Season of Light (12 page)

On being made aware that Madame de Rusigneux had a rare skill with the paintbrush, Georgina had suggested that she take Asa’s likeness so that it could be shown off in London, to Shackleford or other suitable young men. It seemed to Asa that she might as well read while Madame made sketches for the miniature – that way both would be occupied without actually having to comply with Georgina’s programme of education – so she pretended to be absorbed by an edition of the
Analytical Review
. Madame attended so fiercely to her drawing, however, that Asa’s thoughts scattered like feathers.

‘When did you learn to draw, madame?’

A long pause while Madame performed a number of tiny strokes. ‘When I was a child.’

‘Is it normal for a lady to paint miniatures in France?’

A similarly prolonged silence, during which Asa’s question, in all its unintended impertinence, ricocheted from wall to wall. ‘Why, do ladies not paint in England?’

‘Some have lessons, yes. But few ladies, myself included, can paint with any degree of success.’

At this Madame smiled; a flash of sunshine. It occurred to Asa that Madame de Rusigneux was unlikely to have had much cause to smile in recent years and that the precision with which her clothes, limbs and hair were arranged, far from reflecting some inner calm, might be an effort at self-control.

‘The last few years must have been turbulent for you, madame,’ Asa said softly, in French.

‘Turbulent.’ Intense concentration on tiny strokes. ‘Ah, if you only knew.’

‘Can you bear to speak of it?’

Although Madame said nothing her entire upper body inclined towards the drawing so that Asa could no longer see her face, only the white cap and mass of dark hair. ‘My family is scattered. My parents are in Switzerland. My brother is dead.’

‘And your husband?’

‘I have no husband. You must understand. My name … I am so afraid.’

‘Forgive me, madame, that was very clumsy of me.’

They were now interrupted by a hammering at the door; Mrs Woodcock, the blacksmith’s wife, begged to see Asa at once. ‘You’d best come to Key Cottage.’

Half the village was hurrying towards the tailor’s house. The wind had dropped but there was a flurry of sleet as the small crowd at the cottage gate stood aside to let Asa pass. The door, which yesterday had been shut fast, swung wide open. In the days of previous tenants there’d been a row of decorated plates along the hearth and a blazing fire fed, no doubt, by logs pilfered from woods belonging to the manor. Now the hearth was empty except for a few desolate cooking implements. Under the window sat the tailor’s work table, although there was no sign of scissors or pins. Otherwise the cottage was bare.

‘They’re cutting him down, I expect,’ said Mrs Woodcock. They went through to the yard in which the tailor had hanged himself using a makeshift rope constructed of fabric odds and ends knotted together and slung over the branch of the beech tree that thrust over the wall from the manor house garden. The blacksmith had climbed up on a stool, probably the same as that employed by the tailor to reach the noose, and was attempting to encircle the body in his arms. He recoiled as it swung round suddenly and Asa glimpsed Dacre’s dead face.

‘What do we do now?’ asked Mrs Woodcock, as her husband laid the corpse on a plank.

Sleet spattered against the man’s cheeks. His dull eyes were wide open, as if in surprise.

‘We must lay him out,’ said Asa.

They all squeezed back inside, first the men with the makeshift bier, then Judith Woodcock and Asa. Clustered in the main doorway, thereby rendering the interior darker than ever, were Mrs Dean and other servants from the manor. Asa directed that the tailor be laid on his rickety work table and his body covered with a strip of cambric taken from a roll they found underneath. When she attempted to close his eyes her little finger skimmed the globe of his eyeball. Springing back, she noticed for the first time that Madame de Rusigneux was standing just inside the door leading to the bedchamber, her cloak wrapped about her so closely that only the pale shape of her face was visible. She was staring not at the dead man, whose feet in their large, misshapen shoes protruded so lamentably, but at Asa. In other circumstances her alien presence might have drawn considerably more hostility; certainly it explained why the manor-house servants had not allowed themselves to be pressed inside.

‘How was the tailor found?’ Asa asked.

‘I was passing and saw the cottage door was open,’ said Mrs Woodcock, ‘and no smoke from the chimney.’

‘Where is Mrs Dacre?’

