The Reckoning (9 page)

‘As long as he's living at home, we can keep an eye on him.'

‘
But what about Benedict?' Héloïse said. 'He is too young
to go to St Edward's.’

Miss Rosedale looked around the circle of faces. 'I can
teach him here for a year or two, until he's old enough to join his brother – or at least, until you get another chaplain. If you
will entrust him to me, that is.'

‘
Entrust him to you?' Héloïse said. 'Of course we will! But
will you have time, with all the other things you do?’

Miss Rosedale laughed. 'Time? My dear ma'am, anyone
else would have dismissed me a year ago, when Sophie ceased
to need a governess! I have been racked with guilt ever since,
taking such a great salary from you and doing nothing to
deserve it. This is my cunning plan, don't you see, to have you
keep me on a little longer.'

‘
But indeed, I could not do without you,' Héloïse
exclaimed. 'I have been in fear that you would grow bored
and decide you wanted to leave, and then what should I do?
First Mathilde married her John and went away, and then my
dear Marie accepted her Mr Kexby, who has been asking her
for so long – and of course I am very, very happy for her to
have an establishment at last – but I could not at all do
without you, and for my own sake, I hope you will stay for
ever.'

‘
If you managed my poor Fanny,' James put in, 'I'm sure
you can manage Benedict, imp though he is.'

‘
Thank you,' Miss Rosedale smiled. 'I'm sure he will plague
me just as much as Fanny did, but my experience being
greater now, I hope to survive it. Is it decided then?'

‘
Yes – if Nicholas likes it,' Héloïse said. 'I should not wish
to send him to school against his will.’

But Nicholas had been delighted with the idea. He saw it as
an adventure: exciting, different – a change of scene, new
faces. Now the choristers had gone, there was only his little
brother at home to lord it over; at St Edward's, he would be
king of a whole new court. Master Morland of Morland Place
– the heir to the whole estate – the most important person in
the area – he would lead, and others would follow.

Benedict, who was four, condemned to stay at home under
Miss Rosedale's charge, sulked furiously for the first week,
the more so because Nicholas came home every day full of
stories – many of them wildly exaggerated – about the
wonderful times he was having. But they had settled down at
last, and Benedict had benefited from the close personal
attention Miss Rosedale was now able to give him, and from the more liberal regime she favoured. Under Father Aislaby,
there had been rather too much sitting still for a very young
boy full of natural energy, which had meant that when he was
let out of the schoolroom and into the charge of the nursery
maids, he had run amok. Miss Rosedale wisely incorporated a
sensible amount of physical activity into the lessons, and kept
him on a much more even keel.

At the moment Miss Rosedale was away in Scarborough,
chaperoning Sophie and Rosamund. It had been thought
necessary for Sophie's health and spirits that she should have a change of scene and the benefit of sea air, and Scarborough
was the nearest genteel watering-place. Héloïse would by no
means countenance the girls' going even to such a respectable
place chaperoned only by Rosamund's maid. Either she or
Miss Rosedale must accompany the young ladies; but Héloïse
had a strong aversion to Scarborough. It was a place she
didn't like even to think about, much less visit.

‘
It won't hurt Benedict to miss his lessons for a week or
two,' Héloïse had said. 'The maids can look after him, and I
can spend a few hours with him every day. I can teach him
French,' she added on an inspiration. She was only too aware that her education was infinitely inferior to Miss Rosedale's.
With such a teacher, her son may well have surpassed her
already in every other subject.

Benedict didn't much want to learn French, or anything
else, from his mother, but he was always glad to see her, and
was happy to play with her, or to be taken out for a drive or a
walk. Héloïse was glad simply to have the opportunity to
romp with him, and enjoy his affection.

He was a happy little boy, quite ready to take pleasure and
love wherever he found them. He had recently come out of
dresses and into trousers – always a shock to the maternal
system. The cropping of his baby curls had made Héloïse feel
suddenly old, for she would never have another baby now.

On James the transition had the opposite effect. A baby
was the property of the distaff side, but once a boy went into
trousers, his father might legitimately take an interest in him.
He might show him how to fish and shoot and play cricket,
teach him how to whistle, to use his fives, to whittle a stick –all the essential knowledge of manhood. Nicholas had always been too frail, and James too otherwise occupied, for them to
have been close in that way; but since Father Aislaby had
gone and Bendy had shed his frocks, James had been exhib
iting a proper fatherly interest in his younger son.

‘
He needs a man's influence, you know,' he would say
sometimes in the evenings. 'Miss Rosedale is an excellent
woman, but she is only a woman, after all.'

