The Paper Princess (9 page)

“Lord Arthur Bessamy and Mr. Godolphin present their compliments to Mr. Palfrey and wish to speak to him,” said Lord Arthur.

The butler bowed, turned, and walked away. After some hesitation, the two men walked into the hall.

The butler disappeared into a room at the end of the hall. There came the murmur of voices, and then they could hear Mr. Palfrey's voice suddenly sharp and querulous, saying, “Get rid of them. The disgrace of it all. They must not know.”

Lord Arthur raised his thin black brows. “Now, what is it that we must not know? Come, Dolph.” And with Dolph following at his heels, he walked straight into the room from which they had heard Mr.

Palfrey's voice emerging.

Mr. Palfrey let out an outraged squawk at the sight of them.

“Gentlemen,” he said, shredding a handkerchief between his fingers, “normally I would be delighted to entertain you, but I am not well, not well at all.”

“We are in fact come to call on Miss Channing.”

“Sleeping,” said Mr. Palfrey. “Can't be disturbed.”

And then they heard cries from the courtyard and the sound of many feet.

All of them stood stock still, waiting. A group of servants entered with a man in gamekeeper's dress heading them.

“It's terrible, Mr. Palfrey,” said the gamekeeper. “Just terrible.”

“Let me just see these gentlemen off the premises,” began Mr. Palfrey, but one of the servants behind the gamekeeper cried out, “They be dead. All of them. Miss Felicity, Miss Chubb, and John Tremayne.”

Like a puppet with its strings cut, Mr. Palfrey dropped into a chair. “You must be mistaken,” he gasped.

“Where? How?”

The gamekeeper took over. “We went to look for them like you told us to, seeing as how Miss Felicity had run away, her not wanting to marry the baron.” Mr. Palfrey waved his hands in a despairing way, and turned a ghastly smile on Lord Arthur as if to imply that the gamekeeper was talking nonsense.

“We come to a bit o’ the cliff along to the north,” went on the gamekeeper, “and where the cliff had fallen into the sea during the storm, we found where they'd fallen over.”

“I must see this. I cannot believe it,” babbled Mr. Palfrey, now too overset to worry about Lord Arthur.

They parted to let Mr. Palfrey through, and Lord Arthur and Dolph followed close behind.

As they walked along the cliff, Dolph found himself muttering prayers. If only it were not true. Lord Arthur was clay-white, and his face was set in stern lines.

It was too beautiful a day for tragedy, thought Dolph, in a sort of dazed wonder. The sun still shone, the birds still sang, and the air was sweet with the smell of salt and wildflowers. Tufts of sea pinks grew along the top of the cliff, looking almost shocking in the gaiety of their summer display.

Finally the party came to a halt.

“Look,” said the gamekeeper.

Mr. Palfrey, Lord Arthur, and Dolph looked at the jagged, broken cliff, and the pathetic marks of hands that had clawed into the mud.

“And look down!” cried the gamekeeper. They edged to the broken lip of the cliff. There was a dry bit of turf to the side of the mud. The three men lay down and looked over.

A piece of blue muslin, as blue as the sky above, was caught on a jagged rock halfway down above the foaming sea.

“That was the dress she was wearing,” said Lord Arthur in a bleak voice. “She was wearing a blue gown when we saw her.”

As they watched, a boat nosed round an outcrop of rock far below. The men in it were scanning the water. One of them cried out, and they put their grappling irons over the side.

“Oh, no,” muttered Dolph. “I'm going to be sick.”

But they watched as the grappling irons took hold. A black thing was being pulled up out of the water. It was a trunk with limp, soaking clothes dangling over the side. The men hauled it on board and continued their search.

Still they lay there and watched and watched as the men below searched the restless waves.

At last Mr. Palfrey got shakily to his feet. “It had nothing to do with me!” he cried. “It was not my fault.”

A crowd of locals had gathered. As Dolph and Lord Arthur got to their feet as well, one of the yeoman farmers, a free man whose lands did not depend on Mr. Palfrey, bent down and picked up a clod of earth and threw it straight at Mr. Palfrey.

“Murderer!” he cried.

“Stop them,” shouted Mr. Palfrey to his servants, as more missiles followed.

