Suki, p.46
Suki, page 46
‘They’m dressing for the Assembly Rooms.’
‘Good riddance to ’em,’ Ariadne hissed, signing her name with a flourish. ‘There! ’Tis done. Now write your letter before Hepzibah comes to spy on us.’
So Suki set herself to composition.
I did not find Captain Jack, but I knows he is returned on account of his ship came in this morning which I have seen. Should he come to Twerton for Beau, which I will pay you for the fodder so soon as I am payed by Lady Bradbury, would you be so kind as to tell him where I am, which is at this address until Thursday morning and thereafter in Cavendish Square number 16 in London. I hopes my father continues well and he don’t have no further contree-toms.
Once the letter had been handed over to the post boy, she felt cast down again, for there was so much to remind her of Bristol and her darling. There were gallants everywhere, strolling about in his easy, loose-limbed way, or sprawling in the coffee houses enjoying their tobacco, and, on her way back to Queen Square, she passed the Bristol coach as the last travellers were climbing aboard and wished with all her heart that she had the freedom to join them.
But the days passed and there was no time for anything except work. She woke every morning buoyed up by the hope that this could be the day when she would slip away and look for him, and fell into her truckle bed every night exhausted and disappointed. Ariadne kept to her room and her silence, but she rang for her every minute of the day, sending her to the milliner to bring back off-cuts of the materials she’d chosen or to make arrangements for fittings, fussing over trimmings, ordering slippers, buttons, ribbons, feathers.
‘I must have perfection,’ she said when Suki sighed. ‘You’ll not deny me that, surely. This could be the last service you will do me. ’Tis little enough when you think how Melissa is disporting herself.’
Which was true enough, for the bride had the entire household in uproar, with gowns to be fitted, a new necklace of fine pearls to be admired, special meals to be cooked to accommodate her growing appetite, wedding lists perused and the wedding breakfast chosen dish by dish in consultation with the cook and her mother, for, as she explained — entirely unnecessarily since they were both well aware of it — ‘my husband has the most delicate constitution and must not be put to the least inconvenience.’
And as if all this fussing over food and clothes weren’t bad enough, Lady Bradbury was determined that before she returned to London every single one of her Bath acquaintances should know of her daughter’s great triumph, so the family attended every important ball, gave elaborate dinner parties every afternoon and even held a public breakfast, in the Harrison Rooms no less, as though they were gentry born. And, of course, William’s presence was required in the drawing room before and after every event, so that his progress could be displayed and applauded.
‘Never a minute’s peace in this house,’ the cook complained, thumping her mixing bowl down on the table with displeasure. ‘Why she got to have a dish of coddled eggs in the middle of the afternoon I cannot imagine. I shall be glad when we all go back to London again and can have this wedding over an’ done with.’ Suki agreed with her wholeheartedly.
‘The week’s nearly up,’ she whispered to Ariadne as she helped her undress on Tuesday night, ‘an’ I’ve not heard a word from Farmer Lambton, nor gone to Bristol.’
‘’Tis my last fitting tomorrow,’ Ariadne whispered back.
She thinks of nothing save gowns and ribbons, Suki thought sadly, whilst I’m a-wondering if my lover is alive or dead, and there’m no way I can find the truth on’t.
But the very next morning a letter arrived from Twerton addressed to Miss Brown. She paid the post boy with trembling hands and took William and the letter to the nursery, her heart leaping with hope. At last! Now she would know. Had he gone to Twerton for that horse of his? Oh he must’ve done. And if he had, he’d be coming to Queen Square to find her. Maybe that very morning. She tore the seal, bright-eyed with expectation.
It was a flat, dull, disappointing letter. Captain Jack had not arrived to collect his horse, which was in fine fettle. Her father was well. Her mother sent her fondest love to her and to William. ‘There is’, Farmer Lambton wrote at the end of the first page, ‘only one thing left to say.’
Suki couldn’t think of anything at all, except her misery at his lack of news, but she turned over the page to read what it was.
