Chapter One #2
Then Giles said, ‘I was going to ride down myself – I have to see Bexley about those illegal snares we found – but I don’t mind driving in the trap if you want to come with me. It will be rather muddy for walking,’ he added, which caused Kitty to throw him an exasperated look.
Amused, Richard consulted Miss Rowsham. ‘Walk or drive?’
She responded, ‘I should like to walk, if you don’t mind it. I never worry about mud.’
And he felt again that little tug of approval. ‘Then walk we shall. It’s not going to rain again today, and I undertake to find the driest path down the hill.’
By the time Alice reached the village street, the dogs were tired enough to walk quietly at heel, but she leashed them anyway in case of cats, and wandered along the shops.
She knew the content of their windows pretty much by heart, but it was good after weeks of rain to look at something other than wet green fields.
As she reached the corner of Church Lane, the dogs dashed away from her so suddenly they yanked the leash out of her inattentive hand. They had spotted Axe Brandom, just coming out of the sexton’s yard behind the church.
Her heart jumped. She hadn’t seen him since church on Christmas Eve.
Once she had been a regular visitor to his woodsman’s cottage, but now she denied herself the pleasure.
She was reminded of the rector talking about ‘avoiding the occasions of sin’.
It was not sin to love him. But it would not be allowed, and he would be much more harmed by the consequences than her: he would be blamed, vilified, driven out.
It had been a hard and suddenly grown-up thing to understand that, and to take responsibility.
She was only nineteen, but no longer a heedless girl.
It would have been best to give him a polite nod and turn away, but the dogs were fawning on him and licking his hands, and would certainly not leave him if she called. So she crossed the road to him, feeling as though she were being pulled like a compass needle to her personal north.
He didn’t smile, but there was more than a smile in his eyes, which warmed her like sudden sunshine.
‘Lady Alice,’ he said. ‘How are you?’ He pushed the dogs down and they dropped their rumps obediently to the pavement and sat, one either side of him, like heraldic statues, panting with pleasure, unfurling yards of pink, frilled tongue, and looking at Alice as though she were the outsider and Axe their master. He always had that effect on animals.
‘What are you doing here? Did you walk down?’ she asked, a truant part of her mind thinking they might walk back together.
‘Drove down,’ he said, thinking wistfully that he might offer her a lift back.
He jerked his head towards the sexton’s yard.
‘Della’s in there, with the cart. Brought a load of logs for rector.
I was going to poddle along and see how Eli’s doing.
’ Eli Rowse was the village blacksmith – Axe had been assistant blacksmith before he took the job as woodsman to the Ashmore estate.
‘I heard he was poorly. Rheumatism in the hands.’
‘I expect it’s the damp weather,’ Alice said. ‘Richard was complaining about his shoulder this morning.’ It didn’t really matter what they talked about. Just being close to him eased something in her. ‘Is Dolly not with you?’ Dolly was his terrier.
‘I asked her if she wanted to come, but she said she’d rather stay by the fire,’ he said, smiling at the whimsy.
‘I can’t believe it,’ Alice said. ‘Not come out with you?’ I would never choose that, she thought.
‘She’s getting old. She’s eleven now.’ He gave a tiny shrug. ‘Dogs don’t have long enough lives.’
She felt a pang, imagining how much he would miss the little bitch when she died, how lonely he would be out there in the cottage in the woods. ‘If only—’ she began, hardly knowing how the sentence would end.
But there was a tremendous, shocking bang, followed by a long, rending, crashing noise of terrible destruction. Her eyes widened, her scalp felt cold as the hair lifted. They both turned to look; the dogs stood up and whined.
At the far end of Church Lane, at the top of the hill, was the railway station: the line ran along the ridge.
‘That sounded like—’ she began, dry-mouthed. But her words were cut off by a heavy explosion. A column of black smoke rose. Faintly they heard screams and voices shouting.
They must go – had to go – must try to help. ‘The dogs!’ she said.
‘Shut ’em in the stable with Della,’ Axe said, with a jerk of the head towards the sexton’s yard.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Go on! I’ll catch you up.’
He turned and ran.
