Taking Liberties (48 page)

Diana still harboured resentment for what she thought of as Makepeace's interference in the matter of Tobias. ‘Your mother is a meddlesome woman,' she said to Philippa. ‘I cannot bear that Tobias is taking the risk for all of us.'

Philippa nodded. ‘Mama's friends do tend to get embroiled,' she said, ‘but he wanted to go.'

A friend? Is that how Makepeace regards Tobias? Whereas I feel this heavy responsibility for him because he is my servant.

But he
is
my friend, she thought, like Joan. This anxiety is for someone I cannot spare—and not just because he works for me but because I feel affection for him. So I must grant him the right to make his own decisions; after all, he seems to have taken this one for reasons unconnected with his duty to me. I just wish he hadn't.

They went back to the Pomeroy Arms when they'd finished to find Dell rolling bandages for the Frenchman's leg and putting out ointments for his face. Makepeace had begun chopping up half a sheep—a gift from Ralph Gurney—in preparation for Boston lobscouse, partly to relieve her feelings and partly because, as she said, ‘Josh is mighty fond of my lobscouse.'

Watching the cleaver rise and descend, Mrs Hallewell said, ‘Will 'un need that much?'

‘Yes.' She paused. ‘Time you went home, Maggie. And you should stay there. We don't know what will happen. Whatever it is, I'll say you knew nothing about it.'

‘Reckon I'll stay a bit,' Mrs Hallewell said. ‘What vegetables do ee need for that concoction then?'

Zack and Simeon insisted on staying as well; it's doubtful if Zack could have been dislodged if the inn had caught fire: ‘Can't leave you females to manage this business on your own,' he said.

Mrs Welland came in with two pairs of patched sea boots ‘. . . in case they lads turn up with nothin' on their poor feet.'

Reminded, Mrs Hallewell went back to her cottage and returned with some of her husband's clothing that she'd kept like holy relics since his death, as well as a warm coat of her father's.

At the same time, and with the same thought, Rachel Gurney entered with a wool shirt of Jan's. ‘I'm knittin' 'un another one,' she said defiantly.

‘He'll be back, Rachel,' Makepeace said. ‘And my Andra with him.'

‘I bloody know he will.' She looked out of the window; it was still snowing. ‘I been up the farm and told Ralph to get his oxen out and keep that lane clear.'

Mrs Hallewell set a jug of brandy in front of Zack and another for Simeon before she went home. ‘That's all you're getting tonight, ' she said, ‘I know you.'

Sanders began to clean out the stable and put down fresh straw, ready for the return of the team.

Rachel went back to her cottage, put her older children to bed and returned to suckle her baby in front of the fire. Makepeace decided it was time the inn's pewter was polished and the rich smell of lobscouse coming from the kitchen mingled with the acidic scent of horsetail as she rubbed tankards and platters to within an inch of their lives. Dell positioned herself at the window to keep watch for the coach. Philippa took up
The Wealth of Nations
and turned its pages as if she were reading it. The fire crackled.

For want of anything else to say, Diana remarked: ‘I hope that I've got in a sufficient supply of laudanum to see out the snow.'

‘For Ma Green, is ut?' Rachel asked. ‘Bad, is she?'

‘Yes.'

The doctor Diana had fetched from Newton Ferrers had been met with shrieking violence and been forced to go away again. ‘I believe her to have a canker in the breast,' he'd told Diana, ‘though it is impossible to know without an examination. It may have spread to the brain.'

‘Can nothing be done?'

He shook his head. ‘Laudanum if she will take it.' He was a young man and an enthusiastic anatomist; to him Mrs Green was a living corpse. ‘In the interest of science, I should be grateful for your permission to perform an autopsy when the time comes.'

‘Poor soul,' Rachel said now. As always, when the villagers mentioned the caretaker, Diana sensed reserve.

‘I asked her why she insisted on suffering,' Diana told Rachel now. ‘She said a strange thing. She said: “ 'Tis my due.” '

‘Guilt,' Rachel said, shortly. She took the baby away from her breast, put it against her shoulder to wind it, and covered herself.

‘Why should she feel guilty?'