Since my dear wife’s death, I have been giving thought to what is to become of the farm, which needs a woman’s presence and a woman’s care. I hope I do not trouble you too much if I say that it do seem to me that ’tis possible that your lover may not return to you, there being many hazards at sea and you having heard no word of him. Had he returned on the ship you saw, I am certain he would have met with you or come to the farm in search of his horse. That being the state of affairs at present which, believe me, I hope may change to your better satisfaction, I have a proposition to put to you which I hope will, if not meet with your approval, not displease.
I have asked your father for your hand in marriage. He is agreeable to it and said I might broach the matter when I wrote this letter. I do not expect an answer immediately for this is naturally a matter that you must consider carefully and I know you are not one to act on the gad.
Howsomever, I urge you to consider the advantages. The farm is known to you, on which account the running of it would present no difficulty. You are young and strong. The baby could be farmed here while you are still his nurse, should you and the Bradburys wish it. You would be near your father should he need your care. You have my assurance that I would be a considerate husband to you.
You would want for nothing.
Your Obedient Servant,
Constant Lambton
She didn’t know whether to laugh or cry and in the end did both, to William’s consternation. How could she possibly answer such a letter? Oh, the foolish, foolish man! But then she remembered that odd moment in the kitchen when they’d looked at one another and been caught up in all the wrong emotions. Or had she imagined it? No. She was sure she hadn’t. It had happened and happened to them both. And yet he’d never referred to it, either then or now. Oh, how confusing this was. And what a long time ’twould be before she could talk to Ariadne about it and hear what she had to say.
Ariadne was trenchant. ‘You’ll not agree to it,’ she said, so annoyed by the news that she forgot to whisper.
Suki had been fluctuating all week between a determined hope that she would find her lover again, somehow or other, and that all would be well, and a growing and unhappy fear that he was lost to her, either at sea or through sickness, or maybe even through loss of love, which was the worst and deepest misery of all. ‘He offers me a home,’ she said, ‘and if I don’t find Captain jack, I shall need a home of sorts, if I’m to keep my William.’ ’Twas uncommon hard to be torn between your baby and your lover, but that seemed to be the size of it.
‘But you don’t love him.’
‘I like un well enough.’
‘Liking ain’t love,’ Ariadne said firmly. ‘You mustn’t do it.’
‘I’ll write an’ tell un I’m considerin’ it,’ Suki temporised. ’Twill wait till after this wedding, when I might get a chance to visit Bristol and see Mr Wenham. There’s no need to rush. He said so.’
Ariadne wondered whether she should say something comforting because it was plain that Suki was beginning to doubt whether she would see her lover again, which was an uncommon painful state to be in, as she knew only too well, but at that moment they heard the thump of footsteps on the landing and Sir George bellowing, so their conversation had to stop.
‘’Od’s teeth!’ the gentleman roared. ‘Hermione! Where are you? Such news!’
Lady Bradbury was in Melissa’s room helping her to decide between a pair of white satin slippers and an identical pair in cream. ‘What’s amiss?’ she said calmly, opening the door to him.
He had a billet in his hand and waved it at her. ‘Such news,’ he said happily.
‘Another addition to the guest list,’ she said. ‘I do wish people would not leave things to the last moment. Who is it this time?’
‘Guest list,’ he bellowed. ‘There’s more to life than guest lists. This is trade, ma’am. Trade. Our merchantman is back from Lisbon and we’ve made a splendid profit. Quite splendid. I have it first-hand from Sir Humphrey. How say you to that?’
‘Had he no message for me?’ Melissa asked petulantly.
The question puzzled her father. ‘What message should he have, dammit? You’re to be married a Wednesday.’
‘Which is why,’ Lady Bradbury told him acidly, ‘a wedding list is of some consequence.’
Sir George was too busy planning his return journey to pay attention to such a puny barb. ‘We will start at first light,’ he declared. ‘We three will travel in the coach and four with Ariadne and the goods and household shall take the wagon. We’ll harness six horses to the wagon and then we shall be well provided for.’
