Chapter 5
Chapter 5
‘Thank God that’s over.’
Up in the footmen’s attic Thomas tugged at the knot of his white bow tie and pulled it off with the relief of a man ducking out of the hangman’s noose. On the other side of the room Jem Arden was shrugging off his shirt, and Thomas tried not to stare at the well-muscled chest that it revealed.
He’d had the small space to himself since before Christmas and sharing it again was going to take some getting used to. ‘You can have a decent bed now,’ he remarked, nodding at the iron bedstead in the corner recently vacated by Walter Cox, who was at that moment sitting on the rumble seat at the rear of the carriage as it disappeared up the drive.
Not a moment too bloody soon, as far as Thomas was concerned.
By rights, as the visiting footman, Cox should have had the straw pallet on the floor, but the new lad hadn’t been quick enough to claim the bed. He hadn’t seemed particularly bothered about it neither, which Thomas couldn’t understand—who wouldn’t jump at the chance to put that big mouth in his place? Thomas hadn’t quite worked him out yet, this Jem Arden character.
Jem shook out the shirt and slipped it onto a hanger. ‘The bed’ll be great, but it’s the quiet I’m going to really appreciate.’
‘I know. Cocky sod, isn’t he? Bloody Londoners, they’re all like that. Think they’re summat special.’ Shrugging on the fustian jacket they wore for work below stairs, Thomas stopped suddenly and looked at Jem. ‘Wait—did you say you were from—?’
‘London?’ Jem smiled. ‘No. Worked there for a bit, that’s all.’
‘Well, any road, I’m pleased to see the back of him. And the rest of them—including Sir Henry, though I shouldn’t say it. Cocky Cox can call it boring, but I’m all for an easy life.’
It was Sir Henry Hyde’s habit to stay with his daughter at Whittam Park for a fortnight at this time every year, while the house underwent its annual spring clean. Thomas, assisted by Lord Etchingham’s valet, had eased him into the Etchingham carriage as carefully as a piece of priceless furniture, wadding him with blankets and swaddling him in furs.
Jem began to unbutton his trousers. ‘Still got two weeks of cleaning to look forward to, though.’
‘The clean isn’t so bad.’ Thomas averted his eyes. ‘There’s a lot to get done and Mrs Furniss can get quite fierce if she thinks you’re slacking, but I’ll take a bit of furniture shifting and carpet beating over running up and down with trays and standing in the dining room for hours.’ He picked up the livery jacket he’d dropped on the bed, and the discarded bow tie. ‘Right. I’ll get downstairs and return this lot to the footmen’s wardrobe. If you strip that bed, you can bring the sheet down. Laundrywomen are here today.’
He ducked through the low doorway and his footfalls receded on the bare wooden stairs. Jem folded the blanket on Walter’s bed, then bundled up the sheet and tossed it in the direction of the door, turning over in his mind what Thomas had said about Mrs Furniss. He wondered what she might look like when she was being fierce and found he was quite intrigued to find out.
He found he was quite intrigued by her generally.
It was an unwelcome inconvenience. Even before they had been enclosed together in the small space of the library staircase, he’d been distracted by her, noticing the shape of her mouth with its sharply defined Cupid’s bow, the hollow at the angle of her jaw where her little pearl earring quivered. Standing close enough to inhale her scent (a mixture of roses and nutmeg and vanilla… not dissimilar to the potpourri in the drawing room, but warmer somehow and deeper) had been a painful pleasure, and it had hardened an abstract awareness into something more persistent and difficult to ignore.
But ignoring it was exactly what he intended to do. He hadn’t come this far to be sidetracked by a schoolboy crush. Going over to the straw pallet on which he’d spent the last three nights, he raised the corner and picked up the book he’d hidden beneath it. With his shirtsleeve he swiped the dust off the cover and traced a finger over the gold lettering.
COLDWELL HALL VISITORS’ BOOK
He couldn’t believe how lucky he’d been to get away with it. When Mrs Furniss had come across him looking at it, he’d assumed the game was up and he’d be asked to leave immediately—especially if she also discovered the cigarette in his pocket, pilfered from the box on Hyde’s desk. That’s probably what would have happened if Hyde and Miss Addison hadn’t appeared, putting them both at risk of being caught in the wrong place.
Taking it over to the window he turned to the last written page, where the leaf had been removed. He lifted the book, tilting it so the light fell on the paper. It was thick and expensive and bore the faint imprint of writing.
