The Flood-Tide (3 page)

‘Yes, very well, I'll come,' Jemima said. There were six visiting mares at Twelvetrees, sent to be covered by the Morland stallion, Artembares, besides valuable stock of their own, and an infectious disease could wreak havoc there. ‘Go up to the house, boy, and tell them to saddle my horse, and then go straight back and tell Master Humby I'm on my way.' The boy scuttled off, and Jemima got to her feet. ‘I must go up and change. One failing of calico is that one cannot ride in it. Flora, will you take my place here?'

‘Oh Mother, Mother,' Charlotte cried in an agony, having been alerted by the word 'mare' to a conversation about horses, her ruling passion. 'Please can William and I come? You said he must not work any more this afternoon, and a ride will be the very thing for him, to cure his headache.'

‘And have you the headache too, Charlotte?' Father Ramsay asked, amused. Jemima looked at him, wondering why he should even consider trying to separate the twins.

‘I think the harvest is well enough advanced to be able to spare the little ones, don't you, Father?' she said. 'We shall finish all today in any case.'

‘Without a doubt,' he said obligingly. 'They have worked well this morning.'

‘Run up to the house, then, and change. And be quick - I will not wait for you.’

*

The stables at Morland Place were almost empty now, sad contrast to their heyday when Jemima was young. Her own mare, a handsome Morland chestnut named Poppy, three rough ponies on which the children had been taught to ride, and two stout cobs for common use, were all that were kept in. When Allen comes home, she often said to herself, things will be different. She tried not to think about it too much, for she missed her husband so much that if she dwelt on his absence she would unfit herself for all her numerous tasks.

Charlotte was strangely silent as she and William, on Mouse and Dove, followed Poppy out of the yard. She sat well on the pony, making it walk out in a way that no one else could manage. She must have a proper horse soon, Jemima thought, and remembered her own excitement when her father had given her her first horse, the beautiful black gelding Jewel, long since gone to the Elysian fields.

‘Mother,' Charlotte said at last, in a voice unusually subdued. 'Mother, why do you want to be rid of me?'

‘Rid of you? Whatever can you mean by that?' Jemima checked Poppy, who was eager to gallop, to let the ponies come alongside her.

‘Well, when Alison was brushing my hair just now she said to Rachel that you'd have a hard job to get rid of me when the time came.' Her voice was small, and she looked up at her mother with something like fright. 'Are you going to send me away? Me and not William?' Jemima's heart melted.

‘Oh, my dear, it's only servants' talk. It doesn't mean anything.'

‘But she meant
something,'
Charlotte persisted with perfect truth.

‘She meant that I should have a hard job to find you a husband, because you are not like Mary,' Jemima said, deciding honesty was the best response.

‘But I don't want a husband. And I don't want to be like Mary. You don't want me to be like Mary, do you?'

‘I want you to lead a happy and useful life, my love. You must be married one day, and I'm afraid husbands like their wives to be like Mary - at least, to have some of her qualities.'

‘But why must I be married? I don't want a husband. I've got William. Do I have to get married, even if I don't want to?'

‘I would not force you to marry someone you disliked. To be married to a man you disliked would not make you useful or respectable,' Jemima said feelingly, remembering her own first marriage to her Cousin Rupert, Earl of Chelmsford, who before he had drunk himself to death had all but ruined them, and brought the Morland estate to the brink of bankruptcy. 'But you must marry someone. Boys can have a career, but there is nothing else for girls to do.'

‘It's not fair,' Charlotte cried.

‘It's the way the world is,' Jemima said. 'Even for me -I was my father's heir when my brothers died, and he taught me business, but still my mother arranged a match for me.'

‘The wicked Earl,' Charlotte said. It was something of a cautionary tale in the schoolroom.

‘I was fortunate that he died when he did, and I was able to marry your Papa,' Jemima finished. It deflected Charlotte for a moment.

