Haggard (40 page)

Alice's mouth had fallen slightly open. 'Do you really discuss things like that?'

'What would you have us discuss?'

She made a helpless gesture with her whip. Things that matter. For God's sake, if we were not fighting Napoleon we would be fighting somebody else. Has there ever been a year when the English were not fighting somebody? You prate about freedom. What about those poor souls down the mine? Will you give them their freedom, when you inherit? What about the people Father is about to enslave in his factory? You won't raise a finger to stop him.'

'Now that doesn't make sense,' he protested. 'If I no longer mine the coal, not only will our wealth, yours as much as mine, Alice, diminish, but those people will merely be put out to starve. You'd not have that happen? And as I said, I cannot believe the idea of the factory is a bad thing. It will guarantee employment for these poor creatures.'

'Poor creatures?' she cried. 'You speak of them as if they were a different species. They are men and women, like us. It is not their fault they were born poor.'

'But there you have it,' he argued seriously. They
were
bom poor. I do not know who decided that. But it was so
decided. And you and I were born
rich. It is our business to maintain and if possible increase our wealth, that in the spending of it all may benefit. It would do no one any good at all for us to attempt to lower ourselves to the level of the poorest person in the kingdom. There would just be wholesale starvation.'

'And what of raising them to our level?'

'A Utopian dream,' he smiled, it is not possible. Were they capable of being so raised, they would have accomplished as much by themselves over the years, surely.'

Alice Haggard turned her horse without replying, flicked her whip to send the animal galloping into the hills. John Haggard hastily kicked his own mount into following, cramming his tall hat on to his head. 'Wait,' he shouted. 'You are leaving the valley.'

She looked over her shoulder. 'Afraid?'

Away she charged, through t
he hills and out the other side,
crossing the turnpike, which hereabouts made a loop before entering the next village, galloping across a succession of fields, taking the stiles in superb style, red hair flowing behind, slowing only to enter the wood beyond, twisting in the saddle to avoid the branches, occasionally looking over her shoulder to make sure he was following. But she knew where she was going, while John was utterly lost; he had never ventured from Derleth on horseback before.

The trees thinned, and there was another field, and on the far side a lane, and hard by the lane a trim little cottage, smoke issuing from the chimney, and with roses creeping up the wall. The very epitome of rural England, John thought, as he caught her up, for she was pulling her horse to a halt.

This is very beautiful,' he said.

She glanced at him, urged her horse once again forward, trotted across the field and on to the road, turned down the little path leading to the cottage. Instantly the front door was thrown open, and John Haggard stared in amazement at the woman who stood there, the gamine-like features, hardly touched by lines, although he reckoned she could not be less than forty years old, t
he still slender body, the auburn
hair, exactly the same colour as Alice's, only slightly streaked with grey.

Alice was already dismounting, running up the path to embrace the woman. She looked over her shoulder. 'Get down, John,' she said. 'Get down, sir. I'd have you meet my mother.'

John Haggard dismounted more slowly, felt the gravel crunching under his boots. He continued to stare at the woman, his brain tumbling as he took off his hat. He could feel the heat in his cheeks, and did not know what to do with his hands.

Emma had given her daughter a quick interrogatory look, and received a brief nod. Now she came forward. 'You'll be John,' she said. 'Alice has told me a deal about you.'

John's turn to glance at Alice,
‘I
. . . I had supposed you dead, ma'am.'

'Is that what your father says of me?'

'Why, no. My father has never spoken of you. But neither has Alice.'

She nodded. 'My decision. She will have to tell us both why she has spoken of me now.' She stretched out her arms. 'Will you not at least take my hand?'

John slowly extended his own arms, held her fingers; they were cool and dry.
‘I
am totally confused.'

Then come inside.' She released him, led him towards the open door. Fr
om within he could hear the gentl
e murmur of plucking strings and rustling cloth. He ducked his head, entered the front room of the cottage, gazed at the three people who sat there, now abandoning their looms to get up.

‘I’
d have you meet my husband, Harry Bold,' Emma said.

The man was short and thickset, twice the size of his wife although he only came to her shoulder. His hair and beard were black speckled with grey. His eyes were watchful, but not hostile. John shook hands.

'My son, Tim.'

A copy of his father, perhaps a year older than himself, John estimated.

'And my daughter Meg.'

John turned, hand outstretched, and found his mouth opening. Margaret Bold was equally a copy of her mother, without any of the off-putting cragginess of the Haggards, such as afflicted Alice. Here was pure beauty, not like the portrait he possessed of
his
mother, where the very perfection of the features had suggested coldness, but in the warmth of her rounded chin, her short nose, her wide mouth, her sparkling blue eyes. And like both her mother and his sister, she had wavy auburn hair, loose and stretching almost to her waist.

But Alice is
her
sister as well, he realised with a start of dismay. And looked around him in amazement. The people were simply if cleanly dressed—the women wore gowns with aprons an
d slippers, their bodices modestl
y high necked—as was the cottage simply furnished.

'He's in a tizzy,' Alice said, not unkindly. 'My mother is not dead, as you can see, John. Your father, our father, threw her out when she had served her purpose.'

That is not altogether true,' Emma said.

'Why must you defend him? He is an utter brute.'

'I will not have you tell lies about him. Have you heard of me, John?'

'A littl
e.' John Haggard could not keep his gaze from returning to the girl, as no doubt her parents observed.

