The Hawthorne Heritage Read online

  She searched her mind for other and greater sins, and was diverted for a moment by the thought that this seemed rather like the Catholic confession of which her brother John had so astonishingly spoken. She had found that unexpected conversation memorable for more reasons than one – mainly, certainly, because she had been fascinatedly appalled at the thought of cataloguing one’s every fault and misdemeanour to the judgement of a necessarily critical outsider, but, too, she had hugged to herself a secret delight at being the one to be discussing such a wicked and forbidden subject with the one member of her voluble family who rarely spoke his mind to anyone.

  Guiltily she hauled her straying thoughts back to the present, MacKenzie’s dour, hellfire threats fidgeting at the back of her mind. What if God were truly listening and chose to punish poor Bran for her blasphemous lightmindedness – as he had already been punished for her misbehaviour that morning? If she were going to try to strike a bargain with the Lord, she really ought to try to concentrate—

  Even as she thought it a movement in the far distance of the park caught her eye, and she scrambled to her knees, hands cupped about her eyes against the reflections in the glass of the window. Yes – there she was – a briskly marching figure with an unmistakably distinctive gait that ex-Corporal Brancome had been heard to remark reminded him of his old sergeant-major in the North Essex.

  She was off the seat and at the door in a moment. ‘Lucy!’ She rattled the lock with impatient urgency, ‘Lucy – I know you’re there – let me out! Quickly!’

  Silence.

  Creditably she held her patience and her temper. ‘Lucy—’ she wheedled, sweetly, ‘—she’s gone. I just saw her, walking across the park, heading for the village gate. She’s off courting poor old Reverend Jones—' MacKenzie’s single-minded pursuit of the village’s mild-mannered and ineffectual rector was an open secret, the cause of much sly amusement both below stairs and in the village. ‘Come on, Lucy dear – let me out. I’ll be back by tea time, I promise. She’ll never know. Lucy!’ Despite her best efforts her voice was rising and the words were sharp. She swallowed. ‘Lucy, please! I have to get Bran away before Giles hurts him—’

  Still no sound.

  ‘Lucy!’ Raging with impatience, she clenched her fists, trying to keep her voice calm. ‘I know you’re there!’

  ‘She’ll kill me.’ Lucy’s voice was doubtful.

  ‘I’ll give you a ribbon.’ Jessica said, shamelessly. ‘The red one that you like. And next time Cook makes some of those little almond cakes I’ll get some for you, I promise—’ Typically all thoughts of the half-struck bargain with the Almighty had fled her mind when the opportunity was offered to take action herself rather than relying on the no doubt well- intentioned but certainly rather more chancy hand of God. ‘PLEASE, Lucy!’ she begged.

  She heard Lucy shuffle across the room, grumbling, held her breath as the key rattled in the lock. Then the door opened and she was out, almost knocking poor Lucy flying as she went.

  ‘You be back, Miss Jessie!’ Lucy called, anxiously. ‘She’ll ’ave my ’ide if not!’

  ‘I will. I promise.’ Skirts kilted above her knees Jessica was already all but tumbling down the stairs to the west door and freedom.

  * * *

  The barn door stood open, even from a distance Jessica could see that. Heart thumping fit to burst in her chest she ran like one pursued by demons. What if Giles had already fulfilled his barbarous threat? What if Edward had not been able to dissuade him—? Her feet tangled in the dry September grass and she almost fell, but regained her balance, ungainly arms flailing, and flew on. Around the eaves of the old building the swallows were gathering for their autumn flight, twittering and swooping, wings like curved scimitars in the air. Forced by a fierce stitch of pain in her side to slow her steps she watched them lift gracefully from her approach. Edward had told her that they flew to far Africa and the sunshine. She wasn’t at all sure he’d got it right, for all his three years at Cambridge. Africa seemed an awfully long way away—

  The interior of the ancient building – it had stood for much longer than the great new house, built fifty years before – was dark and warm and dusty. As she hesitated at the door, adjusting her eyes to the change in light she heard movement; in the far corner a dejected head lifted, one ear cocked.

  ‘Bran!’

