A Night in Cold Harbour Page 2

  The interior of the hut was now quite dark, save for the flames of the little fire. Faces, clustered round it, watched the bubbling stew. The stench was such that even Jemmy flinched for a moment before going in. The rum had put the sailors into a cheerful mood. They were singing Billy McGee as they watched their supper cooking. Hannah was now bending over the old man.

  ‘He’s a-going,’ she said to Jemmy. ‘He’ll not last the night. Feel of his skin. Hark to his breathing, how it do roar and whistle.’

  He was inclined to agree with her. The scheme to get a pony and seek shelter with Mother Dicker would never answer. Nor could he linger long, for he must be on his way, carrying news of Lucy’s death to those who were waiting for a word from her. Yet he did not like to go. He remembered the roadside where he had lain howling, and a moment of unmeasured bliss which had come to him when those tears fell, as though he had risen up and floated away into some other existence. Some part of him had been touched which had nothing to do with his leg. He sometimes felt that, ever since, he had been a slightly altered man.

  ‘It might be for the best,’ he said. ‘Better than that he should be taken.’

  He took the hot shrivelled hand and felt a faint pressure.

  ‘D’ye know me, sir?’ he whispered. ‘Jemmy? ’Tis Jemmy.’

  A faint reply was drowned by a bellow from the sailors.

  ‘His horse has found a warmer stable.

  Billy McGee McGaw!

  His dog has found a bigger kennel.

  Billy McGee McGaw!

  His mort has found a better mate,

  And we shall get some grub to ate!

  So they all flapped their wings and cried:

  Caw! Caw! Caw!

  Billy McGee McGaw!’

  ‘When you’ve eaten,’ he said to the boy, ‘go you and watch the road. Give word if you see carriage lamps.’

  ‘They’ll never come tonight!’ protested Hannah.

  ‘My mind mistrusts me. This Cold Harbour is well known. No profit to enquire by day. ’Tis after dark they might hope to find folks here.’

  ‘And what might you have done with them skins?’ said a voice at Jemmy’s shoulder.

  It was Hughes who had slipped quietly up to them.

  ‘On a stone behind there, if you want ’em.’

  ‘To be sure I want ’em. What’s to do here?’

  Hughes bent over to look and exclaimed sharply:

  ‘The man’s dying.’

  ‘No, he an’t.’

  ‘I say he is. He must go outside. There’s no luck to be had sleeping with a corpse. It won’t hurt him to die on the heath and we can sleep in peace.’

  ‘You may sleep in peace on the heath if you choose,’ said Jemmy. ‘He’ll bide here.’

  ‘I’ll have you to remember there are five of us. You’ll do as we say. Take him out. Take him a mile off at the least, so we shall have no trouble tomorrow. When they find a dead man in Cold Harbour they bring back all those that were with him to speak before the Crowner.’

  ‘You know too much for a sailor,’ retorted Jemmy, ‘nor you don’t speak like a sailor. Must have been the fear of the gallows drove you to sea. He’ll bide here. Unless you want that your cullies should know what you’ve got in your boot.’

  Hughes started and changed colour.

  ‘Have it your own way,’ he said hastily. ‘Since you set store by the old fellow. Who might he be?’

  ‘One that passes for an honest man with the Walking People. If you want to see Bristol you won’t cross us.’

  Hughes retreated.

  ‘That Gaujo means no good,’ said Hannah.

  ‘He’d skin his own mother for tenpence,’ agreed Jemmy.

  The pot was lifted from the fire and all gathered for the meal, spearing out pieces on their knives.

  Jemmy took pains to establish cordial relations with the sailors. He gave them advice as to the safest lanes eastward, told them of a good barn where they might spend the next night, and amused them with stories. All that he said impressed upon them the importance of winning favour with the Walking People. He told them about the Bottle Man, at Shaftesbury Fair, who had filled a large tent with people paying sixpence apiece to see a six-foot blackamoor get inside a pint bottle and there to sing a song. After waiting for near an hour they tore the tent to pieces. The blackamoor and his barker helped them to do so since, in the interval, one had washed his face and the other had assumed the disguise of an old woman. So great was the riot that a record number of pockets had been picked. But later a reward was put out and the conspirators were taken. One that knew them, explained Jemmy, turned informer, not being accustomed to the roads but making their acquaintance in a Cold Harbour, as it might be this one, and by trade a seaman, as it might be one of the company. No detail was spared as to the ultimate fate of the informer at the hands of the Walking People.

