Chapter 33
Inside the workshop, Lucy found the air suddenly cooler. It was every bit as neat and ordered as she might have hoped. There seemed a perfect place for every tool, some of which she recognised, but a great many she did not, from larger levers all the way through to fine clock-making instruments.
‘My father makes watches,’ Reinhardt explained as Lucy looked over the workshop.
‘He taught my brothers the craft and, while he would not teach me, he could not stop me observing. I had never thought of scaling coiled springs into other forms. Your contraption is quite ingenious. It is a shame it could not be used for other purposes than a quick burst. I cannot yet work out how it might be put to use on a longer journey.’
‘I am perfectly happy for any recommendation you might have to improve its efficiency,’ Lucy said.
There remained a rivalry between them, but during the coach ride, much of the dislike Lucy had felt towards the woman seemed to lose its edge.
There was more in common in their way of thinking than she once cared to admit and it seemed foolish to foster an irrational prejudice, however irritating Elsa’s braid remained.
‘A gear system would allow you to reduce the size and weight, I think. It would require considerable fine-tuning. If we are so inclined, we might be able to fashion a version over the next few days.’
‘How do you afford such things?’ Lucy asked. ‘Some of these more specialised tools cannot be of small expense.’
‘Well, how do you afford things?’ Elsa asked.
Lucy considered how she might diplomatically reply. ‘Atherton is a sizeable estate with surrounding farmland. These are rented to farmers. In addition, I believe there is a modest investment managed for us in London.’
‘You are most fortunate, and more aware of your fortunes than many. A great number of your class never give thought to such matters. As to how we afford things? We work for them. Custom craftsmanship may be required from time to time, or custom carving. We have a wealth of wood and Hekili has time. Perhaps we tinker with something and sell it at a market. If not our crafts, then our skills. There are times when things need to get somewhere in a hurry. Or unseen.’ She left the words hanging in the air, awaiting Lucy’s response.
Lucy turned her attention to a selection of seats and boxes stacked on shelves.
The shape and size looked familiar and she matched them to the interior of Torres’s coach.
In her mind she assembled them, impressed by the modular nature and how seamlessly they might fit into the conveyance.
It could be a simple cargo coach or an elegant travel vehicle.
Her eyes were drawn to a curious step and box, upholstered on top, elegantly carved with wooden detailing.
‘Things that need to get places,’ she echoed the Swiss woman. ‘And sometimes people?’
‘You are a dangerously perceptive woman.’ Elsa smiled, though it was clear she was a little disturbed to have her secrets revealed quite so readily.
‘Were more border guards like you, I fear we should seldom succeed. But you are quite right, particularly at present. There are people of note attempting to escape the Continent and the clutches of Napoleon. Sometimes this calls for a driver with nerve and a coach with seemingly impossible compartments. Dangerous work, but rewarding.’
‘I have always felt detached from the war,’ said Lucy, ‘as if it were taking place in a different world.’
‘In a way it is.’ Elsa nodded. ‘But worlds have a gravity. They draw on each other despite distance.’
‘Of course they do. Kepler’s laws of planetary motion.’
‘I was speaking more metaphorically. Of the interactions of people.’
‘Oh.’ Lucy paused. ‘Well, then I’d quote Sir Isaac Newton.’
‘Saying what?’
‘I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.’
Elsa smiled, eyeing Lucy in a curious way she could not interpret.
‘Come, then.’ The Swiss woman changed topic. ‘There will be time for coach work tomorrow. Dinner will be almost ready. Hopefully the men will not be too distracting.’
Lucy followed after her. For someone so completely out of her familiar element, especially one who disliked change, she was slightly concerned at how readily she was adapting to it all.
It was a train of thought that persisted, even as they gathered about the embers of the fire, seated on sturdy wooden benches.
Dashwood seemed perfectly at ease beside her, eating with a fork from a tin bowl, chatting around a campfire.
There was an exhilarating freedom to the evening, an escape from the social rules that Lucy clung to, but did not always agree with.
Propriety was about doing what was most appropriate to the circumstances.
But that only applied in relation to the expected norms of that circumstance.
It was not so vital to know which piece of cutlery was the salad fork when all everyone had was a fork and a tin bowl.
A strong earthy flavour permeated the meal: potatoes, lamb, carrots and greens. The meat was tender and flavoursome, and Lucy wondered where they had sourced it, and if that source had been entirely legal.