‘No idea.’ Judith Woodcock’s voice had gone small and brittle. Mrs Dacre, then, had been cast as the villain who had caused this death. But what had been the timing of the tragic events in this cottage? Was the tailor hanging even as the boys burnt his effigy on the pyre or had he waited until dead of night? And was it before or after the departure of his wife? Could any woman be so heartless as to leave the house knowing that her husband was swinging from the branch of a beech tree?

‘Surely the charivari wouldn’t be enough to cause a man to hang himself,’ said Asa. ‘Was there anything else, do you suppose?’

‘They was poor.’

‘Many people are poor.’

Judith’s face closed up. ‘The poor gets themselves into all kinds of difficulties, Miss Ardleigh. Such that
you
could not imagine.’

‘What now?’ said the blacksmith, wiping his hands on his leather apron.

‘A man must be sent to fetch my father,’ said Asa, shaken by what Judith had said. ‘I believe he’s trying a new horse on the Downs. And I will send to Pulborough for Dr Clegg. In the meantime we must shut up the cottage and two men must watch the door.’

With Madame at her shoulder Asa walked swiftly home, issuing orders that more men should be sent to find Mrs Dacre. When everyone had gone she crouched by the parlour fire and warmed her icy hands. I must wash them, she thought, remembering the dry convexity of the tailor’s eyeball.

Madame de Rusigneux had resettled by the window and picked up her charcoal. Neither spoke. Only as Asa left the room did she notice that Madame must have been violently affected by what they had seen because her hand had jolted, causing an ugly black line to scrawl across the sketch of Asa’s face.

‘Madame?’

The French woman’s eyes were shot with pain. ‘I was so sure, I had prayed, that I had left such terrible events behind.’

Thirty miles away another crisis was unfolding. Philippa Morton had been brought to bed nearly a month early with her fourth child, so that even as tailor Dacre was cut down from the beech tree, coachmen were driving towards Ardleigh post-haste in order to carry Asa back to Morton Hall. They arrived at seven in the evening just as the squire was returning from Key Cottage, where, as local magistrate, he’d inspected the scene and spoken with the vicar about an appropriate spot outside the churchyard for the burial of the corpse.

‘There’s never any peace,’ he muttered as one boot after the other went flying along the hall. ‘And now you’re telling me you have to be off, Asa. Does no one think of me?’ He covered his eyes with the back of his hand.

Or me? Asa thought, marching upstairs to pack a bag. Does anyone ever consider the disruption to my life? First, in went books – Diderot, Rousseau, Ronsard – but her heart ached as she covered them with slippers and petticoats. Already she anticipated the constraint of limbs and mind that would come upon her tomorrow as she arrived at Morton Hall and from which there’d be no release until she was home again. Next she knocked on Madame de Rusigneux’s door and told her that she would have to remain at Ardleigh because these days Mr Morton, a former visitor to France and whose house was filled with French objets d’art, could not bring himself to mention that nation without a whitening of the lips.

Madame listened in silence but at five the next morning was in the hall, portmanteau packed.

‘Madame,’ said Asa, ‘I told you last night, there’s no question of you coming with me. The children will need all my attention. And then, as I said … you would not be welcome … you are French. My father, I’m sure, would enjoy your company here.’

Madame gave Asa such a look of wounded confusion that the idea of leaving her at Ardleigh now seemed preposterous. Cursing Georgina first for sending Madame, then for rendering herself unavailable for sisterly duties at Morton Hall by the fact that she was always far too busy, and anyway (as Georgina herself exclaimed with a burst of girlish laughter), what
use
would she be either to Philippa or her brood, Asa hammered on her father’s door. ‘We’re leaving. Madame de Rusigneux will come with me after all.’

He grunted and appeared with his shirt half stuffed into his breeches. ‘Send my best to Phil.’

‘Perhaps you’ll ride over for a visit once the baby is born. And Father, promise me you’ll pursue those village lads over the charivari. And that you’ll keep looking for Mrs Dacre.’

‘I’ll do what’s right.’

‘Father, it must be done today. Don’t put it off.’

‘Mind your own business, Asa.’ He ran his palm across his bleary face, then relented and held out his arm. ‘You’re a good girl, one of the best, but you carry the weight of the world on these little shoulders of yours. Now run along to Morton and have some fun.’