  All the time, as he talked, Jemmy’s heart was as heavy as lead. He could not forget the life ebbing away in the corner. No death had ever affected him as this one did. When the sailors began another song he went back.

  ‘He’s trying for to say something,’ murmured Dickie.

  Jemmy put his ear to the trembling mouth and caught a whisper:

  ‘Trouble for you … Coroner … put me … in a ditch … for Billy McGee.’

  ‘No, no, Parson. We’ll stay by you.’

  ‘Dickie!’

  ‘I’m here. Holding your hand.’

  ‘Learn…. Don’t stay on the roads…. Eccles…. Go to him … tell him … from me … he will help you….’

  The voice fell silent.

  ‘Go back to the door,’ said Jemmy to the boy. ‘And don’t blubber. He’ll go so quiet I believe the rest won’t know unless we tell them.’

  The boy went to the door and cried out immediately that the lights of a carriage were coming up the hill.

  An uneasy silence fell upon the hut. Presently they heard the distant ticking of hooves, the rattle of wheels. The sound came nearer. As the carriage clattered past a ray of light from a lamp looked in for a moment at the open door. It went on but, just as a sigh of relief broke from the listeners, it stopped.

  ‘No matter what questions is asked,’ said Jemmy urgently, ‘we knows nothing.’

  Voices were shouting outside.

  ‘It’s here or hereabouts.’

  ‘I believe we’ve passed it.’

  Then came a quieter voice in the accents which they had most cause to fear:

  ‘Don’t turn. I can walk back. I think I see it.’

  A door slammed. Quick footsteps approached the hut. The vagrants within huddled close together as if for protection and Hannah threw her cloak over Parson Purchiss. A tall man appeared in the doorway. Flinching, as Jemmy had flinched, from the stink, he paused on the threshold. A cluster of faces, lit by the dying fire, stared at him. To his greeting, which was civil enough, Jemmy returned a mutter which might serve for all.

  ‘Is this the place they call Cold Harbour?’

  ‘Ay.’

  ‘I believe that some of you good people might be able to help me. You are all travellers, I take it?’

  ‘Travellers and Poor People,’ whined Hannah. ‘What does the kind gentleman want with the likes of us?’

  ‘I’m seeking two people who may be wandering in the country hereabouts. I believe they lodge very roughly. An old gentleman, the Reverend Dr. Newbolt, and a boy called Richard Cottar. Have any of you heard of such people?’

  There was a general murmur of dissent.

  ‘Are you sure? They might not go by those names. But any person who has seen them would, I think, remember them. The boy carries a fiddle. I am offering a reward of ten guineas to anyone who may bring me to them. So keep your eyes and ears open.’

  ‘Might we know your name, sir? In case we should hear of them later?’

  This was from Hughes. Dickie made a quick movement. He had whipped out a knife before Jemmy caught his arm with a firm grasp.

  ‘My na
me is Brandon. Of Stretton Priors, Severnshire. For the next few days I shall be found at the Dolphin Inn at Porlock.’

  The silence and stillness in the hut seemed at last to daunt the stranger. He paused, as though at a loss, and then said:

  ‘I trust you will help me, if it is ever in your power. Meanwhile, perhaps you will drink my health.’ He tossed a coin towards Hughes, who had at least made a civil reply. ‘And remember! I intend to be the benefactor of any person who brings me word of them.’

  With this unfortunate statement the scene closed. He wished them good night and turned up the road again. Everybody stirred and sighed. Not one of them, not even Hughes, hankered after a benefactor in any shape or form.

