Dynasty 8: The Maiden: The Maiden (The Morland Dynasty) Read online

  About the Author

  Cynthia Harrod-Eagles was born and educated in Shepherd’s Bush, and had a variety of jobs in the commercial world, starting as a junior cashier at Woolworth’s and working her way down to Pensions Officer at the BBC. She won the Young Writers’ Award in 1973, and became a full-time writer in 1978. She is the author of over sixty successful novels to date, including thirty volumes of the Morland Dynasty series.

  Visit the author’s website at www.cynthiaharrodeagles.com

  Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  The Bill Slider Mysteries

  ORCHESTRATED DEATH

  DEATH WATCH

  NECROCHIP

  DEAD END

  BLOOD LINES

  KILLING TIME

  SHALLOW GRAVE

  BLOOD SINISTER

  GONE TOMORROW

  DEAR DEPARTED

  GAME OVER

  FELL PURPOSE

  BODY LINE

  The Dynasty Series

  THE FOUNDING

  THE DARK ROSE

  THE PRINCELING

  THE OAK APPLE

  THE BLACK PEARL

  THE LONG SHADOW

  THE CHEVALIER

  THE MAIDEN

  THE FLOOD-TIDE

  THE TANGLED THREAD

  THE EMPEROR

  THE VICTORY

  THE REGENCY

  THE CAMPAIGNERS

  THE RECKONING

  THE DEVIL’S HORSE

  THE POISON TREE

  THE ABYSS

  THE HIDDEN SHORE

  THE WINTER JOURNEY

  THE OUTCAST

  THE MIRAGE

  THE CAUSE

  THE HOMECOMING

  THE QUESTION

  THE DREAM KINGDOM

  THE RESTLESS SEA

  THE WHITE ROAD

  THE BURNING ROSES

  THE MEASURE OF DAYS

  THE FOREIGN FIELD

  THE FALLEN KINGS

  THE DANCING YEARS

  Copyright

  Published by Hachette Digital

  ISBN: 9780748132959

  All characters and events in this publication, other than those clearly in the public domain, are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © Cynthia Harrod-Eagles 1985

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Hachette Digital

  Little, Brown Book Group

  100 Victoria Embankment

  London, EC4Y 0DY

  www.hachette.co.uk

  Contents

  About the Author

  Also by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  Copyright

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  BOOK ONE: The Castle

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  BOOK TWO: The Axe

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  BOOK THREE: The Mermaid

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY

  V. T. J. Arkell Britain Transformed

  Anne Buck Dress in the Eighteenth Century

  John Cannon Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832

  Eileen Cassavetti The Lion and the Lilies

  *Daniel Defoe A Tour Through the Whole Island of Great Britain

  *Celia Fiennes Through England on Horseback

  Dorothy George London Life in the Eighteenth Century

  Herbert Heaton The Yorkshire Woollen and Worsted Industry

  Marion Lochead The Scots Household in the Eighteenth Century

  J. H. Plumb The First Four Georges

  J. H. Plumb England in the Eighteenth Century

  R. E. Prothero English Farming Past and Present

  K. Tomasson Battles of the Forty-Five

  A. S. Turberville English Men and Manners of the Eighteenth Century

  R. K. Webb Modern England

  T. S. Willan River Navigation in England

  Basil Williams The Whig Supremacy

  * Contemporary material.

  For Cassandra

  for her sixteenth birthday

  BOOK ONE

  The Castle

  Loosn’d from the minor’s tether,

  Free to mortgage or to sell,

  Wild as wind and light as feather,

  Bid the sons of thrift farewell.

  Call the Betsies, Kates, and Jennies,

  All the names that banish care;

  Lavish of your grandsire’s guineas,

  Show the spirit of an heir.

  Samuel Johnson: One-and-twenty

  CHAPTER ONE

  One fine October day in 1720, the first dry day for a month, James Edward Morland came riding home to Morland Place from Leeds. He had been staying with Sir John Ibbetson, a master-clothier, a visit which his father had arranged in order that he should learn something of the business; Sir John was unusually indulgent towards the young, and had two pretty daughters, and Jemmy had managed to pass his time most agreeably, despite the weather, which confined them indoors.