‘Is Papa
ever
going to come back?' she asked. It was only a childish emphasis, but it made Jemima shiver: her unspoken dread was that she would never see him again. ‘He has been gone so long.'

‘Almost three years, but it seems longer. James does not even remember him,' Jemima said sadly. 'Father Ramsay says it cannot last much longer.'

‘But Papa does not even write like Cousin Thomas.'

‘Father Ramsay says one must not expect letters from someone on a diplomatic mission. His business is for the King, and secret, and it may not be possible for Papa to write to us without giving a secret away.'

‘I wish the King had never sent him,' Charlotte said crossly. Jemima nodded. She wished, even as she had wished at the time, that her brother-in-law, the new Earl of Chelmsford, had never presented Allen at Court, where his talents could come to the King's notice. Chelmsford did it to be kind, just as he had sold Morland Place to Allen at less than its true value, as a kindness to Jemima, who had been left destitute on Rupert's death. But so often the Morlands had been involved in a king's business, and it had rarely brought them anything but grief. Her father had met his death as a result of the '45 rebellion, and Allen had spent fifteen years in exile in France because of it. It was that exile which had given him the special experience which made him so useful to King George, and taken him from her for three long years.

‘I wish it too,' she said. 'It is a fine thing to serve the King, and no doubt the King will reward him. But I had sooner he stayed at home with us.'

‘You miss him, don't you, Mother?' William said, watching her face.

‘He is the best man in the world,' she managed to reply.

‘Perhaps Charlotte could marry someone like him,' William said. ‘If she learns to keep her hair tidy.'

‘But I don't want to marry anyone,' Charlotte scowled, and the conversation had turned full circle.

*

When they left Twelvetrees, Poppy was still pulling and fretting, for she had not been out much in the past few days, and since Charlotte was in the same condition, Jemima took pity on them and said, 'We shall ride a long way back, and have a canter across Hob Moor, and go down to the Hare and Heather and see if there are any letters.' It was a convenient excuse, and Charlotte, who opened her mouth to say that the footman had been down for letters only that morning, had wit enough to close it again. They skirted Morland Place through the fields, galloped as fast as the ponies could go across the moor, where the common herdsman was tending the village cattle, jumped the Holgate Beck in fine style, and pulled up just in time to avoid running down a little girl who was herding geese back from High Moor. They were just above the South Road, opposite the new racecourse, which Jemima's father had helped to build. Below them was St Edward's School, and across the road from it St Edward's Church and the Hare and Heather Inn.

‘There's the London coach!' Charlotte cried excitedly. ‘Stopped outside the inn.'

‘It must be putting someone down,' Jemima said. ‘Sometimes it is easier to set down here than to go right into the city, if a person is travelling on by another coach.'

‘There's Jack taking down the boxes,' William said. ‘And Abel holding the horses.' The children knew most of the inn servants, who often came up to the house to bring messages or parcels or casks of ale. ‘Shall we go down, Mother?'

‘No, we'll wait until the coach moves on. There will be enough bustle, without our adding to it.’

The children watched, enough interested in the sight not to mind being kept at a distance, until the coach drew away again and lurched up the road towards the city. Then they saw that the alighted traveller, instead of going inside the inn, was standing outside, giving directions about his boxes to Jack and Abel.

‘Why, Mama,' William cried, 'it's—'

‘Yes,' said Jemima, who had recognized the traveller at the same instant. 'It's Cousin Thomas.’

*

’But why did you not let us know you were coming?' Jemima asked. She had dismounted to embrace her cousin, and Poppy, poking her mistress in the back with a hard, impatient muzzle, made her voice jerky.

‘Oh, the mail is so slow, and I knew I could be here by the stagecoach sooner than a letter, so I did not bother,' Thomas said. In his brown face his eyes were a brilliant blue, and his teeth startlingly white as an irrepressible grin revealed his delight to be home. 'Did I do wrong?'

