The Flood-Tide (13 page)

‘You go too fast, Flora. He would probably never agree, anyway.'

‘Oh Charles!' She stared at him ruefully, and many things went through her mind, none of which she could say. For her own selfish reasons, she wanted to shake him out of this notion, for she had lost too many of those near to her to relish the prospect of losing him too. But deeper and darker than that was the growing doubt about her own marriage to Thomas. She did not want, though she could not admit it even to herself, to think of Charles marrying as she did, on a whim, someone he did not in the least know, only to discover afterwards that it did not answer. Charles could have refused permission when she had asked to marry Thomas. If only the positions could now be reversed, and she could refuse him permission to marry the Creole! She left him to his brooding, and walked about the moat for a while before going in, and when she reached the barbican she saw Jemima approaching it from another direction, riding Poppy, with little James up on the saddle in front of her. Not so little James now: he was nearly eight, and his hard, wiry body was almost as big as William's at twelve.

‘Look what I found paddling in the brook,' Jemima called to Flora as she rode up. 'This naughty truant, barelegged as an eel! I cannot find out if he has lost his shoes and stockings, or if he never had 'em on.'

‘Eels don't have legs,' Flora objected.

‘Some eels do - Cousin Charles said so,' James offered unwisely.

‘You hush, you wicked thing,' Jemima said, pinching him. 'What your father will say I can't think.'

‘Papa isn't here,' James said with some complacency. ‘He'll be back tonight,' Jemima said sternly, tossing him down to Flora and dismounting.

‘Why is it wicked?' James changed position quickly. ‘Papa says fresh air is good for you.' He leaned back familiarly against Flora, his accustomed prop.

‘It's wicked because you were disobedient. I sent you to your lessons this morning. You hadn't permission to leave them.'

‘You didn't exactly
say
I had to go to lessons this morning. And you didn't exactly
say
I wasn't to leave them,' James said wheedlingly. Jemima led Poppy across the drawbridge, and James and Flora followed hand in hand. Jemima swung round and levelled a finger at him.

‘Not another word, you sea-lawyer! I'm taking you straight to Father Ramsay. Flora, will you give Poppy to Josh to rub down?'

‘Of course. What time is Allen coming back?'

‘He'll be back for supper, perhaps earlier. Come, truant, to your doom.’

*

Jemima could not be angry with James, for she had played truant when she could in her childhood, but she had at least to pretend to be strict with him, for he was too inclined to go his own way, thinking that a charming smile, or even, in an emergency, an apology, was enough to get him out of trouble. 'They'll hang you for a highwayman,' she warned him sometimes, and dreaded the day when he would be old enough to notice the opposite sex. He would be exactly the sort of charming rogue that women could not resist.

She found the schoolroom deserted, and had to seek out Father Ramsay in his room.

‘I've found one of your strayed sheep, father, but where's the rest of the flock?'

‘Mary was fetched away by the nurse,' he told her, 'and as her wardrobe is evidently going to be of more use to her in her future than her brain, I let her go.'

‘And Charlotte?'

‘A headache. She went to find Rachel.'

‘Really a headache?' Jemima asked suspiciously. 'She was never a sickly child, but she complained of the headache twice last week.'

‘I think she was speaking the truth. She was very pale, looked quite sick with it,' Father Ramsay said.

His kind words worried her more than anything, and she dropped James's hand and left him to his fate while she went to find Rachel. William had suffered from headaches, but never Charlotte, until just recently, since William had gone to sea. Was she pining for her twin, or pretending sickness to gain sympathy? Or was it some mysterious transference of strength between her and William? She smiled at herself at the last idea, and wondered what Father Ramsay would say at such pagan thoughts. Rachel was out with the baby, but she found Alison unpicking the seams of an old dress of Flora's, to be made over for Mary.

‘She was really bad,' she told Jemima. 'Poor mite. I made her lie down for a while, and then it went away, and I sent her out to walk in the herb garden, where the scents will do her good. I sent Mary with her.'

