Prue Phillipson - Hordens of Horden Hall (28 page)

“Are you all right, sir?” The boy was at the door looking up into his face.

He smiled down at him. “War wound. I haven’t walked as far since I got it.”

“I can run for a hackney from the Stand.”

“Thank you, but I should walk. I’ll never get fit if I sit too much.” He waved a hand and saw the lad return to his work.

As he walked he felt a wetness in the bandage over which he had stretched his white stocking that morning. When he was out of sight round the corner he looked down and saw a stain creeping over the stocking and spreading down his leg.

Damnation, he muttered, the wound has opened up when I thought it was knitting well the last time it was dressed.

Nevertheless he walked back and at last reached the house with the walnut tree. He was exhausted from the pain and the effort but as he turned in at the gate the front door opened and his mother came running towards him.

He almost fell with the violence of her embrace.

She was sobbing and laughing. “Oh Dan. It’s really you. Let me hug you to pieces.”

“Let me get inside and sit down.”

“Of course you are hurt. I’m a fool! Oh look at your poor leg. Why have you been walking on it? Lean on me. Nat, Nat, he’s here. Come and help,” she shouted.

Then his father was there too at his other side and together they propelled him into the hallway and onto the velvet sofa that sat against the panelled wall.

They were all in tears at the joy of reunion.

Cousin Celia came wobbling from the kitchen where she had been checking that the dinner was ready.

“Oh good, good, he is back and the dinner isn’t spoiled. Why would you go out walking so long and not be here to greet your parents?”

Mother Bel intervened at once in his defence. Oh it was wonderful to be in her presence again. It was a true restoration.

“He didn’t know we would be here today, Celia. We lay not far from London last night and came on early. But look at his poor leg!”

Celia threw up her hands. “The doctor said he should still be resting it. Wherever have you been, you bad boy?”

Celia, Daniel noticed, had become more like a grandmother to him these last days.

“I went to look at William’s house.”

“Ha! He means Eunice’s. Poor lad he is mourning her sadly, Arabella. But we must get that leg dressed again. I’ll tell cook to hold dinner.”

Daniel stood up, gritting his teeth at the pain. “Pray don’t. It can get no worse if I am sitting at table and I’m hungry. Something smells very good.”

As they went in Bel kept her arm twined about his waist. She couldn’t stop looking up at his face.

“You’ve aged, my little Dan,” she whispered, “and I’ve aged missing you. We must go home soon. You can’t walk about in a coach so we’ll be sure you are resting that leg.”

“But my ship –”

She reached up and laid her finger against his lips.

“No more ship now I’ve got you back. I want you at Horden Hall.” She nodded towards Celia at the dining-room door giving orders to the maid while they took their places at the table. “She is not happy with us here. I could tell at once. We’ve been up and seen Clifford and he too is distressed at our presence. We will go as soon as it can be arranged.”

Daniel was concentrating too hard on showing no outward sign of the pain in his leg to argue with her.

CHAPTER 20

Eunice, relying on her waterman’s gossip, learnt that there had been another battle on St James Day in early August when the English had been successful and had later raided and destroyed ‘hundreds’ – so he said – of Dutch Merchantmen in a great bonfire of ships off the Zuyder Zee. She had seen with her own eyes that the
Elizabeth
was still under repair in Woolwich Dock so Daniel, she thanked God, could not have been involved.

Mrs Harrison had been much more forbearing with the rope ends since the last incident and Eunice had tried not to prolong her outings to a suspicious length. There was no danger of her arousing anger one day in late August when she had been sent to buy a long list of provisions at the market because Mrs Harrison had her dressmaker in fitting yet another new dress she had had made.

So Eunice was happy to linger when she heard two prosperous-looking gentlemen sitting at tables outside an alehouse discussing the state of the war.

She asked for a glass of small beer and sat at the next table.

The younger and smarter of the men slapped his pewter mug on the table. “What I say is the Dutch are as weary as we are of all this loss of trade. They’ll not have the will to launch another attack for a long time.”

The older man in a long wig shook his head. “Ah but they’ll pick off our merchantmen where they can to avenge their losses at the islands of Vlie and Terscelling. Merchants are fearful of trusting their goods to the sea now which is bad for trade. If they don’t get their stuff out how can they buy more?”

“They will, they will. You are an old doom-monger. There’s talk of peace terms. The big merchants in the City are ready to bet on that and will vie with each other to be the first to launch out again.”

“Nay, I’m not so sure of that. There’s many frightened by what happened to Horden.”

Eunice started at the name and listened intently.

“Horden? His trade is mainly in the West Indies is it not?”

“It was. Have you not heard? He lost several cargoes in succession to Dutch action. He’d gone into the country to escape the plague and left the business to his manager Richard Corcoran.
He
speculated to reclaim their losses and now that has gone wrong too. They say he’s vanished with what’s left of the fortune and poor old Horden has died of shock.”

“Clifford Horden dead? That
will
alarm the City. If a big business like Horden’s can disappear who is safe?”

“Well, that’s what I’m saying.”

Eunice drank off her glass and slipped away. Her mind was hardly on the purchases she had to make. Grandfather was dead! As she went from stall to stall and her two baskets became heavier and heavier she was repeating to herself, “Grandfather dead!” It wasn’t until she was trailing back to the Harrisons’ house, weighed down with her purchases, that she began to apply her mind to the loss and what it meant for her.

