Maulever Hall (25 page)

“Oh, nonsense.” Sleeves rolled up, Marianne was busy at their weekly baking. “Who should hurt us?”

“It’s all very well to laugh.” George put down his mug and came over to whisper portentously in her ear. “But there’s a man in the village—been staying at the Bird and Bush several days now—and talks of nothing but blood and vengeance. ‘Down with the aristocrats,’ is his cry, and there’s a plenty that drink the ale he’s so free with and listen to him.”

“But what’s that to do with us?” Marianne turned her dough out on to the floured board and began to knead it with swift, confident movements. “You could hardly call us aristocrats, could you, George?”

“That’s just it, miss.” He sent a conspiratorial glance beyond the open door to the little front sitting room where Mrs. Bundy was busy at her desk. “He says she’s the worst of the lot.”

“Mrs. Bundy?” Marianne could hardly believe her ears.

“Herself. According to him, she’s not Mrs. Bundy at all, but a real live Duchess.”

Awe crept into his voice despite himself. “Duchess of Lundy, not Mrs. Bundy at all. What do you think of that now?”

“Well, even if she is, which I am very far from believing, what is that to the purpose? She hardly lives like an aristocrat, does she? And, being a woman, could not have voted against the Bill, even if she had wanted to.”

“You don’t understand, miss.” Despite herself, Marianne was impressed by his earnestness. “This man is saying that her being down here is all part of a plot—don’t ask me what—but something to do with spying out the weaknesses of the workers, or something.”

“You know that’s nonsense, George. Mrs. Bundy’s been here for twenty years and more.”

“Oh yes, I know it’s nonsense, miss, but that’s not the point. It’s what the others think that matters. I wish you’d persuade her to go away, miss, till the worst of it is past; I truly do.”

There was something uncomfortably convincing in his tone, and when he had gone and Marianne had set her loaves
to rise, she washed her hands, took off her apron and joined Mrs. Bundy in the other room.

“George at it again?” The old lady had a disconcerting habit of anticipating one’s thoughts.

“Yes. I don’t quite like the sound of what he told me today. There’s some man in the village who says you’re the Duchess of Lundy.”

Mrs. Bundy shrugged as she sanded and sealed a letter. “And what’s so remarkable about that? It’s never been more than half a secret anyway.” She looked around her. “Hardly the setting for strawberry leaves, what? And if you start calling me Your Grace, I’ll shoot you. I can, too.” She had whisked a businesslike little gun out of her desk as she spoke. “I’m not quite the helpless, unprotected old lady they t
hink
me. Shall I give you a demonstration? I used to be able to hit a wafer across the room.”

“Pray don’t; it would frighten poor Mary quite out of her wits.”

“Very well then.” She stroked the gun tenderly before putting it away. “He gave it to me,” she said, “before he went off to the Peninsula. Didn’t like my being alone in the country—we had riots then, you know, and survived them. And mutiny, too, in the fleet. George would have loved it. I suppose he wants us to pack up and go back to London.”

“Yes—or at least, away.”

“Flight, eh? Never was my long suit—except from myself, and what’s the good of that? Oh, I take the gun to bed at nights, by the way. And now, what’s for lunch?”

To Marianne’s relief, George reported next day that the stranger had left the Bird and Bush. “Tried to get a mob down here last night, miss—I warned you he would—but Father and I were there, see, and we soon persuaded ’em you was harmless.”

Marianne could not help laughing. Harmless was not at all the word she would have used to describe Mrs. Bundy. “So you think it’s safe for us to stay after all, George?”

“I reckon so, for the time being anyway. The talk in the village is all of the cholera now. They’ve got it bad in Sunderland, they say. D’you think it’ll spread here, miss?”

“I devoutly hope not.” The dread disease had been reported for some time as spreading across Europe, but, at the moment, Marianne could hardly help feeling grateful that it had distracted the volatile minds of the villagers.