‘I trust we shall not leave too early,’ Lady Bradbury demurred.
‘Arabella tells me there are highwaymen abroad. Two coaches were robbed on the new road, only last week. Would we not be wise, my love, to wait until full daylight?’
Sir George was scathing. ‘Are we old women, to be frightened of a shadow? Tush wife, where’s your courage?’
‘We do have a bride to consider,’ Hermione said. ‘You would not wish her to be discommoded on her way to her wedding. ’Twould be heartless.’
His answer was immediate and dismissive. ‘We will travel the old road by way of Laycock. ’Twill be safe enough there, in all conscience, even for a bride.’ Then he was off down the stairs, roaring for Jessup.
‘I shall be so glad to be married, Mamma,’ Melissa said.
The next day dawned bold as summer and bright with sunshine. Sir George was up earlier than his servants, and seemed to be everywhere at once, supervising the packing, checking the horses, bellowing at Barnaby and chivvying his womenfolk.
‘I’ve a mind to make you travel in the cart,’ he told Ariadne, half teasing, half serious. ‘You’d soon be cured of all your nonsense in that event.’ But she climbed into the coach as silent as ever, and didn’t look at him.
‘You two had best sit facing me,’ Lady Bradbury said, as Melissa came yawning from the house to join her sister. ‘There is room for my dear Benjy beside me.’
That arrangement didn’t satisfy Sir George at all. ‘’Od’s teeth!’ he roared. ‘I’ll not have that cur upon the seat. The floor is good enough for dogs, ma’am.’
‘You are to be spurned, I fear, poor dumb creature that you are,’ Hermione said, lifting her corpulent animal and settling him upon the floor.
But that didn’t please her loquacious daughter. ‘Pray do sit the horrid creature somewhere else, Mamma. If ’twere to shit, my petticoat would bear the brunt. You know how unreliable it is. Let it sit in the comer next to Ariadne. She’ll not mind, being she can’t speak and she ain’t the bride.’
As she climbed reluctantly into the open cart with William on her hip, Suki glanced across at Sir George, irritated by his plump face and his plump complacence. He moves us all about, she thought, whenever he feels like it, all on the gad and with no thought that we might have opinions on the matter, that there might be people we don’t want to leave behind. Then it occurred to her that this was the first time she’d been near him since that awful morning when she’d hit him, and now they were to spend two and half days travelling together. What if he were to see her again at one of their overnight stops and recognise her?
But they were all settled and ready for the off and he didn’t seem to be looking at her, or at anybody else if it came to that, so maybe he’d forgotten. Jessup climbed up beside the postilion, and their journey began, up the slow hill to Bath Easton, leaving the city behind. Rich men have short memories when it comes to favours asked of serving girls, she thought, and Ariadne is always saying that women are less than cattle to him. But he shouldn’t be dragging me away from Bristol all the same.
After a few miles, William became fractious and began to grizzle and complain, as he always did when he travelled anywhere. And really the way the cart rocked and juddered, she couldn’t blame him. By the time they reached London, they would all be covered in bruises from head to toe. Fortunately, their lead horse cast a shoe outside a village called Box, so they had to stop and wait while the limping animal was led off to the nearest smithy. ‘We will take the air while we may,’ Sir George decreed. So they all climbed obediently from coach and cart and stood about uncomfortably on the uneven road. This time Sir George looked straight at her and obviously didn’t have the faintest idea who she was. Which was rather a relief.
Presently, Lady Bradbury and Melissa took a short promenade, dragging the unfortunate Benjy behind them like a grunting cushion, but Suki and Ariadne sat on a tussock of rough grass with their backs against a dry stone wall while William amused himself plucking the stone crop. The road was lonely and silent, save for the occasional birdsong, and now Suki could understand her mistress’s fear of attack, and see that the promenade was a nervous, watchful business and entailed much craning of necks and many abrupt turns. There was some sense of security inside their vehicles, but out in the open they all felt exposed and vulnerable. She was relieved when horse and postilion returned and the journey could continue, uncomfortable though it was.