Richard had done his best by Miss Rowsham, pointing out the architectural beauties of the village, telling as much of its history as he remembered.
She had listened and asked intelligent questions: away from other company she was less reticent, and he found himself relaxing and talking to her as a normal human being rather than a female who had been foisted on him and of whom he had to be wary.
They had paused for some time outside the Crown, which was ancient and picturesque.
It had been a coaching inn and was now quite the magnet to visitors from Town, who liked to sketch it, then lunch in it.
He showed her the church next, and she expressed an interest in seeing inside.
He wasn’t an expert on finials and ogees and such – Giles was the man for that, could talk for hours about a flying buttress or a reredos – but there were a lot of family memorials, and he could be amusing on the lives and peculiarities of the ancestors who had left their mark in one way or another.
So they had passed an agreeable half-hour, and Miss Rowsham had laughed several times at his stories, which fed his vanity.
They had left the church door open, so even inside they heard the sound of the crash, and looked at each other, startled.
Then came the explosion, and they hurried out with one accord and across the churchyard to the street to look.
Already people were running up the road towards the station.
A column of greasy black smoke was rising ominously.
‘I must go and see if I can help,’ Richard said urgently. ‘Can you find your way back to the Castle all right?’
‘I’m coming with you,’ she said.
‘Oh, but—’
‘Don’t waste time arguing. If a train has crashed they’ll need every hand.’
He glanced down a moment at her sensible walking-dress, which cleared the ground, revealing her sturdy boots, and said, ‘Come on, then!’ And they ran.
Notwithstanding every good intention, it was impossible not to stop and gape for a moment at the terrible alteration to normality, a destruction that imagination could not have prepared them for.
Two engines were locked together in unholy, twisted union; from them came the flames and smoke.
It seemed as though the down train had just been leaving the station and the up train had somehow ploughed into it.
Carriages had reared up and seemed to be trying to climb over each other.
The first behind the tender of the down train was splintered and compacted.
There were people – including the porter, Hossey – standing on the platform staring in horrified silence.
Further down, carriage doors were opening and people were beginning to get down.
A woman with the sleeve of her coat torn away and blood running down her arm was walking unsteadily towards them, her face blank with shock.
Miss Rowsham’s clear voice cut through Richard’s momentary fog as she said to the injured woman, ‘It’s all right. I will help you,’ and to Hossey, ‘Bring me a bucket of water and all the clean cloths you can find.’
Richard shook himself and said, ‘I’ll start getting people out. You and you’ – to men standing nearby – ‘come and help me.’
It took little time for Alice to secure the dogs, who whined unhappily at being left when the atmosphere was so tense, and she was lighter than Axe and younger, so she caught him up at the top of the hill.
It was a shocking scene. It was apparent that the up train had somehow jumped the rails on the curve before the station, because it had struck the down train at speed and its locomotive was now on fire – presumably the explosion they had heard was its engine.
Of its seven carriages two had concertinaed and were poking up in the air like an inverted letter V.
The other five had slewed off the rails and slid down the embankment, the last one on its side, the others upright as if hanging by their couplings.
And there had been a horse-box at the rear. It had broken free and rolled down until it hit a tree – somehow, thank God, still upright. But Alice could hear a horse screaming.
Axe met her eyes in understanding. It was a sound impossible to ignore. ‘You go,’ he said. ‘I’ll see what I can do up here.’
She scrambled down the slope. She could heard frantic banging inside.
The ramp-door was held closed by a bolt on either side.
Her hands were shaking and she made herself pause and take a deep breath.
You can’t help anyone unless you keep calm, she told herself sternly.
Horses, in particular, reacted badly to nervous handling.
The bolts were heavy, as they needed to be, but moved easily enough.
But as she tried to lower the heavy ramp it was shoved from the other side and she lost her grip on it.
As she jumped out of the way (a broken foot would serve no-one at this moment) it thudded down and a horse bolted out.
Its tethering rope must have broken, and in a blind panic it scrabbled down the ramp, wildly jumping the last few feet, knocking Alice down, catching her a sharp blow on the upper arm with a shod hoof.
She barely felt the pain, scrambling to her feet too late to catch it: it was gone, down the hill, rope swinging from its headcollar.