An Appetite for Violets (10 page)

Biddy Leigh, her best way, 1772

Our rescue was pitiful when it arrived. The only inn Mr Pars could find was a place fit only for trampers, so we must take our own food and bedding. Mr Loveday had cracked his head when the carriage tumbled, and all his fine livery was a slutching mess, poor fellow. But as I rode nervously behind George on one of the horses, the sunset gave a sudden burst of crimson glory, reflected in rain that shone like mirrors across the fields. Once the rain stopped it was a fine ride through a land of bright waters and mysterious black woods.

The inn was indeed a shattered ruin, for the landlord’s wife had run off with a journeyman and left him to the drink. We had drifted four long miles off the highway, and the blackened inn was sinking in the winter bogs. Yet we had to bless our fortunes, for the roof leaked only in certain rooms, and a couple of hearths did throw out a little heat after much of a struggle with my tinderbox.

While Mr Loveday aired my lady’s sheets, I set to scratching up a supper. With not even time to change from my own damp clothes I had in one half-hour some welcome tea steaming and hot brandy to mix a punch. Our bill of fare was the remnants of Mrs Garland’s Yorkshire Pie, still sound and savoury, fried bacon, and a hillock of toasted rabbits that disappeared as quick as I made them. The last of the seed cake was eaten too, with a douse of brandy sprinkled over it to warm us.

‘She will not eat those beggarly scraps,’ said Jesmire, the spiteful old cat, when I took a tray of food to my lady’s door. Yet I did see a slice of brandied cake disappear. I knew my mistress well enough by then, and she was a slave to her sugar tooth.

After supper Mr Pars got up to attend to some business with my lady. Then just as the rest of us settled down to a fire-bright doze in the parlour, we heard such a racket start up from my lady’s chamber that we all jumped like startled sheep. One moment we heard Mr Pars speaking in a low rumble, and the next Her Ladyship crying out fit to burst her lungs. Wanting to get a proper earful, I made a pretence of clearing up, then loitered in the hallway. I could not hear a word of Mr Pars’speech, only that he sounded to be complaining in an unhappy manner. But my mistress’s lighter voice came right through the wall, crying out, ‘You will indeed,’ and, ‘Cannot? I will!’ Mr Pars’ words were again as clear as mud, then she yelled, ‘Be off! Get out!’ The door banged open and I scarce had time to disappear.

When I came back to the parlour, Mr Pars had returned to his deep chair by the fire and was complaining to the others. ‘She says we must all lose our positions. As soon as the carriage is mended I must lead you all back home while she goes to London alone.’ When I offered him his tankard he clutched it so tight his knuckles were white.

‘Well, I for one should welcome it,’ said George. ‘She’s worse than the dog’s mother.’ He was settled right above the fire like a great pink hog, his boots off and his wet stockings releasing clouds of steam.

‘Mind your tongue before a lady, George.’ Mr Pars glanced in Jesmire’s direction, then took a deep draught and narrowed his eyes for a moment. I never saw him look more angry than when he wiped his bristled jowls and stared into the fire. ‘And if your old place as coachman at Mawton were taken from you, too?’ He spat into the flames and glared at the old coachman. George looked baffled for a moment, then a fuddled frown creased his brow.

As for me, what did I care if I lost my position? Why, me and Jem could then find work in town and soon be married. Yet what of my five guineas bonus? There was a long silence as the fire crackled.

It was Jesmire who spoke up next. Her features took on a right know-it-all simper. ‘Mr Pars, pray do not be offended if I declare a little superior knowledge on this subject. May I tell you that
dismissal
is something of a refrain of hers? It is not in my nature to gossip, but she has very little grasp of genteel behaviour. Whims run through her mind like the changing weather. The facts stand that without us she would not have the slightest notion of how to proceed. By the morning she will doubtless have forgotten her hasty words.’

Mr Pars acknowledged this with a nod of his head, but he was still nearly purple with choler.