‘But she's never sick - until this last week or so,' Jemima said. Alison nodded.

‘I thought maybe she was grieving over William - that's what Rachel thinks - but now I'm not sure. I think perhaps all the studying is too much for her. It's well enough for the boys, mistress—’

But Jemima wasn't going to be trapped into that old argument. 'It's traditional in this family to educate the girls,' she said firmly, and Alison had nothing more to say. She revered tradition, as only a shepherd's daughter could.

*

It was still cold enough in the evenings for a fire, and Flora, Charles, Jemima and Father Ramsay were sitting round it in the drawing room when Allen arrived home. Jemima leapt up at the first sound of hooves in the yard and rushed out to greet him, and the other three waited, smiling, through all the sounds of dogs and boots and voices in the hall, until the drawing room door opened again and Allen came in with Jemima attached to his side like a third limb.

‘Well, Charles, it is all fixed, all settled,' he cried cheerfully by way of greeting. Charles looked startled, but Flora had an inkling of what he was going to say, and felt a sinking.

‘What is?' Charles asked. 'You are looking very pleased with yourself, sir, I must say.'

‘And so I should,' Allen said, sitting down in his own chair by the fire and rubbing his hands briskly. 'I have done a good piece of work, pleased myself, advanced you, and served science, all in one.'

‘Congratulations,' Father Ramsay said drily. 'And how many times will we have to ask before you tell us what you have done?’

Allen grinned. 'I have found a way for Charles to go to America, that's all. Potatoes! Potatoes, my dear cousin! You know - or at least you should know by now - that I have a very deep interest in potatoes. I think they will be as important as turnips - more important, in fact, for there's no denying that turnips are not fit for anything but animal feed, whereas potatoes, I am sure, can be made into a very seemly dish indeed, fit for anyone's table.'

‘Really, Allen!' Jemima protested, and he took her hand and kissed it.

‘Yes, really, dearest. It will only need time for enough people to be eating them for a host of new ways of dressing them to be discovered. And I am persuaded that they are as good for the land as turnips are. I have been reading a pamphlet upon the subject, and it recommends—'

‘Yes, I'm sure, but what of Charles and America?' Father Ramsay said hastily, nipping the effusion in the bud.

‘I think I begin to guess,' Charles said.

Allen, still holding his wife's hand against his cheek, said, 'My brother Chelmsford and I have been dining with various people - members of the Royal Society, and men with large estates and advanced ideas - and we have got together a group of six, all interested in potatoes. And we, with the Society's help, of course, have put up a sum of money to send a man to America to investigate potatoes -what different sorts there are, what conditions they grow best in, what diseases they are prone to, how they may be improved, and so on - with the object, of course, of breeding a better potato, suited to our climate and soil. Now, of course, we need only find the right man to send.’

There was a burst of exclamation, congratulation, and thanks, in which Flora's lack of enthusiasm went unnoticed. Charles shook Allen's hand heartily before restoring it to Jemima's. The conversation revolved around the planning of Charles's trip and the validity of Allen's ideas about potatoes, and the time passed rapidly until supper. And then Alison came in to tell Jemima, quietly and aside, that Charlotte had been sick.

‘Which doesn't seem natural to me, madam,' she went on, 'because as to the other end, there's been nothing for two days, and I was going to give her a dose tomorrow if she didn't mend her ways. And now being sick - it doesn't seem natural. I think perhaps we ought to get the 'pothecary to her tomorrow.'

‘I'll come and have a look at her,' Jemima said. She couldn't quite shake off the idea that Charlotte was somehow doing these things deliberately, to punish them for taking William away from her.

*

The next morning, while Jemima was dressing, Alison came in to say that Charlotte would not get up.

‘She just lies there, mistress, huddled up, with her face in the pillow. I thought she was being naughty, but now I'm not so sure.'

‘I'll come,' Jemima said. 'Has she a headache, or a pain?'