“So we can sleep quietly tonight, can we,” was Mrs.
Bundy’s reaction. “Without expecting to be burned in our beds? Good. All a lot of nonsense, anyway.”

It had been a crisp December day and Mrs. Bundy and Marianne had taken advantage of the fine clear weather to work hard in breaking up and fetching in a supply of twigs for the fires. Marianne, working doggedly on till her back felt like breaking, had told herself that surely this should earn her a proper night’s sleep. And indeed, she found herself almost nodding off over her evening game of chess with Mrs. Bundy, who beat her in two short games running, scolded her for not putting up a better fight and ordered her off to bed: “You’re asleep where you sit already.”

But, as always, as soon as Marianne was settled in bed, the ghosts she managed to keep at bay during the daytime came out to haunt her. Should she have abandoned little Thomas? Could she have written Mauleverer another letter? Could she still? It was very late before she fell asleep at last, and even then she was tormented by maddening, inconclusive dreams. Gradually they worked up into the old, familiar nightmare of unknown terror and galloping hoofs. Then, sweating with fear, she was awake, to lie, as always after this dream, fighting her way back to calmness and the real world.

She was lying very still, deliberately trying to relax her way back into sleep, when an odd crackling sound brought her even more fully awake. What could it be? And now, surely, she smelled smoke. She was out of bed in an instant and, running to her window, looked out to see smoke and flames pouring out of the kitchen wing at the back of the house.

Luckily, Mrs. Bundy, though an easy was also a light sleeper, and woke at once. “Fire?” She was out of bed on the word and wrapping herself in the big military cloak she had once lent Marianne. Then she took the little gun from under her pillow, picked up the box that always stood by her bed, and hurried downstairs after Marianne. Here, an appalling sight greeted them. The kitchen was already an inferno of flame, but the little porch over the front door was also burning fiercely. Ten minutes more and the stairway would have gone.

“Lucky you woke,” said Mrs. Bundy, opening the door of Mary’s downstairs bedroom, which, fortunately, opened not off the kitchen but from the tiny dining room. “We’ll go out this way.”

Mary was slow to rouse, and by the time they had got her wrapped in a heavy shawl the sitting room was in
a blaze. “Lucky this window’s big enough.” Mrs. Bundy now threw it open. “Out you go. No arguing; you’ll have to catch Mary.”

Landing soft in a flower bed Marianne turned back to help the incoherent maid down. Then, Mrs. Bundy handed her the box, wound her cloak more closely around her, and followed. “And just in time, too,” she summed it up as they looked back at the blazing house. “Arson, of course. It would never have started in two sides at once. I trust he’s gone.” Her hand, Marianne saw, was on the pocket where she had put the gun.

“He?” Marianne asked.

“The stranger from the village, I should think. Well, not much use dallying here to warm ourselves by our fire, as Mr. Garrick would say. Best get down the lane to the farm.” She looked back, for a moment, at the blazing house: “I was happy here. I never expected to be. Life’s full of surprises.”

It seemed to take a very long time to get the now hysterical Mary down the lane to the farm, but they got her there at last, sobbing with fatigue and fright. “Lucky there’s a moon,” remarked Mrs. Bundy as they turned the last corner to where the big farmhouse stood silent and dark.

“Yes.” There was no hint of morning yet in the sky.

“We’re going to be unpopular.” But Mrs. Bundy proceeded to beat a resounding tattoo on the seldom-used front door of the house.

At last an angry voice hailed them from an upstairs window. “What the devil’s to do there?” It was Farmer Tho
rn
e himself, his nightcap oddly illuminated by the flickering candle he held.

Mrs. Bundy explained their plight in her usual swift, laconic style, and his angry tone changed to amazement and horror before he hurried down to let them in.

By the time he was able to send some of his men up to the cottage, it was past saving.