‘Like it?’ Hekili asked with a grin.
‘It has an excellent texture,’ she replied. ‘Is this how you normally cook?’
‘Mostly stews for us. Or roast. This we save for special occasions.’
‘It is a remarkable home you’ve built here.’
‘It is. Never imagined when I was a boy that one day I’d be living in a castle. The sea takes us strange places.’
‘That it does,’ Dashwood interjected. ‘I can see how being a whaling shipwright might lead you here, and how coaches might attract an engineer, but what brings you to this place, Senor Torres?’
The Spaniard paused, clearly weighing up the question and the man who posed it.
‘My father was a courier,’ he said eventually.
‘I was learning to drive a coach before I could walk. I grew into the same profession. But when the wars came it got harder. If you didn’t work for the army, work got slimmer and slimmer.
My father and mother were getting older then; I was bringing in the money.
Not enough money. So I started finding other jobs.
Getting things places fast. Or unseen. With less to go around, well, that meant there was good money in the things people wanted most. I stopped asking questions. People paid the most for that.’
Torres flicked a piece of gristle into the embers and it crackled briefly.
‘One day I transported a coachload of crates. I never found out what was in them, but the Emperor of France wasn’t happy with me.
And that’s not an eye anyone wants on them.
So I left my parents every coin I had spare and ran as fast as I could.
They must have chased me for damn near a year.
Never caught me though, obviously. I tried to stay in Europe.
I figured if they were chasing me anyway, I might as well give them trouble while they did.
The trouble with heat is that it can always get hotter. ’
As if to punctuate his point, a brief shower of sparks rose into the air as the stones and embers shifted. Torres watched them as they drifted away into invisibility.
‘The Flight of Lisbon?’ Dashwood asked. ‘The Portuguese royal family escaping under the French army’s nose.’
Torres nodded. ‘Not all of them got out by ship. I think on that day if Napoleon could have chosen the Crown of England or my head on a pike … he’d have chosen the Crown, but he’d have thought about it first. So the only safe place for me was on this side of the Channel.
Not so much work here for a man like me, but enough coin to survive, good racing, good company. What more could a man ask for?’
‘Some would ask for more.’
‘Not me.’ Torres shook his head. ‘And what about you, Miss Elliot? What do you ask for?’
Lucy, aware of all the eyes on her, took a breath and wondered what Margaret might say in this situation.
‘I believe,’ she began, ‘that in respect to self-knowledge, it is important to know the difference between what one needs and what one wants.’
Torres laughed and she wondered whether she had embarrassed herself, but when she looked up, he was nodding in agreement.
‘That, I will drink to. Elsa, fetch the good drink please.’
The Swiss woman smiled, stood and headed to one of the buildings.
‘We should have company more often,’ Torres said. ‘But then privacy has its advantages too, especially when one is living off the land as we are.’
‘Privacy is a strange thing, really,’ Dashwood observed. ‘I am an only child, so I was often left to my own devices. Then, upon joining the army, I found myself surrounded by people and noise. Now, once again, I find myself mostly alone in an estate far too large for me.’
‘The solution to that is to find a family,’ Torres replied.
‘Perhaps. It is certainly expected of one of my station that I marry a woman of good standing.’
Lucy, so recently involved in wedding preparation, was struck by the improbable image of Dashwood and Charlotte Wyndham at the altar.
The invasive thought so unsettled her that she felt a twinge in her stomach.
She kept her gaze on the fire, unsure quite what this tense new feeling that kept plaguing her was.
‘I said a family, senor,’ Torres replied. ‘This can mean many things. Ah.’ He waved to Elsa as she returned, carrying two bottles and a handful of cups. Torres took a bottle and passed it to Dashwood for approval.
‘Have you tried Spanish wine before, Captain?’
‘Certainly not of this vintage. A rare commodity these days.’
‘A fringe benefit of some of the work we do.’ He opened a bottle, pouring the wine into mugs and sharing them about.
Lucy was faintly amused at the thought of drinks being served in such a fashion at a dinner party.
‘A toast,’ Torres proposed.
‘To racing,’ Dashwood suggested, turning to Lucy with a grin, ‘whether it gives us what we need, or what we want.’
There was a clinking of mugs and sipping of wine.
It was a fine wine indeed, Lucy noted. A mellow texture, with a strong aromatic fruit flavour and subtle hints of tin mug.