‘I asked, but she wouldn't answer me,' Alison said. Jemima finished dressing in a hurry and went along to the night nursery, which Charlotte shared with Mary. It was as Alison said - Charlotte was hunched up in her bed, with her face in the pillow, which she seemed to be trying to pull round her head.

‘Come now, Charlotte, you must get up,' Jemima said, trying to sound normally cheerful. There was no reply, no movement even. 'What is the matter, chick? Have you a pain?' Still no reply. Jemima tried sternness. 'Charlotte, enough of this silliness. Get up this minute, or I shall be angry.' Charlotte only burrowed deeper into the pillow. Jemima bent over her and pulled her ungently by the shoulders, turning her face upwards for a moment; but Charlotte gave a strange little moan, and with astonishing strength freed herself, pressing her face back into the pillow with a violent movement, as if the light hurt her. Jemima and Alison exchanged doubtful glances, and Jemima cautiously felt Charlotte's brow.

‘She does seem a little hot,' Jemima said hesitantly. Alison spoke quietly, so that Charlotte would not hear.

‘I don't think she's pretending, mistress. Did you see? She was sort of squinting. Maybe the headache has come back.’

Jemima was still hesitating when Charlotte gave again that strange, muted moan. It was a sound of pain and fear, such as an animal might make, and it convinced her.

‘Let her stay in bed, and send for the apothecary,' she said.

Charlotte was sick again before the apothecary arrived, and her temperature was certainly up. The apothecary examined her, and shook his head. He could not say what was wrong. Certainly her head hurt her, and the light hurt her eyes, but he did not know what was the cause of either. He prescribed aperient medicine and a febrifuge, and when he had gone, Alison snorted her derision and made up her own doses, though it was hard to get Charlotte to take them, for she was unwilling to uncurl herself, or to speak, or open her eyes.

By the following day it was clear that she was in pain. She twitched and moaned with it, her hands plucking at the covers, her legs moving restlessly, drawing up and then straightening with a spasmodic jerk. The pain seemed to come and go, sometimes making her grimace with a sudden stab. The light hurt her, and loud noses made her jump and cry out. Alison's face looked suddenly old, as she advised sending for the surgeon from York.

‘You think it's serious then?' Jemima asked, and Alison nodded.

‘Aye, mistress. I'm afraid.’

The surgeon was with the child for a long time, and when he came out, Jemima knew from his face that it was bad. But Charlotte had always been strong, she thought; whatever it was, she'd get over it, big, strong, healthy Charlotte.

‘I think,' said the surgeon, 'that it is brain fever.’

Jemima stared blankly at him. It meant nothing to her. Then she grasped at the word fever. There were all sorts of fevers, and most of them were easily shaken off.

‘What should we do? How could she have caught it?' she asked.

‘Your nurse says that she had inflammation of the ears after the measles,' the surgeon said. 'It has been my experience that the fever enters the brain most often through the ears or the nose. This sort of fever attacks children, hardly ever adults. I'm afraid it is usually fatal.’

Jemima's brain did not take in the words. 'But what should we do? Can you give her anything? Should we bathe her head? She's a strong child, she has always been healthy. She'll make nothing of a fever.’

The surgeon reached out and took her hand, and she flinched at his touch, as it ushered in understanding.

‘Lady Morland, you have not apprehended me. There is nothing I can do for her. I would be failing in my duty to you if I did not tell you that I have never known a child recover from this particular malady.’

Jemima pulled her hand away, staring at him, and then shook her head. Not Charlotte. Charlotte won't die. It's William we were always afraid for. William's gone to sea - he's too young, and too frail for it, but he would go. Charlotte should have been the boy. She was always the strong one of the two.’

The surgeon looked at her for a moment with pity, and then turned to Alison, to speak to her in a low voice, giving her what instructions there were. When he had gone, Alison came and took her mistress's arm comfortingly.

‘Surgeons don't know everything,' she said. 'We'll nurse our little miss, and she'll get better. That old black crow of a surgeon - well, I didn't like to be rude to him, but I nearly told him what I thought of him.’