The windowsill was dusted with grime. He tapped his fingertip in the dirtiest corner, then rubbed it lightly over the paper, so the impression made by the pen stood out against the smear, like words whispered from the past.
GENTLEMEN’S INDIAN HOUSE PARTY. NOVEMBER 14TH–17TH 1902
His heart had begun to thud more heavily as he repeated the method, brushing his finger over what looked like a guest list, printed beneath. Goose bumps rose on his arms as the page gave up its secrets and the second name in the column was revealed.
Frensham.
No title because that would be vulgar, no first name because that would be common, but Jem knew who it was. Tobias Forbes, Viscount Frensham, was Lord Halewood’s eldest son. The man whom Jack had worked for at Ward Abbey in the autumn of 1902.
‘Bull’s-eye,’ he murmured.
For Kate, there was no time to relax after the carriages had made their swaying way up the drive. As soon as the visitors had departed, and their breakfast dishes were washed, their beds stripped, and the sheets carried across to the steaming laundry, she had to turn her attention to the next task, which was the biggest and most labour-intensive of the housekeeper’s year.
The annual spring clean was the time when the windows were thrown open to air stale rooms, carpets were hauled out into the sun to have the dust beaten from them, mirrors and ornaments were cleaned, chimneys swept, floors polished, walls washed down. All the main rooms on the ground floor needed to be worked through, except the library. It alone remained locked, its scandals hidden from the eyes of the servants.
This year, with a wedding suddenly in the offing, it felt like they were doing more than simply shaking off the layers of winter grime. It wasn’t only a change of season that they were preparing for but a change of pace at Coldwell. There had been sherry in the servants’ hall when Mr Goddard announced the news of Mr Hyde’s engagement and proposed a toast to the good health of the happy couple. Mr Hyde would likely be spending a lot more time in Derbyshire when he was married, Frederick Henderson had said, looking pointedly at Kate.
Watching Jem Arden out of the corner of her eye, Kate noticed that he didn’t join the dutiful chorus of good wishes, but downed his sherry in a single mouthful with a grimace that suggested he was sealing some private vow, not drinking a toast.
She didn’t want to notice. She tried not to, but she found that she was oddly conscious of him. In spite of the demands of the spring clean, the extra staff to supervise, and the list in her ledger (covering two pages and stretching on to a third) of tasks to tick off, she was powerless to stop the prickling awareness of his presence, his movements, almost as if those strange, suspended moments they had shared in the library had left her with an unwelcome sixth sense where he was concerned.
Or, she told herself briskly, maybe it was that she wasn’t as easily taken in as Mr Goddard and the others. She had made the mistake of being too trusting before, and taking someone at face value. She wouldn’t do it again. She’d let the visitors’ book incident go unchallenged for her own sake, not because she believed him. And because she’d half expected him to give notice anyway.
But he didn’t.
He showed no sign of it. In the days that followed, as the work got properly underway and the kitchen yard rang with the voices of the laundrywomen and village girls who’d been drafted in to help, the epithets of ‘hardworking’ and ‘strong’ in his character proved well chosen. Furniture was hefted away from walls and rugs were rolled up and carried outside more quickly and efficiently than in any previous year Kate could remember.
In addition, he was easy company in the servants’ hall, diffusing the petty squabbles that erupted when days were long and tempers short. He made sure to compliment Susan, left in charge of cooking for the staff while Sir Henry was absent, on the meals she rather erratically produced; and in the evenings, while the others dealt hands of cards and gambled for matchsticks, he taught Joseph to play chess. Joseph the skinny hallboy, who had come to Coldwell from the Sheffield Union Workhouse, who slept on a shelf in front of the silver cupboard, and whose job was to do all the things that no one else wanted to. Who was usually left out of servants’ hall games or permitted only to take the role of scorer, ball retriever, or referee.
Arden was troublingly handsome too, which was the most highly prized asset for his role (she had overheard an exchange between the laundrywomen one day, with one remarking that he’d fill a livery suit very nicely indeed, and the other one commenting that he’d look even better without it.) All in all, he appeared to be the living embodiment of Mrs Beeton’s ideal footman.
So what was he doing at a lonely, left-behind place like Coldwell Hall?
The rhythm of the year was such that the end of the spring clean fortnight always coincided with Howden Bridge Fair, held on the first Monday in May on the expanse of open ground at the edge of the village.