  They heard the carriage door slam again. The horses started forward. The hooves clopped and the wheels rattled for a long time in the still night, but at last they could be heard no more.

  PART I

  A YOUNG GENTLEMAN IN A RAGE

  1

  ROMILLY BRANDON, BORN in 1777, was reckoned by the neighbourhood to be a child of singularly good fortune. As an only son he was heir to a considerable property. A large sum of money had also been left to him by an uncle, of which he was to have absolute control when he came of age. His excellent parents doted on him. His five sisters were expected to defer to him in everything. His tastes were considered, his opinion asked, at an age when most children are told to hold their tongues. In person and capacities he deserved his reputation as the handsomest and liveliest young man in the county.

  He knew no check, was balked of no desire, until his twenty-first year, when Jenny Newbolt wantonly broke his heart. She was a distant connection, the daughter of the Rector at Stretton Courtenay, and they had been sweethearts as long as they could remember. They had agreed to announce their engagement and to marry as soon as Romilly was twenty-one, when his uncle’s bequest would make him perfectly independent. But, six months short of the date, Jenny suddenly took it into her head to wreck this delightful scheme. It had been, she said, a childish fantasy which must now be given up. They must wait, for some years perhaps, since her mother had died and she could not abruptly abandon her father at such a time.

  Romilly was furious. Whatever the claims of her family might be, he insisted that her earlier vows to himself should have priority. When she refused to listen to him he broke with her completely and fell into a fit of the sulks which culminated, before the year was out, in a bitter quarrel with his father, since it became clear that he intended to put nothing of his private fortune back into the Stretton Estate.

  Old Mr. Brandon had always assumed that he would do so, and had relied on it. Debts had piled-up. There had been a succession of bad harvests. Marriage portions for five daughters must some day be forthcoming. It was only fair that Romilly, who would some day inherit Stretton, should take some notice of these responsibilities, and his refusal was never forgiven. He made no secret of the fact that he disliked country life, found the local society insufferable, and wished to settle in London. He meant to spend his own money in his own way. He hoped, in elegant and cultivated surroundings, to become a patron of Art and Literature. It was a great grievance with him that he had never travelled or seen the world, never taken the Grand Tour. This right had been denied to him by the barbarous custom of fighting the French, for which his father’s generation must be held responsible.

  To London, in the end, he went, and in London he remained for ten years. Thrice, during that period, he went home — to bury his father and to attend the weddings of a couple of sisters, but he never stayed longer than three days.

  At the age of thirty he had got through a good deal of his money without having done anything in particular for Art and Literature. He began gradually to think that he might patronise them quite as effectively living on his own property, and spend a good deal less. He grew quite sure of this during a visit to his friend, Scrutty Phelps, of Long Bickerton. Scrutty was neither cultivated nor elegant, but more respectable friends, whose company Romilly had sought on first going to London, had now grown cool or dropped him; for want of better he was driven to the society of an idle rake with whom he had nothing in common. Having lost money to Scrutty every night for a week, he decided that boredom at home would be cheaper, and set out for Severnshire, in pouring rain, on a morning in May.

  He took with him a young naval lieutenant called Edward Latymer, a cousin of Scrutty’s, whom he had met at Long Bickerton. He had been rather sorry for the young man, who was too poor to share in the amusements of the house, or even to secure the civility of the servants. The maids, known through the county as ‘Scrutty’s Seraglio’, famed for their complaisance to his guests, had no smiles to spare for such a shabby visitor, and purposely omitted to bring him shaving water. Nobody knew what he did with himself all day. When he appeared at dinner he was boisterously greeted and immediately forgotten again. On an impulse of good nature Romilly decided to take him to Stretton, lend him a fishing rod, lend him a horse, and generally play the patron.

  As they drove in the rain over the Cotswolds he learnt that his protégé was the son of a clergyman in Yorkshire. Both the parents had died during his absence at sea. An only sister had married and gone to the West Indies. He had left a happy home, a united family, which he was never to see again. Home now, on leave, he had gone up to Braythorpe to attend, as he put it, to the graves, and had probably spent more than he could afford on tombstones. Then, having no other kinsman, he had betaken himself to Scrutty, with whom he had been on good terms in boyhood.

