Brothers' Fury (Bleeding Land Trilogy 2) (6 page)

THOUGH HER CHEEKS
were numbing, Bess felt the faintest touch of the tear coursing down her cheek. She cuffed it away just as Joseph glanced at her from his saddle, the concern in his eyes not quite daring to find voice and offer words of comfort.

‘It is bitter cold,’ she said, not meeting his eye, hoping that the young man might take her tears as a symptom of their riding into the wind. The day had begun still and cold when they had set out from Warrington, but now a biting south-westerly was scouring the Cheshire plain, buffeting an array of ravens and jackdaws that came barrelling through the nearby woods to roost, and causing the skeletal hedgerows to shiver incessantly.

‘Take my cloak, my lady,’ Joseph said, raising raw, gloveless hands from the reins to remove the thick woollen garment.

Bess shook her head. ‘Thank you, Joseph, but it is only my face that feels the chill,’ she lied, giving him a smile that was meant, if not convincing. ‘And remember you must call me Bess, simply Bess. To be safe.’

The lad nodded, pushing two fingers against his mouth as if chastising himself for forgetting their arrangement, and Bess waved a hand as though it were of no matter, at least whilst they two were alone out there. The young man riding with
her, a blunderbuss strapped across his back, was as thin as a birch and would likely freeze to death without his cloak, which meant that his kind offer was another blade in Bess’s conscience. For she knew Joseph would do anything for her, that freezing to death would be a contentment to him if she would only wear his cloak. Which was, of course (she had no illusions) why she had asked him to ride from Shear House with her, the two of them slipping away through the pre-dawn cold the night before last.

Well, she had not exactly asked him; she had told him of her intentions, perhaps at that time simply confiding in him because there was no one else she felt she could tell. But Joseph had offered to go with her, to guard her, had all but insisted, and perhaps Bess had known that he would. Certainly her protestations that he must remain with the garrison or surely face Major Radcliffe’s wrath had felt hollow on her tongue. And had she not admitted that she
would
feel safer on the road with a brave man such as he beside her?

‘I can see that your mind is made up to go, my lady,’ Joseph had said with a determined nod, ‘and I will not have you travel alone.’

She had smiled at him then, a warm, true smile that was for him certainly, but half for herself too and the excitement of the planned journey upon which she had set her mind to embark. Not that she was without fear, for even in times of peace it would be a dangerous enterprise for a woman to set off across the country as Bess had done. To do so in the midst of war, and with Bess being who she was – a woman long on privilege but short on experience – was recklessly foolish and Bess knew it. But she would risk anything … everything to bring her family back together, to have her brothers back under the roof of Shear House and spare them the fate of those she had loved and lost. Was she not as brave as they? Was she not a Rivers too?

‘You are a good friend, Joe,’ she said now, stifling a shiver
that ran up the backs of her arms, ‘and I’m lucky to have you. Do not think I don’t know it.’

His head lifted at that, his boy’s eyes giving away too much, the smile on his chapped lips joy tempered by pride.

I owe him that much at least, she thought, and this time she cuffed away the tear whilst it yet welled in her eye. Because if she felt guilty for drawing this young man into her scheme, it was as nothing compared with the shame that sat in her belly like a coiled serpent for leaving her baby.

She had tried to smooth the thing in her mind countless times. Little Francis, her love, her pride, would be fine, she had told herself. Mother will dote on the boy, will see him rarely leave the crook of her arm and all his needs attended. For where else could Lady Mary’s heart settle now, with her husband dead, her sons off fighting in the war and Bess gone without so much as a parting word?

And yet she had missed her baby from the moment she had last kissed his soft cheek and inhaled his scent, and it had been a cold writhing in her guts ever since.

‘Do you recognize the place, Bess?’ Joseph asked, watching a great white owl that was observing them from atop an old post stuck in the marsh that bordered the stream on their left. Ahead, at the end of a well-worn track from which grass and weeds sprouted in tufts, stood a rambling old farmhouse that seemed to Bess to be subsiding into the wild profusion of climbing plants surrounding it.

‘I came here once but I was too young to remember it,’ she said. Then, on reflection: ‘I do recall orchards. I remember challenging Tom and Mun to see which of them could steal the most apples without getting caught.’ That faint memory was a blush of warmth on a frigid day. ‘My grandfather was a strict man.’