Howden Bridge itself was small and unremarkable; a huddle of grey stone houses tumbled at the foot of the hillside, with a pub called the White Hart (a reference to Henry VIII’s legendary hunting coup); a school; a blacksmith’s forge and police house; and a tiny, cave-like village shop, poorly stocked with basic provisions. However, its position where the toll road to the north met the old packhorse route running from east to west had long made an obvious place for the trading of livestock. Over the years, the May sheep fair had grown in size and sophistication, drawing farmers, their wives, children, labourers, and maids from every village and lonely moorland farmstead in the Dark Peak, to enjoy novelty stalls, entertainments, food and ale, as well as the business of buying and selling animals. In this remote spot, it was the high point of the year.
It was also an incentive for the Coldwell staff to work hard on the spring clean; and after two weeks, all the major rooms had been turned out. Paintwork had been washed, floors waxed; every delicate china figurine had been wiped over; every gilded picture frame cleaned; and every item of intricate Indian silverware polished to a gleaming shine. Even the animals in the hallway had enjoyed their annual grooming, with Thomas and Jem taking turns to climb the ladders to rub oil into dull horns, brush clouds of dust from dead fur, and buff the tiger’s bared teeth so that Mrs Furniss could find no fault and Mr Goddard had to grudgingly agree to a rare day off for the whole household to attend the fair.
The spell of good weather held. Warmth was already thickening the air beneath the sloping attic ceiling as the girls got ready. Eliza had decided she was going to wear the muslin blouse with the embroidered daisies on the collar that she’d bought for two shillings from a former housemaid (whom, except for the blouse, she would have entirely forgotten), but Susan eyed her doubtfully as they hurried down the stairs.
‘Aren’t you going to put a coat on?’
‘No need,’ Eliza replied airily, by which she meant no way . The blouse was far too pretty to be covered up with her ugly old blue coat, which would also look daft with her summer hat, newly trimmed with the spray of paper violets she’d bought last time she’d made the long trek to Hatherford on her day off.
‘It looks fine now, but you know what they say,’ Susan warned, hitching her own coat more securely over her arm. ‘“ Cast ne’er a clout till May be out .” It could turn nasty yet.’
Eliza had no intention of letting Susan’s pessimism spoil either her outfit or her mood. Johnny Farrow was already waiting with the wagon in the stable yard, and Joseph had been sent to hurry them up. ‘We’ll be going without you if you don’t get a move on!’ Thomas called as they emerged into the bright dazzle of the yard.
Eliza was surprised to see Mrs Furniss sitting on the front bench beside Johnny Farrow; she didn’t usually bother with the fair. But then she remembered that Johnny had agreed to take the housekeeper on to Hatherford to settle the accounts and place orders, tasks which had been postponed over the past fortnight. Mrs Furniss gave a pointed look when she saw the tussle between her and Abigail as they both tried to get the seat next to Jem Arden.
‘Hurry up, girls,’ she snapped. ‘We’ve waited long enough already.’
She’d been in a sour mood for the last two weeks. Behind her back Eliza pulled a face, feeling a little buzz of satisfaction as Abigail made way and she was able to take the place beside Jem. She folded her skirt neatly about her knees, hoping he’d notice how different she looked when she wasn’t in her dowdy uniform. For once—feeling pretty in her pin-tucked, daisy-sprigged muslin—she didn’t envy the housekeeper, or wish she could change places. Instead of her usual head-to-toe black Mrs Furniss was wearing a cream cotton blouse with a high lace-edged collar and a dark blue skirt, but she still looked uptight. Like her laces needed loosening.
The wagon creaked and rocked as the others climbed up, Joseph the last to scramble into place. Johnny Farrow flicked the reins and they jolted into motion; and Abigail, still settling herself, pitched sideways and was caught by Thomas. ‘You can sit on my knee if you like,’ he joked. ‘All you had to do was ask.’
‘In your dreams, Thomas Booth,’ Abigail retorted, throwing Eliza an accusing glare.
But nothing could tarnish the shine of that bright morning. Not even Thomas launching into the tired old story about the year Stanley Twigg got so drunk at the fair that he was sick on a swingboat and fell asleep under Black Tor on the way home.
‘What’s Black Tor?’ Jem asked.
‘Dirty great pile of rocks on the track across the moor to the village,’ Eliza said, aware of Jem’s long thigh inches away from hers on the bench. One hand rested loosely in his lap, the other—thrillingly—stretched along the back of the seat behind her. ‘There’s an overhanging stone where travellers used to shelter from the weather.’
