Hope (2 page)

Up till then Nell had believed, as all the servants did, that her mistress’s lengthy stay in her room was because she’d been hurt falling from her horse. Rose, one of the other maids, had said it was a ‘queer do’, as the previous time Lady Harvey had had a fall from her horse she was hobbling around with a walking stick within two days.

But Nell saw nothing suspicious in this extended period of bed rest. She had noted in her four years of service that ladies of quality tended to suffer from curious ailments which didn’t strike common folk.

It was her view that the mistress’s problem was melancholia: a combination of the long, bitter winter and her husband’s extended absence. Whenever Nell was sent upstairs with a tray, Lady Harvey was either still in bed or sitting by the window with her feet up, covered in a quilt. She looked as beautiful as ever, her golden hair loose on her shoulders, but she was subdued and very pale. Nell often felt Bridie ought to be firmer with her and make her take a short walk outside every day.

Just before Baines left in the carriage bound for London with the rest of the household, he had given Nell her orders. She was to cook, fetch and carry until Lady Harvey felt able to travel to London with Bridie. Then she was to stay on here alone to look after the house, and the gardener and groom would take care of everything outside.

Nell wasn’t disappointed at not going to London too. Bridie said that there was always far more work there because it was a much larger house and the Harveys entertained a great deal. She also said the London staff looked down on country yokels, and it was like working in a madhouse.

In fact Nell viewed staying at Briargate as a holiday, for she’d have virtually nothing to do. She would be able to slip home every afternoon to see her mother and younger brothers and sisters, and to wander around the grounds as much as she liked.

When Bridie told her yesterday what really ailed the mistress it was a huge shock. ‘
She slipped up
,’ was how Bridie put it, as if she imagined Nell didn’t know how babies were made.

Nell had been promised a sovereign just as long as she never breathed a word of what she would see and hear in the next few hours. Bridie bluntly stated that it was her hope the baby wouldn’t survive.

Yesterday that hope didn’t seem so terrible. Bridie was only being practical, just as the groom was when he drowned kittens born in the barn. Everyone knew that ladies got a wetnurse in for their babies anyway, and had very little time for their offspring until they were almost fully grown.

But once Lady Harvey went into hard labour, she wasn’t any different to any other woman Nell knew. She sweated, she cried, she even shouted crude oaths like the slatternly barmaid down at the inn. All the fine linen and lace, silver hairbrushes and jewellery didn’t stop her having to push that baby out just like a tinker woman in the fields. And just as the commonest beggarwoman would still grieve for a dead baby, Nell knew Lady Harvey would too.

She looked down at the wrapped parcel in her arms and tears welled up in her eyes. Her folks had nothing, ten children brought up in a tiny cottage with a leaking roof, yet each new baby had been greeted with joy. This one had never been kissed, and it wouldn’t even be given a name or get a proper funeral.

The burden of being witness to the birth was a heavy one too. Nell didn’t know how she was going to be able to talk to Lady Harvey normally after this, or if she could ever forget. She and Bridie might even be cursed for their part in it!

Everyone knew how a curse was put on Sir John Popham. He was an ancestor of the Pophams who still lived at Hunstrete House, the mansion closest to Briargate on the other side of Lord’s Wood. Sir John was the judge at the trial of William Darrell of Littlecote who was charged with murdering a newborn baby by throwing it on the fire. Darrell put the curse on the Pophams because the judge took Littlecote, and with it Hunstrete, which was part of the Littlecote estate, in exchange for his acquittal. The curse was that the Popham family would never have a male heir. They hadn’t had one either, only girls.

Nell had to suppose Darrell murdered the baby because he hadn’t fathered it. She and Bridie hadn’t murdered this one, but perhaps not attempting to make a newborn baby take its first breath amounted to the same thing?

If anyone found out they could be hanged!

Nell’s heart began to race and her stomach churned. Was Bridie intending to bury the baby’s body out in the garden? How did she think they could do that without old Jacob the gardener seeing?

As she began walking down the backstairs, a faint stirring against her chest surprised her. She stumbled and nearly dropped the little bundle before steadying herself. With trepidation she drew the covering flannel back a little, and to her utter astonishment she saw one tiny hand move, and the baby opened its mouth in a yawn.

