Lady of the Highway Page 11

  My freedom. It was the one thing I was desperate to keep – for the babe’s sake.

  I should have known. The moment had come, as I surely knew it must. Downall was going to demand something of me for his sudden and peculiar cooperation.

  As soon as we were in the drawing room, he turned to me. ‘One word from me and you’d be arrested, you know that. I’ve seen you riding out in breeches and boots, like a man. Mallinson and his son might be naïve, but I know a lie on a treacherous woman’s lips when I see one.’

  ‘So what do you want?’

  ‘I want your hand in marriage, and this estate.’

  16: Two Arrivals Together

  I had given Downall no answer. What answer could I give? To refuse him would lead to more trouble. And the thought of accepting him was too grim to contemplate. I told nobody, not even Abi. From a child, this was always my way, to stubbornly refuse to face the things I did not want to see.

  So spring came and my stomach swelled even more. I was so terrified of it showing that I hardly dared to eat, then suddenly I’d be faint with hunger and would have to creep to the larder in the dead of night. I had a strange urge to eat the dried peas for the porridge, and kept filching handfuls from the sack in the larder.

  Downall had received written instructions from my stepfather in London that he must make the house look presentable for prospective buyers, although this was to be done as cheaply as possible. Downall ignored these instructions, no doubt thinking he would be the one enjoying the house in the future, so an army of carpenters and cleaners were engaged to repair the house, and sheep were found to graze the grounds. The ragged topiary was re-trimmed and expensive wool work curtains rehung in the principal rooms.

  Downall was so preoccupied with overseeing his new empire that he had little time for me. Once he remarked that I was thickening at the waist, and my heart almost jumped from my chest.

  ‘It suits you,’ he said, admiringly. ‘A woman looks better with more flesh on her bones.’

  The twin emotions of relief that I wasn’t discovered, and revulsion at his insinuation, flooded through me. Whenever I had to meet with Downall, Abi laced me so tight I could barely move, and I dealt with his business quickly, anxious to be free of the restriction and able to breathe once more. Finally as I grew bigger, I pretended such enthusiasm for an embroidered fire screen that I begged to have Abi bring my meals to me. From below I could hear Downall and his men drinking and laughing like lords, making themselves at home in my dining room. I resented it, but there was little I could do.

  To all outside appearances the refurbished house looked grand enough, but it still felt hollow to me. For a Puritan, Downall certainly had ostentatious taste. I hated the gaudy furnishings, none of which were to my liking. I never rode out now or went to the village because I feared what jolting on a horse or in a cart might do for my growing baby. Besides, I did not want to come face to face with anyone who would see me. And to tell the truth I was feeling heavier and more tired.

  A few weeks later, Abi was dressing me when she paused and stiffened.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘Someone coming.’ She’d felt the vibrations of the footsteps. Downall’s heavy footfall stopped outside my chamber. The door handle twisted and he opened the door without knocking. I flung a cloak over my shoulders; wrapped it tight.

  ‘I thought to see you at dinner,’ he said, ‘yet you deliberately ignore me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. But if it is business, I will see you downstairs. Not here.’ I could not keep my dislike of him from showing, but my tone was formal.

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I expect you forthwith.’

  Abi drew my bodice so tight that I winced. Pray God it would not hurt the baby.

  When I went down he passed me a letter. The words were blurred with damp, but they made my heart lurch.

  ‘Downall,

  There is no trace of Thomas in London. Worse, I have been delayed through this bad April weather with one of the main roads cut off by floodwater. I will get there as soon as I can. When I return, we’ll see about giving you your own chambers at the manor. Mallinson speaks highly of you, and it makes me uneasy not having a man on the premises…’

  My stepfather’s florid signature followed. I needed to read no further.

  Downall saw my stricken face and gave a half-smile. ‘It appears we will be seeing a little more of each other,’ he said, approaching uncomfortably close, so that I smelled the rancid tang of his hair oil. I recoiled, but dipped my head in the semblance of an agreement. I did not want to meet his eyes, or he would sense my defiance and it would rile him.

  ‘Perhaps you will be a little warmer to me in future,’ he said. ‘Especially as when he arrives I plan to make Sir Simon my offer for the house.’