‘And who won?’ Joseph asked, seeming genuinely keen to know.

‘I don’t remember,’ Bess said, though if pressed she’d have
wagered that Tom would have retrieved the most apples but would also have got himself caught.

The nerves were beginning to announce themselves, her skin suddenly sensitive to her linen’s weave and even the coarse wool of the travelling cloak on her shoulders and back, now that she was so close to the old place. To her grandfather. If he is even alive, she thought, for no one in Shear House ever spoke of Lord Heylyn, Earl of Chester, nor had they since his and his daughter Lady Mary’s great falling-out more than twenty years ago. It had been a sharp disagreement and barely sheathed, so that everyone within sight of Parbold Hill knew that Lord Heylyn thought his daughter had married beneath herself in Sir Francis Rivers. The earl had threatened Mary with being cut off if she went ahead with the marriage, or so Sir Francis had revealed to Bess and her brothers one Christmastide around the table, when the malmsey had loosened his tongue and the festivities were in full flow.

Bess’s mind tortured her now by conjuring the memory, even gilding it with the dancing flames of the parlour hearth, and her family as it once was. Sir Francis with his pipe resting between his lips. Their mother dressed in the old fashion, a ruff at the neck and wrists, copper eyebrows raised indulgently at her husband, perhaps wishing he would not speak of it, but it being too late now to stopper the bottle.

‘But your grandfather might as well have tried blowing the wind back the way it came as tried telling your mother what to do,’ Sir Francis had said, a mischievous smile cinching the pipe’s stem. ‘Besides which, your mother was always going to marry beneath her, no matter the man.’ This had been meant as a compliment, Bess had realized years later. At the time, though, she (and her brothers, too, perhaps) had reeled in shock at their grandfather’s threat and she remembered feeling – unfairly, she knew now of course – more sorry for her father because of the insult than for her mother because of Lord Heylyn’s indifference to her heart’s
desires. But Bess had been a girl and a girl will always pity her father.

The thing had of course unfolded neatly enough so that all knew their place around it. Lady Mary had made good her own ambition, marrying Sir Francis because she loved him and going north with him to Shear House. The earl had proved as stubborn and resolute as his word, having nothing to do with his daughter or her new family other than a handful of solemn requests to see his grandchildren when they were young. And even those requests had dried up, perhaps because those children, the progeny of a mere knight, whenever they came pillaged his beloved orchards.

‘Well, someone is here,’ Joe observed, nodding towards the grey-black smoke rising silent as the long dead from a shamble of chimney upon the farmhouse roof. The wind was whipping the smoke eastward, up into the bitter, heavy sky. For a long moment Bess watched it rise, reflecting that it was her grandfather’s ire itself, still smouldering after all these years, bitter idle fumes that availed an old man nothing in his loneliness.

Strange, she thought, that a man so obdurate regarding the formalities of his class should favour a near derelict farmhouse over his grand estate lying on the River Dee’s south bank at Handbridge. Then again, what did Bess know? Lord Heylyn, Earl of Chester, was a stranger to her, for all she now hoped to convince him that that was not so, for all her determination to haul on the halyard of his remorse and raise him to her cause.

They had dismounted and tethered their horses, each to an iron ring beside a mounting block by the front door, and now Bess found herself sheltering from the wind in the oak-timbered porch as Joe grasped another ring, this one forged with a dog’s-head knocker, and rapped it against her grandfather’s door. Near by, three hens scavenged in the mud, their plumage bristling in the chill.

‘He will not know me,’ Bess said, watching Joe huff into red
raw hands. The poor lad’s felt broad-hat had holes in it, she noticed.

‘I think he will, Bess,’ Joe replied with a frown, knocking again, louder this time.

Bess had braided her hair and pinned the long tresses against her head, covering all with a simple linen coif and then a loose felt hood which she now removed for fear of the thing obscuring her face.

Let him be alive, God
, her mind whispered, a shiver running through her flesh as the door opened and a balding servant in her grandfather’s blue livery enquired after them.

‘I am Elizabeth Rivers, daughter of Sir Francis and Lady Mary Rivers of Parbold in Lancashire. I am here to see my grandfather the earl.’

