Page 40 of The Affairs of Ashmore Castle (Ashmore Castle #2)

Kitty looked. Gale was positively purring with pleasure at being the one to enlighten her.

‘The family motto, m’lady – you can see it on the coat of arms over the fireplace in the hall.

Tempus omnia edax . It means “time consumes all” – as I know I don’t need to tell you, m’lady,’ he added politely.

‘So my great-grandfather, he carved a clock, see, right at the heart of the house, so to say. A great craftsman, my great gran’fer.

You can see his work all over the place.

A lot of the poppyheads on the pews in St Peter’s were done by him.

I’m just glad that pirate battle all them years ago didn’t damage this termination, m’lady, because that would’ve been a much bigger job to replace. ’

Kitty walked on up the stairs, thinking that it was a curiously depressing motto: Time consumes all.

Almost an excuse for inertia; in that case, one might say, what was the point of trying?

She wished she could talk to Giles about it.

She tucked it away in the back of her mind as something to bring out when they were next together.

At school, they had been taught to prepare suitable topics to stimulate conversation should it flag.

It was the hostess’s duty to make sure talk flowed.

She could have asked Uncle Sebastian, of course – he’d be bound to know – but Giles was so often absent in thought, even when present in body, that it was good to have a question ready to ask, to bring him back

By the time he reached the farm, Giles was aware that the heat was taking on a different character.

The hazy blue sky had developed a steeliness; to the south-west, sullen clouds lined the horizon.

It had been a long hot spell: the hay harvest had been good and most of it was in.

But all hot weather ends in rain. A storm was coming, and High Ashmore had been the last to cut.

It all needed to be got in before the rain came, because wet hay was worthless.

The farmyard was a hive of activity. Haysel was a time for coming together, for community effort.

Everyone helped everyone else, and with their own harvests secure, every local farmer, with his men, had come up to High Ashmore to bring in the final one.

That done, it would be time for celebration.

Giles had been meaning just to look in and see how things were going, but having seen those clouds, and smelling the threat in the air, he was seized by the desire to help.

Everyone had to pitch in, so why not the master?

Without asking – and no one had yet spotted him – he swung down from the saddle and led Vipsania towards the stables, to see if there was an empty stall he could leave her in.

The first thing he saw was a round dun pony-rump that looked familiar; and as Vipsania knuckered a greeting and the pony turned its head and replied, he saw it was indeed Biscuit.

He led the mare into the next stall, slipped out the bit and loosened the girth, tied her up, and went outside.

A cart was just coming in, laden with hay, heading for the barn, and driving the big skewbald between the shafts was Alice.

She flung him one look of consternation, then assumed an airy insouciance and said, ‘Out of the way, Giles! No time to waste. Rain’s coming.’

He stepped forward and caught the horse’s cheekpiece, stopping it. ‘What are you doing here?’ he said grimly.

‘Helping,’ she said blandly. ‘It’s haysel – everybody has to help.’

‘Not young ladies. Not Lady Alice Tallant from Ashmore Castle.’

She made an exasperated movement with her head. ‘Oh, really, Giles, why ever not? If I drive a wagon, it frees one of the men for pitchforking. I can help – and why shouldn’t I?’ She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Why are you here, anyway?’

He gave in. ‘To help,’ he said, with a shrug and an embarrassed smirk. ‘All right, you can carry on. But never, never tell your mother about this.’

She laughed, clicked to the horse and drove on.

He was not surprised to see his woodsman, the former blacksmith Axe Brandom, among the pitchforkers.

Stripped to the waist, his fine, smithy-toned muscles gleaming, he was forking the hay up from the row into a waiting cart with a strength and rhythm that was beautiful to watch.

Giles knew he could not achieve such balletic grace, or keep up such strenuous effort for any length of time.

His place was up on a cart, spreading the received hay.

Axe spotted him, stopped, and straightened. ‘M’lord,’ he greeted him, with a nod. He had a piece of rag tied round one wrist, and used it now to wipe the sweat from his brow before it could get into his eyes.

‘They got you here as well,’ Giles remarked pleasantly.