At ten o’clock they crossed a low stone bridge over a brook and came to a little old-fashioned village called Laycock, where the houses were a higgledy-piggledy collection, small and low and much in need of repair. As they trundled through a narrow street, past the glow of the smithy and an ancient inn where two mud-spattered horses stood waiting, Sir George stuck his red face out of the window and told the coachman to stop at the Red Lion.
‘We will take breakfast here,’ he said. ‘Rest the horses, Sam. Bowden Hill ain’t a jaunt for an empty stomach.’
The Red Lion was a modern building, set right on the edge of the village. It was three stories high and made of brick, with a fine classical balance about it, seven windows to each floor, three on the central bay and two on either side, and all finely graded and neatly curtained. Behind it was a courtyard shaded by a fine horse-chestnut tree, where there was a new pump for watering the horses and very fine stables. Inside it was still old-fashioned, with low beams overhead and a great stone hearth at the far end of the room. But they served a good strong cider in the servants hall and the food was wholesome.
The postilion was too full of gloom to eat well. ‘Time to take our ease when we’m atop of Bowden Hill,’ he said dourly. ‘Why we couldn’t’ve took the new road, I cannot imagine. But there ’tis. You can’t tell ‘em nothing, not that lot. I hopes they has the good sense to walk up the hill.’
‘I shall speak to Sir George about it,’ Jessup promised.
At the foot of the hill, the coach and cart both stopped and Sir George and Jessup got out to discuss conditions with the coachman while the household waited. Warblers were singing shrilly in the reeds beside the river and the sky was as blue as a thrush’s egg.
‘’Tis a fine fair day,’ Sir George said when he came back to his womenfolk, ‘so we will walk to help the horses.’
‘My love!’ Hermione protested. ‘Our shoes will be worn to shreds! Have you considered the distance?’
‘Shoes!’ he said. ‘’Od’s teeth. Are we to consider shoes? If you wish to be at the White Hart by nightfall, you were well to do as I say.’
‘I shall be ill!’ she said leaning back in her seat and clutching her kerchief to her bosom. ‘Have you no care for the delicacy of my constitution?’
He snorted and scowled, but eventually gave way. ‘Very well, ma’am,’ he said. ‘Stay where you are, ma’am, and if we are forced to travel by night in consequence, we shall know whose folly to blame.’
She protested his heartlessness, but stayed in the coach, and so did Benjy, who was snoring in an evil-smelling heap at her feet. But everybody else got out or down, and prepared to climb. And a long hard climb it was, with the coachman leading the horses, up and up and further and further away from civilisation, between dense trees that creaked and whispered ominously, and over ruts and hollows hardened by sunshine and brutal to the feet. Halfway up, they passed a solitary farmhouse, settled under the rim of the road, and the farmer came to the gate to touch his cap to Sir George and wish them good day. Then they toiled on past a bend in the road and the farm was lost to view among the trees. It was very hot and they were all footsore, and William grew heavier by the minute. Sir George walked ahead of his womenfolk, with Jessup and the coachman, the postilion walked with his horses, but Ariadne and Melissa and Suki dropped further and further behind.
‘How far we shall see once we’re at the top,’ Suki said to encourage her panting companions. At that moment, she could see very little except the road under her feet and a few inches of foliage on either side of her.
‘’Tis a view I could well do without,’ Melissa grumbled. ‘It takes a deal too much effort.’ She was watching the road as she spoke, so Ariadne was able to glance at Suki and smile.
‘We shall soon be there,’ Suki said, returning the smile. There was a sudden sharp noise behind her, and she turned her head to see a black shape running out of the trees towards them. Then, almost before she had time to realise how frightened she was, three more figures followed the first. Four men, in black and green, masked men brandishing pistols and shouting in loud harsh voices, dark threatening men crouching under the branches and leaping into the road. Highwaymen!
The first caught Ariadne about the neck and had his pistol pressed into her side before she could scream, the second seized Melissa with such force that she fell, squealing like a stuck pig. At that, Sir George turned and began to run down the hill.
