Taking Liberties (25 page)

For the rest she would have to rely on supply from T'Gallants's undercroft which, on her initial inspection, she had discovered to be full of furniture, all of it heavy and not to her taste but . . . well, beggars couldn't be choosers.

‘What of servants?' Lucy had said. ‘You cannot live in a house like that with fewer than ten servants at the least.'

‘I have Tobias and Joan and I expect the village will provide others. Babbs Cove must have a laundress.' She would not shame Robert by admitting that her pension was too small for adequate staff.

‘Joan seems unwilling to go.'

It was true; Joan had disliked T'Gallants on sight. ‘Castle Grim', she'd called it.

‘She will settle to it, I'm sure.'

But Lucy, dubious, had insisted on providing a cook and a scullery maid, putting them into Tobias's coach like a mother stuffing a last-minute cake into her son's tuck box before sending him off to school. ‘You can send them back when you are settled.'

So the only cloud on the horizon was the one that blew along behind her. It had a black hull, tan sails and flew the long red pennant of the Board of Customs—a liberty that infuriated the sailors on Admiral Edgcumbe's barge as if they were bulls being teased by a red rag.

Young Lieutenant Damerell, who was in command, was much put out. ‘Damn fella's followin' us—beggin' your pardon, ma'am.'

‘Is it Captain Nicholls?' the Dowager asked, shading her eyes.

‘The
Wasp
all right. Nobody else'd be so damn bold—beggin' your pardon, Lady Stacpoole. If we didn't have ladies onboard, I'd turn and ram the hell hound, beggin' your pardon, ma'am, but damned if I wouldn't.'

‘He's probably got Mummy with him,' Diana said, wearily.

Mrs Nicholls was everywhere. The woman had called again at Mount Edgcumbe where, the Dowager being absent, she had not been admitted. The next day she'd been outside the gates of Millbay, waiting, she said: ‘. . . to get a glimpse of they poor lads I gave money for,' and sent off with a flea in her ear which had not stopped her appearing, apparently accidentally, as the Dowager emerged from the office of Spettigue and Son. ‘In't this a happy meeting, your ladyship? Arrangements for T'Gallants, was it? Don't ee forget now, if you find it should'n suit, my Walter wants first refusal.'

Appalling woman.

In fact, the Dowager had been delivering another well-bred flea into the ringed ear of young Mr Spettigue.

‘I was forced to stand like a petitioner at the door of my own house, Mr Spettigue.'

‘Devastated, ladyship. Wonderful embarrassin'. Mrs Hedley offered to buy, d'ye see? And I understood . . .'

‘You understood T'Gallants was for sale. Unless you are now finally disabused of that idea, one will have to find oneself another land agent.'

The humiliation to which the Hedley female had subjected her still stung. In the race for the cup to be held by the female the Dowager Countess of Stacpoole would most like to see roasted on a griddle, Makepeace Hedley was beating Mrs Nicholls by a short head.

Lieutenant Damerell had to beg her pardon for swearing many times more. The Revenue cutter stayed exactly one mile astern with an unpleasant doggedness.

Was this pursuit part of Nicholls's Revenue duties? If so, why was it so reminiscent of a creature stalking its prey? Did he hope to harry her out of T'Gallants that he might be restored to what he fancied was his ancestral home?

When pigs fly, Captain Nicholls, when pigs fly.

‘Babbs Cove coming up to port, your ladyship.'

The place twinkled in the sun, as it had done when she'd first seen it, though to her it was not as if a giant had cut a piece out of the coastline as it had been to Makepeace, but as something a giant had tucked into it, an artefact precious to him, to be returned for later.

Yes, she thought.

Just as it had on her first visit, T'Gallants tricked her eye at first glimpse into thinking it just another part of the cliffside.

In a way, Joan was right: it was hardly a castle, but it was certainly grim. Even with its angular roofs set against a sky so perfectly and uniformly blue that it might have been plastered into place, T'Gallants House could not be flattered. The granite of which it was built seemed to have shot upwards from some ancient seismic eruption and solidified before it could fall back, leaving a freakish, vertical piece of the rock itself. There was no ornament, no architectural softening, just a harsh perpendicularity. The original builder had sited it so that it refused protection from any lash of the sea, any blow of wind, but instead met them head on.