  So that was it. I should have guessed. And of course by ‘the house’, he meant me too.

  A hot temper flared inside me, sudden as a fire leaps into life. ‘He will not sell to you,’ I said, my control gone. ‘He sees the snake you are. You have not deceived him, any more than you have deceived me.’

  His hand whipped out and took me by the arm. His fingers pressed through the flesh to the bone. ‘I know you do not like me, Katherine, but you will learn to.’

  I gave a sudden twist and freed my arm.

  ‘I would rather learn to skin a pig.’

  I heaved myself up the stairs and into my chamber, grabbed a knife and jammed it into the latch to prevent it opening.

  *

  ‘What are you going to do when the baby comes?’ Abi asked later that day when I told her Sir Simon was on his way.

  I shook my head. It was question I had no answer for. Just like the question of what to do about Downall.

  ‘I know you don’t want to, but you’ve got to think about it, Kate. You might be able to hide a pregnancy, but you won’t be able to hide a baby. You’ll have to find a wet nurse, and then someone who will take him in. But it will have to be done quietly, so no one—’

  I found my voice. ‘No,’ I said with vehemence. ‘I can’t give my baby up.’

  ‘They’ll kill you.’

  ‘We’ll just have to hide it.’

  Abi looked at me dubiously. ‘Where?’

  ‘I’ll think of something.’

  ‘Then think fast. The buds are out on the May already. You’re running out of time.’

  ‘There’s a whole month yet. Stop haranguing me.’ I was short with her and I knew it wasn’t fair, but I could not think what to do. It didn’t seem real. These sensations I was feeling, the pressure in my abdomen, somehow I could not equate them to holding a real live baby in my arms. And I didn’t want to think about it. Childbed was dangerous; many women did not survive it.

  *

  Weeks passed. I caressed my belly with my palm, soothing the child inside. Abi had brought some May blossom inside and put it in a vase. Though it looked pretty, the smell of it made me heave. I knew she meant it as a reminder, and I knew it was thought unlucky to bring it indoors.

  Outside, the squally rain still hammered down, turning the yard to a quagmire. I shivered, feeling the cold, despite my layers of clothes. I wore a shapeless over-gown on top of my bodice. The laces would no longer fasten properly anyway. Over that, a fur-lined cloak. Winter clothes were good for hiding my secret. Without my stays my navel protruded like a button.

  The babe inside me was restless, churning. I’d been out of sorts all day.

  Worried, I picked up the stained letter from the side table, and re-read my stepfather’s few blurry sentences;

  I will get there as soon as I can.

  As if to taunt me, a shaft of sun broke through the clouds, illuminating the room with sudden sharp light. So far, the floods had kept my stepfather away, but it looked like the weather was improving. I had to face it – Sir Simon was returning, and with me in this condition, there would be no hiding from him, that much was certain.

  He would think the babe to
be Thomas’s, but that would give him more excuse to order me and own me. I would have to lace myself tighter, try to keep out of my stepfather’s way, yet I knew him to be astute. He would not be easy to fool. I worried he would spot something amiss, and he was not beyond taking a rod to me, even now. Abi had been right all along; I must start to make plans.

  I was about to open the door when a needle-sharp pain gripped my stomach. I stood stock still, and gasped for breath. And then it subsided. I told myself it was lack of food and hurried up the stairs and along the corridor to the tower where the servants’ quarters were. By the time I got to the narrow stone steps I was panting. My legs seemed heavy, unwilling to move. I grasped the rope banister and hauled my way up, but as I got to the top of the stairs a sudden wetness gushed between my legs.

  The baby was coming. This could not be happening. Not now. Not yet.

  I burst through Abi’s door, but another wave of pain made me clutch the door jamb with both hands. I groaned, and gripped the stonework, feeling my nails scrape into the grit.

  Abi was darning a stocking but stood up, her eyes large with shock. ‘No. Is it…?’

  I could not speak, but she took me to her truckle bed and pressed me to lie down. I sat up again as soon as I could catch my breath. ‘Sir Simon… what shall I do? He’ll be here any day.’

  ‘Never mind him,’ Abi said. ‘How long between bouts?’