  It was a relief to be away from Morland Place, a relief which he believed his father, Matt, shared. Jemmy’s mother was dead: she had hanged herself in her bedchamber when Jemmy was a child, leaving behind her the confession of a series of adulteries which had broken her husband’s heart. Matt had adored her, and had trusted her implicitly. After her death he grew morose and gloomy, and for a long time he had refused to acknowledge even the existence of the six sons she had left behind her.

  Time had brought Matt to accept that Jemmy, the firstborn, was probably his own, and he had acknowledged Jemmy as his heir. But he remained a solitary and uncommunicative man, and Jemmy felt that the frequent absences from home his father arranged for him were as much to take him out of his father’s sight as to educate him. Of Jemmy’s brothers, only the two youngest, Tom and Charles, remained at home, educated by the chaplain tutor and kept strictly out of their father’s way. The other three had been sent away to be educated, Robert and Edmund at Christ Church, Oxford, and George at Eton.

  There had been a time when it had seemed that Matt’s sad life might be redeemed. The 1715 rebellion, though it had been tragic for the Morlands as a family, had brought Matt the return of his childhood friend Davey, and a second wife, his cousin Sabina, who had loved him since childhood. Sabina had survived terrible ordeals to escape to Morland Place with her sole remaining child, Allen, having lost everything in the rising. Matt had devoted himself to her, and they had married, and had been happy for a while. But a difficult pregnancy and a perilous delivery of a stillborn child had left Sabina bedridden, virtually a cripple, and her suffering, for which Matt blamed himself, had sent him back into his dark cave of solitude.

  Jemmy was very fond of his step-mother, but he had been in no hurry to end his visit to Leeds. However the change in the weather could not be ignored, and he had set off before dawn, as every good traveller should. No curtain of the Ibbetson house twitched as he clattered out of the yard on his horse, Auster, with his servant Jack slouched gummy-eyed and yawning on his own horse behind him. The
young ladies were evidently not so in love with him as he had thought, not enough to rise from their beds early to see him go, at any rate.

  As they rode, the sun began to rise in the pale sky, glancing off the pools of standing water on every side, glittering dazzlingly on the droplets that hung from every leaf and twig. It was fortunate that Jemmy had ridden this way many times before, for the road had virtually disappeared. In wet weather, the centre of the road became rutted and sunken, and gradually filled with water; it was impossible to drain it, for the continuous process of scraping layers of mud away on cartwheels and sledge-runners left it lower than the surrounding land. So travellers would begin to strike out their own line on the higher, drier ground on one side or the other, until that, too, became a morass. The present wet weather had lasted so long that where the road had once been there was now only a twenty-foot-wide quagmire, eating deeply into the unfenced fields on either side. Jemmy made no attempt to use the road, but went straight across country, heading for Wetherby and the Crown Inn, where he meant to break his fast. Auster was glad to be out after his long confinement in the stable, and laid down his feet with a will, while Jack kept up a sotto voce stream of complaint at the speed and the rough travelling. Kick his horse as he may, it would never break in to a canter, but only trotted faster and faster, shaking Jack’s teeth in his head where, in any case, they were none too soundly embedded.

  In Jemmy’s opinion, the Crown Inn served the best ale in Yorkshire, as well as good food, which was free if you drank enough ale. Besides that, the landlord had a pretty daughter of seventeen, and Jemmy was nineteen and unwed. He lingered with pleasure in the parlour, which he had to himself until a large grey cat stepped delicately in through the open casement, and sat in the patch of sunlight on the windowsill, its eyes half-closed in bliss at the blessed warmth, its bushy tail curled tightly around its forefeet as if to stop them escaping.

