Diana the Huntress (14 page)

The vicar’s brother, Sir Edwin, was there with his wife and two daughters.

The vicar himself stood with his head bowed while the squire shivered beside him.

Dr Philpotts, Bishop of Berham, was conducting the funeral service. His thin voice rose and fell on the icy wind.

‘I know that my Redeemer liveth, and that He shall stand at the latter day upon the earth. And though after my skin worms destroy this body yet in my flesh shall I see God: whom I shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not another.’

‘There was nothing I could do, Lord,’ muttered the Reverend Charles Armitage under his breath. ‘There wasn’t no way a man could get her to stop taking the muck without watching her day and night. All the women addle their brains with suchlike potions. How was I to
know
? I was a good husband … well, as good as a man could expect to be. I didn’t beat her.’

‘… every man living is altogether vanity,’ intoned Dr Philpotts.

What had happened? That was the thought running through the heads of all the sisters. Could we have done anything? Did she have to die so that we would
take notice of her? Only Annabelle thought
rebelliously
, ‘How could we care for her when she never seemed to care for us?’

Two latecomers joined the mourners around the grave – Colonel Brian and Lady Godolphin.

Minerva alone remembered their mother when she had been more alive, less drugged, almost frivolous. She closed her eyes in pain and her husband, Lord Sylvester Comfrey, edged his way to her side.

‘O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?’

‘Soon we shall throw earth on the coffin,’ thought Diana. ‘I hope I do not faint. I cannot bear the sound.’

But soon the ceremony was performed and Dr Philpotts began to deliver the collect. The worst was over.

By the time the mourners filed two by two from the graveside, each one began to experience a sense of relief. Left behind in the grave was someone waiting peacefully in a deep sleep for the last trump.

Mrs Armitage would rest in her grave as she had rested so many times in her bedroom upstairs in the vicarage. Only Frederica, overcome with cold and misery and a dread of going back to school, let out a hysterical laugh and said to Diana that at least they would no longer have to climb the stairs to visit Mother, all they had to do was walk across the churchyard. Diana hugged her and told her she should go to bed as soon as they got home. Betty, their former maid, came up and led Frederica away.

In the vicarage, the sisters sipped negus and talked
in hushed voices. Minerva said that little Charles was fully recovered and she was anxious to return to him. Then she turned to Diana. ‘Would you care to come to London with me, Diana?’ she asked. ‘There is no need for you to stay with Lady Godolphin.’

Diana shook her head. She was thinking of Mr Emberton. He must have seen her talking to Lord Dantrey that morning in the square. If she stayed in Hopeworth, then he might return. And by staying in Hopeworth, there was no danger of meeting Lord Dantrey. Then she looked across the room and gasped.

‘What is
he
doing here?’ she asked.

Minerva followed her gaze. Lord Dantrey stood talking to her husband, Lord Comfrey, and to
Annabelle’s
husband, the Marquess of Brabington.

‘That must be Lord Dantrey,’ said Minerva, who still made it her business to know every newcomer to the neighbourhood. ‘It is only natural that he should call to pay his respects. I saw him at the graveside. No doubt Sylvester invited him. You look quite white, Diana. Is anything the matter?’

Diana bit her lip and shook her head.

‘And those must be the Carters,’ she heard Minerva say.

Diana looked up again.

Ann Carter and her mother had entered the room. They were talking to Mr Armitage and then to Sir Edwin. Ann was wearing a silvery grey dress, so fine it could have been woven from cobwebs. Her only covering was the gauziest sort of pelisse. She looked like a fairy, dainty and fragile. Lord Dantrey was being
introduced. Mrs Carter was gushing up at him, words pouring out from between her rouged lips, while all the time Lord Dantrey watched Ann. Diana saw the warmth and admiration in his eyes and felt sick.

How right she had been not to marry him.

Once a rake, always a rake!

Two months later, Daphne Garfield called on her sister, Minerva. Winter still held the land in its grip; it was a bitter, dirty day with wreaths of fog sliding around the buildings.

Minerva was spending a few weeks in town to shop for her children and her household. Although she had an army of servants, she still liked to attend to domestic matters herself.

