Page 8 of Linenfold (The Alice Chronicles #4)

In due course the oven becomes fiery red, and she rakes out the embers onto the hearth, where they glow momentarily and subside to grey ash.

Each loaf goes onto the peel for Maureen to insert and slide onto the hot bricks of the oven floor.

Then the cook places the heavy wooden oven door and seals round with strips of dough.

As though at a signal, the household gathers for breakfast. Angus is already seated.

Grace comes in from the dairy, Allan soon after to sit next to her.

Joe follows with Betsy. Others trickle in, Ned from the fields, Rose clattering in breathless but still managing a string of good-humoured chatter to anyone who will listen.

Lastly, sought out from the pot room by Alice, Mollie sidles in and slips onto the end of a bench and breakfast can begin.

The warmest place in the house, inevitably, is the kitchen.

A chill driven by the conditions out of doors has settled over the rest of the house, but a good fire in the hall will spread its heat and take the edge off the nip of winter.

Breakfast over, the bread safely baked and cooling on the kitchen table, Alice makes her way through to the hall where the fire is laid ready.

It takes only a moment with flint and tinder to make a baby flame that catches and spreads.

Plenty of logs but not much kindling left.

She checks in the winter parlour but there is only half a basketful.

This won’t do. She pulls on boots, fetches cloak and gloves and makes her way out to the woodshed for a couple of sacks and heads through the mist towards the belt of trees surrounding the front of the house.

Yesterday’s gale has brought down rafts of rotted branches throughout this ribbon of woodland that separates High Stoke from the road.

All of these are good to feed fires, once dried.

She starts to gather short lengths of the new-fallen yield, gradually filling the sacks as she moves along.

After a while she looks up between the misty trunks and realises the house has disappeared in the fog and she has nearly reached the road out of Guildford.

She can hear, though she can barely see, the coach that has just trundled past on its way towards London.

The steely cold has stiffened her fingers until they ache and she stands to blow on them and shake her gleanings down in the sack.

All around is white silence, out of which sounds the clink of metal, the creak of wheels as another coach approaches.

Two horses pass at a walk, hooves muffled on sodden leaves, a window, an elderly face peering, all greying into the fog, to the groan of swaying wood, the muted ring of harness.

She regards the two scarfed, hatted and cloaked figures hunched atop, coachman and man-at-arms, leaning forward, peering.

The clap of wings and a flight of ducks squawks low across the horses’ path.

A snorting and the scrape of hooves and the coach jerks in a stumble.

It rocks, there is a shout, the whole shape starts to lean.

The coachman stands, desperately hauling.

The man-at-arms, perhaps to reduce the weight on that side, or perhaps, poor man, to save himself, springs clear as for a moment the coach teeters.

It shakes as one horse rears and struggles against the pull.

It seems as if they might escape the ditch, as if the coachman might regain control of his pair and pull back to the road.

Then, slowly, so slowly it seems, with a squealing and splintering the coach slides into the roadside ditch, bumping onto its side with a further crunching crack.

It comes to lie with two wheels sticking up clear of the ground, while the coachman, arms wrapped round the now vertical plank seat, scrabbles for a foothold.

The coach continues to shake as the terrified horses kick out.

Cries of dismay and fury issue from within.

Alice drops her sack and hastens as fast as she can, which in her advanced state is little more than a walk.

Quick-thoughted, the man-at-arms has rushed round and nimbly hauled himself up onto the side of the coach now facing the sky.

Despite the shaking from the trapped horses’ struggles, he draws a knife and hacks at the leather coach leaves hampering his access, frantically pulling and struggling to get sight of his passengers.

Meanwhile the grey-haired coachman finds a foothold and climbs stiff-legged to the ground to do what he can to calm and release the frightened horses. And collect his fallen hat.

‘Sir!’ Alice calls to the man atop the coach as he continues to hack, ‘Tell me how I can help!’ His head whips round, the surprise of her sudden appearance stilling his hand. Now she has his attention. ‘If you can get your passengers out,’ she says, ‘let us see if they have injuries.’

As he stares down at her, a voice from within cries, ‘Idiot!’ A gloved hand bats his knife aside, two arms come up, elbows brace on the door jambs and thrust upwards to reveal the head and shoulders of a young man. ‘God’s blood, Pearce! You nearly had my eye out!’