But his servants stood in a circle, staring at him with accusing eyes.

With a frightened little cry, Mr. Palfrey set off running, as stones and turf whistled about his ears.

Dolph reached up and put a plump hand on his friend's shoulder. “Come away, Arthur,” he said. “There is nothing we can do for the girl now.”

While Mr. Palfrey was fleeing back to the castle, it was still early morning in Williamsburg, Virginia, and Bessie Redhill was at last up for sale. It had been a nightmare of a voyage, as they were driven off their course time after time by storms and gales. Then the good ship
Mary Bess
had limped into Bermuda for repairs and to take on fresh water before finally setting off south for Virginia.

For a good part of the journey, Bessie had hung between life and death. She had been suffering from severe concussion, as well as from the overdose of laudanum; she had been violently seasick and then had contracted a fever. She sometimes thought that the only thing keeping her alive was her burning thirst for revenge. Before she had come down with the fever, she had begged a scrap of oilskin from one of the crew and had sewn that precious will up in it. She had not confided in the captain. The captain was an accomplice of Mr. Palfrey's in her eyes.

Virginia was about the worst place where she could have been sold. The decline of white servitude had begun some twenty years earlier because of the vast numbers of black slaves. Why buy a white, who must be granted his or her freedom and paid wages in seven years’ time, when a black worked for nothing for life? White servants were rated cheap, and their masters often tried by various ruses to prolong their servitude. In other states, Connecticut, for instance, there were no laws under which a runaway could be recovered. But there were such laws in Virginia and a recaptured servant could have years added onto that seven-year term.

At least Williamsburg was far better than anything Bessie had expected. She had imagined with dread a wild and barren land. A former governor, Francis Nicholson, had planned “a green country town.”

Williamsburg was divided into half-acre lots on which dwellings were set back, by law, six feet from the street. The impression was one of prettiness, elegance, and cleanliness.

Bessie, standing on the auction block, envied the Scottish servants. Provided they had a clan name like Macleod or Macdonald, one of their American clansmen would buy them on the spot and set them free.

She was too tired and dazed to really know what was happening. The fierce heat on her uncovered head was making the colorful scene swim before her eyes.

“Get down, Redhill. You're took,” barked the auctioneer. Numbly, Bessie stepped down.

A black manservant in neat livery said, “Follow me. Mistress is waiting in the carriage.”

Bessie stumbled after him through the crowd.

A lady was sitting in an open carriage. “This servant shall travel with me, Peter,” she said to the servant.

The manservant opened the carriage door and, catching the eye of his mistress, helped Bessie in.

“I am Mrs. Harrington,” said the lady, unfurling her parasol. “Walk on, Peter.” The carriage moved off.

“I must make one thing clear ... Bessie, is it not? I am the wife of the Reverend Hereward Harrington.

We do not believe in slavery. You will commence your duties as a kitchen maid until you are trained in our ways and may rise to a better position. You will be paid wages and you may, as from this moment, consider yourself a free woman.”

“Thank you,” whispered Bessie, tears of weakness and relief beginning to roll down her cheeks.

“You poor woman. You will be nursed back to health before you start your duties. Now, do not try to talk. Here, take this parasol, and keep the sun from your head.”

Bessie looked into Mrs. Harrington's kind eyes and then at the saucy silk parasol with the ivory handle that she was holding out to her, and for the first time in her life, Bessie Redhill began to believe in the existence of a merciful God.

* * * *

The sea was mercifully calm, but the landswell was enough to make Dolph begin to wish he had not dined so well. Hatless and in his shirt-sleeves, Lord Arthur rested on the oars for a moment.

“One of the fishermen told me, Dolph, that bodies are often swept out to sea. I fear they may end up in France.”

“In that case...” said Dolph hopefully.

“But we shall continue our search. Perhaps a little farther out.” Lord Arthur began to pull away from the cliffs with powerful strokes.

Lord Arthur was the youngest son of the Duke of Pentshire. He was very rich. All of which, thought Dolph queasily, should have made the noble lord remember what was due his position. He should have hired men to search and men to row.

“There's something white in the water,” shouted Lord Arthur suddenly, making Dolph jump. “Over on the port side.”