  I could not think. My back hurt. ‘A few minutes, maybe?’

  ‘Then there’ll be someone here a lot sooner than him. Lie here, and for God’s sake don’t scream. I’m going for water and towels.’

  ‘Don’t leave me!’ Suddenly I was terrified. I didn’t know what was happening to me. A further wave of pain made me grind my teeth and groan again.

  ‘I’ll need cloths and you’ll need something for the pain. Here, bite on this.’ She folded a kerchief into a pad, pushed it into my hand and rushed away.

  The grip on my belly seemed to abate, and I thrust my legs out of bed and began to pace, round and round the room like a prowling tiger. When the pain came I bit down on the kerchief, but the urge to scream out was overwhelming. I curbed it. Nobody must know. I held onto that thought, praying for the cramp to fade.

  When Abi returned I was on my haunches, leaning against the bed. Sweat dripped from my forehead, my back felt as though it was squeezed by the weight of an anvil.

  ‘Make it stop,’ I wept.

  For hours Abi sat with me. I was aware of her going occasionally and then her return, knew she brought a Bible and began to read to me from it, the words from Creation. But when the pain came she helped me to muffle the screams with her hands. Several times I thought I saw Ralph, and called out for him, but somewhere inside I knew he was dead, that he could not be in this life where my body was all too solid, straining, cursing, following its own rules.

  Sometimes I fought Abi off, railed at her, slapped out when she tried to hold my mouth quiet, yet still she kept returning.

  ‘Don’t they ask where you are?’ I groaned.

  Her face looked down at me with its habitual puzzled expression as she read my lips. ‘I’ve had to tell them I have a stomach ache and I’m too ill to work,’ she said.

  ‘Oh Abi. I have to push!’ The urge made me cry out, but Abi bade me hush.

  It was tearing me apart.

  One last push and suddenly something slippery came from between my legs. I scrabbled to upright to see, and a baby, red and wet, squirmed there on the bed.

  ‘A boy.’ Abi’s voice was a whisper. She stared in awe.

  He opened his lungs and began to cry, a cracked, tentative sound as if he was unsure how to do it. I had a sudden vivid image of Ralph, standing at the foot of the bed, but I blinked and it was gone.

  Abi watched the babe’s mouth open with wonder. ‘Is he loud?’ she asked.

  I nodded, eyes full of tears. I reached for him just as I heard the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  ‘The door!’ I hissed. ‘Quick! Someone’s coming!’

  ‘You all right, Abi?’ It was the maid of all work, Nancy, from the kitchen. ‘I heard a noise.’

  ‘It’s Nancy,’ I mouthed to Abi.

  The door creaked open, but just in time Abi leapt to shut it and batten down the latch.

  ‘Hey! What the devil…?’ came Nancy’s voice as she shook the door. ‘Let me—’

  Abi could not hear her, so yelled over her, ‘I’m not fit to be seen. I’m sick. I told them. Just leave me alone.’

  ‘Stupid bloody girl. I can’t talk to you behind there, can I? Whose cockeyed idea was it to take on someone deaf? Bloody useless.’ With one final thump at the door her footsteps retreated downstairs.

  ‘Has she gone?’ Abi asked.

  I nodded, but turned my attention immediately to the baby. ‘We’ll need to cut the cord.’

  ‘I don’t know how, do you?’ Abi said, her eyes scared.

  ‘No. And I’m afraid. What if we hurt him?’

  ‘I know someone who will know.’

  ‘Who?’ I was immediately wary.

  ‘Cutch. He’s been a chirurgeon in the wars. It’s either that or do it ourselves. And I’m not sure what to do. He’s so little. Please Kate, I don’t want to do it.’

  ‘No.’ I gathered my little son to my chest, terrified. ‘Someone might see you or Cutch. I’ll do it myself. I think I know what to do. But I’ll need a clean sharp knife and some twine.’ I mimed cutting and tying.

  ‘I can’t go to the kitchen, they think I’m ill. Where else?’

  ‘In the drawer of the study. There’s a knife for cutting quills and twine for parcels.’

  ‘The quill knife?’ Abi was checking she’d understood.

