Page 40 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)
J ack’s next stop is at the Angel, a few doors away on the High Street.
But they sent no messenger to London, and it is a similar story at all the inns until he tries the White Hart.
They did indeed send a mounted messenger to London with a letter to be delivered urgently to York House.
The request for paper and quill came from a personable young gentleman probably in his twenties, decently if not expensively clad in russet wool and a brown cloak.
Slight he was, brown hair and eyes, a thin face that had never yet seen a razor.
Handsome enough to set the maidservants’ hearts a-flutter as they peeped at him from doorway and stair.
Before the landlady sent them sharply about their work, that is.
There is no question of going straight home.
With the information he has gleaned, Jack has enough to make it vital that he tell Alice and Philip without delay.
That story Melbury strung about the coach.
For Melbury not to demand payment in advance is unheard-of.
And then, the information Jack gleaned from the other inns.
He looks up the High Street at the rush-lit windows, the last carts leaving for home, lanterns swinging.
Now he wishes he had brought his horse, but even in the dark it is a familiar walk back to High Stoke.
He can put them wise, collect the bay, and walk easily across the fields to Freemans.
For supper, Alice has settled on the tongue pie and the pig-pie that Philip supplied, preferring that to the struggle with Maureen to make something edible.
She thought half her guests would be gone long before supper time.
Then Master Cranley’s revelations and the search for the Frenchwomen and the taking of Honorine resulted in little time to spend cooking.
Everyone who has been involved in the search gathers with the rest of the household in the parlour next to the kitchen to share the pieman’s wares.
In they come from the Red Lion, lanterns deposited inside the kitchen door.
To lend his help, Philip has taken a plate of food to Master Cranley in his locked chamber, and Alice does the same for Honorine in the Accounts room.
As Philip returns downstairs, the chatter in the servants’ parlour is loud with enquiry and narration, only slightly muted as he walks in to join them. ‘Where’s Pearce?’
‘He left us at the inn,’ one of the men says. ‘Said he was meeting a woman. Again.’
‘He can buy his own supper then,’ says another, ‘and hers!’ And there is general laughter.
Alice sends Maureen in with the last dish.
As she unties her apron she catches sight of Mollie standing behind the door to the pot room.
The girl rarely speaks and much of their communication comprises signs on her part and guesswork on Alice’s.
Always the last to come to table, Mollie hesitates, looking at Alice.
‘You too, Mollie.’ And Alice goes to join the household. Philip beckons her to a place on the bench where he is nudging his men along to allow her a seat next to him. From the door, Mollie watches. ‘This way,’ Alice calls. Shyly, Mollie joins her and the two squeeze into place.
‘Well, it’s been an eventful day,’ Philip is saying through the hubbub. ‘We should toast you and Angus for your capture.’
‘Philip,’ she says, leaning close, ‘you should know that Honorine and Lewis are agents to more than the duke.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘They principally work for the French throne.’
He stares at her, mouths, ‘Louis? Christ! We’ve all been taken for fools. How do you know?’
‘Honorine,’ she whispers. ‘It slipped out. I feel sorry for her. This sort of adventure isn’t in her nature. She’s still very subdued, there’s little fight left in her.’
‘She should have thought of that before,’ Philip says. His bluntness, she thinks, is coloured by the loss of his uncle, and who can blame him? But it kills further discussion of the fugitive. ‘I hope Jack has success in his enquiries in town,’ Philip goes on.
‘I wouldn’t be surprised,’ Alice answers. ‘He knows how to question and he doesn’t let go easily. Yes, Mollie, what is it? I’ve not forgotten to bring in a dish, have I?’ Mollie shakes her head, pointing outside. Alice is puzzled. ‘Show me?’
Again Mollie points. And then the word comes, slowly, agonisedly, for one who rarely uses her voice. ‘E … Eger … ton.’
‘He will have gone home by now.’
‘H … hor …’
‘Yes, he will have collected his horse. Don’t let your supper get cold, Mollie.’
It is some minutes later that Alice notices Mollie has not touched her food.