‘My dear Thomas, of course not! We are so glad to see you. Only this morning—'

‘We were all talking about you in the orchard,' Charlotte broke in, trying to edge Mouse nearer to the exciting newcomer. 'Flora was saying—'

‘But what were you doing on the London coach?' Jemima asked hastily. 'I thought you were to come in to Portsmouth.'

‘I was, until I came up with the Channel Fleet off Flushing. When I made my number the Admiral diverted me with dispatches to London Pool, and the Admiralty have decided to give the poor old
Hydra
one last run up the coast before she's laid up for good. So I have an extra week or so of leave, since the
Ariadne
is not ready yet.'

‘Well, I am entirely delighted, though I'm afraid we have been plum harvesting today, so it will be poor feasting for you tonight. Abram will be most put out, not to have a special dinner ready for you. You know he never feels we keep enough state even on common occasions.'

‘Poor Abram! Well, I should not like to upset him. Suppose Charlotte and William ride on ahead and warn him, while you and I walk back together?' He gave her a significant look, and so Jemima agreed and the twins, delighted to be the ones to bring the great news, turned their ponies and dashed away homewards. Thomas took Poppy's reins from Jemima politely, and looked directly into her inquiring eyes. 'I have news for you, which I thought you would like to have first alone.’

Jemima tried to ask a question, but her mouth had dried, and she could only move her lips soundlessly. Thomas smiled and took her hands.

‘Yes,' he said. 'He is home, he is back, safe and sound. He is in London this very moment, and another week should bring him to you. He bid me bring you all the proper messages, and would have written but he has not an instant's leisure from making his reports to the King. But his greetings he bade me bring you, and his love he will bring himself in a week more.’

Jemima had no words, no words at all; she only gripped Thomas's hands so hard that there were tears in his eyes, to match those in hers.

*

’His lordship is waiting for you in the drawing room, Sir Allen,' said the butler, stepping behind him to lift off his wet cloak. 'Her ladyship has retired.’

Allen gave a grimace, not at the news, but at the appellation. He had been born Allen Macallan of Braco; in recent years he had been known as Allen Morland, since he had decreed that his children should bear that name so that Morland Place should not pass out of Morland hands; he had gone incognito by various names while on his recent mission; but he had been knighted only at this morning's levee, and was not at all sure he liked it. It was typical of the butler at Chelmsford House that he should not make a mistake even about so new a title.

‘Thank you,' he said, handing over his soaking hat. Drops of dirty water fell onto the black and white tiles of the elegant Wren mansion's great hall, and a piece of mud the size of a walnut had dropped from the heel of his shoe, but the butler gave no sign of having noticed these things.

‘Shall I have some refreshment sent in to you, sir? His lordship was not sure whether you would have supped.'

‘Yes, please, a little supper would be welcome,' Allen said, and made his escape. He had felt at home embraced by the fantastic etiquette of Versailles, had navigated the dangerous shoals and narrows of St Petersburg and a dozen minor foreign courts, but Chelmsford's butler made him nervous.

The Earl himself, Jemima's brother-in-law, was waiting for him in the drawing room, and jumped up to greet him. ‘My dear Allen, come to the fire, you must be drowned. I haven't had a chance to congratulate you yet. It is the least that you deserve, and I am sure that further honours will come your way.'

‘Thank you, Charles. The King has told me I am to be the next Justice of the Peace when I get home, and when I think what that will cost me in terms of work and worry, I'm not sure I can afford any more honours. My knighthood will mean five shillings on every innkeeper's reckoning on my way home.'

‘But my dear friend, the honour, the increase of influence! If you do not value it for yourself, think of your wife, your children. Ann said just now that your daughters must be presented at Court when they are old enough. You must let us present them.'

‘You and Ann are very kind,' Allen said, easing himself into the grateful embrace of the sofa corner. 'I dare say the girls will like that, though Jemima, I know, would be happy never to see St James's again.'