‘Davy Wells saw him wandering home at first light and thought it was Samuel’s ghost.’ Thomas laughed, finishing the story. ‘Gave him such a fright they had to send for the doctor to give him something to calm down.’
Jem turned to Eliza, one eyebrow raised in faint resignation. ‘Davy Wells?’
‘Mrs Wells’s lad, from the gate lodge. Grown-up, but not right in the head. You’ll see him wandering around the estate. If you speak to him, don’t be offended if he doesn’t answer. He’s mute.’
Jem nodded. ‘Right. So that just leaves Samuel. Or his ghost.’
Abigail gave a gasp of mock horror. ‘You mean no one’s told you about Samuel?’
‘Shows how busy we’ve been,’ Susan remarked. ‘Go on, Thomas, you tell it best.’
‘Well, it should be told at night, really,’ Thomas said, ‘but anyway… It all starts with Sir Aubrey, the second baronet—the one whose portrait hangs in the entrance hall. He worked out in India, same as the present Mr Hyde, and when he came back to Coldwell, he brought a lot of the things you see around the house today: hunting trophies and fancy silverware and all manner of artefacts, including a young Indian boy called Samuel.’
‘That wasn’t his real name,’ Abigail interjected, ‘but what Sir Aubrey called him. His English name.’
Susan nudged her to be quiet. ‘Whatever you want to call him, Sir Aubrey used him as a tiger—carriage groom, you know? Unsurprisingly, the lad didn’t take to Coldwell—homesick, I should imagine; missed the warmth—and the story goes that during one of Sir Aubrey’s long house parties, he tried to escape. But, here’s the thing—’ Thomas leaned forward in the swaying carriage, lowering his voice. ‘It was winter, and the boy wasn’t familiar with the landscape. He lost his way in the snow, and his body was found by poachers in the woods behind the temple, stripped naked and frozen to death. It’s said that on winter nights when the moon is bright, you’ll see his ghost running between the trees as if pursued by the hounds of hell…’
For a moment, they clipped along in silence. They had crested the rise now and the house was lost from sight, though the tower was still visible. Jem turned his head to look at it, and Eliza saw that his expression was oddly tense. Usually, the ghost story generated a thrill of excitement, but somehow it had fallen a bit flat. Thomas was right: it was best told at night, when the circle of lamplight made all the listeners huddle together in awareness of the shadows at their backs.
‘His grave is in the churchyard,’ Abigail offered. ‘“Samuel, Tyger to Sir Aubrey Hyde, Second Baronet Bradfield” it says on the stone. Tourists come and look for it sometimes.’
Just then, a movement ahead caught the corner of Eliza’s eye, a white flash breaking cover from the gloom of the coppice to the right. The horses saw it too; one faltered and tossed its head, making the wagon lurch. There was a beat of air. On the seat opposite, Susan gave a screech and buried her face in her hands as the bird swooped silently across the path.
‘Saints alive,’ Thomas stuttered. ‘What was that?’
‘It’s all right,’ Jem said. ‘It was just a barn owl.’
Susan’s face was white as she lowered her hands and crossed herself with trembling fingers. ‘It’s bad luck to see them in daylight, didn’t you know? A barn owl flying in daylight foretells a death .’
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Eliza muttered.
That girl could spot the Grim Reaper behind every corner and suck the fun out of anything. As they approached the gate lodge Eliza saw a figure move in the shadow of the wall and felt her own heart kick with fear, until she realised it was just Davy Wells, keeping watch, as he always did. He sprang forward and opened the gate, turning his wary, unsmiling face towards them as they passed.
It was surprisingly cool out of the sun. Goose bumps stippled the skin beneath Eliza’s daisy-embroidered blouse, and she found herself wishing that she’d brought her coat.
June 26th
The guns are still going on. It’s very wet and we’re back in the reserve lines. The countryside here reminds me of where I grew up in Oxfordshire—meadows and copses and farmhouses, gentle and green, not at all like the hills and moors around Coldwell. The farmhouses are mostly ruined now, by shelling and army occupation.
As I came back from night fatigues this morning a barn owl flew low over our heads, following the line of the trench. They nest in the ruined buildings and probably can’t believe their luck with all the fat rats here. I thought of the day we went to the fair at Howden Bridge, and what Susan said when that owl broke cover from the wood.
In this place, I think there’s a good chance she’d be right.