Something is bothering the girl, something to do with Jack.
Mollie has a particular affection for Jack, who is one of the few people she trusts.
Quietly, Alice rises and excuses herself, ‘just for a moment,’ to Philip, who nods and continues talking with Jackson next to him.
It will settle Mollie’s mind, Alice thinks as she lights one of the lanterns, if the big-boned bay has been collected.
Jack probably did not want to disturb us all and has slipped back to Freemans.
She opens the kitchen door. Outside all is quiet in the December dark.
Across the kitchen court the door to the stables is closed, keeping in the warmth from the horses’ bodies.
Alice lifts the latch and walks along the stalls.
Philip’s horse, then Athena, Cassie, the four coach horses sharing two and two.
And at the end Jack’s bay, calmly waiting.
‘Jack?’ Alice calls. She goes back outside.
He is late coming back from town. She rounds the house to the front.
‘Jack? Are you there?’ Silence across the clearing.
There is not a breath of wind tonight, no sound of footsteps.
Perhaps he will come back through her neighbour George Renwick’s property and enter the kitchen court by the barn.
She returns round the house and through the kitchen court, past the dairy court and the barn, calling.
Still no response. A niggle of disquiet.
If Jack were not coming back for the horse, he would let her know somehow.
She considers sending one of the boys to George Renwick’s to see if Jack is there.
A scrabbling, gasping noise has her turning back, hastening past the barn, raising her lantern high, trying to see.
‘Jack? Is that you?’ Where did it come from?
There it is again, this time with a human groan, like a muffled, bubbling cry.
Somewhere near the stables, no, nearer, the wash house. And then she knows where it came from.
‘Jack!’ she screams. ‘Jack!’ Pushing her way through the drying bushes, screeching, ‘Philip! Ned!’ Twigs catching at her clothes, slowing her down. Past and on, on to the vegetable garden. Not another. Not Jack. Feet stamping away through the mud.
He lies face down, unmoving. ‘Oh, please, no!’ and all she can think is, lift him, lift him out of it.
Falling on her knees, taking his head in her hands, pulling him out of the mud.
Lifting his limp form, turning him in her arms. ‘Jack, Jack!’ Wiping the mud away, her finger in his mouth, scooping it out, squeezing it from his nose.
His ghastly, clogged fight to breathe and she scoops again and he is struggling, he is alive, but choking, he cannot catch a breath through the mire in his mouth, in his throat, and she thumps his back hard, thumps again.
Terror stalks her that he will expire at any moment.
‘Jack, try to cough, please!’ She stands, gets hold of him under the arms to drag him.
‘Hold on, my dear. Just hold on a little.’ She drags him a step.
Such a weight to pull. Hauls again, again.
Anything to get him away from the sucking mud.
She screams again, ‘Philip!’ Surely he will hear?
Drags Jack another step. She dare not leave him, even to get help.
His would-be killer is somewhere there in the shadows, waiting his chance.
She has to get Jack away towards people.
People are protection. Gathers herself and hauls, a rock-hard, blind determination to fight for Jack’s life.
She once before knew this single-minded instinct when Sam was threatened …
‘Give him here, missus,’ Ned’s voice says behind her and she feels his bulk close by as he takes the drooping body.
Against the rushlight from the kitchen she watches him pull Jack’s back against his own chest, wrap his arms around him and give a violent squeeze.
Mud spurts from Jack’s mouth and he hauls in a long coughing breath, then another.
Then he is spitting and gagging and coughing, rubbing his muddied hands over his muddied face and gasping in distress and disgust. Ned has sunk to his knees to support him.
It is only then that Alice realises she has dragged Jack out of the vegetable garden, past the drying bushes and into the kitchen court.
The sight of Jack’s muddied face, so nearly another gaping death-mask, is unbearable to her and she hitches a handful of underskirt, clearing his eyes, wiping his cheeks, holding it to his nose like a child, laughing and crying at the same time as she tells him to blow, and someone is saying over and over, ‘Thank God, thank God, you’re alive! ’