e took seldom-used roads and traversed many fields as we rambled north.
At first, the weather was mild, and the way was not as deserted as I wished.
We found simple lodgings that were not terribly disgusting, and I questioned why we had brought half of what was bundled in Trusty’s saddlebags.
In essence, my adventure, which held such promise to be challenging, began uninterestingly.
I wondered if I would have to write to my sister that twice we could not open the gate to a field and had to find a way around, or that the most excitement we found was an old man lying inert by the side of a stream who, as it turns out, had only been resting.
He was greatly annoyed by our attempt to revive him, grumbling there is no peace for a man in no hurry to get home to his missus.
Eventually, however, we found ourselves passing the eastern edge of the Pennines.
I was not an indolent man and can easily walk for many miles, but upon the morning of the fourth day of this, we approached an escarpment which challenged us to a stiff climb up to a path that traversed an ancient ledge of gritstone.
My legs did not feel so enchanted with such work and my feet less so.
The view had been magnificent, but we did not linger because the wind harassed us relentlessly, at which point, I fell silent and into that passage in any journey during which a person questions what madness had inspired them to commit to an undertaking that was less than pleasurable.
What I discovered in the days that followed was that there was in me a streak of perseverance upon which I could rely—I was not a man to call quits because of a blister.
This doggedness was rewarded by a descent into the Rivelin Valley.
We chose to avoid the heart of Sheffield and struck down a path that led us to a sheltered spot by an old stone bridge that apparently led nowhere, rendering it overgrown and forgotten.
There, we arranged our bedrolls around a fire made of what sticks and branches we could find.
Trusty was well-watered at a small stream, and after his oats, he settled into that state of standing somnolence common to mules.
For our dinner, we had a pot of dried peas with bits of dried beef, and after Donaldson and Carsten finished squabbling politely as to whether to string a canvas overhead in the unlikely case of rain, we each retreated into the mysterious world of our private thoughts.
I descended into the deeper layers of my mind—initially taken up with feeling the various aches and pains in my body as I stretched out below a dark canopy of leaves.
This led me to examine the shadows above my head, the sparks from our fire flying upwards and disappearing, and then, to trying to conjure a picture of the sky above the trees that night.
Was it clear enough for stars? This naturally led to that strange sensation of being a speck in an incomparably vast unknown, to the awareness of my fragility and mortality, and to the staggering awareness of the speed with which my life was progressing.
It was this urgency that took me further inwards to the question that had danced around my head for many days. Had Elizabeth truly changed her opinion of me? If so, how favourably would she look upon me if I were to meet her again? Did I dare to hope and plan?
As I closed my eyes, I came bluntly to face the fact that I had never stopped hoping or planning. How the tables had turned on me since I had stood on the roof of the folly at Rosings Park musing over whether I could lower my standards in order to have her!
As we continued roughly in the direction of Tyne and Wear and the days melted one upon the other, it was tempting to dwell on myself in this way. But I had two companions, and I found some relief in directing my attention onto them.
Donaldson, a man in his fourth decade, was a career soldier—a sergeant—used to having his orders followed unquestionably.
Carsten, raised as a gentleman and now answering only to a man of great privilege, was also used to having his orders attended to without argument, though he was much more polite about it.
Aside from their ingrained sense of authority, they were each in positions in which their opinions and judgments mattered more than a little.
Gentlemen deferred to them on many subjects, and they had made an art of their profession by keeping their employers oblivious to just how thoroughly they— we —were being managed.
Had they not had a third member of their party, I thought they would have engaged in a more open expression of their rivalry with such smug remarks as ‘I told you that wood would smoke’ or ‘Ah. Here is the rain you swore would not fall.’ This is not to say they hated each other, for they seemed to respect one another, but the position of leader of our expedition was quietly contested all day long.
This was an undercurrent with which they quietly struggled because they had a more consuming problem.
They had with them an uncommonly complicated travel companion.