For a moment she could only stare, convinced she was imagining it, but the hand moved again, more vigorously this time. ‘It’s a miracle!’ she exclaimed aloud, her voice echoing in the stairwell. Everyone knew newborn babies cried to proclaim they were alive and well. She had never ever heard of one remaining silent unless it was too weak to survive.

Unless it was a fairy child.

Nell’s education amounted to little more than being taught her letters and a few sums by the Reverend Gosling between the ages of six and eight. But she’d learned superstitions from birth, from her own parents and many of the old folk in the village.

The story went that fairy children came into this world to bestow good fortune. They could be recognized by their unexpected arrival, their exceptional looks and gentle nature. Joan Stott in the village was barren, and then at well over forty she finally gave birth to a little girl who looked like an angel. Joan and Amos Stott had scratched less than a bare living from their land, and no one expected their baby to survive, but she did. And she was hardly put into her cradle before the Stotts’ hens began to lay, their crops increased, and even their old sow produced a litter of twelve fine piglets. That child was over six now, still as pretty as a May morning, and the Stotts were becoming almost prosperous.

But whether Lady Harvey’s baby was a miracle or a fairy child, Nell knew Bridie wasn’t going to rejoice that it was alive. She had been in service to the Dorvilles, Lady Harvey’s family, since she was fourteen. She had risen from scullery maid to nursemaid to the Dorville children, and eight years ago when Anne, the youngest, was to marry Sir William Harvey, Bridie came here to Briargate with her as her personal maid.

Bridie’s whole life pivoted around the mistress she’d helped bring into this world, and she wouldn’t allow anything or anyone to bring disgrace and shame to her.

But the possibility that this was a fairy child prevented Nell from considering Bridie’s feelings or wishes; she had to act on her own instincts. She hastened on down the stairs to the warm kitchen and picked up the shawl she’d left on a chair to wrap the baby more warmly. Ousting the cat from Cook’s chair in the corner, she laid the infant down on the cushion, then rushed outside to fill the kettle from the pump.

By the time Nell heard Bridie’s heavy, slow step on the stairs almost an hour later, it was broad daylight, with warm sunshine coming in through the lattice window by the sink. The baby was now washed, rewrapped in clean flannel and fast asleep in a linen basket by the stove.

She had opened her eyes as if in astonishment when Nell peeled off the soiled flannel, and she’d wailed indignantly as she washed her. But the moment she was rewrapped she went back to sleep.

‘I thought I told you to go to bed?’ Bridie said grumpily as she came into the kitchen, weighed down with a pail of dirty water in one hand, a covered basin in the other and bundles of bloodstained linen under each arm.

She looked all in. Her apron was bloodstained, her shoulders were stooped and she was wheezing with the effort of walking.

‘The baby, it’s alive,’ Nell said, pointing to the basket.

Bridie blanched and dropped her burdens, splashing water on to the floor. ‘Oh Jesus, Mary, Mother of God!’ she exclaimed, crossing herself and glancing fearfully at the basket.

‘She’s very bonny,’ Nell ventured fearfully. While she felt some sympathy for Bridie and her mistress because she knew how much trouble a living baby was going to cause for them both, she couldn’t help but feel delight she’d helped it to survive. Yet at the same time she also knew girls like her could be dismissed for getting above their station, and Bridie was quite likely to feel that was just what she’d done.

Bridie let out a sob of pain, and put both hands to her face in consternation. ‘Oh, my lawd!’ she exclaimed. ‘What am I to do?’

Nell instinctively moved towards the older woman and put her arms around her, just as she would do to her own mother if she was in distress. Bridie had been kind to her right from her first day at Briargate, when she was a frightened twelve-year-old who had no real idea of what leaving her own family and going into service meant. It was Bridie who had suggested Nell was wasted in the kitchen, and that she should be trained as a parlourmaid; she’d fought the protests from Cook and Mrs Cole, the housekeeper, covered up for Nell when she broke an ornament, and smuggled home leftover food when her father was laid up with a bad chest and couldn’t work.

During her four years at Briargate this woman had been Nell’s comforter, teacher and confidante. Thanks to her, she could help her family; she had good food, decent clothes, and prospects. She didn’t know if there was any way she could help Bridie out of this tight spot, but if there was one, she’d find it.