After gossip had been exchanged, Daphne got down to the purpose of her visit. ‘It is Diana who concerns me,’ she said. ‘We were travelling back from the country and I asked Simon if we could visit Papa. It was all quite terrible. Papa has lost weight and spends a great deal of time in the church, which is where he is supposed to be, but it does not seem to bring him any consolation. I fear he blames himself sorely for Mama’s death.’

‘As we all do,’ sighed Minerva. ‘How could we be so stupid as to take her behaviour for granted? How is Diana?’

‘Ah, that is the thing that is most worrying. She has become grim and gaunt and seems to do nothing but sit about the house or go for solitary walks. She shows no interest in hunting …’

‘Nor should she,’ said Minerva severely. ‘Hunting is not a sport for a lady and I often think it is no sport for a gentleman.’

Daphne coloured faintly. ‘Don’t prose at me, Merva, for I must tell you about this. I managed to get Papa to give his permission to let Diana hunt. It was just before I married Simon. He said she could, provided she dressed as a man.’

‘But she didn’t!’

‘She did, and it’s no use glaring at me, Merva, because Diana lives for the hunt.’

‘But if it should ever come out …’

‘It has. It did. Squire Radford recognized her on the hunting field and so she was sent to Lady Godolphin to prepare for a Season. Now there seems to be no hope of a Season because of Mama’s death.’ Daphne clasped her hands together and gazed beseechingly at her sister. ‘We must encourage Diana to hunt again, Minerva. It is the only thing that will bring both Diana and Papa out of their misery.’

‘I could not countenance such a thing!’

‘If Squire Radford knew, then some of the country people must have known about Diana hunting as well. So before it gets about that she hunted dressed as a man, I thought we should send her a very modish hunting dress and a side saddle. Don’t you see? It would be considered very odd for Diana to hunt
at all
, but since she will be seen to be hunting in the proper style of dress, it will not be such a scandal.’

‘I cannot give permission …’

‘Stuff! I am not asking for your permission, Minerva.
I am a married lady now, and if you will not help me, then I shall send Diana a riding habit myself. But if
you
were to send it, it would have great effect. Oh, I don’t think poor Diana will
ever
marry. She said she hated men.’

Minerva still protested, but the beautiful and
normally
gentle Daphne could be very stubborn. A crash and a wail from the nursery above suddenly made Minerva say impatiently, ‘Oh, very well. If Diana is as bad as you say, then I do not suppose her riding with the hunt with her father’s pack in a country parish can be so very shocking. I must go to the nursery.
Yes
, Daphne, I will order a riding habit as soon as possible!’

Diana wandered aimlessly about the countryside, though any time she found her steps taking her in the direction of Saxon Mere, she swerved away and hurried off in the opposite direction. Mr Emberton, rumour had it, had returned to Wentwater mansion, but he had not attended church and was to be seen over in Hopeminster a great deal. There were rumours that Lord Dantrey was courting Miss Ann Carter. Diana felt very alone. Her father was strange and withdrawn. Normally, she would have turned to Squire Radford for help, but she blamed the little squire for Frederica’s banishment to school and for the end to her own hunting days.

She was returning from one of these long walks when she felt the slightly warmer breath of the wind on her cheek, heralding an end to the frost which had held the land in an iron grip for so long. Hounds would be
howling in their kennels, sensing the return of good hunting weather.

She saw a thin spiral of smoke rising from a stand of trees and her step faltered. Gypsies! She walked forward a little and stood staring. The old woman who had foretold the arrival of Jack Emberton in her life was stirring something in an iron pot slung over a fire. She looked up and beckoned to Diana to approach.

‘I met the dark and handsome man you spoke of,’ said Diana breathlessly. ‘He came into my life but then he went away again.’

‘Give me some silver and I will tell you all,’ said the old witch. Her eyes were red-rimmed with smoke. Diana gave a superstitious shiver.

‘Very well,’ she said. She produced a shilling and held it up. The gypsy snatched it up and put it carefully away in a leather bag slung around her scrawny neck.

‘Now come close, sweet life,’ said the gypsy. Diana nervously sat down on an upturned cask beside the fire and held out her hand. The gypsy looked down at it and then, raising her eyes, fixed Diana with a strangely hypnotic stare.

‘He ain’t gone,’ she said, ‘your dark lover. Biding his time, that’s what he’s doing, on account of a death in your family.’

