Read The Painter's Apprentice Online
Authors: Charlotte Betts
Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Historical, #General
The Painter's Apprentice
The Apothecary’s Daughter
Published by Hachette Digital
ISBN: 978-0-7481-2496-1
All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 Charlotte Betts
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.
Hachette Digital
Little, Brown Book Group
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London, EC4Y 0DY
To Simon
April 1685
The night air was chilled and the trumpets and the kettledrums echoed the pounding in James’s head. The barge rocked a little
under his feet as an anticipatory drum roll made him look up. His stomach gurgled and fizzed with gas and elation; he wondered
if he should have refused the second serving of duckling. The richness of the delicious dishes, over fourteen hundred of them,
at his coronation banquet in Westminster Hall that day had been enough to tempt anyone into gluttony.
Then the first fireworks burst from the platform of barges like a crack of thunder and a dazzling array of coloured stars
exploded into the black dome of the night sky, dropping gobbets of white fire on to the Thames below. A gigantic blazing sun
made up of firecrackers hung over the river and a myriad of water cannon shot flumes forty feet into the air, while explosive
charges crackled and popped all around.
As the crowd on the banks of the Thames roared in delight, James’s heart swelled in exultation.
Listen to them!
The populace
loved him. His brother, Charles, had always been too afraid to stand up and declare his faith, haunted by memories of their
father’s execution, but now he, James II, would tear down the walls of Anglican domination just as if they were the walls
of Jericho. This was
his
time. Now he had the power to bring the True Faith back to the people.
November 1687
Darkness had already fallen when shouts and then the sound of a whistle blown three times made Beth’s head jerk up from her
easel. Her paintbrush slid from her hand and fell unheeded to the floor. Instantly alert, she reached for her own silver whistle,
which always hung around her neck. Noises in the night were not unusual in a lunatic asylum but generally the disturbance
came from within the walls, not from the outside.
Several sets of footsteps raced along the gallery, and in the courtyard below, Orpheus began to bark as furiously as if the
Devil himself had knocked at the gate. Beth pushed open the casement and hung shivering over the sill to peer into the frosty
night.
The servants had run outside with lamps and were shouting and milling around in the flickering light. The commotion was too
great for anyone to hear her when she called down to them so she hurried to investigate.
In the stone-flagged hall, the front door was wide open to the night air; a small group of anxious inmates huddled together,
while
Beth’s mother and her youngest brother, John, attempted to reassure them. Orpheus still raged outside, his barks reverberating
around the courtyard louder than a peal of bells in a belfry.
When Beth caught sight of her father’s black-clad figure striding purposefully across the hall she ran after him down the
front steps into the courtyard.
‘Orpheus!’ William Ambrose caught hold of the wolfhound’s collar and pulled his huge grey head around to face him. The dog’s
teeth were bared in a vicious snarl, his muzzle spittle-frothed. William snapped his fingers. ‘Quiet, sir! Your job is done!’
Orpheus gave a throaty growl and William raised a warning finger. ‘Beth, take control of this hell-hound, while I find out
what is happening.’
‘Yes, Father.’ Beth hooked her fingers through the dog’s studded collar and tickled his ears until he quietened.
Emmanuel and Joseph had a man pinned between them, his face pushed between the bars of the great iron gates. The prisoner
fought furiously but he was no match for the sheer bulk and strength of the two black men.
‘Let him go!’ William’s voice rang out above the grunts and shouts of the struggling man.
‘We found him climbing over the gate,’ said Emmanuel, the whites of his eyes gleaming in the lamplight. Emmanuel looked at
Joseph and winked. Slowly they lowered the intruder, chuckling as they held him so that his feet hung just above the ground.
‘Down, I said!’
William held up the lantern to study the trespasser, who straightened his travelling cape, adjusted the lace at his cuffs
and turned to face them.
The light illuminated a young man’s features, currently arranged in a scowl.
‘Well, sir, what have you to say for yourself?’ A frosty cloud of William’s breath hung in the air between them.
Beth didn’t envy the intruder. It had been a while since Father
had spoken to her in that way and she sincerely hoped it would never happen again.
