Burning Bright (Brambridge Novel 2) (2 page)

Lord Stanton snorted. Even Lord Anglethorpe looked disconcerted.

“A likely tale. No son of mine
stargazes
. It’s something we tell the ladies to get them into bed.” Lord Stanton walked further into the room, stopping suddenly as Lord Anglethorpe clapped a hand on his shoulder. 

“Alright, I'll come with you quietly.” James swung his other foot from the bed. “I'm innocent, though, I haven't done anything wrong. I was stargazing. Just let me change my clothes. Please?” The last word stuck in his throat. To his father that word would have been better than a scream.

Lord Stanton opened his mouth to speak again but Lord Anglethorpe stopped him. “Enough, Stanton. It’s a bit of a walk to the lockup, and there is no way out of the room apart from the door and window.” He peered through the murky glass window and sighed. “It’s too high for him to escape by the window and I'll put a guard on the door as well.”

Lord Stanton glared balefully at his son, as if wishing he could pick up James and carry him to the prison himself. James looked away from the hateful stare, so like those in the family pictures.

Lord Anglethorpe shouldered Lord Stanton from the room. “Come on. The quicker we leave, the faster he'll be ready. It’s not as if he’s going to escape to France.”

Lord Stanton pulled away and brushed at Lord Anglethorpe’s hand. He cast one last red-eyed glare at James and left, shoving a grinning Edgar out of the way. As Lord Anglethorpe pulled the door shut behind him, he stopped and stared at James. With a barely imperceptible flicker of his eyelid he winked and closed the door with a click.

CHAPTER 1

Two years later 1813

Miss Harriet Beauregard scraped the last letter on the chalkboard, wincing as she caught the black slate with her nails. With a sigh, she turned back to face her class. Three sallow young children stared back at her. The remaining sixteen looked down at their books or fiddled with their slates.

How long would it be before the church bell rang the hour?

“Turn your books to page two hundred and fifty four please.” She paused and narrowed her eyes. “Joseph Carter, give Thomas back his book and put your bottom back on your seat.” She waited as the small boy meekly handed back the slim pamphlet to his classmate. “Thank you. Any more of that, and you will no longer be included in the midsummer play.”

Good grief.
Harriet shook her head. Edmund Kean didn’t have to deal with any of this.

The little boy sat up straight, his ears turning a bright red. There was a visible stirring in the classroom as all the boys and girls aged from six to sixteen sat a little straighter and lowered their eyes to their books. They had had their first rehearsal of Romeo and Juliet this morning. There had been a very
enthusiastic
response. However, the flow of the tragedy had been quite disturbed when the eight-year-old playing the menacing Mercutio tried to embed a pencil in his nose.

Harriet sighed. And the fact that the sixteen-year-old who had the role of the count still could not get over the fact that Romeo and Juliet fell in love in a day also stayed with her.

Did he have no romance in his soul?

She smoothed her tightly-bound hair and looked out of the window.

Ring bell, ring
. Her gaze followed the vale high up to the ridge which led to Honiton. “Joseph, start reading at paragraph three please,” she said without turning from the window.

“Once upon a time there was a… a… a—”

“Knight,” she corrected absently.

“Knight,” Joseph carried on, “who lived in a large c... c... c…”

“Castle.”

“Castle, and had a large white horse.”

Harriet blinked. Up on the ridge there was a shadowy figure mounted on a horse. Harriet turned to look back at the class. Joseph was still valiantly battling on with the tale.

“The knight rescued the princess from the palace and…”

Harriet looked back to the window again. The figure had disappeared. She rubbed her tired eyes and looked again, but the ridge was empty. Good grief. She had definitely been reading too late into the night again.

Joseph had fallen silent. Bringing her hands away from her eyes, Harriet edged round her desk and sat in the large slatted chair. “Carry on, Joseph,” she said, shuffling the papers on her desk.

“I’m not sure I understand the story, Miss Harriet.” The little boy’s mouth was set in a straight line. “Why do knights always rescue the princess? Why don’t they just leave them alone and go off and do interesting things like playing jumping jacks?”

It seemed today was a day for questions. “Because that’s what knights do, Joseph.” Harriet infused as much enthusiasm into her voice as possible. “After all, who else would rescue the princess?”

