An Incomplete Revenge (32 page)

Paishey ran to her husband’s side, and as others came closer, seeing the gypsy remove his clothes above the waist and begin to douse himself with water, Webb turned to his wife.

“I’ve got to find him. Give me your shawl.”

Paishey pulled the shawl from her shoulders, immersed it in a bucket of water, and wrapped it, sopping, around her husband’s upper body. It was then that Webb pulled off his hat. Maisie saw Fred Yeoman, who was standing nearby, put a hand to his mouth. Webb wasted no time; he held his wife’s hand in his for a second and then ran into the holocaust.

No one spoke or shouted, but a muttering began between the villagers as Fred turned first to one, then to another.

“Did you see that? Wasn’t that Pim Martin?”

“I didn’t want to say anything, thought I was seeing things.” “Looked for all the world like Jacob.”

“It was him, I know it was.”

“No, couldn’t have been. He’s been dead all these years.”

In the distance, the relentless ringing of the fire tender’s bell could now be heard coming closer, as the people came together to wait for Pim Martin to walk from the burning home of the man whom, they knew, he would himself have murdered, if he could. No movement was visible as the flames bucked and leaped from floor to floor, and some of the onlookers screamed as the reverberation of a falling beam echoed through the house.

“They’ll both be dead. The man was mad to go in, mad.”

Two fire tenders screeched to a halt, their red livery reflecting another eruption of flames from the roof. Maisie and the butler
spoke to the fireman in charge, as others pulled hoses and dug in their heels to brace against the force of water that cannoned out toward the eye of the fire. And still Paishey waited, as close as she could to the door through which her husband had entered the house. She neither keened nor cried but waited with her shoulders back, a vigil for her husband until he returned. Soon others gathered around her, both locals and outsiders, waiting, waiting to see if the man they knew only as Webb would walk from the blaze.

“I can hear coughing,” a fireman shouted back to the chief.

Paishey called out, the first words she had spoken since her husband ran into the mansion. “Webb, come back to me, come back to me, Webb. I’n be waiting for you, my Webb. I’n be waiting here for you.”

And then they saw him, the shawl gone, his torso seared with charcoal and dripping with black heat, one hand shielding his eyes, the other dragging behind him, by the scruff of his neck, the smoldering body of Alfred Sandermere.

“Webb!” Paishey was first to his side, as he leaned forward and retched, only letting go of Sandermere when Fred Yeoman touched him on the arm and said, “It’s alright, we’ve got him now. It’s alright, lad.”

The gypsy men pushed forward to claim Webb, dousing him with water again and again, pulling him away from the smoke toward the air beyond the boundary of the fire’s breath. Two firemen placed Sandermere on a stretcher and took him back, close to the place where the gypsies circled around Webb at the bottom of the hill. Soon another bell was ringing and an ambulance approached, followed by the doctor.

Maisie made her way over to the gypsies. “Is he alright? How does he breathe?”

Paishey looked up. “He’n be safe, now, miss. Webb’s breathing alright, and we’ll look after the burns.” She pulled a pot of deep green cream from a pocket in her skirt. “Beulah’s mixture.”

Maisie nodded, knowing the people who had come together to fight the fire would now disperse to their tribes, would gather to be with their own. She moved across to the place where Sandermere was being treated. “Can I help?”

The doctor glanced at her, as he held up a syringe ready to inject painkilling morphine into Sandermere’s body, for the man’s deep mucus-filled moaning told of his distress.

“I was a nurse in the war, in France.”

“Good, then you’ll have seen your share of burns. I need your help to get him stable before he’s taken to Pembury Hospital. Right, then, let’s get on with it—my instruments and that swab.”

The years contracted as Maisie doused her hands with disinfectant from the physician’s case, placed a spare mask across her mouth and nose, and laid out the exact instruments that would be needed. Using forceps, she picked up a swab, snapping the instrument into the palm of the doctor’s hand as she prepared another swab, then held scissors ready.

“Like riding a bike, isn’t it? It all comes back to you when you need it.” The doctor wrinkled his nose to keep his spectacles from sliding down, and Maisie reached across to push them back up again.