Axe glanced towards the horizon. ‘Storm coming, m’lord. Every man that can has come to help. Mr Webley put out the word yestreen.’

‘Quite right,’ said Giles. ‘I’ve come to give a hand myself.’ Over on the next row, he saw young Hugh Marbeck from Topheath forking as though his life depended on it. He’ll wear himself out, the silly ass, Giles thought. Even he knew there was a rhythm to this sort of work.

Axe followed the direction of his gaze and said, ‘Got a lot on his mind, that young man.’ He wiped his brow again and turned back to Giles. ‘I hear Lord Shacklock’s got a baling machine, over to Ashridge Park.’

‘A baling machine?’

‘’Sright, m’lord. You loads the hay into a kind of hopper, and a big tamper comes and squashes it down, and pushes it into a sort of funnel, and out the other end comes a square bale, all pressed and tidy and tied up with string.

’ He grinned infectiously. ‘Gor, what’ll they think of next!

But it’d see an end of all this tedious-hard pitchforking, my lord.

And you can store a lot more bales in the same space as loose hay. ’

‘I suppose so,’ Giles said. ‘I suppose machinery is the future of farming.’

‘The future, m’lord. But right now I’d better get back to work.’ And he bent his magnificent back again to the task.

Giles moved on, found another cart, and called to the man up on the load.

‘Shall I take over from you? I’d be no use at forking up.

’ Very shortly he had taken his place in process.

The heat settled on him like a heavy hand, and he was soon sweating.

The hay began its usual maddening game of inserting scratchy tendrils down his collar and up his sleeves and through his buttonholes.

The lovely smell of hay was in his nostrils, its unpleasant dust coated his tongue; his unaccustomed hands grew hot with friction.

The dogs had gone off to join the farmers’ collies and terriers in a fine game of rat-and-mouse hunting.

The hay flew up and he levelled it. The work took him over and he lost track of time until the man below said, ‘That’ll do,’ and he climbed down to stretch his back and watch the cart trundle away.

A woman was coming up the row with a jug of water and a tin mug, which she offered to him before she looked up and saw who he was. A blush spread over her face, and she said, ‘Oh, your lordship, I’m ever so sorry! I didn’t see it was you. You can’t use this after everyone’s been at it.’

‘I certainly can,’ Giles said kindly, but when he took the mug from her he turned away so that he could wipe the rim on his shirt end before he drank.

When he handed it back, she said, ‘Why don’t you go over in the shade a bit, your lordship, till the cart comes back. There’s victuals over there, for folk taking a breather.’

At intervals along the hedgerow there were trees, and it was good to get out of the sun and into their shade.

The cloud bank had climbed halfway up the sky, but still there wasn’t a breath of wind.

He joined a group sitting on the grass, and they shifted over with silent comradeship to make room for him.

A large pie cut into wedges was lying on a cloth in the middle of their circle, and one of them picked up a wedge and offered it to him, saying shyly, ‘Scuse fingers! Mrs Webley’s veal an’ ham, m’lord. ’

He took it with a smile of thanks, and his benefactor seemed delighted with the small attention.

Everyone was chewing, no one was speaking, but he felt a brotherly acceptance, which was more pleasure than the ache of his muscles was pain.

He wondered if other earls of Stainton before him had helped with the harvest. Not his father, of course, but perhaps in an earlier age, before earls got so grand .

. . He found his mind drifting, and felt he could have slept right there and then in the blessed shade of this tree .

. . He was almost gone when the dogs found him again and came tramping in to wash his face and try to climb on his lap, delighted to discover him down at their level for once.

Isaac got the last morsel of pie out of his fingers before he knew what was happening.

And his cart had returned – a cart, anyway.

He heaved himself to his feet, shoving the dogs away, and stepped out into the brazen sunshine again, noting only out of the side of his attention that Alice was there, standing under the shade of the next tree along, and talking animatedly to Axe Brandom.

She had always liked hanging around the forge, so she knew him quite well.

Always nutty on horses, little Alice – and it didn’t look as if she’d grown out of it yet.