The Captain's Daughter (14 page)

“Some thief must have accidently
dropped it,” Amy reasoned. “In the dark he must have not noticed. Perhaps he,
or maybe they, as they trampled about, must have kicked dirt over it. If they
didn’t notice it missing that means they had more valuables.” She paused and in
a hushed voice said: “This is where the highwaymen must hang out. You are
right, Emma, we should get out of here. Bring the pendant. We must try to
return it to its rightful owner.”

“What if the highwaymen miss the
pendant and come back looking for it?” asked Emma nervously.

“They won’t know who found it.
They’ll probably start accusing one another. We will be quite safe, but I don’t
think we should come back here for a while. We better wait until the king’s men
catch them.”

As they made their way back to the
house, with Amy holding the reins, Emma who had been polishing the pendant,
opened it. She looked up at Amy.

“There is an inscription inside the
pendant,” Emma said in a hushed voice.

“What does it say, Emma?”

“To my beloved Esther.”

“Amy,” her mother said as the
family sat down to eat lunch, “there is a letter on the stand in the hall for
you. It is from Sir Anthony.”

Amy knew her mother would never
tolerate her reading the letter before she ate lunch with the family, so she
made short work of her lunch, excused herself while her mother was speaking to
her father, and escaped the dining room before her disapproving mother could
object.

Up in her room alone, she broke the
seal with Ben’s signet impressed in it, and eagerly read what Ben had to say.
His letter opened with the usual greeting that a man of his station used to
address a woman whether she was married, or was unmarried like Amy.

Madam,

I have been most
earnestly striving to address your mystery, Amy. Even to the neglect of my own
affairs. Do not feel any guilt about this as my efforts have been driven by my
own curiosity.

So far I have
eliminated all but the captain and his wife from serious consideration. I
cannot see at this time how it could be any of the others. There doesn’t seem
to be anything significant about them, although I would never dismiss them
completely.

I have been
fortunate to find out where the coach was swallowed up by the river and its sad
victims were drowned, but I have more inquiries to make and then I will have
much more to say.

Your obedient servant

Benjamin Anstruther

That’s all?
she said to
herself.
He could have told me more. Where did the captain and his wife
drown?
Amy would have no option but to wait until Ben chose to divulge more
information. And she hungered for more.

As she sat at her writing desk
tapping the letter on it in annoyance, an idea came to mind. They were now
getting into summer. The London season ran from the beginning of the year until
late June. The Sibbridges were forced to sit most of it out here at home
because of their delicate finances, but there was still time. If they could go
to London she could track Ben down. He couldn’t refuse to pay them a visit and
she would find out much more about the captain and his wife.

“Mama,” she said when she found
Lady Sibbridge in the sitting room, “I know the London season is over in two or
three weeks, but couldn’t we go there for just a little.”

She knew she could never bring up
their financial situation to her mother. It was one thing they must never
mention, although they were all painfully aware of it. The hidden query between
the lines in her question was
Don’t we have enough money for just a little
time in the capitol?

“No, dear, we cannot go there
because Sir Frank and Lady Ramsey have invited us to visit with them in Bath.
Besides, we cannot really go to London because of your father’s present state.
We do not want his old friends to see him that way.”

Mattie’s eyes lit up at her
mother’s words. Most young ladies greeted with joy and delight a visit to Bath
where parental strings were much looser and the chance to meet with other young
people, and that definitely included young gentlemen, on its streets, at its
bathhouses, and its gardens was a hundredfold that of London where things were
much more formal, except for regulated visits to Vauxhall Gardens.

Amy was devastated. She knew the
attraction of the invitation was that her mother felt comfortable with staying
with the Ramseys in Bath, whereas she felt that in London they had to engage a
residence for their visit. Amy was miserable. She felt that Ben had no reason
to visit Bath, whereas he had reason to come to Stockley-on-Arne because his
home was here. She might not see him in months, she fretted to herself.

Amy ran to her room in tears and
threw herself on her bed. But then she soon got up and went to her desk. Her
mother’s announcement gave her a good reason to write to Ben and tell him they
were going to Bath. In fact, this might work out well, because if he did choose
to pay a visit to Bristol he could stop by in Bath since it was but a slight
detour on a journey from London to Bristol. With these thoughts she began to
feel much better.

And there was another advantage.
She had felt reluctant to tell Ben about the Frenchman who visited their house
with the Ramseys and claimed to be a nobleman being pursued by the agents of The
Committee of Public Safety. She was worried he would look on her as a fretful
girl hiding from phantoms, and Amy did not want to appear weak. Now she could
speak frankly in her letter.