  Rose, the landlord’s daughter, brought his breakfast, but declined to be drawn into conversation, and Jemmy guessed from her muted voice and lowered eyes that her father had warned her not to linger. Jemmy had been wild in his youth, and at one time would have regarded that as a challenge, but at nineteen he was more philosophical, and Rose’s reticence only made him shrug. He drank a quart of ale, and ate the best cut off a round of beef, a wedge of sweet, crumbly Wensleydale cheese, and enough fresh hot bread to have caused an older stomach considerable unease. Then he finished off his meal with a couple of small, crisp pearmains, stretched his legs and stared past the dozing cat at the sunlit world with contentment. Indeed, he had little enough in life to vex him. He was young, healthy, handsome, and the heir to a valuable estate. If his father’s temper made his social life a little restricted, why, he had horses and hounds and coverts to hunt, and there was always something to do to take him out of the house.

  When finally he went out to the stable to fetch Auster, he found Jack leaning against the doorframe and staring moodily at the sky, which had deepened from its pale beginnings to a perfect bluebell shade.

  ‘Ready now, Jack? Did you get something to eat?’ he asked cheerfully. Jack shook his head gloomily.

  ‘Naught but new bread, master, and no doubt that’ll give me the gripes before long. And hossler says the glass is going back, and it’ll rain again any moment.’

  Jemmy glanced again at the cloudless sky, and said, ‘The ostler wouldn’t be a cousin of yours, I suppose?’

  ‘And the roads,’ Jack went on remorselessly, ignoring the pleasantry. ‘The mire’ll be enough to drawn a man. If we get through it’ll be a miracle, and if we sink, there’s not a soul knaws where we are to come and fetch us out.’

  ‘We’ll go over the moor, and stick to the causeway,’ Jemmy said soothingly.

  ‘Aye, if t’causey’s not broken all to bits, for it’s no man’s care to mend it as I can see.’ He sniffed. ‘You’ll not be the only one to think of sticking to t’causey.’

  Jemmy made no answer, busying himself with tightening Auster’s girth. Jack was right, of course – the stone causeway down the centre or the side of the road was meant for foot-travellers or single horsemen, but when the mud was bad, everyone stuck to it, even the heavily-laden packhorses, and the stone surface soon broke and crumbled under heavy traffic. But he would not give Jack the satisfaction of agreeing with him.

  When they got past Bickerton and onto Marston Moor, they found things even worse than expected, for the Sike Beck had overflowed, making a sheet of water to either side of the causeway, which itself was entirely blocked by a train of packhorses, standing inexplicably stationary.

  ‘Now what’s to do?’ cried Jemmy crossly, flicking at the rump of the end horse with his crop. The packhorse did not even flinch, standing head down, burdened by its huge, bulky packs. Its legs were thick with grey-brown mud, its tail was lank with it; the long hair on its belly was so festooned with it that it hung down like strange stalactites; even its packs were splashed with it.

  ‘Why aren’t they moving?’ Jemmy said, standing in his stirrups to try to see ahead. It was a long train, stretching seemingly for ever, and though he could see men moving about up ahead, he could see no cause for the holdup.

  ‘We s’l have to strike our own path, master,’ Jack said with gloomy satisfaction, eyeing the water to either side. ‘Most like we s’l drawn, and that’ll be the end of that.’

  ‘If you go in over your head, Jack, I promise I shall erect a stone monument on the place,’ Jemmy said tersely, and Jack was silenced, wondering whether or not this was a tribute to his loyal service. ‘Come on.’

  Auster was extremely unwilling to leave the safety of the causey, and Jemmy had to use spurs and crop before he could make him take the first leap. They went in girth-deep, and Jemmy shuddered as the water ran cold and clammy down inside his boots. He drummed on Auster’s sides, and the horse proceeded, eyes bulging, in a series of snorting lunges, sending sheets of brown water up on either side as they went past the stationary pack beasts. Jemmy soon identified the trouble: the train was in fact two trains, of perhaps seventy animals in each, which had met head-on on the narrow track, and the packmen and their boys were apparently arguing over who should give way to whom. It was an amusing scene, for while the men were in hot altercation, with much shouting and waving of arms, the two lead horses in their belled harnesses had leaned their muzzles together like old friends and gone to sleep.