‘So it’s prob’ly fer’t best if we forget it, Mr Pars, sir,’ said old George peaceably.

Soon afterwards the others went to bed, and I began to clear the place. But our steward remained, his stout body slumped in his chair, jowls set and lower lip jutting deep in thought. As I picked up his tankard he met my glance.

‘One strange matter,’ he said. ‘Your mistress said a very odd thing. I didn’t care to share it in company.’ His voice was slurred with liquor for he had drunk hard from the inn’s store.

‘And what’s that, sir?’ I said, my fingers cramping with the mass of cup handles I was trying to carry.

‘That she would dismiss us all – save for you.’ He blew out a plume of smoke and watched me steadily. ‘Now all this evening I’ve been asking myself why she should make so much of our Biddy Leigh.’

I truly was too weary to mull over it.

‘Sir, if I knew the answer to that I’d be the first to make summat of it.’

At that he jumped up and started to knock the ash out from the bowl of his pipe most violently against the mantel. Then he stood up straight, very large and towering above me. His expression was quite hately, as if he’d as soon see me rot as wish me good night.

‘I’m watching you, Biddy Leigh. You women think you can bury your filthy secrets out of sight. But I will find you out.’

‘Sir, there’s nowt—’

‘Shut those saucy lips of yours, girl. And get this place neat before you finish.’ With that he took his wavering candle and marched off to his chamber.

*   *   *

It took a few days until the local blacksmith had mended the carriage and we got back on the road. Mr Loveday was shaken and his coat still stained, but no one but I cared a whit about that. As for me, I couldn’t forget Mr Pars saying he was watching me.

I tried to put it from my mind once we settled into our next lodging at the Star Inn, where I was making our new quarters ready by collecting some rubbish thrown away in a basket. Once I was alone on the quiet backstairs, quite from habit I had a rifle through it, helping myself to some good sheets of paper that had clean backs. Pressed amongst those was a sheet of blotting paper that I also slid into my pocket.

That night I got out the papers to see what quality of stuff I had garnered. It was the blotter that caught my eye, for written upon it again and again in backwards writing were words that looked familiar, though I couldn’t read the odd-fangled loops. Recollecting that a looking glass hung by the inn’s stairs, I picked up my candle and moved very softly onto the landing, where the looking glass soon reflected my pale figure growing closer.

Slowly I lifted the candle and saw my own face peering forward in the mirror, my eyes making gleaming enquiry back at myself. Pulling out the blotter I held it to the glass and read it the right way about. It spelled again and again, as if being keenly practised:

Sir Geoffrey Venables, Baronet

I heard a warning creak behind me on the boards.

‘Biddy Leigh. What are you doing here?’

Lord! I nearly dropped the candle and set my skirts alight. In the mirror I saw Mr Pars himself coming up behind me across the landing.

‘Just wiping a smudge from me face, sir,’ I said smartly, rubbing at my cheek with the edge of the blotter. ‘I have no mirror, sir.’

By then he was right next to me, so I turned about, all the time praying he might not ask to see the paper clutched inside my fist.

‘Mirror? A kitchen maid has no need of a mirror, girl. Give me that taper. The draught just blew my candle out.’

So then I had to fold the blotter and place the end in my candle flame. Sir Geoffrey’s name seemed to stand upon it so boldly before my eyes that I thought Mr Pars would ask me where I had found it. But instead he took it and did not notice at all. I bobbed low and wished him good night and he went back to his chamber, the paper burning down fast. It was a mighty fright he had given me. Yet who was it practised Sir Geoffrey’s name?

*   *   *

Next day, as the carriage rolled along the turnpike road and Jesmire and my mistress dozed, I listened to the
rat-a-tat-tat
of rain beating hard against the roof. Then I got to remembering Widow Trotter’s old lesson:

It is a sin,

To steal a Pin,

Much more to steal a greater thing.