  The gawky bundle of bone and fur leapt ecstatically at her, despite the restriction of a hempen rope fastened to an iron ring in the wall. It was the work of a moment to free the dog, and then she was on her knees beside him, arms thrown about his massive neck, face buried in the roughness of his shaggy fur, tears of relief and reunion threatening to triumph where tears of despair had not. Frantically happy, Bran licked every inch of her that he could reach, his great flagged tail waving triumphant as a banner about them. She gave him another huge hug, dropped a quick kiss on the bony head, then jumped to her feet. ‘Come on, old lad – quickly – let’s find Robert. He’ll help us.’

  Together they fled, the slight and wiry figure of the girl shadowed by the huge dog. Beyond the barn Jessica ducked out of sight of the battery of windows on the east side of New Hall and headed towards the great woodland-fringed ornamental lake at the back of the house. A mile long and half as wide in parts, dotted here and there with tiny tree-grown islands, the lake emptied into the river very close to where Old Hall, Robert’s home, lay snug within its ancient moated walls. As she ran she kept a good weather eye out for Giles and Edward, who just might choose to ride this way back across the park. The warmth of the sun was on her back, the rich smells of autumn sweet in her nostrils. Bran bounded gleefully beside her, revelling in the run, treating it all as a splendid game.

  They reached the shelter of the trees on the eastern side of the lake with no mishap and no discovery; they were safe from here on. Panting, and shaking a little from reaction and relief, Jessica threw herself to the ground beneath the spreading shelter of a great old oak and Bran flopped close beside her, leaning against her, joy at their reunion easily read in his devoted, muddy-brown eyes and his one ridiculously cocked ear. Jessica scratched his head, a little absently, eyes and ears still alert. From here they could reach Old Hall easily and secretly, even though the ornamental woodlands on this side of the lake offered rather less dense cover than the heavy forestation on the other. Still fondling the dog she absent- mindedly and unsuccessfully tried to tuck the wild strands of her wiry, mouse-coloured hair back into their restraining ribbons, then drew her knees up beneath her chin, crooking her free arm about them. Slowly the uncomfortable pounding of her heart eased and her breathing steadied. From here, the wide top end of the lake at the back of the house, one of the grandest views of her home could be had. Before her Melbury New Hall stood in Palladian splendour, golden stone gleaming in the sunshine. The portico and terrace at the back of the house overlooked lake and woodland, a flight of shallow marble steps curving gracefully to the bright and velvet lawns that were invisibly divided from the park by the brick-lined ha-ha. The building, massively elegant and classically proportioned, its ranked, ornamented windows glimmering, jewel-like in the light, dominated the landscape. It had been built some fifty years before by Sir Thomas FitzBolton, the great, great-grandfather of Robert, to whom Jessica and the threatened Bran were now fleeing. The building of New Hall had been a magnificent but sadly misplaced gesture of confidence in the financial future of a family that had lived here in this green land that was the inland borders of the counties of Essex and Suffolk since the time of the Normans. For fifty short years the FitzBoltons had abandoned Melbury Old Hall, the ancient moated jumble of a house that had sheltered the family since medieval times, and gone to live in modern and punitively expensive splendour – as Jessica’s family now did – in the New Hall. Unfortunately, however, the family fortunes had not been equal to the family ambitions. The extravagance of the building project itself had wrought the first financial damage – the house, designed by James Gibbs, furnished by William Kent jus
t before his death and at the height of his fame, took eight years to complete, and the costs were crippling: even as the FitzBoltons at last took possession of their grand new home, Sir Thomas was slipping deep into debt. Unwilling, or perhaps unable, to admit to his mistake he had borrowed, imprudently and very heavily, still further, and in an attempt to reinstate the family fortunes he had invested rashly in hope of a quick return. When he died, eight years later, his son – Robert’s great-grandfather – had inherited an unexpected encumbrance of grievous debt and mortgage that drove him to an unnecessarily early grave. For twenty years after that his son in his turn had clung stubbornly to grandeur, and in doing so had almost beggared the family entirely. It took Robert’s father, another Thomas, a studious, unworldly and tranquil man, to solve the problem simply and swiftly. In 1798 – the year of Jessica’s birth – he had sold the new house to William Hawthorne, Jessica’s father, and the FitzBoltons had withdrawn, very sensibly, to Old Hall, the ancient riverside house that in the opinion of the greater part of the county they should never have left in the first place.