He shifts his grip and levers himself, bringing up booted feet to swing clear.

With a hefty shove he pushes the fellow away, rolls to one side and leans to unlatch the folding central panel.

Had the coach been upright, it would have made the opening for passengers to disembark, at the same time forming a step.

‘That’s all you had to do to get us out! There was no need to destroy the leathers!’ The young man grips the wooden jamb as the coach continues to jerk to and fro. ‘Go and help Jackson loose the horses!’

He turns and catches sight of Alice. He is slight, nimble, more than a boy though barely a man.

His unconfined hair, shoulder-length and brushed as smooth as a horse’s mane, is a warm brown that awaits but a ray of sunshine to gleam as he moves.

His eyes dance with merriment in a face lit with a smile, and even his tone changes.

‘Ah, mistress, I would doff my hat, but I fear it has already doffed itself in the ruckus.’

Clearly uninjured, this one. And with no groans coming from within, perhaps no injuries there either.

‘I can offer you and your companions shelter nearby while you decide what is to be done,’ she suggests.

‘Shelter sounds good,’ he says, glancing around.

‘This fog, have you ever seen the like of it? Ah, well, let’s get them out of there.

’ He is already leaning into the opening where another pair of hands reaches up.

Rather, a pair of gauntlets, and exceedingly fine embroidered gauntlets at that, the gleam of silk and goldwork, heavy lace cuffs.

The crown of a tall hat with ornate silver buckle rises.

She hears the irritation in his demand to, ‘Help me up, then,’ as he attempts to extricate himself from the depths.

His back is to her as he clambers out with the young man’s assistance, his exit none so lithe, nor so dignified, rather a scrabbling and kicking while his helper tugs on his senior’s breeches and bites his lip to suppress a smile.

As the climber kicks and wriggles, a cry rises from within.

‘Then move out of the way, man!’ the climber shouts.

He hauls himself onto his belly, gets a leg braced and plumps onto the panel of the coach.

‘Stay there, Uncle,’ the young man says. ‘I’ll get him out.’

‘Reedy little spindle-shanks he might be, Philip, but you’ll never lift him alone,’ his uncle advises, rolling onto his side. ‘And he’ll not be able to pull himself out as I did.’

His nephew forbears from observing that his uncle barely pulled himself out at all. He leans over the space and calls down, ‘Come on then, reach up and we’ll draw you forth between us.’

There is a muted objection from within, like a pleading or excusing.

‘Dammit Cranley, do as you’re told!’ the uncle barks.

The remaining passenger elects for compliance, and hauling on an arm each, they draw out a thin streak of an old man.

His hat is knocked off as he emerges through the opening, which seems to cause him great distress as he rises between them.

His legs kick to no purpose until he is ordered to, ‘Be still, man, you’re safe now!

’ At last, they are able to deposit him on the side panel, from where he immediately reaches down inside.

‘My hat! My hat!’ It is only the young man’s quick thought in grasping the neck of his doublet that prevents the elderly passenger falling back into the coach, still exclaiming, ‘My hat! It’s down there.

’ Whether from chill or from chagrin, one hand is clamped over the scanty wisps of grey around a bare pate the colour of wax. ‘I must have my hat!’

‘I shall rescue it for you, Master Secretary.’ And the young man called Philip jumps back in, retrieving not only the secretary’s plain, narrow-brimmed hat but also his own, its long white plume waving and undamaged.

Lastly, he throws up a travelling rug, and as nimbly pulls himself out once more.

He folds the rug cornerwise, laying it over the top of the old man’s cloak round his shoulders.

His uncle meanwhile maintains his grasp on the secretary’s nape, while the old man sits clinging to the frame, his face a combination of puzzlement and fright.

Philip’s uncle peers frowning up the road, swings round and looks back towards Guildford. ‘Where are the others?’ He bats ineffectually at the mist. ‘I can’t see through this damned fog. Where’s the other coach?’

‘They were only just ahead of us as we came out of town,’ Philip says. ‘Let’s get us all down into the road, Uncle, and I’ll—’

‘It’s not there! I told them to stay close. Where are they?’

‘If you want to get down onto the road, Uncle,’ the young man repeats, ‘I’ll see to finding them.’