’Tis better for me to be poor,

And beg my Bread from door to door.

Better to be poor? Even at ten years old, I reckoned it was not. When Widow Trotter left me alone to my tasks I would stroke her spotless hand-worked linen and play with her best silver spoons. I called them my pretty ladies, fancying their curling silver handles were hair and their bowls round satin skirts. Every night I had to leave that neat cottage and go home to maggots in the oat sack and a wallop across my ear. Better to be poor? Fiddlesticks.

As for those of us in service, pay a servant little and he will pay himself, they say. Nothing too grand, mind you, just the dregs of a bottle, a spare candle, or indeed, a few sheets of paper. That was quite a different matter from faking the master’s name. I did not know what to think.

Mr Pars had taken a dislike to me, that was for certain. And why had my lady said she would keep me if she dismissed the rest of them? I turned these matters over in my head, but of answers none arrived.

XII

Stony Stratford

The Correspondence of Mr Humphrey Pars
29th November 1772

PRIVATE CORRESPONDENCE

The Cock Inn

Stony Stratford

29th November 1772

Mr Ozias Pars

Marsh Cottage

Mawton

My Dear Ozias,

I pray you are all in good health and in better spirits than your poor brother. Tonight he sits in the Cock Inn at Stony Stratford, a den of Southern thieves, where the landlord has presented me with a bill of £3-7s-6d for one night’s lodging for three persons and their servants. I do not jest! The closer we get to the great metropolis, the more boldly we are fleeced. In a mere week of travelling I have handed over more than twenty-five guineas to such vultures.

Little more than a day passed before our homely brick farms and soft Cheshire meadows made way for The Midlands of this country, a far less beauteous place, disfigured by wild irregularities of landscape not able to be cultivated. Indeed there is no land of such quality as Pars Fold, though I do try to put that loss from my mind.

Thanks only to my own diligent efforts, we made good time along the roads until my inferior map led to our losing our way around Stone, and, as a consequence, our carriage broke its axletree. I feared a fever from the soaking, but thanks to God’s Mercy I am spared any consequences. After tedious repairs we found our road again and proceeded via poor inns to Lichfield, and there the jade demanded we stay only at the grandest place, namely the famous George, as she claims to need respite from the rolling carriage and low-class inns. No sooner was I settled in the excellent Newspaper Room than I was interrupted by a man with a letter that had followed me about the roads this week past. My heart quailed to see it was sent by Sir Geoffrey’s man at Wicklow, written two weeks since. Brother, this was his import:

‘It is grave news I must tell, Pars, that Sir Geoffrey arrived here in a most dreadful condition, having fallen down in a fit on the sea voyage to Dublin Bay. It seems the ship’s captain had sent his servant to make enquiries after his lordship stayed so long in his cabin and found him lying on the floor in disarray. At first the question was raised as to what Sir Geoffrey had eaten, for he had been violently sick, but it was found he had taken nothing since coming on board. Now, after a full examination by Sir Geoffrey’s own physician, it is found he has been stricken by an apoplexy. Pars, I must reluctantly inform you that our master can neither speak nor move his limbs and is in no condition to be moved. He is being tended as well as can be, though the softening of the brain leaves him insensible to his surroundings.’

My hand shook as I read it, plagued as I was by a single question: is my master close to death, and what then are the consequences?

I sought her out. The girl was at the card tables, disfigured by paint and sporting more blubber above her bodice than a halfpenny streetwalker.

‘My Lady,’ I said, ‘I have grave news from Ireland. Sir Geoffrey is struck down by an apoplexy and may not recover.’

‘Sir Geoffrey?’ she uttered slowly. ‘My poor husband.’ She tried to mimic a sad face but did not fool me. ‘I suppose it is of no great consequence. Old men are often sick.’

‘He is more than usually sick, My Lady. It is a softening of the brain.’

She looked about herself, fearful of being heard.