Chapter 30
Chapter 30
On Boxing Day, a fat pink sun rose into a clear sky full of fading stars, and a gentle thaw began. The quilted snow slid down the roof of the laundry, the trees shed their armfuls of white, and the slope of the drive lost its treacherous sheen. The roads beyond Coldwell must have become passable too, because in the middle of the afternoon a spluttering motor appeared on the hill and made a careful descent to the stable yard, where it disgorged four men and what appeared to be enough luggage for a week’s stay.
They took everyone by surprise (particularly since there was no Davy to give notice of their sudden appearance), but introduced themselves as the string quartet, booked by Lady Hyde at the beginning of November. The luggage, it turned out, was an assortment of valises, violins, violas, and a cello which took up most of the back seat. Once they had unloaded it all onto the slush-covered cobbles of the stable yard it seemed that the servants’ ball—which everyone had somehow assumed would be cancelled—was going ahead.
Mrs Gatley was the only one with any enthusiasm for the evening. ‘Heaven knows, I work hard enough every other day of the blessed year, I’m not going to miss the chance to put on my best frock and dancing shoes,’ she said to Susan and Doris, who were grumbling about having to prepare a cold buffet at such short notice. ‘What’s the matter with you young things? Slice the ham thinly for the sandwiches, and we can use up the leftover salmon from luncheon on Christmas Eve. We’re too late for jellies—they won’t set in time, but we can do meringues. I’ve plenty eggs.’
Mr Goddard dispatched Eliza and Abigail upstairs, to remove small items of value from the hallway and dining room, in case they proved too much of a temptation for the less civilised outdoor servants.
It seemed, after Jem’s defection, no one was to be trusted.
From his hiding place in the church, Jem saw the motorcar arrive. He had heard its puttering engine and climbed onto a pew to look out of a tiny diamond windowpane to watch its careful progress along the drive, sending up plumes of slush as it lurched through the puddles, and finally disappearing beneath the stable arch.
He felt slow with hunger, light-headed with lack of sleep, but his hollow stomach clenched. Had Henderson summoned the police, with another concocted story about a missing servant stealing something? He looked around for some means of escape, but there was only a small door to one side of the altar, which proved to be locked, and another in the porch that led only to the dark bell tower.
But it couldn’t be long until three o’clock.
When he’d arrived at the church, the dawn was only a faint hint of pink above the dark blue hills to the east. He’d left his pack in the porch and crept round to the garden bothies by the orchard to steal a couple of apples.
Hollinshead could collar him for that, as well as whatever Henderson was going to pin on him.
He’d dozed a little, propped up on the Hyde family pew (cushioned in red velvet and twice as deep as the narrow shelves the servants perched on), slipping in and out of uneasy dreams but not managing to escape the bone-deep ache in his shoulders, his neck. He’d thought he was back in a cell waiting to be brought into the Norwich Assizes, and heard his own voice saying not guilty . It jolted him awake, and he suspected he had spoken it out loud.
He didn’t dare sleep after that.
The church was small, surprisingly simple in style, its edges softened with age. He paced around, killing time, eventually picking up one of the Bibles from the shelf by the door. Lying on his back on the velvet cushion, his head propped on his pack, he flicked through the tissue-thin pages, idly noting how many times he spotted the word servant ( We are unworthy servants… Blessed are those servants, whom the lord when he cometh shall find watching… Well done, thou good and faithful servant…) until the light started to fade and he had to strain his eyes to read.
A noise, out in the porch, made him sit upright. He got to his feet—too fast, making his head swim—and stumbled into the aisle. The afternoon gloom tented the little church, and he blinked to see into the shadows as the heavy door creaked open, his lips parting to say her name.
But it wasn’t Kate whose slow footsteps tapped on the stone floor; who came forward to stand, arms folded, beside the ancient stone font.
Henderson sighed deeply. ‘You just won’t be told, will you?’
There was something wearily unsurprising about it. Jem had no idea how Henderson had found out about the meeting place, but he’d known somehow that it wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped. That didn’t mean he had any intention of letting Henderson stand in his way. He was tired and he was hungry, but a quick mental calculation told him that he had the advantage of height and strength. And rage. He had a lot of rage.
‘You didn’t think I’d just give up and go quietly, did you?’
Jem’s aching shoulders squared, and his hands balled themselves into fists. By contrast, Henderson appeared completely at ease as he leaned against the font. In his neatly buttoned overcoat and expensive leather gloves, he looked unprepared for a fight.
‘No, I suspected you’d be foolish enough to push your luck,’ he drawled. ‘That’s your trouble, Arden. You don’t know when to accept that you’re beaten. You think you’re on some noble quest for justice? You’re a fool. Your purpose—the purpose of all the staff here, and in every great house—is to serve your betters. To represent the family. Don’t you realise that the good name of a man like Sir Randolph and the reputation of a house like Coldwell are far more important than the petty grievances of a nobody like you?’