‘Forgive me, sir.’ The voice was that of an educated man but he didn’t sound at all as if he was seeking an apology. Bending
over, he picked up his wide-brimmed hat, now severely trampled, dusted it off, tweaked the feather back into shape and replaced
it upon his head. ‘I lost my way. The cart dropped me off in the village and some mischievous child thought it amusing to
direct me to the wrong road. By the time I’d found someone to point me to Merryfields it was dark.’
Beth was astounded at how unruffled he sounded. He certainly didn’t behave like a common thief.
‘I rang the bell,’ the young man continued, as he stamped clods of mud off his high boots, ‘but no one answered. Since the
gate was locked and the hour so late, I took the liberty of climbing over the top, intending to knock on the door.’
William frowned. ‘And the purpose of your visit?’
‘I have a letter for Mistress Susannah Ambrose.’
‘My wife.’
‘Then you must be Dr William Ambrose?’
‘Indeed. And the content of this letter?’
The young man tilted up his chin. ‘I prefer to speak directly to Mistress Ambrose.’
Beth saw how the visitor, only a little older than herself she judged, met Father’s stare and couldn’t decide if he was fearless
or simply arrogant.
William grunted. ‘You had better come inside before we all catch a chill.’
Joseph, his steward’s keys jangling at his waist, held the lamp up high and spoke to the servants. ‘Back to your duties, everyone.’
Orpheus growled again. Beth pulled on his collar and patted his wiry head.
William led the way up the steps into the hall.
Shivering, Beth closed and bolted the massive oak door behind them.
‘Susannah, my dear,’ said William, ‘this young man brings you a letter.’
Beth’s mother, her pretty face anxious, let go of Poor Joan, who had been weeping on her shoulder, and came forward. ‘A letter?
But what was all the shouting about?’
‘The servants merely became overexcited when they thought our visitor was an intruder.’
‘Well, for goodness’ sake!’ Exasperation showed in Susannah’s green eyes. ‘What a fuss about nothing!’
‘Let me present …’ William turned to the visitor, with an enquiring look.
The young man took off his battered hat, exposing a fine head of wavy chestnut hair, and bowed low to Susannah.
She gasped, her face turning as white as bone. ‘But …? It can’t be! Tom? Oh, Tom, is it you?’
Then, almost before her husband could catch her, she fainted.
Supper was about to be served in the great hall. A fire crackled and danced in the stone chimneypiece; high up amongst the
beams the vaulted ceiling, painted cerulean blue, was studded with embossed stars of gold. Antlers of ancient stags adorned
the walls, a relic of the time when Merryfields had been a rich man’s hunting lodge. A group of chattering people clustered
around a long table, lit by candelabras and gleaming with polished pewter plate. The air was rich with the scent of woodsmoke
and chicken soup.
Beth and her parents, brothers Kit and John and her sister, Cecily, filed in to take their places at the top table on the
dais under the minstrels’ gallery. The visitor, whose name it transpired wasn’t Tom at all, but Noah Leyton, accompanied them.
William nodded at a portly man dressed in a shabby crimson
velvet coat and an extravagantly curled wig topped by a golden crown. ‘Your Royal Highness, will you honour us by saying grace?’
The man bowed, cleared his throat and raised an imperious hand. ‘Pray silence!’
Beth squinted at Noah through half closed lashes, stifling a laugh at his expression of amazement.
After the grace there was a scraping of chairs and the hubbub of conversation began again. Peg and Emmanuel’s daughter, Sara,
bustled between the tables serving the soup and bringing more bread and baskets of russet apples.
‘His Royal Highness?’ whispered Noah, leaning closer to William. ‘Who is your illustrious guest?’
‘An honorary title,’ said William. ‘He was born Clarence Smith but imagines himself to be Henry VIII. It’s a perfectly harmless
fancy but his family are unable to live with his notions.’
‘So you eat with the inmates?’ asked Noah, looking with raised eyebrows at the handful of people sitting at the long refectory
table.
Susannah smiled. ‘It’s important for our
guests
’ wellbeing that they feel they are a part of our happy family. A regular daily routine is helpful in guiding them back to
health and happiness.’
‘I had thought that
guests
in a lunatic asylum …’
Susannah put a gentle hand on Noah’s arm. ‘We never call Merryfields a lunatic asylum. It is merely a place where those of
a melancholic disposition can come in times of sorrow to rest and mend their spirits in good country air.’
‘I h-h-help them to plant their g-g-gardens,’ stuttered John.