She took the soiled swab and handed him the scissors. She remembered the humor, the quips and jokes leveled at death, as he did his work at the same time as the casualty clearing station doctors. And she remembered Simon, that final day working with him, and his last words when shells began to rain down on the operating tent as they tried to save the life of another soldier: “Let’s get on with it.”

LATER, WHEN THE
ambulance had left and the gypsies had made their way up the hill, across the fields, and back to their clearing, Maisie found Billy among the Londoners trudging to the hopper huts.

“I thought we’d lost you, Miss. I’m glad to see you.”

“You too.”

“What about that for a turnup, eh? There’s that Webb, showin’ them all who ’e is. You should ’ave ’eard ’em, talkin’ about it.”

“I’m sure they were.”

“They’re terrified of what might ’appen now. There was talk of a meetin’ tonight, at the inn. They want to get everyone together, to work out what to say to Webb when ’e comes. They know ’e’ll come for ’em.”

Maisie stopped. “Then that’s where I’ll go, to the inn.”

“Miss, you’re all spent. Look at you, you’re wore out. You can sort them out tomorrow, they’ve been haunted this long.”

She shook her head. “No, it’s time. They know about Pim now—well, they’ve likely known all along, if truth be told, but now they have proof. And they know the piper must be paid. They have to tell him, to his face, what happened.”

CLAIMING HER MOTOR
car, Maisie used a clean handkerchief to wipe her hands and face, then started the engine and drove toward the farm, going as far as she could on four wheels before she had to continue on toward the gypsy camp on foot.

Webb was resting at the edge of the clearing where the air was fresh with a crisp evening breeze that might help clear his lungs. Paishey sat with him, with Boosul on her lap, and together they watched Maisie approach. She saw Beulah’s caravan moved to one side, farther away from the others, for the coffin containing her body rested within. The lurcher lay on the steps and did not stir.

“You were brave, Webb. You risked your life for a man you have every reason to despise.”

He nodded. “I just couldn’t stand there and do nothing to help him.”

“You are hurt?”

“Not as badly as it seemed. Some skin singed, and my lungs are sore, but that will go in time.” He looked at his wife and his daughter, then back at Maisie. “Will he live?”

“The doctor was not hopeful. The burns are extensive, and the risk of infection high. He will be drugged for days, for weeks to come, if he survives.”

“It may be a small mercy, then, that my family perished. That they did not live with such pain.”

A silence descended between them, the only sounds a gentle nickering to be heard, as horses grazed nearby, and a gypsy meal being prepared in the clearing.

“They know who you are, Webb.”

“Yes. The hat has served me well, and the passing years have done their camouflage work on my face, though it seems I look more like my father than I thought, except for the hair. I have come to work here for many a season and have been taken for nothing more than the gypsy they saw me to be.”

“It’s like seeing someone you know in a different milieu. You don’t recognize him because you don’t expect to see him in a certain place.”

Webb shook his head. “I wonder what will happen now?” He coughed, wincing and clasping his chest.

“I thought you would want to know that there is to be a meeting in the village tonight, at the inn.”

“Ah, they don’t know what to do about me.”

Maisie came to her feet. “I’ll be there, Webb. I want to hear what they say, and I want them to explain themselves, to tell what happened on the night of the Zeppelin raid. Just as you told me, in your words, how you came back here, so I want to hear their story.” She turned to stroke a horse who had come close in search of a treat before she spoke again. “If you are well enough to come to the inn, I would have thought that you might want to hear their story too. It is, after all, part of your past.”

Webb looked at Paishey, and she smiled. “If I’m there, I’m there,” he said. “That’s how it is.”

Maisie looked across toward Beulah’s vardo. “When will she be buried?”

“On Tuesday. The word’s gone out, and I’ve seen the vicar, the one who comes to the village from Horsmonden. She’ll be buried in the churchyard, with my people.”

“Then back here for the afterwards?”

Webb nodded. “It’s not as if Sandermere will be here to complain about a bit of a singe on his field, is it?”