I was to be protected and coddled as much as they could manage without making me aware they were doing so, and at the same time, I had set out with the intention of suffering alongside them equally.
I was the figurehead of the enterprise, yet they had never once considered I might be eligible for the position of leader.
What neither of them knew was that I was aware of their dilemma, and I found it greatly entertaining, primarily because they could argue about which path we took and where or when we stopped, but our destination was always mine to determine.
I often struck out in front of them, simply because my greatest pleasure was to see the trail before me, stretching almost as if to the other side of the world beneath an infinite sky above my head.
But from time to time, particularly when the westerly winds were unceasing and, therefore, irritating, I followed behind with Trusty and his pack saddle as my windbreak.
Occasionally, my companions forgot my presence altogether.
“Might I see the map?” Carsten said to Donaldson on one endless march through a series of undulating fields.
“It is folded in my rucksack.”
“I am not convinced this is the straightest route to Catterick.”
“I assure you it is…”
I smiled broadly behind their backs, for there before me was what Elizabeth would have called ‘ something to laugh at’.
They were irritable because the day had been long and wearisome, itching to slap each other stupid as a result, and Carsten, unsatisfied with Donaldson’s insistence that only he knew the way, then persisted.
“If this is the best way, I expect we would see less grass growing in the middle of these ruts,” he said.
“I have soldiered with a compass all my life,” our sergeant said with a twitch of his moustache. “Are you perhaps tired? Otherwise you would find no argument with this road.”
I was at last moved to intervene. “If you cannot agree, I believe we should strike off through this field to explore that interesting hill,” I called from behind them with great enthusiasm while pointing to a far distant rise bordered by a vast tangle of brambles, scree, and rock-filled gullies.
This suggestion shocked them into instantly agreeing to proceed another few miles before consulting the map again, and it took a great deal of concentration on my part not to burst out laughing.
It was absurd, but I actually possessed the power to force us to march off into such a horrible landscape!
I could only use this tactic once more before my two minders began to suspect I had their measure and was prompting them to settle their dispute.
As we passed through another week, the dust had settled.
It seemed clear that Donaldson was in complete charge of our direction and protection.
He built our fires, found our drinking water, and cared for Trusty.
Carsten, meanwhile, had the final word as to where we would stay and, if we were sleeping rough, how our campsite would be arranged. He also did all the cooking.
This left me with a few paltry contributions with which I had to be satisfied.
I collected firewood, hauled water, and lent a hand with the few tasks requiring more than one man, such as relieving our mule of his pack saddle.
In many ways, this was the perfect mirror to life as a rich man—my retainers would have had little purpose without me as their principal business, and in exchange, I had to settle for having little to do save for being slightly helpless.
Was it this peculiar paradox I wished to confront in choosing to retreat from the confines of my life of privilege? Did I question the idleness, the sheer irrelevancy of being rich as compared to a man who could build a wall with stones or make a chair from a fallen tree?
In essence, I found sanctuary in the time and circumstances in which to reconcile this question. She had not named this specifically as one of my shortcomings, but she had certainly alluded to it when she spoke of my consequence in such disparaging terms.
But what good do we actually know of him?
she had demanded in answer to her friend’s mention of my wealth and power.
Clearly, the advantages of my birth counted for nothing in her eyes since I had done nothing whatsoever to earn them.
Just days after the humiliating question of what my actual value as a man had been posed, I found myself driving Elizabeth through the countryside in a farm cart.
It had been during this experience that I discovered firsthand the shocking novelty that is personal, physical usefulness.
For once, I did not throw a purse of gold at someone to accomplish what needed to be done with no inconvenience to my own comfort.
In effect, my service to her had been a revelation in the feeling of satisfaction that a man can enjoy upon demonstrating ‘the good she might actually know of him’.
And yes, I wished with all my heart for a pitcher of fresh cream, a hot bath, a sumptuous meal, and decent clothes.