Jem let his hands go limp at his sides. There was no point in arguing; nothing to be gained by taking him on, this tin-pot downstairs despot, who wouldn’t survive for five minutes out in the real world without Randolph Hyde’s name to hide behind. Shaking his head, he leaned across to pick up his pack, then walked up the aisle towards Henderson, confident that if he tried to stop him on the way out that he could take him down.
The judge in the Norwich Assizes had instructed him to learn from his poor choices, and he had. One of several valuable things he’d learned in Norwich Gaol was how to stand up for himself. How to punch hard and clean.
But Henderson didn’t try to stop him. He made no move at all. And Jem, opening the door to step into the darkness of the porch, felt a flash of surprise as he collided with a solid figure, barring his way.
There was no time to think. No chance to speak. He saw the glint of gold epaulettes and the flash of braid on a chauffeur’s cap, and felt a meaty hand grab his arm, holding him still in the second before a fist connected with the side of his face.
An explosion of white light inside his head. (Maybe the chauffeur had spent time in gaol too.)
Pain tore through him as the world reeled and turned upside down. Another blow, and his cheek smashed against the stone floor, wetness seeping into his ear, running into his eyes, turning everything dark.
The blue silk dress was lovely. Kate could see that, as she smoothed the narrow band beneath the bust, where the little glass beads caught the lamplight. It made her feel acutely uncomfortable.
Her black working dress hung on its hook on the back of the door. As she went through the motions of brushing out her hair, twisting it up, and repinning it (tightly, with no concession to frivolity,) she kept fighting the temptation to exchange it for the unfamiliar blue, which exposed her arms, her neck, her throat, her former self. The woman in the mirror in the silk and chiffon looked like the one who had sat on overstuffed sofas in the Bristol house and sipped Madeira wine from cut crystal. The woman she had tried so hard to outrun.
But she had discovered that you couldn’t escape yourself. And she couldn’t bring herself to snub Miss Dunn’s kindness, either. Even in her state of shocked numbness, with her heart like a stone in her chest, she couldn’t do that.
We women should stick together.
The only sound in the attic was the whistle of the wind through the window frame and the hiss of the lamp. Eliza and Abigail, Susan and Doris had finished getting ready a quarter hour ago and clattered downstairs in their best Sunday shoes, leaving a trail of lavender water and excited chatter behind them. Kate supposed that everyone would be assembling in the hall, where the candles had been lit on the tree and the band had set up.
She should go down…
She had seen Henderson briefly, after breakfast. Passing the stillroom, he had looked inside and enquired, with guileless courtesy, if she was feeling a little better after her early night? He had appeared pleased to hear that she was (what else could she say?) and said that he was looking forward to continuing their conversation later.
‘I don’t have anything more to say, Mr Henderson,’ she had asserted coolly.
‘Perhaps not, Mrs Furniss,’ he had replied, dropping his voice confidingly. ‘But I do.’
Her ledger lay on the table beside the character reference Eliza had brought from her previous position. Kate had been putting off writing her new one, but even that awkward task was preferable to going downstairs and facing Henderson. She picked up the watch from her chatelaine, lying beside the ledger.
It was half past seven. They would be waiting for her to start the dancing; Mr Goddard with Lady Hyde, herself with Sir Randolph, as was the tradition. If she didn’t hurry, they might send someone up to find her. A sudden unpleasant image of Mr Henderson climbing the attic stairs to seek her out was enough to galvanise her into motion.
She put a silk shawl round her shoulders and picked up the lamp, holding it above the bed for a moment as she made her way to the door. It was neatly made, its secrets folded in the smooth linen, as if everything that happened there last night had been nothing but a dream.
There was a time, thought Eliza, stifling a yawn, that she would have considered this a proper treat.
A string band, done up in evening suits (though they were cheap ones and had seen better days), and a buffet spread out in the dining room, with candles alight in the crystal chandelier, reflecting in all the mirrors. A huge Christmas tree, and dancing; everyone standing around the floor watching Sir Randolph and Mrs Furniss, Mr Goddard and Lady Hyde, waiting to take their turn.
Now she felt only indifference.
Abigail had finally noticed her altered shape. Getting changed into their best before coming downstairs, she had glanced at Eliza in surprise and asked why she wasn’t wearing the velvet skirt she’d made last winter (honestly—this was someone who’d always boasted that she had a good eye for clothes and the fit of them). Eliza, weary of waiting for the penny to drop, had told her, quite bluntly, that it wouldn’t do up. And she’d watched Abigail’s gaze move downwards and her mouth fall open.
She didn’t have to be so superior about it. So horrified. As if Eliza was the first person ever to get caught out after a bit of fun (not much fun, but that hardly mattered now). She was over there now, standing with Susan and Drippy Doris beneath the portrait of the second baronet, and it was obvious from the way they kept looking at Eliza—trying to look as if they weren’t—that she’d told them. Susan would probably let on she’d read it in the cabbage leaves or something, but the fact was, none of them had guessed. They fancied themselves modern girls, but they were as silly and sheltered as hens in a coop, with their old country sayings and superstitions. They knew nothing of the real world.