With considerable satisfaction she
ended her letter with what she considered was a justifiable tease after the way
he had abruptly ended his letter leaving her wanting more.
Oh by the way
,
she wrote,
I visited Hillfield House to warn you of the Frenchman’s
presence, but you were not there. When I returned home my sister Emma informed
me that one of the Frenchman’s henchmen followed me to your house.

She signed and sealed the letter
and sat back in her chair with a satisfied grin.
Now we will see what Ben
will do
.

“
Oh dear
,” fretted Amy’s mother, “it’s been daylight
for more than two hours now, and we have to get to Maidenhead before dark.”

“Don’t worry so much, mother. It’s
just after six, and it should take about ten hours at the most to get there.
The sun doesn’t go down for another fifteen hours, so we should get there long
before dark.”

Her mother, who when worried did
not like her fears to be punctured, mumbled: “We better, after what happened to
poor Frank and Estella.”

“What happened to Sir Frank and
Lady Ramsay?” Amy was trying to remember what horrible thing had happened to
the Ramsays that she couldn’t remember.

Her mother paused, clearly trying
to remember what she meant by making that remark. The thought had at some point
lodged in her memory without her brain actually indexing it. And then it came
back.

“That horrid, frightening, crowd at
the inn.”

“The noisy travelers that were
singing too loud?”

Her mother rather obviously felt that
Amy was not taking the revelers at the inn as being the clear threat that they
were, so she left for the kitchen to find out how Mrs. Pemberton and Effie were
doing with the food hamper.

As she left, Amy could hear her
mother mumbling about how Amy would learn when she got older... What she would
learn as she got older, Amy was not privileged to find out as her mother’s
voice faded away.

One genuine worry that her mother
had to contend with, as Amy well knew and her mother badly tried to conceal,
was the family’s shortage of money. They had drastically cut back on the
household help over the years, and could get by without too many problems as
long as they were at home. When they traveled it was another matter, but Amy’s
mother still felt obliged to visit London some during the year, although it got
less and less, with shorter journeys as time went by.

With only one maid, it would have
shocked Lady Sibbridge if she ever found out that Amy sometimes helped Effie
with some of the dusting and cleaning. And on laundry days, both Amy and Emma
would pitch in to help Mrs. Pemberton and Effie with the mountains of laundry,
although even laundry days were not as frequent as they should have been.

The most taxing task that Lady
Sibbridge faced now that she had to take over the financial disbursements that
Amy’s father had once handled was the cost of traveling, although that was not
as bad as entertaining guests. It had grown more and more obvious that their
close friends, such as the Ramsays, had guessed their predicament, so that
nowadays they made overnight visits to the Brewminster’s, and not the
Sibbridges despite the fact that her father was Sir Frank’s oldest and dearest
friend.

Amy had no doubt whatsoever, that
Sir Frank and Lady Ramsay’s invitation to visit their house in Bath was another
kindness by the Ramsays.

She did not know how conscious her
mother was of this, but she did know her mother was deeply upset that she had
to take advantage of hospitality she could not reciprocate. On the way to Bath
they would visit Lady Sibbridge’s cousin, Alexandra Meckle, in Salisbury. They
could not, however, reach Salisbury in one day. They would have to spend the
night in Maidenhead.

Maidenhead was the only convenient
bridge over the Thames since London was too far to the east, and the bridge at
Chertsey was too far south. The recently constructed bridge over the Thames at
Maidenhead was the only convenient crossing.

After Amy’s father was injured and
no longer capable of running the affairs at Sibbridge House, they could not
afford a coachman. When they had to let old Eben Maitland go, he went to live
with his middle daughter who was the baker’s wife in Stockley-on-Arne. She was
a shrewd businesswoman but tended to scold her husband and the other members of
the family, so Eben was happy to get away from her at times. He was not
sufficiently unhappy at his age to seek any sort of continual employment, but a
week or two of coaching for the Sibbridges got him back into his best humor.

He had brought with him a youth named
Leonard, who seemed to be related in some way that was never clear. Leonard had
a permanent lop-sided grin, but whether from a good humor or from a bad injury
was also never clear. They had walked out to the Sibbridge’s just after dawn,
and had been occupied readying the now seldom-used coach for the journey.