‘Don’t take on, Bridie,’ Nell said comfortingly. ‘We’re both tired now, but if we put our heads together we’ll think of something. I’ll make you some tea, and then you go to bed. I’ll put the linen in to soak and listen out for the mistress.’

Bridie drew back from Nell’s arms and wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron. Her blue eyes were still swimming but Nell could see she was struggling to regain her composure. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘But it’s you who must go to bed. I’ll sit here with my tea for a bit, and then go back upstairs. I can doze in the chair in the mistress’s room.’

‘Shall I take the baby in with me?’ Nell asked.

Bridie shook her head. ‘She’ll be warmer here. Go to bed now.’

Nell found she couldn’t sleep for thinking about the baby. It would need feeding soon and if Bridie was up in Lady Harvey’s bedroom she wouldn’t hear it cry. There was so much else which needed to be done too – coal brought in for the stove, linen to be washed and something nourishing cooked for Lady Harvey. She couldn’t just lie here wide awake and leave everything to Bridie.

She got up, washed herself and put on the old grey dress she had been given to wear when there were dirty jobs to do, then, carrying her boots, she stole quietly down the stairs from her attic room so she wouldn’t disturb the mistress.

Hardly a day passed without her feeling blessed to be able to live at Briargate Hall. It was a light, bright house built just forty years ago by Sir Roland Harvey, William’s father, and situated half-way between the cities of Bath and Bristol. Nell had never been to either of these cities; all she knew was the village of Compton Dando where she was born and the surrounding villages. The farthest she’d ever been was to Keynsham, some three and a half miles away.

People did say that Bristol’s port was a marvel and you could see wondrous great sailing ships there that sailed to the far ends of the earth. But Nell had no yearnings to go there; a year ago hundreds of people had died from cholera, and only five months ago, in October, there had been three days of terrible riots. Scores of people were killed, many more seriously injured, and dozens of buildings destroyed and burned. Four people were hanged for their part in it and dozens more put in prison or transported. To Nell it sounded a very dangerous place.

Mr Baines, who knew just about everything, said that the riots happened because the system of government was corrupt. He said the Tories bribed and intimidated people at elections so that the reform parties couldn’t get in. He took some pride in the fact that the people of Bristol were brave enough to make their voice heard, and he claimed that if he had been a young man he would have joined them.

Nell had heard that Bath, the other city nearby, was very different to Bristol, for it was where the gentry went to take its special waters and have a high old time. Baines said it was beautiful, with wide streets, splendid houses and shops so full of luxury items that your eyes would pop out looking at them all.

Cook claimed that it was a hive of wickedness, the streets full of pickpockets, and the special waters tasted so vile it was a wonder they didn’t kill people. So if these were the two nearest cities, Nell didn’t think there was much in either of them for a girl like her.

Baines said that old Sir Roland Harvey had been a great traveller, and the design of Briargate was influenced by houses he’d seen in Italy and plantation houses in the West Indies. He had brought the black and white marble for the floor in the hall back from Italy, along with the marble statues in the garden, and instead of building it in the local stone, he’d used brick with a kind of pinkish-cream plaster over it. There was a very grand portico at the front held up by big pillars, and the tiles on the roof were green instead of red.

Long narrow windows almost reached the floor and let sunshine stream in all day; the graceful shutters had been specially designed for Sir Roland, as were the marble fireplaces. Nell particularly liked the carved grapes and birds on the staircase newel posts; it didn’t seem possible a man could make something so delicate with just a chisel. With the sparkling chandeliers and thick rugs and furniture so highly polished she could see her own face reflected, Nell felt as if she were living in a palace.

When she first came to work at Briargate she could scarcely clear a fireplace for looking at the paintings on the walls. Everywhere she looked there were objects of wonder. Bridie didn’t share her enthusiasm. She said with only eight bedrooms, it wasn’t anywhere near as large or magnificent as the London house. She did concede that old Sir Roland had his head screwed on right, for he’d designed it to be labour-saving. She usually added somewhat tartly that he must have known that slave trading would be abolished, and that he wouldn’t be able to get servants to work for nothing here.