And something dark in the Dowager's nature, something she was almost ashamed to discover, exulted at it. Here was her reply to twenty-two years of servitude.

Dear, dear, she chided herself. He is dead; I am free of him. But she was not, and now knew she was not; almost every action she had taken in the last weeks was in response to the spirit that had overpowered hers for over twenty years—and still did in calling forth defiance to it. As she had organized the public subscription for the prison hospital, she had heard Aymer writhe. He who had so loathed all charity, what would he say to charity for rebels?

I can conform to my own nature now, she'd told that unquiet spirit, you shall suppress it no longer. I wish to do this and I will do it.

And T'Gallants is also my rebellion. It is mine. I am the master of something as harsh and unyielding as you were. The Pomeroy answer to Stacpoole domination. Did you expect me to retire, defeated, to the Dower House and lick the wounds you inflicted? Then look here.

She heard one of the crew mutter something.

‘What did that sailor say?'

‘Nothing, your ladyship.' Lieutenant Damerell was uncomfortable.

‘Yes, he did. He said “wreckers”.'

‘An old tale, a myth. Attaches to every house on the coast. Nothing to worry about, ma'am.' Lieutenant Damerell became busy.

It was the second time she had heard the word in connection with T'Gallants. The Hedley harridan had flung it, like mud, as she'd left the house.

She looked to where the sea was gently soothing the rocks at the cliff's foot and tried to imagine human beings, flapping like injured birds in the water as they were clubbed to death. No. Damerell was right; it was the house's position that gave rise to such a calumny. The early Pomeroys might have been rascals, like all Tudor adventurers, but there'd been no suggestion they killed anything other than Spaniards.

It took time to transfer herself and Joan and the furniture to the beach and by the time they had been, a new rowing boat full of men was being drawn up on the sand to debouch Captain Nicholls of the Revenue.

He marched across to her, a matt, neat figure with the peculiar quality she'd remarked on before of taking in light and giving none back. He approached until he was too close, standing with his face only eighteen inches from her own, staring at her with an intensity that suggested there was no one else on the beach.

‘Lady Stacpoole, again I must ask you to let my men search your house before you enter it.'

She moved back two paces, her hand instinctively covering the chatelaine of keys dangling at her waist under her cloak. ‘Have you a warrant this time, Captain?'

‘I am asking as a matter of courtesy. It will be better for you.'

She looked towards the village, where she could see her coach—two coaches—tucked within the coach-house of the inn. Tobias was talking to somebody outside it. In other doorways, women, children and old men were watching her arrival.

Smugglers they might be, but they were also her tenantry; she did not wish to start off on bad terms. Apart from the fact that the thought of Nicholls searching her house was odious, here was the opportunity to show one's people that, though one was not necessarily running with the hare, neither was one hunting with the hounds.

‘I shall decide what is best, Captain Nicholls.'

He leaned forward. ‘You must know I am not without influence, ma'am. I am pressing the Lord Chancellor to have Mr Chauncey replaced.'

She was becoming bewildered. ‘Mr Chauncey'?'

‘The local magistrate. He favours these rogues, as do local juries.'

Oh, she was tired of it. This was to be her private place. ‘Lieutenant Damerell,' she called, ‘perhaps your sailors would be good enough to carry my pieces to the house. My man Tobias will help them.'

Expressionless as ever, Captain Nicholls turned away.

‘Lead on, your ladyship,' Damerell said, coming up.

Over the bridge and up the cobbled way to the gatehouse. As they went through, she noticed what she had not during her first visit—her family coat of arms, a coronated apple, carved in stone above the archway.

Of course the courtyard was dilapidated and the view of the house's west wing nearly as chilly as its frontage, but its saving grace was a beautiful bow oriel standing on a base of branching stone, a gracefully feminine thing in a plane of dour masculinity.

Behind her a sailor carrying her clothes chest puffed: ‘Move on, there's a good lady. This here's heavy.'