Of course Joseph had a point. Harriet looked down at the papers on her desk. Spelling quizzes, writing comprehension, mathematical exercises. She looked back at her class, who chatted quietly among themselves. They were good children, every one of them. But despite her efforts to give them an education, she knew that they would end up like their parents before them, trapped in their cottages making lace, out on the fishing boats or worse—

A bang resounded through the small room as the school door shot back on its hinges and slammed against the wall. Harriet jumped and then stood as a small boy fell in through the door, gasping.

“It’s Jack,” Joseph cried. He pushed the small desk away and kneeled by the little boy. “It looks like he has run all the way from home.”

Harriet moved quickly to the boy’s side. Jack panted rapidly. Putting a hand on his back, she patted him gently until his breathing slowed.

“It’s Da,” he said, gulping at the air. “We need your help. He’s hurt.”

“Tommy’s had an accident?”       

Jack nodded slowly, his breathing almost back to normal.

Harriet looked back at the chalkboard. The lesson was nearly over anyway. “Where is he?”

“At your cottage with Miss Agatha.”

“Alright Jack, I’m coming.” Harriet picked her duffel bag from the floor and quickly packed the papers in the bag. As the children chatted excitedly, she raised her voice. “Rehearsals start again next week. You may all go early today.”

The children pushed back the desks with alacrity. Taking Jack by the hand, Harriet stepped into the blazing sunlight. “We’ll take Isabelle and the cart, we’ll get there more quickly.”

Jack gave her a watery smile. The children loved the old pony that Harriet left every day to crop grass behind the school house. It was the work of the moment to hitch Isabelle to the cart and set her off down the hill into Brambridge.

The door to the small whitewashed cottage that she shared with her aunt stood partially open. A hubbub of voices emanated from within. Leaving Isabelle hitched to the cart, Harriet swung Jack to the ground and hurried up the small garden path to the open door. The door opened further as she stepped under the thatch.

“Thank goodness you came quickly.” Agatha stood back to let her in. “Janey won’t allow anybody else to touch Tommy. And I cannot get Peggy to stop crying.”

Harriet stepped further into the room that served as their kitchen, parlor, dining room and morning room. Tommy lay by the fire that had been stoked into roaring flames. His jerkin and short fishermen’s trousers were wet through. Peggy, his wife, sat in a low chair by the fire, sniffing. Janey, Harriet’s friend, and Peggy and Tommy’s daughter, knelt at her father’s side holding a piece of cloth to his shoulder.

“What happened?” Harriet said in her best calm, schoolteacher voice above the sniffing as she fixed her gaze on Tommy. Bright red drops of blood dripped from his shoulder onto the floor.

“Sword gash.” Bill Standish, the village blacksmith, stopped peering through the low window at the kitchen sink and turned his massive form to face her. Glancing back through the window, he reached up and twitched the lace curtains close together.

“There aren’t many people with swords in Brambridge,” Agatha said calmly, looking at Tommy crumpled in a heap on the floor.

“No.”

Still weeping, Peggy caught hold of Harriet’s hand. “He was on the
Rocket
. He says they took boarders. He says he was in a
fight
.”

Harriet blinked. Janey hadn’t mentioned that the
Rocket
was sailing again. Harriet had thought it all had stopped when James disappeared.

I always come back for you.
No, he didn’t, he hadn’t.

“Why did you come here?” She pulled back her hand and stared at Bill.

“Because Rebecca Denys, the only woman who can treat him, is too far away.” Bill pointed a thumb at Janey. “And she said you would know what to do.”

Janey nodded. “You were telling me the other day about su…su—“

“Suppurating wounds.” Harriet shook her head, resisting the urge to wring her hands. “I’ve only read about this in the circulars,” she protested.

Bill carried on as if he hadn’t heard.  “I need him sewn up. I need it to look as good as new so that he won’t soak through his shirt.” He rolled his massive shoulders as he stared at her.

“I can’t do that!” Harriet stepped back towards the door. “He’s not a piece of cloth.” Didn’t they know she was terrible at sewing?

“If you don’t do it, he’ll be taken away.”

“What? Why?”

“Because someone told old Lord Stanton before he died that the
Rocket
was operating again, and he set a custom’s man onto our tail.”