Rachel looked at the Dowager carefully and said: ‘Her husband fell down that shaft of yourn.'

It was the moment, Diana realized later, when she was finally accepted into the village, or, perhaps more than that, into its female society as a woman no greater and no less than all of them who waited for a man to come back. Though Mrs Green remained the outsider she had always been, Diana became part of the sisterhood and entitled to its secrets.

‘She were a Polperro maid,' Rachel said. ‘They'm fey them Cornish—and her married Martin Green over South Huish. They Greens might be Cornish theyselves, so wild as they be. Dark souls, all of 'un.'

It was never a happy marriage, Rachel said. Green blamed his wife for having no children. ‘But he'd'a blamed her for blinkin' her eyelashes. Beat her he would, oh, shockin'. Her never said a word but the marks was ever on her face. Good gardener, though, oh, he could make things grow somethin' wonderful. 'Twas one o' your tenants hired him for ut, years back this was, and when they left, Agent Spettigue—that were the old man, not this one—he did keep Martin on in the garden and her in the house, caretaking. Then Martin were found dead.'

It was Eddie Gurney who first saw the body, Rachel said. He'd been raising the family lobster-pots one morning when Green's corpse had come floating out of the cavern below T'Gallants and into the cove.

‘Fell and drownded, they reckon. Bruises all over 'un. Could've slipped on the clifftop, though this was just before dawn and what he were doin' on the cliffs for that time o' day we don't know . . .'

Diana said: ‘She pushed him down the shaft?'

Rachel shrugged. ‘Lord only knows and He idd'n sayin'. But some creature do trouble her from the grave and that's a fact.'

There was never a longer night. Occasionally they would find themselves drifting into uncomfortable half-dozes from which they woke with a sense of being menaced. If the Dowager saw Nicholls's face peering into the window she saw it a dozen times. Knowing he wasn't there, she would get up and look out. And, of course, he wasn't. Just snow, getting thicker.

Makepeace began sweeping the floor. Dell continued to sit on the window seat, staring out at the snow. Diana went and sat with her. ‘Tobias is a very kind man,' she said tentatively. Dell merely nodded.

‘Probably hasn't even got there,' Makepeace said, sweeping hard. ‘I don't know why we're all bothering.'

Their charity with one another began to wear thin.

‘Can't you sit down?' Diana snapped at Makepeace.

‘No.'

Philippa went to the window. ‘It will be dawn soon.'

‘We know that,' Makepeace said. ‘Get on with your book.'

Daybreak found them hopelessly playing cribbage.

By nine o'clock in the morning, Makepeace was considering the pros and cons of relieving the misery by throwing herself off a cliff.

At half past ten the door banged open to admit a panting little Jack Gurney. ‘Coach is yere. Comin' down. Dad swept the lane for 'un.'

They tumbled out into a white world. They began running up the lane in the exaggerated high-stepping slowness snow imposed. Steaming horses with white caps between their ears advanced on them with Tobias above, outlined against the front of the coach.

The women went backwards as it came on, shouting and cheering: high drifts left no room by which they could get to its sides.

‘Did it go well?' Makepeace shouted.

Tobias's mouth was set as if in concrete by the cold; he seemed to have difficulty unstiffening it. He didn't look at Makepeace. She heard him call to the Dowager: ‘They didn't break through 'til nearly dawn.'

‘Nobody stopped you?'

He shook his head. ‘Nobody about.'

They were hindering the coach's progress. They all turned and capered back; if there had been palm leaves to strew they'd have cast them before the horses' hooves.

A small crowd in the Pomeroy forecourt had gathered to watch the coach draw up. Its curtains were closed. Sanders went immediately to the blowing horses. Tobias climbed awkwardly down from the box and then opened its door. Makepeace, going forward, was stopped in her tracks by a glimpse of piled bodies.

They're dead, she thought. It's a plague cart.

Others rushed to help with the disentanglement and slowly, through the crush, ragged men emerged. One, two, three, four . . . beside her the Dowager gave a moan of gratitude as the Frenchman was lowered to the ground . . . seven, eight, nine . . . She'd seen a comic play once, one of her brother's, in which a coach, side on to the stage, debouched an impossible number of occupants. She'd laughed and laughed. She didn't laugh now . . . thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one.