By the time such furniture as she'd brought with her was in place and the beds made and Mrs Clarke, the cook, with the scullery maid Polly, had investigated (and deprecated) the kitchen, the crew of the barge had to leave or miss the tide.

The place was clean; the caretaker had done his job—where was the caretaker? To the Dowager's relief, there had been no sign of smuggled goods, though there had not been time to investigate all the rooms on the upper floors.

In brief glimpses from the windows during all the activity, she had seen that Nicholls and his men were searching the village. Air from the open casements carried the sound of crashing furniture and the shouted remonstrances of its owners. She was sorry for it but there was nothing she could do; if the villagers were smuggling, they must expect it.

Now, standing at the front window of the Great Hall, she watched with relief as the
Wasp
followed the barge towards Plymouth and found exultation in her command of the view. Here, at last, was freedom.

It had to be admitted that it was not luxury.

T'Gallants possessed nothing so feminine as a parlour—presumably when Pomeroy gentlemen had roistered, Pomeroy ladies retired to their bedrooms—so she'd had to annex the Great Hall as her sitting room. In any case, she was unwilling to relinquish such a view. But her few tables and chairs looked pitiful in its vastness and it was still dominated by the dragon's gape of the fireplace and the oak throne on the west wall which had proved too heavy to budge. And by the front window: the most wonderful thing in the room, with its hundreds of latticed panes so mellowed by time that, when the sun had shone through their amber and greenish glass, the effect was that of a vast honeycomb thrown on the floor.

But now the sun was going down, its rays full on the houses of the village but missing the hall's window and putting the hall into an early dusk.

Joan had sunk onto a packing case, tired and obviously depressed.

‘Candles,' said the Dowager, ‘and supper. You'll feel better with something inside you. Shall we see how Mrs Clarke is getting on?'

They walked along a passage that had become very dark to an ancient arched door. Kitchens were not in the Dowager's line, she had rarely visited one, having chosen Chantries's menus from the decency of her sewing room, but she had recognized on her first visit that T'Gallants's was a pig.

Some centuries-dead Pomeroy had visited France and recreated the kitchen of Fontevrault on a Devon clifftop. A giant pepperpot of a building, the middle of its ceiling was so high as to be lost in darkness. Four enormous fireplaces, each with its own flue, stood ready for an invisible army of cooks to roast invisible oxen. Between them, whitewash fallen off the stone left leprous, grey patches on the walls. Spiked hooks hung down from the roof. Bread ovens were gaping holes, reminiscent of wall graves. A well-head with bucket attached stood in one corner. Only a gleaming collection of pans and skillets suggested that the place had been used since the Black Death.

For which, thought Diana, it could have been responsible.

Mrs Clarke and Polly stood at its vast central table, chopping onions brought with them from the Edgcumbe kitchen garden and radiating resentment. Tobias was up a ladder washing one of the tiny, high windows in an attempt to increase the miserable lighting.

‘I wath thaying it'th nithe and cool in here, your ladyship,' he called in the artificially bright tone of encouragement. ‘Better than motht kitchenth on a hot day.'

He was right. Even with one of the ovens lit, it was downright cold. In winter it would be icy.

‘And
I
was saying, your ladyship,' declared Mrs Clarke, ‘that I never worked in a kitchen where I had to wind up water in a bucket. There's no pump!'

‘One supposes it was useful in a siege,' Diana said.

‘Well, all I hope is we don't have no sieges and not too many guests neither.'

‘No, Mrs Clarke, I shall not be entertaining.'

‘There ain't even anywhere to sit down and my poor legs . . .'

‘An' 'tis spoookish,' Polly said, dragging out the word and shivering. ‘I do swear I saw a spectrish figure flittin' along that passage there.'

‘It would be the caretaker, he hasn't presented himself yet.'

‘Didn't look like no living man to me, all flowy it was.'

‘An' my poor legs . . .'

She'd always had people to stand between her and the earthier side of domestic management before; she must learn to cope with this. ‘Follow me, Mrs Clarke, and you shall choose a chair to your liking from the undercroft. Tobias, you'd better come too to carry it. Bring a candle.'