'You'll take a glass of cider,' Harry Bold said.

John's head turned in surprise; never had any man with such an accent addressed him without saying sir. But why
should
Harry Bold call him sir?

‘I
would like that very much,' he said.

'And you'll sit down, and tell us why Alice has brought you here,'

Emma said. 'Your father will not be pleased. He'll not be pleased to know we are within even ten miles of Derleth.'

Then I shall not tell him.' John watched the girl sit down and take up her cloth. 'You are industrious.'

Emma sat beside him. Harry Bold gave him a mug of glowing cider. ' Tis a sight better than traipsing the country. And it is a good living.'

'Which Father would destroy,' Alice said.

'What's that?' Harry Bold demanded.

'It is his latest scheme. Apparently he has lost an entire sugar crop to privateers and weather . . .' That would
not
please him,' Emma said.

'He is determined to replace the loss, to shift the emphasis of his wealth, as he says, from the West Indies to England. As I told you, he has never got over being defeated on the Slave Trade Question.'

'And how can that affect us?' Emma asked.

'He is building a factory,' Alice explained. 'Into which he is going to put the machine looms. He intends to take over the cotton weaving for this entire area. He will put you out of work.'

Emma frowned at her daughter.

'But it is our livelihood,' Tim Bold protested.

'Do you think that matters to my father?' Alice cried.

'And how do you stand in this, boy?' Harry Bold asked.

'Why, I
...
I knew nothing of it, until an hour ago.'

'But he assumes Father must be right,' Alice said bitterly.

'I . . . I had not properly considered the matter,' John protested. 'Be sure that I will consider it now. I do promise you.'

'Why, then,
1
am sure we have naught to bother about,' Emma said. She rested her hand on top of his. 'And you'll come to see us again, John Haggard. You will always be welcome here, I promise you.'

John gazed at her, found his eyes sliding away from her face to look at Meg, just visible over her shoulder. In twenty years' time, Meg would look like this. Why, she would be just as lovely then as she was now.

‘I’ll
come to see you again. Mistress Bold,' he said. 'You have my word.'

CHAPTER 2

THE SOLDIER

Low clouds gathered above the Sierra do Mondedal, shrouded the mountain peaks, dipped down into the valley as scything April rain. The huge drops cannoned on to the burnished helmets of the dragoons, splattered from the barrels of the great cannon creaking along the road, embedded themselves in the bearskins of the Guards, dripped from the brims of the shabby shakoes which denoted the bobbing heads of the infantry of the line.

'Bleeding weather,' grumbled Private Corcoran. 'Don't the sun
ever
shine?'

He was a replacement. His jacket was a crisp crimson, his trousers a fresh grey rather than a nondescript brown. His cross belts were still white and his musket gleamed; his shako still possessed a strap. He had joined the Army as part of a draft from England, after the Passage of the Douro had sent Marshal Soult tumbling back from Oporto in disarray. He knew nothing, as his immediate comrades knew nothing. As yet.

But they would learn
. Already from in front of them there came the rumble of gunfire, and the hoarse sound of men shouting.

'On the double, the 29th.' Captain Llewellyn came trotting down the disordered column. 'Close up, there, close up. Sergeant Major, take that man's name.'

For Corcoran was trailing his musket by the strap.

'Corcoran,' the sergeant major snapped. 'Pick it up, boy. Pick it up.'

Private Corcoran hastily shouldered his musket, broke into a trot with the rest of his fellows, eyeing the sergeant major who ran alongside him. Sergeant Major Smith. There was more to him than first met the eye. He was a young man, still in his early thirties, and his accent was unplaceable, a trace of brogue littered with the remnants of what might even once have been a toff. But he was a
veteran. He had crawled over the sand dunes of Walcheren as a private, and he had seen Abercrombie die outside Alexandria as a corporal. As a sergeant, only a year ago, he had marched with Moore over the mountains of this self same land into the haven of Corunna, and instead of sailing home with the battered remnants of that army, he had volunteered to change his regiment and remain with the nucleus around which had been formed this new army, Wellesley's army. His skin was burned the colour of mahogany, and his moustache drooped like that of a froggie. But he was a man. Far more so than any of the perfumed officers on their high trotting horses.

'What's the shooting, Sergeant Major?' inquired Private Withers on Corcoran's left.

'Rearguard,' Smith grunted. They've not better than that left in Portugal.'

Now they could see the houses, what remained of them; wisps of smoke still rose into the damp air. And now too they could see the dragoons galloping out the far side of the village, waving their swords.

'Column.' Captain Llewellyn came down the line.

The men fell into column of fours, tramping along the rutted road, splashing in and out of puddles.

'Keep time there,' Sergeant Major Smith bawled as the drummer took up the beat. 'Left, left, left right left. Goddam you, don't you know your left foot?'

Captain Llewellyn and Lieutenants Portman and Mayhew had taken their
place at the head of the colum
n, the sergeants flanked the recruits. For now too they could smell the stench, and not only of burning timber. They could see the gallows, where the three bodies hung, swaying gently, perhaps still warm; the French had only just evacuated their billets. And nearer at hand there was a dead woman, her skirts thrown above her head, her legs strangely white and twisted. Even in April, the bees were gathering above the great rent in her belly.

Someone vomited. 'Keep time there,' Sergeant Major Smith commanded. 'Keep time.'