One little problem or minor
disaster after another kept delaying their departure as Amy’s mother grew
increasingly impatient and upset. Finally, with their baggage loaded and the
food hamper tied precariously on the top of everything else, Lady Sibbridge
escorted a benign appearing Lord Sibbridge to the coach. Leonard, who was
taking the place of a footman but had no clue as to what a footman actually
does, helped Lord Sibbridge board the coach. He helped Lady Sibbridge into the
coach, and he somewhat solicitously helped Amy and her sisters into the coach.
The one other person accompanying them was Mrs. Charlotte Parkhurst. No one had
really discussed why she was coming with them. It was presumably as Emma’s
tutor.

For reasons unknown, Leonard did
not offer to help her into the coach. Maybe she looked too frightening to him.
She did not like to be ignored and made her feelings known to everyone,
especially the negligent Leonard. It was scorn at first sight.

It was a pleasant journey with the
sun playing peekaboo with the travelers all day until they stopped to eat a
picnic meal at two o’clock. It then began to rain and sprinkled off-and-on
until they had finished eating, and then the rain clouds packed up and left,
and the sun came back from lunch, and more-or-less remained with them for the
rest of the journey.

Mrs. Charlotte Parkhurst had
started the journey complaining about everything and nothing in particular.
However, Amy’s mother had proved to be much better at complaining than the
grumbly Mrs. Parkhurst, and her complaints were much more entertaining, so the
grumbly tutor realized that she had been outclassed and could not hope to
outshine, or more accurately, out-complain Lady Sibbridge and grew silent,
mute, and morose for the remainder of their journey.

They headed in a southerly
direction as the coach jostled past fields of sheep and meadows strewn with
wildflowers and lowing cattle. Even Amy’s mother grew quiet as Emma read one of
her books, Mattie busied herself with her needlework, and Amy, with nothing to
do and nowhere to go, began to meditate on all that had occurred to her in the
last few weeks.

It was the drowsiest part of the
afternoon, and even the rumbling and rocking of the coach could not compete
with the buzzing of the insects, and Amy had sunk slowly into that condition of
sleepiness that a warm early summer afternoon can induce, when a sudden bang
caused her to snap awake when she didn’t even realize she was asleep.

The coach was alongside another
conveyance which appeared to be a cart, and Eben was exchanging words with what
sounded like a country wight.

“What’s happening?” Amy’s mother
asked sounding distressed.

Eben appeared at the window of the
coach. “A merchant’s wagon lurched into the side of the coach. Everything
appears undamaged though,” he added as he dusted the side of the coach with his
coachman’s scarf. “We been lucky. I don’t see a scratch.”

“Good,” said Lady Sibbridge. And
then yanking Lord Sibbridge’s watch from his waistcoat pocket, she snapped it
open. The old man awoke and looked confused wondering what had just happened.

“Ohhh, ohhh,” moaned Lady
Sibbridge, “it’s past six o’clock. We’ll never get to Maidenhead before dark.
We’ll be at the mercy of these brigands that are plaguing our highways in these
fearsome times. How far is it to Maidenhead?”

She leaned out the window of the
coach. The merchant’s wagoner was inspecting his load making sure it hadn’t
been damaged. Without looking up from what he was doing he grunted: “We’re
somewhat better’n sixteen miles north’n the river.”

As Amy and Emma climbed out of the
coach, the wagon jostled and started moving slowly northward, its two horses
struggling to pull their heavy load.

“Everythin’ seems to be in good
shape milady.”

Old Eben and Leonard were at Amy’s
elbow.

“Good,” said Amy as she heard her
mother’s panicked voice imploring them to get back into the coach so they could
continue on their way.

She was about to comply when Emma,
who had been examining the coach, came up to them where they were standing just
behind it.

“The left lamp appears to be
loose,” said Emma.

“Don’t tell mother,” Amy pleaded
with her sister in a snarly whisper.

“Don’t tell mother what?” came a
concerned voice from the coach.

Amy went up to her mother who was
leaning out of the window of the coach.

“Emma thinks the lamp appears to be
loose.”

Eben was examining it and shaking
it a little.

“Indeed it be a little loose,” he
said solemnly.

“Which lamp?” Amy’s mother asked,
her panic seemed to be ratcheting up even more.

“Don’t worry, mother,” said Amy
attempting to calm her. “It’s the right lamp.”

“That’s the one facing the middle
of the road,” said Amy’s mother her panic increasing. “It’s going to be dark
soon and we’ll have a collision with one of these big merchant wagons or worse,
with the Royal Mail Coach. I’ve heard these overnight mail coaches sometimes go
as fast as ten miles an hour. They won’t be able to see us if our lamp isn’t
lit. They’ll crash into us and kill us all.”