For a moment the servant’s inquisitive eyes scoured her face, then slipped down to take an inventory of her modest dress: the russet cloak and, beneath that, the simple neckcloth pinned around her shoulders to cover her décolletage. Likewise her bodice was deliberately unworthy of remark and her skirts, though full and of multiple layers, were of thick, dull green wool.

Then the man’s eyes jumped across to Joe but did not linger on him, the appraisal done in a heartbeat, and returned to Bess, a lift in the brows intimating that perhaps it might be possible that the girl before him was indeed his master’s relation.

‘Do you doubt me, sirrah?’ Bess challenged.

His blue eyes, which were watery from the sudden cold air, widened, and he gave a slight nod, the few strands left on his liver-spotted head floating wispily.

‘Cry your pardon, madam,’ he said, ‘but we do not receive many visitors, fewer still since the troubles. Please.’ He swept an arm back into the dark interior. ‘Come in from the cold.’

Joe thanked him but Bess held her tongue as they stepped into the house, their eyes adjusting to the dark as the servant closed the door on the day and went to announce their arrival.

They waited for what seemed to Bess an age, as her memories sought form and familiarity that would not come, and she breathed the air that was sweet with wood smoke yet cut by the tang of an old man’s urine.

‘Lord Heylyn will see you now,’ the servant said, beckoning them into the parlour beyond whose threshold came the crack and pop of a roaring fire. ‘May I advise you to speak up and with clarity, for my lord cannot abide mumbling.’

‘Drink!’ The word was drawn out and had the sound of an ancient tree falling, ripping its roots from the earth.

‘Yes, my lord,’ the servant said, nodding that Bess and Joe should enter the parlour, then hurrying off along the gloomy hall.

‘Wait here, Joe,’ Bess said, noting what looked like relief in the young man’s eyes, then she took a deep, smoky breath, exhaled, and went to meet her grandfather.

That the man was old should not have surprised her, and yet it did. Seeing his face had lit a memory of him which, until that point, had been at best shadowy. Now, though, the past came flooding in on the scent of gently rotting apples stacked on racks amongst countless books behind her, beyond the reach of the fire’s warmth.

‘You have your mother’s face,’ the old man said, holding up a candlestick to better see her. His hand trembled though he did not look weak.

‘As do you, Grandfather,’ Bess said. For it was true. The old man’s hair was still thick, hanging unkempt in waves of black and light grey to his shoulders, and his beard, which was almost all grey, was thick and voluminous as camp-fire smoke on a still day. Yet beneath all this the thin flesh on his face was tight over the bones, his cheeks prominent up to the lined skin and soft bulges beneath his eyes. As for the eyes themselves, which seemed now to drink of her, they were narrow and tired-looking, though still deep as wells beneath tufted grey brows.
‘It has been a long time, Grandfather,’ Bess said, wishing she knew what the man before her was thinking.

Lord Heylyn leant in closer to Bess, so that she smelt his old skin and hair, caught a whiff of garlic and stale tobacco on his breath.

‘You’ve got your father’s eyes, I see,’ he said, a hint of tooth revealing itself within the bloom of grey bristles. He sees well enough, Bess thought, for it was true that although she resembled her mother in many ways her eyes were her father’s, more blue than green.

‘May I sit?’ Bess pointed to a chair, one of two by the fire. Her grandfather nodded, still staring at her.

‘Is she dead?’ he said, meaning her mother.

‘No. But my father is,’ she said, sitting and raising her hands to the flames. Books and apples, most of the fruit withered, littered the room. Here and there a candle flickered. ‘He died protecting the King’s ensign at Kineton Fight. They never found him.’

The old man followed, easing himself into the other chair, which creaked from long use. ‘He was no coward, your father,’ he said, at which Bess felt herself nod, relieved that his first words had not insulted her father’s memory. ‘If he had been, Mary would never have turned her back on me for him.’

‘He died for the cause, Grandfather,’ Bess said, ‘as did the man I was going to marry. Emmanuel.’ She said his name for herself, not him, for the old man had never met Emmanuel and his death would mean nothing to him. ‘We were handfast and would have wed.’

‘Then along came this war,’ her grandfather said.