‘
Yes, my James,' Héloïse would reply serenely. 'As soon as I
can find a chaplain-tutor –'

‘
Oh, no hurry, my love! No hurry at all. Miss Rosedale's doing an excellent job – and I can take the lad out with me
now and then.’

This afternoon Benedict found his mother in thoughtful
mood, and not much inclined to romp, so he went back to the
battle he was fighting all over the day-nursery floor with his
lead soldiers. They were a splendid and extensive set. The
English soldiers were red, and the French soldiers blue – that
much Bendy knew. He was too young to know anything about
the war which had gone on for most of his mother's life, but
he knew that opposite sides in any game were always French
and English. He also knew, both from his brother and the
servants, that the French general on the white horse for
whom the worst fates were always reserved was Boney, and
that Boney was The Bad Man.

So while Héloïse sat nearby, deep in thought, watching him
without really seeing him, he went back to his private game.
He crawled about the floor on his stomach, moving the pieces
and murmuring the commentary to himself. 'And then he
goes down here and round here and they come round here
and he goes BOOM! You're dead! Like that. And they all fall
down. Hurrah! And then they come over the hill – dum-de
dum-de-dum – like that, and down here, and they go BOOM
BOOM – and then old Boney comes – dum-de-dum-de-dum
– and BOOM! He's dead!' He flung the battered horseman up.
in the air, and as it fell with a clatter he chanted the foolishnursery song, 'Silly
old Boney sat on his pony . .

The battle of Waterloo, Héloïse thought, thus reduced to
its essence. She thought of all the young men who had died,
of the terrible wounds she had witnessed as the survivors
crawled back into Brussels. The battle of Waterloo, the culmi
nation of everything that had happened since the calling of
the Estates General in 1789 had set the creaking wheels of the
Revolution in motion. Could it happen here? Had it started
already? How would they know, until they were in the middle
of it and it was too late to stop?

‘
Oh Bendy!' she said. He looked up, but it was not at her.
The door had opened, and Mathilde looked in.

‘
Madame! They said you were in here. Am I intruding?’

‘
TILDA!' Benedict bellowed, scrambling to his feet and
rushing at her.

‘
How's my friend Bendy?' she said, fielding him just in
time to save her dress.

‘
I'm playing French and English. Come and play,' he
commanded, tugging at her hand. 'You can be French,' he
offered generously.

‘
Kiss me hello first,' Mathilde said, stooping.

‘
Soldiers don't kiss,' he informed her sternly, pulling
himself free. 'Never-never-never.'

‘
Oh, don't they? I'm sorry. I'll try to remember that.'
Disgusted with womanhood, he stumped back to his game.
Mathilde turned to Héloïse. 'You're looking thoughtful.'

‘
You look blooming,' Héloïse said, rousing herself. Since
Mathilde's soured and difficult mother-in-law, Mary Skel
with, had died last winter, she seemed to have gained in
confidence, and was now a happy, contented young matron.
‘What a smart pelisse. And a new bonnet, I see.'

‘
The pelisse is my wedding one made over – don't you see?
I took the fur off, and put on the braid and the frogging and
new buttons.'

‘
So you did. How clever!'

‘
And John chose the bonnet. I think he had very good taste,
don't you? I wasn't sure at first if perhaps there weren't too
many feathers, but he says it suits me. You don't think it's too
fine, do you?'

‘
I think it's charming. A new bride has every right to be
fine.'

‘
Not such a new bride now,' Mathilde said seriously. 'It's a
year and two months and thirteen days ... But I didn't come
to talk about me. I came to see how you were. I heard there'd
been some trouble in the village. Are you all right? You do
look rather pale.'

‘Oh no, I am quite well. What did you hear?'

‘
I was at the Somerses', and they said you'd discovered a
runaway frame-breaker at one of the village houses, and that
Edward had gone to arrest him with half-a-dozen constables.
Only when they got there, of course, he'd rubbed off.'

‘
I did not know he had escaped. Your information is later
than mine.'

‘
All the Somerses are chattering away like disturbed starl
ings about it.' Mathilde studied her. 'It's upset you, too, I can
see that. There wasn't any — unpleasantness, was there?'

‘
Not in the way you mean. But it has worried me.' She
looked at Mathilde's healthy, happy face under the smart,
exceedingly over-trimmed bonnet, and her next words died in
her throat. Mathilde remembered nothing of the France she
had fled as a child not much older than Benedict, nor of the mother who had died under the guillotine's knife; and if she
had, it would only have made it even more impossible to talk
to her of such hideous fears. Mathilde was just starting out on
the adventure of married life, and no shadows should be cast
over that.