Tapping her foot idly to the music (some dreary waltz), Eliza’s attention shifted to the dancers. Mr Goddard looked like a broken umbrella—all spiky elbows and flapping black coattails as he steered Lady Hyde around the floor. (She was wearing the diamond choker Sir Randolph had given her for Christmas—the one Jem was supposed to have had his eye on, though that didn’t seem likely to Eliza.) Sir Randolph stumbled on the hem of Mrs Furniss’s dress as they passed, and Eliza caught a whiff of whisky and bad digestion. Anyone could see that he was three sheets to the wind, hanging on to Mrs Furniss like a drowning man on a life raft, his eyes heavy, his hands too low on her back (not on her back at all, you might say). Mrs Furniss was stiff in his arms, straining to maintain a space between her body and his, and you could tell from looking at her that his touch made her skin crawl. Eliza didn’t envy her.
It was funny to think that she ever had.
Even in her own current predicament, Eliza wouldn’t swap places with her now. The mauve silk housecoat and the silver chatelaine and the parlour with the velvet armchair that Eliza had coveted so much hadn’t stopped Mrs Furniss from falling for a bit of charm and a nice smile, just like Eliza had. And a housekeeper had that much further to fall.
Around the walls the deer and cattle watched, looking as bored as Eliza felt. She stifled another yawn and wondered when they would be allowed to start on the buffet. People were pairing up, preparing to join the couples on the dance floor: Gatley and Mrs Gatley, Thomas and Susan. Eliza watched George Twigg offer his arm to Drippy Doris (who looked like she might cry from excitement this time. Tragic.) and the new gamekeeper approach Miss Dunn, who shook her head and turned away quickly, as if he were a dog begging for scraps at the table and shouldn’t be encouraged. She wondered if Mr Henderson was going to ask Abigail, who was sipping her fruit cup and trying not to look like a spare part, but his narrowed eyes were fixed on Sir Randolph and Mrs Furniss as they made their hobbled progress around the floor.
Eliza was so taken up with watching that she didn’t notice Robson the chauffeur until he was almost on top of her. Starting with surprise, she stepped back to let him move past. Except he didn’t. He flexed his thick neck and stared at a point past her shoulder as he asked her if she’d like to dance.
There was a mark on the collar of his white shirt, she noticed. A splash of scarlet, which looked like blood. Fancy being so ham-fisted you could cut yourself so badly while shaving that it dripped on your shirt. Fancy being so stupid you would put your clean shirt on before you shaved.
A few weeks ago, his request might have been a straw she would have gratefully clutched. Now she couldn’t see the point. She’d be leaving any day. It wasn’t what she would have chosen, but neither was meaty Robson, with his thick neck and bristly skin like pink pork rind.
‘No thanks,’ she said, giving him an offhand glance. Then, as an afterthought, she added more kindly, ‘Look—Abigail doesn’t have a partner. Why don’t you ask her?’
Dripping.
Something was dripping, slowly and steadily. The sound reverberated around Jem’s throbbing head, echoing in the darkness.
The darkness was… total.
Perhaps he was blind.
The thought sent a surge of suffocating panic through him. With difficulty he propped himself against the slimy wall and fumbled at his pockets, pain pulsing through every muscle. His hair was wet, and so were his clothes. The brick floor beneath him was mossy and the air was damp and rank, like the inside of a well. Or a grave.
Moaning with the effort, he tried his pockets again, and this time his stiff fingers found the matchbox. He eased himself back, breathing hard, waiting for the florid pulse of pain inside his head to fade a little before he summoned the energy to strike one.
The first match skittered and fell from his grasp. The second sparked and died. The box was almost empty, so he forced himself to wait, to gather his strength and quell the panic that was rising with every slow drip.
The third match flared into a tiny, leaping flame that dazzled in the dark. He was not blind, nor sealed in a grave, but in a wide tunnel, with brick-lined walls. His own hand, holding the match, was crusted with drying blood.
It was too much to take in before the match went out. But as the blackness closed around him, the images stayed. Slime-slick bricks. His fingernails, rust rimmed. His shirt sleeve, soaked red.
The brief brightness seemed to have burnt itself into his eyes. He could still see it, dancing in front of him, after the match had died. But then he realised it was coming closer, and there were footsteps too, echoing and splashing along the tunnel.
His body responded instantly: a whipcrack of panicky energy that sent him scrambling to stand as pain ripped through his shoulder and exploded in his head like fireworks. He didn’t want to give Henderson another go at him while he was on the floor. Bent double, with his arms clamped around his body, he staggered up, tasting blood as he coughed, almost passing out from the spasm of pain it unleashed.
He wanted to square his shoulders, to lift his head, and raise his fists, but he couldn’t. And so he waited, every screaming nerve taut, braced for the blow.
The footsteps stopped a few feet away.
‘It’s all right. Don’t be scared,’ said a voice he didn’t recognise.
He forced his eyes open a crack.
The light swayed, gleaming on the wet walls. On the face of the person who held it. Jem squinted, trying to bring it into focus.
‘ Davy?’