  I nodded and sank back. Could I do this? Cut my son free with a quill knife? The babe was searching to suck. I let him find my breast. Softly the door closed as Abi went out. I looked down at the baby in my arms, at his soft downy head. A bolt of love shot through me for this tiny scrap that was part of Ralph and part of me.

  I had so little, and yet God had given me such a gift. A miracle from nothing.

  *

  An afterbirth had come, which filled us both with a mixture of disgust and amazement. Abi took it outside to bury it. Half terrified, I had severed the babe’s cord, with Abi watching me like an owl from the corner. And now here he was – a separate human being. His own self.

  Pride filled me. I’d done it, all by myself.

  In the morning I suckled him and swaddled him with torn bedsheets. Abi had brought them before going back to her duties below stairs. She looked at us as if the babe’s appearance were a mystery she could not solve.

  I called him Jamie. James Ralph Ferrers. I couldn’t even bear the idea that the babe might be thought of as connected to the Fanshawes. I was Katherine Ferrers. My marriage had been none of my will – a sham when I was only twelve years old. I had never truly thought of myself as a Fanshawe. I despised my stepfather, and his nephew who had been forced on me. They had treated me like a beast.

  And my son was Jamie Ferrers, not one of them.

  I knew I could not stay here in Abi’s room forever, but my chamber was nearer the parlour and if Jamie cried, someone might hear him. Once Jamie was sleeping I stood up. Abi had left me pads to wear, and clean clothes, so I struggled into them, aware of my legs trembling like shivering leaves in a wind. Somehow I must to pass through the house to get back to my room.

  I crept to the landing and waited until I saw Venner and the men go into the study before making my move. I gathered Jamie up and set off down the stairs, one arm pressing Jamie to me, the other clinging to the bannister rail. At the bottom of the stairs I missed my footing and jerked, seizing the newel post to stay upright.

  Immediately Jamie woke, opened his mouth and let out an indignant cry. The sound pierced through me.

  ‘Hush,’ I whispered, willing him to stop, but he did not. He howled in earnest, choking cries that tore my heart.

  I heard the stud
y door open. ‘What the hell’s that?’ Downall said.

  I ran for the side door, hurtled through it and closed it behind me. I could not go past the front of the house so I scurried out into the garden and burst into the stable. Jamie was bawling by now, and my own eyes were filled with tears.

  ‘Hush now,’ I crooned, desperate to make him quiet, ‘Mama’s here.’

  ‘Guess he needs feeding.’ The voice made me spin round.

  Cutch was leaning over the iron gate at the horses stall. I froze, my arms holding the still crying Jamie closer to my chest.

  ‘Best feed him, unless you want his noise to bring Downall out here. There’s a place you can sit over there.’ He indicated the empty stall with a wag of his head. ‘I’ll keep everyone out whilst you do it.’

  I hurried into the empty stall, out of sight, and settled Jamie to feed. Immediately his cries stopped and peace descended on us both. I looked down at him. How could anyone wish such a tiny thing harm? Yet I knew Sir Simon would destroy us both if he found out.

  ‘That’s better,’ Cutch said.

  I shielded my naked breast from Cutch, embarrassed and ashamed to be in such a position.

  ‘What will you do with him?’ Cutch asked.

  I shook my head, having no answer.

  ‘He’s not the master’s child, is he?’

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I’ve seen the signs before. Years of seeing camp followers and their babes. And I know to heed my instincts, so I watched. Saw you grow bonnier and bigger like a waxing moon. But you said nothing and tried to hide it, so I knew it couldn’t be the master’s.’ He leaned over to look down at Jamie’s little face now he was sleeping again. ‘Looks like his daddy, don’t you, little man?’ He reached out a hand to touch the top of Jamie’s head. ‘And just like his daddy, he’s sure to bring trouble in his—’

  But the sentence was never finished. The sound of hooves approaching and the rumble of wheels.

  Cutch shot out of the stable door and went to look.

  Moments later he was back. ‘A carriage, four horses. And two riders alongside. They’ll need stabling. It’s not safe for you here.’ He hauled me to my feet, ‘Quick, into the fodder store.’ He shoved open a plank door.