During the drive Asa was at first too preoccupied to take much notice of Madame. The coach was travelling in entirely the wrong direction. Today Caroline was expecting her in Littlehampton but there’d been no time for more than a brief note to explain her absence. She had been looking forward to discussing the French woman’s arrival and the disturbing events at Key Cottage. Particularly haunting was the fact that the tailor had ended his life only a few feet away from the philanthropic Miss Ardleigh’s parlour.

But after a while Asa was ashamed to realise that Madame, who was pressed into a corner, was watching her intently, as a whipped puppy might. ‘You must have a very low opinion of Ardleigh, madame. You’ve been here only two days yet so many distressing things have happened.’

‘It’s true. But when I met your sister in London she gave me to understand that you needed to be shown how to behave like a lady. Mademoiselle Ardleigh, I think many ladies would have a great deal to learn from you.’

‘Thank you, madame, but I do regret that you have witnessed such violence in our village given that you must have endured so much already in your own country.’

‘Mademoiselle Ardleigh, I have seen things in France that make your banging of pans and tormenting of a poor man hardly of significance at all.’

‘The world, at the moment, seems out of sorts,’ said Asa. ‘How has it happened when in the Paris of 1788 we were all so full of hope? I remember the day an edict was issued suspending laws of censorship on pamphlets and books. Afterwards we were forever trampling on papers which had been written in a rush of excitement, begging for change. And now we hear that censorship is to be reimposed.’

‘Ah yes. Those were good times.’

‘What were you were doing in the summer of ’88, madame?’

‘I was at home with my family.’

‘And where is your home?’

Pause. ‘My home is in the south of France.’

‘In a village or a town?’

‘A small town. Frenelle.’

‘What sort of house did you live in, madame?’

‘The sort of house that in France we call a chateau.’

‘And what is Frenelle like, since the Revolution?’

‘Frenelle is a home no more. What we never understood is that change is a monster. A people that had no voice seized a voice for itself and then, when all its demands were not met, resorted to pike and stone and flame.’ Another silence. ‘The Revolution has discovered that the only way to prolong its life is to crush those who oppose it.’

‘There must be another way, madame. I still believe that good will prevail. The people I met in Paris were so fine.’

‘People change. Power, politics, money, those things make people change. Sometimes small hatreds such as we saw yesterday can determine the fate of thousands.’

Madame, swathed in her dark cloak, took up scarcely any space at all, yet it seemed to Asa that the vastness of her experience filled the carriage. ‘You are an exile,’ she said softly. ‘Were you in such danger that you were forced to leave the country?’

Madame closed her tortured eyes and shrank deeper into the cushions. ‘Memory. The memory was too much for me.’

‘Memory, madame?’

‘They murdered my brother.’

Madame said no more. Her fingers gripped the handle of her portmanteau, as if it gave her strength, as the carriage swung between the imposing gateposts of Morton Hall and clattered along the avenue of sapling poplars.

There could have been few houses of medium size that provided a greater contrast, one with another, than Ardleigh Manor and Morton Hall. Although Ardleigh had retained the name
Manor
it was in fact a small-windowed rabbit warren of an ancient place, with narrow staircases, crooked passageways and rooms far too low ceilinged ever to be fashionable. John Morton, on the other hand, had built a mansion in the classical style: airy, warm, long-windowed and with a gracious entrance hall from which rose a swirl of staircase. The furniture was mahogany and newly bought, including a modern type of piano with eight octaves which nobody at Morton Hall could play, the hangings were of delicate pastels, and the ornaments judiciously selected during the fateful honeymoon in France.

The two older boys, John and Edward, came hurtling down to greet Asa but stopped short at the sight of Madame de Rusigneux, who, suddenly roguish, knelt, opened her portmanteau and tilted her head to indicate that the children should come closer. ‘I have little presents for you,’ she whispered, producing a paper of sugared almonds for the younger, a little fan for the older. ‘Look.’ She demonstrated how the rosebud painted on its creases unfurled into a full-blown flower as the fan was opened. ‘You must take great care of it,’ she said, placing it in John’s palm, ‘but then you seem to me a very careful boy.’

Morton threw open the door of his library, hands outstretched: five years of marriage had thickened his paunch and given him an air of a man who had entirely moulded the world to his purpose. ‘Our Thomasina is here so all will be well.’