‘We have embroidery, singing and drawing groups, too,’ added Beth, smiling at John, who so rarely spoke except within the
bounds of his family.
Noah studied the guests, who were bent over their soup bowls. ‘They certainly seem to be enjoying their supper,’ he said.
‘Some have helped to grow the food we eat,’ said William. ‘Digging and planting leave little time for melancholy.’
‘It’s almost disappointing that this is so far removed from how I had imagined a place such as Bedlam,’ said Noah. ‘I can
see I must forget any notion of dining out on tales of how I broke
into
a lunatic asylum.’
Susannah froze in the act of spooning soup into her mouth and Beth glanced at her father, but William only frowned and said,
‘Indeed you must.’
Beth passed Noah the bread. The hunting-green of his well-fitting coat perfectly complemented the burnished chestnut of his
hair. She couldn’t help noticing that his eyes were a warm shade of amber and wondered, if she were painting his portrait,
how she would achieve the little flecks of gold that gleamed in his irises. ‘Have you quite recovered from your unfortunate
reception?’ she asked.
‘Perfectly! Although I can’t say the same for my hat.’ His lips twitched in amusement. ‘And I trust you are none the worse
from the shock of my arrival, Aunt Susannah?’
‘You have the same lean figure as my dear brother, Tom. It must be thirty-five years since he left us but then I saw you standing
there and I thought, just for a moment, that I was seeing a ghost. It’s hard to imagine him as a grown man with children of
his own.’
‘Your hair is even redder than Beth’s,’ said Kit, tweaking one of his sister’s copper-gold curls.
Beth glanced down the table at her siblings. All had hair as dark as their father’s. ‘Mama and I are the odd ones out in this
family,’ she said. But, of course, although William had been the only father she had ever known, his cousin, her birth father,
had been fair.
‘You’d feel at home in Virginia,’ said Noah. ‘I have three sisters and all are as red-headed as the Old Queen.’
Beth glanced at Noah from under her eyelashes. He carried with him an air of restrained energy, as clean and fresh as the
scent of the air on a spring morning in the smoky hall.
‘But why have you come to England?’ demanded Cecily.
Noah looked down at the table. ‘I fear I have been a great disappointment to my father.’
‘Surely not!’ Cecily looked up at him with limpid green eyes. ‘How could you
possibly
be a disappointment to him?’
William gave her a sharp stare and she lowered her eyelashes.
‘He has worked very hard to make his tobacco plantation so successful. He had every expectation of passing it on to me, his
only son, in the hope that I would continue to fulfil his dreams and make the name of Leyton mean something in the world.’
Kit gazed intently at Noah. ‘And your interests do not lie with the plantation?’
Noah shook his head. ‘But I shall always be grateful that the good living Father makes from it gave me the opportunity for
the education I received.’
‘Where do your interests lie?’ asked William.
‘I am an architect.’
‘An architect!’ said Beth, her curiosity aroused.
Noah’s face lit up. ‘And I have such plans! I am come to London to learn from some of the great masters of the art. There
is a great deal to see now the city has been so nearly rebuilt since the Great Fire. I shall return to Virginia and build
fine houses and public buildings.
That
is how I will make the name of Leyton well known.’
‘But will these fine buildings be enough to soothe your father’s sadness? It would be a hard thing for a son not to carry
forward his father’s ambitions.’ William glanced at Kit, who bit his lip and looked away.
‘Perhaps not at once,’ said Noah. ‘Oh! I quite forgot!’ He took out a letter from inside his coat, which he proffered to Susannah.
‘Father asked me to give you this.’
Susannah took it with eager fingers. ‘It’s been more than a year since I had news from him.’ She opened the letter and angled
it towards the candlelight to read it.
‘Noah, you will be able to stay for a few days, won’t you?’ said Cecily. ‘There’s
so
much to talk about!’
Susannah, still bent over her letter, drew in her breath and Beth glanced at her curiously.
‘Do stay!’ said Kit.
Noah glanced at William, who inclined his head. ‘Then I would be delighted to accept your invitation.’
‘Yes, of course you must stay,’ said Susannah, tucking the letter away in her bodice and giving Noah a bright smile.
Beth wasn’t sure but she thought she saw the gleam of tears in her mother’s green eyes.