  Now, twelve years later, it was Jessica who sat on the shores of the lake that old Sir Thomas had so recklessly excavated, a silver setting for the jewel house that had broken its builder; youngest child of a merchant family from Bristol now reaping the benefit of that ruined man’s lovely vision. Few people, however, dared to or cared to mention the source of the wealth that had bought and refurbished New Hall. The Hawthornes were well-established now, here in the Eastern Counties, as had been the intention. Under the gentle, ruthless pressure of Jessica’s handsome, courteous, judiciously generous and exceedingly rich parents all opposition to new money and upstart outsiders had been overcome, and if talk there still might be of a less than honourable trade, now outlawed, it was rarely within range of a Hawthorne ear. It had taken the spiteful innuendoes of Clara, Robert’s sister, to apprise Jessica of her family’s association with slaving. Within the family no one ever spoke of it. Until then Jessica had had no reason to believe that the Hawthornes were any different from any other landed East Anglian family – except, perhaps, in so far as they were wealthier than most of their neighbours. She thought they belonged. Understanding and alliances had been reached. Sir Richard and Lady Felworth’s elder daughter had been chosen for Edward. A commission in the Guards for Giles, through the good offices of old General Warner of Pate’s Tye, after William Hawthorne had in neighbourly fashion provided the general, who was partial to good horseflesh, with a fine black hunter. Wouldn’t the fools of girls just love awful Giles in his gallant uniform, Jessica thought, sourly. A good living was being negotiated already for John, though it would be some years before he was ordained. And for Caroline a much-sought-after prize, the son of a baronet, no less. Jessica’s father was a man who liked to keep a shrewd eye on his investments; none of the fortune-hunting young blades that lovely Caroline had attracted during her first London Season had greatly appealed. In a younger sister’s jaundiced eyes the match was a more than suitable one; ‘Bunty’ Standish had a handsome face and a pea brain, a fatuous sense of humour and no fortune of his own to speak of. Jessica was sure they would suit very well. And what of herself? She presumed, almost without thinking about it, that her parents, when they remembered her, plotted and planned her future as they did those of their older children. The problem for Jessica was that time trailed with such leaden-footed slowness that even the remote possibility of ever finding herself part of that magic and frightening adult world that she so longed and yet so feared to join seemed unimaginable. As long as she could remember everyone in her world had been older than she, busy about concerns that were none of hers, coming and going, ordering their lives – and frequently hers too – leaving her always watching and listening on the sidelines, like a spectator at a play. Always she felt like an afterthought, isolated as she was from her older siblings by several years. Nor, she knew, could she produce any great claim for their attention apart from her apparently chronic if for the large part unintentional aptitude for getting into trouble. She was neither irresistibly likeable, as Edward was, nor was she forceful and dashing like Giles. She was not beautiful, like Caroline, and if she sometimes suspected – somewhat immodestly perhaps – that she might, given a chance, be as clever as clever John, what good was that in a girl – and a second girl at that? That she was a trial to her parents she was certain. It seemed she could do little right, no matter how hard she tried. Only in one particular could she always be certain of attaining the prize for which she always so longed, her father’s approbation, and that was on the back of a horse. She was the most accomplished rider in an accomplished family, and was proud of it. She had ridden to hounds since she was ten and had never baulked a hedge, taken a tumble or lost the field. On horseback she shed the humiliating gaucheness that so pained her mother and became one with the animal she rode. Small as she was she could control the most fractious of beasts. But even that had brought her eventually to trouble; it having been reported to her mother that she spent more time with the stable lads than at her music and sewing. She had been cursorily forbidden the stables except for a single hour a day, between four and five in the afternoon. This arbitrary but absolute rule she had broken this morning, and beneath her terror for Bran lurked a trepidation she had been trying all day to ignore – for if her father’s approval was the thing she most truly desired, her mother’s cool anger was the thing she most truly feared.

  She looked again at the huge, golden house, magnificent against the spacious East Anglian sky, and found herself wondering why she had always so disliked it.