No news to me,” said Mrs. Bundy when this was broken to her. “I never thought there was a chance. There wasn’t meant to be.” She laughed. “Poor man. What a lot of trouble. No doubt he thinks we’re all dead in our beds by now. It’s thanks to you that we’re not, my dear.” She and Marianne were sitting huddled over the blazing fire that had been kindled for them. Mary had been put, grumbling, to bed, but Mrs. Bundy had refused to go. “Shouldn’t sleep;
what’s the use?” Now she turned to Farmer Tho
rn
e. “You
think it won’t spread?”

He shook his head. “Too damp for that; it’ll bu
rn
itself out in the course of the day.”

“Good. Then can you spare one of your men to do an errand for me?”

“Willingly, ma’am.”

“Thank you. Then send him, if you please, to Exeter, to hire me the best traveling carriage he can find—at once. And horses, of course; four of them; good ones. For the Duchess of Lundy. Send someone you can trust. We’ll start as soon as it gets here.” She was speaking, now, to Marianne.

“Start?”

“For London. Where else? I should like to get there before the news of my death—and yours. Don’t look so puzzled, child. Has it really not struck you that there may be more in this fire than Reform Bill madness? As for me, I strongly suspect that we have your husband to thank for this night’s work. If he
is
your husband, which, to tell truth, tonight’s work tends, to my mind, to confirm. Do you not find it a most matrimonial bit of behavior?”

“You mean—” Marianne could hardly believe her ears. “You mean you have lost your house—everything, simply because you sheltered me?”

“But not my life—thanks to you. Never look so distressed; I’ve been thinking, for some time, that I was tired of this country vegetable existence. Now, it’s all over. I look forward to stirring times in town. I wonder if we shall get there first?”

“First?”

“Ahead of Mr. Rossand. I hardly think he will have lingered here. And neither shall we, just in case he should come back to make sure of success and try and finish you off by some other genteel method of murder. You must be a great inconvenience to him, my dear. I wonder why.” She rose briskly. “And now I think we should take advantage of Mrs. Tho
rn
e’s kind offer of beds and rest for a while. We start as soon as the carriage comes. You sleep so little anyway, I am sure you will not object to traveling night and day. I have a mind to get to London first.”

“But poor Mary—”

“Mary stays here—I have already arranged it with Mrs. Tho
rn
e.”

There were a thousand questions Marianne would have
liked to ask, but Mrs. Bundy’s manner made them all equally impossible. One, however, seemed essential. “I must call you Your Grace?”

Mrs. Bundy swore a good round military oath. “You’ll call me ma’am. It’s good enough for the Queen; I’ll bear it. And now, rest, child. We shall be busy in London.”

To her own surprise, Marianne fell asleep almost at once, and woke, much refreshed, to broad daylight and the manifold sounds of the farm. She found Mrs. Bundy, or rather, as she was trying to make herself style her, the Duchess, already downstairs talking to Mr. Tho
rn
e.

“Good.” She smiled at Marianne. “I was about to wake you. The carriage is here; we start at once; Mrs.
Thorne
has provided food; we will eat and sleep on the way.” She picked up the box she had rescued the night before, hitched up the brown stuff gown Mrs.
Thorne
had lent her, wrapped her military cloak firmly around her, and held out her hand to Mr.
Thorne
. “I am much in your debt.”

“It is a pleasure. We’ll take care of Mary, never fear.”

“Thank you. I know you will. You’ve been a good friend, all these years. Come Marianne.”

The hired carriage was ancient and battered-
l
ooking. Mrs. Bundy inspected it gloomily, paying particular attention to its wheels, then turned to cross-examine its driver and give an approving glance to the four horses. “Your team’s all right, at least. Can you drive ’em?”

He had been gaping in astonishment at her bizarre appearance, but reacted with instant respect to her voice. “Yes, ma’am—I should say Your Grace. I used to drive for Sir John Lade.”

“Oh you did, did you? And what made you leave him?”

“Marriage, ma’am, the curse of the working-classes. Don’t you fret yourself, I’ll get you to London, all right and tight. The horses is good, and the carriage ain’t so bad as it looks.”