And none of them was Josh.

FOR a few minutes chaos had the Pomeroy Arms in its grip. Makepeace had Able Seaman Abell in hers; they had to drag her off him. As it was, she bloodied his nose.

‘Se'gated, what d'you mean
se'gated
, you bastard?'

‘Put in diff' ent shed, ma'am.' Abell wiped the blood with the back of his hand. He seemed to bear her no ill will. ‘Told the commandant days back: se'gate or we's riotin', take yo' choice.'

‘I'm afraid that's what they did, Missus.' Lawyer Perkins was at her side. ‘Some of us protested but Captain Stewart preferred to segregate rather than have trouble in the prison.' He adjusted his glasses and turned to Diana, who was attending to de Vaubon. ‘The plan was for the negroes to bring up the rear in the tunnel.'

‘Why?' Makepeace demanded of Abell. ‘Why'd you do that?'

He said patiently, ‘I tol' you, ma'am. They's black.'

‘
And what do you think he is?
He risked his life for your carcass.'

Abell looked along her shaking finger to Tobias. ‘Much obliged, boy,' he said.

‘Man,' shrieked Makepeace. ‘He's a
man
.'

‘There's nothing we can do about it now,' Diana told her sharply. ‘For God's sake let us see to those we have here.' De Vaubon was semi-conscious, his lips compressed against pain.

‘To hell with them,' Makepeace said. She went to a booth at the back of the room and sat down on it, covering her face.

Bilo, the only black man in the group, bent to lift his captain. ‘Where, madame?'

‘Up there.' Diana grabbed some bandages and the medicaments box from their shelf and followed Bilo and his burden up the stairs.

Dazedly, Philippa looked round the taproom; her mother's defection left her in command. And I don't know what to do, she thought. It was as if a multitude of scarecrows had suddenly descended on the inn, rips in their rags showing ribs and legs like white sticks strung together. They jostled to get near the fire in the way of dull-eyed bullocks, uncaring of everything except getting warm. I don't know what to do.

It was Dell, enlarged at the safe return of Tobias, who did. ‘Ain't it lucky your ma made all that stew?'

Lobscouse.

They hurried into the kitchen to set it over the fire. Mrs Hallewell was already there, cutting bread. A scarecrow followed them in and stuffed a crust into his mouth. ‘No need to wait 'til it's hot, missy,' he said to Philippa through the crumbs, nodding at the lobscouse. ‘Smells just dandy to me.' She ignored him.

Rachel Gurney came in, looking for flint and tinder. ‘Us'll have to burn their clothes,' she said. ‘They'm crawling with little visitors.'

‘Rachel, what are we to do with so many?'

‘Don't know, girl.' Rachel looked grim. ‘Let's get the buggers vitty first. Is Gil here?'

‘Upstairs.'

In the taproom, Tobias sat himself opposite Makepeace in the booth and tapped on the hands that covered her face. ‘I'm sorry, Mithuth.'

She looked up at him. ‘All these months,' she said. ‘It was all for him and they left him.'

‘We'll get him out, Mithuth.'

‘He's
precious
,' she said. ‘He'll think I've abandoned him.' She began to weep. ‘I don't know what his mother would say.'

She kept hearing King David's cry.
‘O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son!'

‘Don't take on, Mithuth, I'll get him out for you.'

She wiped her eyes. ‘What happened?'

He'd found the track where she and Sanders had waited on the night that Josh got shot, he told her. He'd rugged the horses against the cold and waited. To stop freezing to death, he'd got into the coach occasionally but had been frightened each time that, if he stayed in it too long, he'd fall asleep, so he kept getting out again.

There'd been traffic using the road when he'd got there but it had dwindled to nothing as the night and the snow went on.

It was still dark and the Plymouth clocks had just struck the five o'clock when he heard a scuffling sound on the other side of the road. He walked to the edge of the trees. The snow had stopped. ‘Moon wath bright ath day,' he said, ‘and there wath a turf lifting all by itthelf out of the ground. Eerie, it wath. They'd come up short, you thee, on the wrong thide of the road, on the verge next to the wall.'