  ‘It’s not his fault, you know, that we have so little to say to one another now. He’s very good-natured. He invited me to stay there as long as I pleased.’

  ‘He’s got twenty bedrooms,’ commented Romilly, ‘and can’t always fill ’em. But had you no friends, down in Yorkshire, with whom you could have stayed?’

  Latymer flushed. There had been friends, he admitted … a family from whom he had expected a welcome … but certain circumstances … an alteration of feelings … there had been changes, in the course of seven years. Yorkshire was now the last county which he could visit in comfort.

  Few young ladies will wait seven years for a penniless lieutenant, reflected Romilly. It’s pathetic enough. But family tedium might be just the thing for him at the moment. The girls can take him for picnics and my mother can take him to church. I shall endure it better myself if it does him any good.

  He then remembered that Stretton Priors was not so full of girls as it used to be. Charlotte and Sophy were married. There remained but Bet, who was too plain and stupid to put Yorkshire out of any man’s head, and a couple still in the schoolroom — Amabel and Ellen.

  ‘I’ve spent very little of my time in Severnshire these last ten years,’ he said. ‘I had, formerly, a strong aversion from it. I don’t know if I shall like it any better now. That remains to be seen.’

  Latymer glanced at him and then looked out of the window down which the rain sluiced continually.

  ‘It will clear in a few minutes,” he observed. ‘Wind’s sou-west. Ten years is quite a period.’

  His tone, which was a little dry, nettled Romilly, who would have liked to hint, with a sigh, that his own history might have been quite as pathetic as Latymer’s. He could not do this, however, at the top of his voice, and the drumming of the rain on the window panes obliged them both to shout.

  In a few minutes it slackened. Splashes of light dappled the hills to the west, as a few isolated trickles ran down the panes. Eastwards a misty shadow rolled away over England. Now there was an opportunity for a sigh, but Latymer got one in first, a long breath of pure pleasure.

  ‘I never watched a squall at sea go by,’ he said, ‘without thinking of this kind of scene — how the colours change on the hills and fields when the sun comes out, and the smell of the soil after rain, and the way the birds strike up. That fellow in front must have got very wet.’

  ‘He’s paid to get wet.’

  ‘Do they expect you
at Stretton tonight?’

  ‘They don’t expect me at all.’

  ‘I thought you said you’d sent a servant on.’

  ‘Not to Stretton. I sent him home for a holiday.’

  This piece of good nature Romilly was already regretting. It had been prompted by the fear that Markham, who was a good valet, might find Stretton very slow, and refuse to settle there. Nor was the scheme for patronising Latymer quite so attractive as it had been when they set out. It seemed that he had enjoyed himself at Long Bickerton; he had hired a pony and explored the countryside. At Severnton, while they were changing horses, he insisted upon looking at the cathedral. A person so determined to be in good spirits could hardly be endowed with pathos.

  The sun was shining as they crossed the great tract of hilly forest which lay between Severnton and their destination. Emerging from the trees, they saw beneath them an expanse of rich fields, prosperous farms and shadowy woods. With more emotion than he had expected Romilly thought that all this was his. Latymer lowered a window glass and looked out. Immediately at the foot of the hill a river wound through an oddly smudged and blackened tract of country. There was a clutter of hovels, too many for a village, too few for a town, amidst great sheds, squat chimneys and mounds of grey-white earth.

  ‘What’s this? A pottery?’

  ‘Observant fellow! Yes. That’s Cranton’s. The land used to be ours, but my father sold it. There’s china clay there, and lead, and coal to be got in the forest.’

  ‘Cranton’s china? I’ve heard of it. What a pleasant spot it must have been before, though!’

  ‘It was. Luckily there’s a rise in the ground which hides it from us at Stretton.’

  The sale of this land had been a grotesque blunder which Romilly generally managed to forget. Cranton’s offer, at first contemptuously refused, had later become a blackmailing threat in the course of the quarrel between father and son.