Amy feared her mother was working
herself up into hysterics.

“Mother! Mother, calm down.”

She grabbed her mother’s forearms
and shook her gently.

“Mother! Stop it! You’re working
yourself up. There is nothing to worry about. We have more than three hours. We
have time to get to Maidenhead before dark. We can get the lamp fixed in the
town before we go on to Salisbury.”

Her mother had a frozen, distressed
appearance. It was then, at that moment, that Amy realized what her mother was
going through. Her mother put on that fussy persona, but underneath she was
suffering from worry about Amy’s father, the household debts, her inner need to
keep up a front, and all the other worries that were swirling around her. Her
mother was not an emotionally strong woman, and it was all too much for her.

Suddenly, Amy felt a change in
their relationship. Amy was no longer the trouble-free girl. She was a
young woman now, and she realized for the first time that she was stronger than
her mother.

The light of day was fading fast as
they rolled across the bridge into Maidenhead.

Just beyond the bridge, Amy heard
Emma yelling. When she leaned out of the window to hear what Emma was saying
she immediately saw the sign: David Daniels, Coachbuilder.

“Shouldn’t we get the lamp fixed?”
asked Emma.

They stopped and pulled as tightly
as possible to the side of Bridge Road in front of Mr. Daniel’s coachworks.

“Leonard,” she heard old Eben the
coachman say to the youth, “go thee in and see if they can fix a lamp this
evening.”

“I’ll go too,” said Amy climbing
out of the coach.

Inside the courtyard a man of about
forty was struggling unassisted with a stagecoach wheel trying to attach the
slim metal tire to the wooden rim. As they approached he stopped and looked up
obviously glad for an excuse to rest.

“Afternoon, milady, I’m David
Daniels, what might I do for you,” he asked Amy, casting a questioning glance
at Leonard.

“My family’s coach has a damaged
lamp and we need it repaired before we go on. Can you fix it this evening?”

“I don’t rightly know, milady. Let
me take a look at it.”

They watched as he checked the lamp
as well as he could with the increasingly heavy traffic of wagons and coaches
rumbling past only inches away from him on the busy road.

Finally he looked up. “It’s not
that bad, milady. Why don’t you go to your lodging and then send your man back
with the coach.”

“We don’t have any lodging yet,”
said Amy.

“Then, milady, I recommend you get
lodging fast, hoping that there is some remaining. We have some ninety or so
coaches pass through here daily and this late they all want to lodge in
Maidenhead for the night, because those heading north are afraid to go on until
morning because of the threat of highwaymen around Hounslow Heath.”

“We just passed safely through
there,” said Emma with restrained excitement.

David Daniels looked at her
solemnly and gave a slight shake of his head.

“The southbound road is much worse.
Just outside of Maidenhead is an extensive area known locally as Maidenhead
Thicket, which I regret to say is filled with highwaymen and scoundrels of all
sorts. I recommend that you speedily find lodging. It would be far better to
sleep on the streets of Maidenhead, rather than gentlefolk like you going
further after the sun goes down. Take my word, milady, make haste to find a place
for the night or they will all be filled.”

“Would you recommend any place in
particular?”

“We have several fine inns, but you
might wish to go to the new Greyhound Inn.”

“The Greyhound Inn?” asked Amy.

“Yes, milady, just continue down
Bridge Road about, oh, three hundred yards, and then you will come to
Moorbridge Road which veers off to the left. Almost immediately you will cross
over the Strand Water. Moorbridge Road soon becomes Bridge Street and then High
Street. High Street curves into Queen Street and right there on the northwest
corner is the Greyhound Inn. Now hurry milady, please.”

When they reached the Greyhound Inn
they were able to secure the only upstairs room that was left. The entire
family would have to occupy the same room, which was, Amy mused, better than
sleeping in the streets which would mean all sleeping in the coach, a most
discomfiting arrangement. They found accommodations for Eben Maitland and
Leonard in an area in the back set aside for servants, and most fortunately a
very small room for Mrs. Charlotte Parkhurst. It was under the stairs and had a
small cramped bed which was normally occupied by a scullery maid who had to
hurry off that morning to attend a gravely ill family member. In truth it was
more the size of a storage cupboard but it did allow Emma’s tutor to retain her
dignity since she would not deign to spend the night in the servant’s area.