  ‘Holloo!’ Jemmy yelled as soon as he was near enough. ‘What’s to do? You can’t stay here all day, you know.’ The two men looked round. Jemmy knew them both: one, Ezra Pyke, was a familiar figure around York, a brogger of the old school; the other, a clothier called Scotney, Jemmy had seen once or twice at market in Leeds. They both knew him, of course, and their faces brightened as they discovered an authority to appeal to. They both began speaking at once.

  ‘Nay, master, it’s my road. He won’t give me past, damn his eyes.’

  ‘I come this road same time every week, everyone knaws that. I’ll not shift for him nor no man.’

  They stared at each other.

  ‘Why, you black-hearted villain!’

  ‘You damned son of a thief!’

  ‘Peace, peace, be silent both, I pray you,’ Jemmy cried, lifting his hands. ‘One at a time, gentlemen, please. Now, Ezra, you first.’

  ‘Like I said, master, I come this road same time, same day, every week. Yon villain Scotney knaws that well enough. He comes of a Tuesday. He’s no right taking my road. I’ll not shift.’

  He folded his arms righteously, and Scotney spread his hands to Jemmy in appeal. ‘Nay, young master, it’s true Tuesday’s my day. But wi’ beck overflowing, naught but a train of eels could have got by yesterday—’

  ‘Then you should ha’ waited til next week,’ Pyke interrupted him. Scotney continued to address Jemmy.

  ‘I couldn’t hold off a week, master. The boat’s waiting at King’s Staith, and I’ve to get this lot to York by tonight, or it sails without. And his horses aren’t
loaded. He ought to give me road.’

  That was a telling point. Jemmy nodded wisely, thoroughly enjoying himself. Pyke was scowling furiously, but both men were still looking at Jemmy, appealing to his authority as ‘the young master’. He never had such consequence at home.

  ‘That’s true,’ he said at length, judicially. ‘Master Pyke, you must give road.’

  Scotney beamed and rubbed his hands, and Pyke looked from one to the other grimly.

  ‘All very well, young master. But you nor no man will get my beasts to step off t’causey into that lake o’ water, not when they’re faced from home.’ The unwillingness of packhorses to leave the causey was aphoristic, as Jemmy very well knew, but he smiled placatingly at Pyke.

  ‘There’s no need for that. The flooding does not go on for ever. There is firmer ground back there.’ He nodded over Pyke’s shoulder.

  ‘Aye, master, but—’

  ‘All you have to do is to untie each packhorse, turn it round on the spot, tie them all up again, and lead them back the way you came until the ground is firm enough to step off and let Master Scotney past. Scotney and his boys will help you with it, I am sure.’

  Scotney nodded eagerly, and made admiring murmurs about Jemmy’s cleverness, but Pyke only looked the sourer. ‘Aye, and then I s’l have the whole blessed business to do all over again, and Scotney will be long on his road by then, I warrant you, and leave me to do it all.’

  ‘By no means,’ Jemmy said patiently. ‘All you’ll have to do is untie your bell-horse, bring him round to the front of the train again, and off you go.’

  Neither of them had thought of that, and Jemmy was hard put to it to hide his laughter. He beckoned to Jack and set off, and Scotney waved and called out, ‘A judgement of Solomon, young master! God bless you!’ Jemmy waved back, biting his lips determinedly. Behind him Jack rode in his own private cloud of gloom, and Jemmy thought ruefully how good it would be to have a friendly, cheerful manservant with whom he could share life’s little amusements.

  Shawes was a new house, within an easy walk of Morland Place. It was faced with the stone of the old house on whose site it stood, so that it looked as though it had always been there. That had been the design of Sir John Vanbrugh, who had built it for Annunciata, Countess Dowager of Chelmsford. It was a small house, in comparison with Vanbrugh’s other masterpieces, and was therefore often called ‘Vanbrugh’s little gem’.