MAISIE PARKED THE
MG close to the church and watched as villagers came alone and in pairs to the inn. Even though the evening was not cold, each and every one was wrapped as if winter’s breath had settled upon the community and their bones had been touched by a sliver of ice. When those whom she knew had arrived, Maisie left the MG and walked across to the waste ground opposite. Gone was the chill of her earlier visit, the specter of the terrible night when the Zeppelin came and the van Maartens became the crucible who paid the ultimate price.

Pulling her collar up around her neck, she walked at an unhurried pace toward the inn. Was it on a night like this that the Zeppelin came over, its low drone lingering above the village? Had a light—perhaps embers from the smithy’s fire—caught the enemy’s attention, providing a new target? Here, in a place where sleep evaded those who had just learned that their sons were dead, Wealden boys killed on a foreign field and never to return home again, the Zeppelin had brought the war to a village in England.

She lingered for a moment or two outside the inn, looking through the ancient diamond-paned glass as the villagers came together, some seated, some standing at the bar. Fred Yeoman leaned across, resting his elbow on the counter, with his sleeves rolled up
and a cloth in his hand that he absentmindedly drew back and forth across the wood as he spoke. From a seat next to the low inglenook fireplace surrounded with shining horse brasses, a man raised his hand to Yeoman and called out above the throng, loud enough for Maisie to hear, “Better get on with it, Fred. There’s a lot of talk to be done tonight.” Maisie took a deep breath, rested her fingers on the door handle for a moment, and entered the inn.

At first she was hardly noticed, then a woman glanced around to see who had joined them, and Fred Yeoman looked up from the counter, ready to pour another half-pint. The woman nudged her husband, who turned, and soon the hubbub of conversation died. The innkeeper broke the silence.

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like to sit in the residents’ room, Miss Dobbs?”

She shook her head. “No, thank you, Mr. Yeoman. But I would like a half-pint of the Harveys ale, if you please.” She pulled off her jacket, a sign that she was staying, and looked around the bar. A man next to the counter stepped away and held out his hand toward a stool. She inclined her head and stepped forward, thanking the man for giving up his seat. Fred placed the frothy brew in front of Maisie, which she sipped before turning around. All eyes were upon her, the outsider.

She set down her glass and looked again at the villagers, weighing her words with care. She had no need to raise her voice; the crackle and spit of a fire in the inglenook was the only sound to punctuate her words. “You’ve all seen me in this village, and you know I’m working for the company involved in negotiations to purchase the brickworks and the estate. And you know by now that my interest has been in the crimes, and more importantly, the fires that have occurred in this village.”

Her words were met with silence. One man shuffled his feet, only to be met with a scornful look from his wife, who crossed her arms and turned away from him. Maisie continued.

“Heronsdene is a beautiful village, and I believe you are all good people.” Again she paused, choosing her words with care. “But a secret cannot be kept forever—”

At that moment the door opened, and it appeared to Maisie that every single man and woman in the room drew breath as the man they had known before the fire only as Webb, the traveling gypsy, came into the bar. Maisie nodded and smiled, holding out her hand to the seat just vacated next to her. No one attempted to leave. No one made an excuse to depart, or coughed, or made a noise.

Webb joined Maisie and looked around the room, as if to remember every single face and to torment each villager with his silence.

“I was just saying,” said Maisie, her voice low, “that a secret cannot be kept forever.”

Webb cleared his throat to speak, but instead nodded to Maisie, who continued addressing those assembled.

“You came together this evening to decide what to do about this man, whom you knew as Pim Martin when he was a boy. He was from a family you understood to be of Dutch blood until the night of the Zeppelin raid, when you came to sense the power of doubt. Will anyone speak to this man of that night?”

There was silence for a moment. Then a woman began to sob and was comforted by Mrs. Pendle. One man stood as if to leave, but was stopped by another, who laid his hand on the man’s shoulder and shook his head.

Maisie spoke again. “Pim Martin went to war as a boy. He fought for his country, as did the other sons of Heronsdene. This man, then barely fourteen years of age, saw death of a most terrible kind—” Her words caught in her throat, as she banished images of the war from her mind. “Then he came home to . . . nothing.” She paused. “So I ask again—will anyone speak to this man of that night?”

Now the silence in the room was interwoven by more sobbing. Maisie watched one woman repeatedly punch her knees with her fist, as if to strike feeling into limbs that were otherwise numb.