  Bran nuzzled her hand. She wiped her green-stained fingers absent-mindedly on her skirt and scrambled inelegantly to her feet. ‘Come on, boy,’ and she set off at a fast pace round the lake in the direction of Old Hall, the ungainly mongrel loping at her heels.

  * * *

  Old Hall was a dark, draughty and inconvenient jumble of a building, its river walls damp and its roofs uncertain. It was also, to anyone with a whit of imagination, an enchanted place, the stuff of the magical fantasies of childhood. It was the Sleeping Beauty’s Palace, an ogre’s lair, the gaunt-walled home of an exiled prince, a fairy castle, all in miniature. Moated, steep-gabled, it was built inward-looking about a cobbled court in the centre of which stood an ancient, sweet-watered stone well. The aged brick and timber of the old buildings had been mellowed and warmed by the slow passing of time and the tall, multi-paned windows glittered in the autumn sunlight as Jessica dashed across the much-patched rickety bridge that had in harder times been a defensive drawbridge. Bran, from familiar habit, led the way in a scamper, long claws clattering upon huge worn flagstones along the short dark passage that, on the eastern side of the courtyard, led to the kitchen.

  ‘Goodness gracious me!’ Mrs Williams, the FitzBolton’s cook-housekeeper, threw up mock-scandalized, flour-whitened hands at their sudden entrance. ‘Might I ask where the fire is, Miss Jessie? And might I ask, too, what that animal is doing in my kitchen?’

  ‘Sorry, Mrs Williams.’ The apology was perfunctory. That Mrs Williams’ bark was far worse than her bite Jessica had known since babyhood. ‘I’m looking for Robert. It’s VERY important – do you know where he is?’ Another early-learnt lesson; Mrs Williams was the oracle of Old Hall that everyone consulted, including her employers. Absolutely nothing happened within or without these walls that she did not know about. Jessica eyed a tray of fresh-baked biscuits with interest, her stomach reminding her suddenly of her missed lunch, and of there being no great prospect of tea either.

  Mrs Williams, small and solidly built, her hair iron grey beneath its starched white cap, the repressive sternness of her expression hopelessly belied by the twinkle in her blue eyes, turned back to her bowl. ‘As a matter of fact I do. He’s gone down to the old church to practise. Miss Clara chased him out of the house. Said his caterwauling was splitting her head.’

  ‘She would.’ Jessica sidled towards the biscuits and reached a tenta
tive hand.

  ‘Well-brought up young ladies ask nicely,’ Mrs Williams said, placidly, not turning her head.

  ‘Please – may I? I’m awfully hungry.’

  ‘You’ll spoil your tea.’

  ‘I’m not to have any,’ Jessica admitted gloomily.

  The grey head turned, a kindly gleam in the astute, rosy face. ‘Well – we won’t go too far into the whys and wherefores of that, in case I hear something I shouldn’t. Take a couple, then, and one for Master Robert, too. But not a crumb for that great beast, mind. I don’t slave to feed dumb brutes like him.’

  ‘Thank you.’ The girl grabbed the biscuits, flashing a quick, imp-like smile before skipping across the room to the door that led to the great main hall and thence back into the courtyard. Like the huge kitchens of New Hall, Old Hall’s kitchen was painted pale blue to keep the flies at bay, but there any resemblance ended, for the domain that was relentlessly contested by Mrs Benson, the Hawthorne’s Cook General, and M. Bonnard, their recently-employed almost-French chef, was vast, a series of pale caverns inhabited by an army of scurrying underlings who under stern eyes and within a hierarchy every bit as rigid as that which reigned above stairs, tended the great ranges, the hotplates, the huge open fire, the pastry ovens and the meat ovens, the churns of the dairy, the bread ovens of the bakehouse, the vats of the brewery and the ranked shelves of preserves in the stillroom. Here at Old Hall both the scale and the atmosphere were in utter contrast to the new house. The fittings had barely been altered in a hundred years, and it was inconveniently situated for the dining room, which was on the first floor, but for all that it always seemed to Jessica that this big, homely room was the true heart of Old Hall; and if the staff over which Mrs Williams ruled with despotic benevolence was a fraction of the size of the one needed to run New Hall, at least each face had a name and each servant, from Mrs Williams herself down to the lowest scullery maid, knew that the loyalty that they gave freely to the family was as freely returned.