Diana gave a little hiss of dread and tried to pull her hand away, but the gypsy held it tight. ‘He’ll come back, never fear,’ said the gypsy, ‘if that white-haired villain don’t stop him.’

‘Dantrey!’ gasped Diana. She wrenched her hand away and began to run as hard as she could, her hands
up to her ears to drown the gypsy woman’s jeering cackles of laughter.

The gypsy woman turned as her husband climbed down from the cart. ‘I said my piece to the gentry mort,’ she said, still laughing. ‘I told her what the gentleman paid me to say.’

Diana was still shaking when she arrived home. But after a while, when her superstitious panic had
subsided
, she began to find comfort in what the gypsy had said. Mr Emberton had only behaved like the
gentleman
he was.
He
had not come to the funeral like some vulture, like Lord Dantrey. He had merely stayed away out of a delicacy of feeling. Then she caught sight of herself in the glass.

Her tanned face, surrounded with tangled elf locks, stared back at her. Her dress hung on her thin figure. What man would
want
to see her?

For the first time since the funeral Diana began to feel ravenously hungry. Unlike her other sisters, she had taught herself to cook, and cook well. All the sisters could take their turn in the kitchen if need be, but none had mastered the mysterious art of bringing a tempting meal to the table.

Diana resolved to turn the cook-housekeeper, Mrs Hammer, out of the kitchen for the rest of the day. Let her enjoy a rest. She, Diana, would set a dinner on the table tonight that would cheer her gloomy father and put some much-needed flesh on her own bones.

On impulse, she sent the odd-man over to Squire Radford with an invitation to dine. If the squire could lighten her father’s grief with his usual good sense, then
it was silly to continue to hold a grudge against him because of the ban on hunting.

Diana busied herself in the kitchen all afternoon. As she worked away, she muttered under her breath at her father’s parsimony. Surely the vicarage finances could have run to a closed range!

Mrs Hammer had never been famous for her cooking but Diana thought, for the first time, that perhaps Mrs Hammer might improve if she did not have to work on such antiquated equipment.

The open wood fire had a hot water boiler on the right hand hob and a tiny oven on the left. The oven was not much use, and so Diana had to light a fire under the bread oven, a cast iron safe of a thing sunk into the wall.

She decided to make a hare and pigeon pie, and, after she had cleaned a large hare and two pigeons, she jointed them and put them in a pot of boiling water which she swung out over the fire on a crane which looked like a little black iron gallows.

Then she put a leg of mutton to roast on the spit which was down in the front of the fire, parallel to the high fender. She wound up its clockwork mechanism, thanking God for small mercies, and reflecting it was a wonder her father had not thought to use a pair of hounds to turn the spit.

While the ingredients for the pie were cooking, Diana took out a battered notebook and looked up a recipe for pudding. It seemed to involve using a great amount of raisins, currants and dates as well as flour and suet. Only when she had it all mixed and ready to
put in the pot, wrapped in a cloth, to boil after the pie ingredients had cooked, did she realize she had used all the flour. There would not be any left for the pie crust. Then she remembered the genius of Mr Wedgwood and sighed with relief. At the height of the Napoleonic wars flour was very scarce indeed and Wedgwood had produced a beautifully designed crock in the shape of a pie with a raised and ornamented china crust as a lid. Minerva had presented the vicarage with one of these wonders. All Diana had to do was to fill the crock with the hare and pigeon and put on the china top and hope the gentlemen would be so pleased with the effect that they would not miss the pastry.

What with cooking and baking and pumping water from the pump over the stone sink in the scullery into buckets, the afternoon flew past and Diana realized with a sort of wondering surprise that she had started to sing as she worked.

The vicar was surprised to meet Squire Radford in the lane outside the village. He had kept clear of the squire of late feeling bitterly that his uneasy conscience did not need any further jabs.

‘Evening, Jimmy,’ he said awkwardly. ‘Where bound?’

‘Why! To dinner with you. Diana invited me.’

‘
Diana!
Well, come along in. You know what Mrs Hammer’s cooking is like so you’ll know what to expect. I might find a good bottle of hock in the cellar to take away the taste. I think some of it’s left from …’ He had been about to say ‘from the funeral’ but found he could not go on.