Going in the back door she could hear voices in the front parlour so the dressmaker was still there. She began to unpack, refilling herb jars from the packets she had bought, replenishing the empty earthenware crocks with butter and cheese in the larder and hanging up the shoulder of lamb on its hook. The fresh local apples she had bought she kept out on the table for today’s pudding.

She hung the empty baskets on pegs in the wash room out of the way of rats and began the preparations for dinner. All the time she was saying to herself, Grandmother is alone now. She has lost her son and her husband and must believe I too am dead. It is possible that Daniel is staying with her but I think he will be recovering at home in Northumberland. His mother will want him there. She always looked at him with such love and pride. But poor Grandmother! I have been selfish in running away. I know why she and Grandfather didn’t try to take us into the country with them. They knew Father would not desert what he saw as God’s work for him in London and that I would never leave him. Dear God, I left him when he was dead and for that I will always feel guilty. But since then I have pursued what Eunice wanted whilst trying to live a lie as Patience Porter. That must stop. Grandmother needs me. I must care for her in her old age. I must give her the love that Grandfather only showed her sparingly and my poor father not at all.

She stirred the broth in the cauldron, round and round unnecessarily when she should have started on the apple pie she was to make. Upon hearing Mrs Harrison showing her dressmaker out, she began to peel the apples.

When her mistress looked into the kitchen Eunice said at once straight out, “Mistress Harrison, I am afraid I must leave you. I am needed in London by my grandmother. I will work my week but then I must go.”

Mrs Harrison’s mouth hung open. “How did you hear that? You have had no letters. You are making this up. You have never mentioned a grandmother.”

Eunice realised she could be in very great trouble if she revealed she had been working under a false name. One lie led to another as her father had always said. But the lie popped out easily enough.

“A messenger came seeking me and saw me shopping. I must go to my grandmother. She has no one but me. I needed to earn my own bread but now she is alone I must look after her.”

“Let her come and live in Woolwich so you can keep an eye on her.”

“She wouldn’t leave London. She has a house there. I must go to her.”

Mrs Harrison was glaring round at the kitchen and the dinner preparations. “Where is the pastry for the tart?”

“It’s not made yet, Ma’am.”

“And Mr Harrison will be here any minute! You are hopeless, girl. As I have always said, I must get a cook-maid. You are dismissed. You can go at once.”

She stormed out of the room and went to the front door to look for her husband.

Eunice, or perhaps it was still Patience, quietly went on with her preparations. There wasn’t time to make pastry so she stewed the apples with some cloves and put them in a dish decorated with cherries.

She heard the master come in and remonstrate with his wife.

“My precious, she cannot leave till you have found someone else. Think of your lovely hands. I will put bills up and in the newspaper that you need help and if Patience will write some lines that she is leaving of her own accord and this has always been a happy place that will bring the girls in.”

This Eunice knew she would have to do. She excused herself for the deception with the thought that she had had some contentment in her own soul and had perhaps taught her mistress that beating did not produce the best servants. Still her conscience troubled her that evening when she put her name to this declaration as ‘Patience Porter’.

Four days later on September the third a gangly girl, taller than Eunice, but looking no more than fourteen was taken on. The rope ends had disappeared and Mrs Harrison, her hair frizzed into the tightest ringlets and wearing her new rose pink gown and cherry-blossom petticoat, welcomed her with smiles.

To Patience she gave a curt farewell nod and Eunice, shedding her alias, walked out of the house, carrying the bundle she had set out with and in her purse enough money from her saved wages to get to London by river.

It was early on a Monday morning and she was surprised to see an unusual number of boats coming down river and disembarking at the stairs. They were filled not only with people but many household goods, furniture and chests of clothes and musical instruments.

“What is happening?” she asked Jack the waterman who had got himself a skiff and was preparing to leave with a man she now knew to be his son.

He spat on the ground as he usually did before answering. “When there’s work to be done even an old ‘un must make a killing.”

“If you are going upriver have you room for me,” she asked, “as far as London.”

“Is it the burnt part you want or the rest?”

“What do you mean?”

“Are you the only soul that doesn’t know London took fire yesterday morning and it’s spreading fast. Folks are getting their goods out to friends and relations that live in these parts. Come down in if you’re coming but the City is burnt to the waterline at the bridge.”

Eunice, sure he must be exaggerating since fires in London were common enough, clung on to the rail and descended the slippery steps. “I am going to the Strand. Can you get me to Milford Stairs?”

He took her hand and jumped her into the boat, an unusual courtesy, the watermen being notoriously surly.

“Sit you there under the hood. When we’re turned around you’ll have shelter from that east wind, and don’t you fret, the flames won’t have got as far west’ard as Milford Stairs.”

Several other passengers squeezed in and the old man and his son pushed off and were soon rowing vigorously.

Eunice sat clutching her shawl about her more with excitement than cold for the morning was sunny again after a long dry spell. She didn’t expect to see Daniel at the end of this day but there was a sliver of hope that she might. She could do so without embarrassment since she had such good reason to visit her grandmother. She would meet him coolly and give him her hand without a tremor. But even as she thought of it she quivered and pressed her hands together over the string of her bundle which she carried on her lap.

“Not cold are you?” The old boatman was at the oars nearest to her and grinned up into her face. “Take a turn here and you’d be warm enough.”

“I am not cold I thank you.”

She decided to look about her at the busy river and put aside all thoughts of the end of her journey. It was such a joy to be out of the Harrisons’ house with no chores to do that day. Even under the boat’s hood she could feel the fresh air coming from the sea and not the stifling heat from a kitchen fire. She took gulps of it and gave thanks that Patience Porter was no more.