Dolph looked over to his left and saw a white shape bobbing on the water. “Oh, dear,” he moaned.

“Get the grappling iron,” ordered Lord Arthur, shipping the oars.

Dolph closed his eyes while Lord Arthur fished in the water. When he opened them again, Lord Arthur was standing in the rocking boat, looking thoughtfully at a sopping white dress on the end of the iron.

“More clothes,” he murmured.

He took the dress off the iron and then sat down in the boat, shook it, and held it up. It had been a pretty little dress with a flounced yoke and a flounced hem.

“How tall would you say Miss Channing was?” asked Lord Arthur.

“Little under my height,” said Dolph, surprised. “'Bout five foot four inches, I would guess.”

Lord Arthur studied the dress again, and then looked thoughtfully at the cliff.

“You know what puzzles me, Dolph,” he said. “Clothes have been found. But you would have expected trinkets to have been lying down the cliff, or floating about—fans and ribbons, shoes and laces.” He picked up the oars and began to row powerfully back in the direction of the little harbor below the village.

“Where are we going?” asked Dolph.

“Back to Tregarthan Castle. I want a look at that trunk that was recovered.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just an idea.”

When they got to the castle, it was to find that the portcullis was indeed a working one, for it was firmly down at the end of the drawbridge.

“Mr. Palfrey must be frightened of a hanging,” said Lord Arthur.

There was a bell beside the portcullis of the same size as the one beside the front door. He gave it an energetic peal and waited until a servant ran out to answer its summons.

“I was to let no one through, my lord,” said the servant, “and Mr. Palfrey is lying down, having taken a sleeping draft.”

“I merely want to examine the trunk of clothes that was found yesterday,” said Lord Arthur. “Raise this silly contraption immediately.”

He and Dolph waited while the servant ran to fetch three of his fellows, and it took the combined efforts of the four to winch up the portcullis.

Anderson, on hearing their strange request, turned them over to the housekeeper, Mrs. Jessop, who took them up to Felicity's bedchamber.

“I had not the heart to take the clothes out and wash them,” said Mrs. Jessop, beginning to cry.

“Do not distress yourself,” said Lord Arthur. “Leave us for a little. We shall take our leave shortly.”

Watched by Dolph, Lord Arthur carefully took items out of the trunk and studied them. Two strangely small dresses, an old pair of shoes, an ugly tartan scarf, four old bonnets—not the sort of styles one would expect the modish Miss Channing to wear.

A slow smile curled Lord Arthur's lips. Then he began to laugh.

Dolph looked at his friend in shock and outrage.

“Have you gone mad?” he cried.

“No, no, my friend,” said Lord Arthur. “I fear the tragedy has overset my nerves.” He put the clothes back in the trunk, slammed down the lid and left the room, with Dolph trotting at his heels. Grief took people in very strange ways, thought Dolph.

Princess Felicity of Brasnia made a triumphal exit from the town of Falmouth. The mayor bowed and a military band played a brisk march. Felicity waved graciously until the people and the town were left behind.

“Thank goodness that is over,” said Felicity, leaning back with her head against the squabs. “It is amazing, this business of being a princess. No one will let us pay for anything. I feel such a fraud.”

“They all enjoyed themselves,” said Miss Chubb. “But the one thing now troubling me is our lack of servants. It will look odd if we do not hire some. You have only John. And, oh, how difficult it will be with a retinue of servants. We shall have to play our parts even in our sleep.

“Perhaps our John will think of something,” continued Miss Chubb. “He is proving to be amazingly clever.”

“Well, at least I can take this heavy tiara and collar off for a little,” sighed Felicity. “Do you really think Mr. Palfrey will believe us dead?”

“Bound to,” said Miss Chubb bracingly. “It all went off splendidly.”

Felicity frowned. “I am a little worried about the things we left in that trunk that went over the cliff. I put in some of my gowns that I had not worn since I was about thirteen. But I could not bear to throw away my lovely new clothes—you know, the ones Mr. Palfrey ordered from London to make me look attractive to the baron.”

“But you did sacrifice the nicest one, the blue one that John tore a piece from and left on that rock.”