Agatha’s face paled. “You mean that a riding officer may come here?”

Bill shrugged and looked out of the window again as his jaw hardened. “I don’t know who saw us. Half the village probably.” He pointed his thumb at Tommy. “He’s the worst hurt. Someone in the village told the riding officer about the
Rocket
. Our boarders were custom’s men, every last one of them, despite their ragged clothes.”

Harriet gulped. Reaching over the low chair by the fire, she opened her aunt’s sewing box. Inside, a range of needles and threads were jumbled onto a pin cushion, flanked by a roll of hessian. She lifted the hessian out and unrolled it, letting a long piece of embroidery drop out. A long shiny needle, scissors and a silver knife pushed into woven parts of the hessian remained. She pulled the long needle out, and with trembling hands, unthreaded the white thread that hung from its tip, and dropped the needle into the ashes of the fire. “Have you any brandy?” She stared at Bill.

“Barrels of the stuff.”

“Get us some now.”

He was back within minutes with a small glass bottle that held an amber liquid that he waved between Agatha and Harriet. “Cask strength. The Frenchies have added caramel to give it color.”

Agatha made no move to take it. “Are you sure you want to do this, Harriet?” she asked, worry filling her voice. Harriet stepped to the sink and washed her hands slowly in the bowl of fresh water.

Bill swung the bottle back to Harriet. “Come on, I did a good deal for it, the Frogs will do anything for British wares at the moment.”

Harriet paused and dried her hands. “What would you do if you were me?” she asked Agatha. Her aunt had the most to lose if they were found.

Agatha glanced at a letter sitting on the kitchen table. “I would continue,” she said quietly.

Conscious of the time, Harriet let go of her towel and reached out and gripped the bottle by its neck. Bill waited, his expression impassive. She took a deep breath. Her arms felt like jelly and every time she tried to focus on the needle in the fire, she could barely pick it out. How could she do this if she couldn’t see or sew straight?

“Have confidence, Harriet,” Agatha murmured.

A core of panic boiled in Harriet’s stomach. The only time she felt completely confident was when she was acting. Then she could be anyone she wanted to be. What would Kean, her hero, do? She shook her head. It wasn’t a case of what the famous London actor would do. It was about what the character would do. Her eyes focused on the needle as a strength surged into her fingers. She gently pushed Peggy out of the way and pulled Agatha in.

“You take his head, Aunt.” She pointed to Bill. “And you, foul blacksmith, take you his arm.” A crash of thunder resounded outside. A small smile crossed her lips—a spring storm, even the elements were conspiring to help her. Bill stared at her and didn’t move. Harriet sighed. Some people just didn’t appreciate theatre. “Bill, grab his arm please.”

She knelt on the floor and eyed the bottle of brandy. Without pausing to think, she dashed half onto Tommy’s shoulder. The injured man writhed and woke with a loud scream.

Agatha tightened her grip as Bill stopped Tommy’s head from thrashing from side to side.

“What are you doing to him?” Peggy began a fresh bout of weeping.

“Apparently it prevents infection.” Harriet gingerly removed the needle from the fire, wincing as the hot steel burned her hand. She pulled a wind of black thread from the sewing box and rethreaded the quickly cooling needle.

Harriet pulled back the ragged shirt around Tommy’s shoulders and brandy dripped from the wound revealing the sliced edges. The sabre must have been sharp. As the full extent of the wound was revealed, Peggy’s weeping intensified, and Tommy struggled awake.

“What’s the matter with her? Why is she crying?” he asked.

“Shhh.” Bringing the bottle of brandy to his lips, she poured a generous slug into Tommy’s mouth before she handed it to Peggy. Her sobs were beginning to get on Harriet’s nerves.      

“If you don’t stop crying, I’m going to have to ask you to step outside into the dark and the wet.” Harriet stretched her fingers; the strength lent by the theatrical spirit was ebbing away from her. Peggy lifted her apron to her face and stifled her cries. Janey patted her mother on the shoulder and shushed her gently.

“Thank you.” Biting her tongue between her teeth, Harriet assessed the wound again. She would start at the collarbone and work towards the armpit where the gash gaped the most. Risking a quick look at Agatha and Bill, who both stared steadfastly at Tommy, she took a deep breath and, pinching together the skin, readied her needle.