Page 116 of The Ladies Least Likely
CHAPTER TWO
Y oung earls, even if they are tongue-tied cripples, are not allowed to consort at liberty with nameless orphans, no matter how amusing a guide or how skilled at wilderness craft she might be.
They had one summer, the most precious and brilliant summer of Ren’s life, filled with endless stretches of blue-grey days and fleecy clouds, green fields dotted with slow-moving sheep, when Harriette Smythe led him through every trail and well, hill and byway that Shepton Mallet could offer.
He lost his fear of caves when Harriette took him exploring the small shafts and holes the locals called a swallet, and he laughed as she held the guttering candle beneath her chin and spun chilling myths of giants and robbers, or told wild tales from her Silesian homeland.
They explored Ham Woods and climbed Beacon Hill, where she pointed out the spire of Glastonbury Tor rising from a hollow of mist. They dug holes around Maesbury Ring, looking for iron weapons, then threw the trinkets they found into St. Aldhelm’s Well as wishes.
When Mr. Mortmickle forbade the housekeeper to open the door to her, Harriette climbed the tree leaning against the Blinder Wall and pitched pebbles at Ren’s window to lure him away to adventure.
If he fell asleep at his lessons the next morning because he had spent the day rambling about the countryside, he considered the extra beatings from his tutor a fair price to pay.
One night, Harriette drew him out at dusk and dared him to walk with her over the ancient burial grounds on Barrow Down, telling him stories of barrow wights guarding buried treasure and other unsightly apparitions.
They spent hours and days inside St. Peter and Paul, while Ren read a book and Harriette sketched the old Saxon stonework, including the runes etched on the baptismal font.
Ren preferred the town’s more recent history, especially the heroic and tragic tale of the Duke of Monmouth, who passed through Shepton Mallet leading his men in a short-lived scheme to overthrow James II, for which a dozen of the duke’s supporters were hanged and quartered before the Buckland Cross in Market Square.
But Harriette liked the old tales, the older the better, and in their rambles she was forever stopping to dig for Roman coins or brooches.
The smallest broken potsherds delighted her, leading her into speculations about the lives of the people who had lived there before.
Ren loved her imagination; her people were always daring, living dramatic lives of danger and passion, not lives of disappointment and shame and ridicule.
One day, as they traveled the Fosse Way, reliving the battles of the Roman legions against the wild stubbornness of the native tribes, Harriette found a small, circular bronze amulet with a symbol he recognized from church, an X overlying a P. She stared at the object as if it were pure gold.
“The chi-ro symbol,” she told him. “From the Greek letters chi and ro , which spell Christos in Greek.”
He already knew this, but wondered how she did. He hadn’t mastered Greek yet, despite daily toils with his tutor, but Harriette, who taught herself by poking about Mr. Demant’s library, was full of odd and useless bits of knowledge.
“This was the sign Constantine put on his standard, the one that came to him in a dream— in this sign shall ye conquer .” She traced the bronze circle, her eyes lighting so that the gold in them overshadowed the brown.
“Some early Christian carried this, praying for protection and guidance. Where’s my sketchbook?
” She groped about the pockets of her apron for the small pad and the porte crayon she always carried.
“It’s not rare,” Ren snapped. “There must have been Christians about since the beginning of Roman times. Since Joseph of Arimathea planted the thorn tree at Glastonbury.”
They’d been to Glastonbury once or twice, walking through pastures and swallets to the storied town and its great ruined abbey, climbing the tor to the stone tower that commanded a view of all Somerset.
It delighted Ren to see the place like a regular pilgrim, without any of the attention he’d attract as an earl.
And he’d never let Harriette see how the walk had made the calluses on his clubfoot blister and bleed.
“I like it.” Harriette’s eyes narrowed. When she was angry or annoyed, the green emerged. “And I mean to sketch it.”
“Fine.” Ren threw himself to the ground with a surly growl.
Or rather, he wished he could throw himself to the ground.
He lowered himself into an awkward crouch among the tall, rough grasses lining the road.
“I’ll stay here and be bored out of my skull while you putter about with your crayons, shall I? ”
“What’s eating you?” she demanded. “Is your foot hurting? We’ve walked a long way.”
“I’m not an invalid, and not everything is about my foot,” he snapped.
“Nay, some things are about the arse you carry about atop your neck!”
She stomped off a short ways, something she did to let off steam when she came to a full boil. He admired how she knew to find a valve for her strong feelings. He just nursed his until they festered.
“Come back,” he called, struggling to his feet to follow. “I’m blue-deviled today and taking it out on you, as usual.”
He was surly because he’d gained an extra beating that morning for not finishing his porridge before it grew cold.
He’d been remembering how Harriette had taken him fishing the day before, and how, when his three old bullies had come nosing about, all she’d needed to do was take her slingshot from her pocket to send them slinking away, spitting insults.
His tutor had also delivered rather unexpected news.
She came back immediately, another thing he liked about Harriette.
She never held a grudge. She plopped down on a tuft of grass beside him and the skirt of her petticoat, much tattered and mended over the course of their summer romps, spilled over his leg.
The casual encroachment on his space was another habit of hers he’d grown fond of.
She never recoiled from him, not when he was in pain or raging or sullen.
She never let him remain cross for long, and she never withdrew from him, not when he stammered so much in front of other people that he strangled for breath, not when she’d seen his foot unbound.
Not even when she’d found him, many times, in the kitchen of the Manor House, sucking back tears and gritting his teeth against the welts and bruises his tutor had raised on him with the cane.
Being Harriette, she merely began carrying witch hazel in her pocket, and soaked cotton cloths in it that she then pressed to his wounds, all without saying a word.
“Why are you blue-deviled?” She flipped open her sketchbook, laid the amulet beside her, and picked up the small metal cylinder that held her black chalk. She had a swift, steady hand and a remarkably good eye. Ren had put many of her sketches up in his room, though not the ones she did of him.
He wondered how she would receive his news.
Harriette, he’d been surprised to learn, was only ten years old.
She acted older. He was fourteen, and the years between them, at their age, ought to have meant a gap of worlds, one a child’s and one of a boy verging on manhood.
But Harriette was more canny and matter-of-fact about the world than Ren was, and in many ways, he felt his sheltered life had kept him a child.
That was why he longed for a change, and was terrified of it.
“My mother is coming to visit,” he said. “And I suspect that means she’s decided to send me to school at last.”
“You said you asked to be sent to school,” Harriette reminded him, her hand moving quick and sure.
“And my father always denied me, since he didn’t want his shame known. That his heir was a cripple.”
“You are not a cripple,” Harriette said. “So why did the countess send you here when he died, instead of off to school? To give you time to mourn?”
“To remove me from her sight, I think. My tutor told her I wouldn’t do well in school. That the boys would be cruel and hurt me, and the canings there when I am slow or stupid or disobedient would be worse than the ones he gives me.”
Harriette paused and considered him. “And because Mr. Mortmickle, the great ogre, would lose his salary were you sent away.” She snorted. “Someday, Renwick, I wish you would use the cane on him, so he can see how it feels.”
She only called him Renwick when she was feeling peevish or stern.
“You’ll miss me, will you, lass?” he said. Adopting the southern Somerset accent, its round smooth vowels, made the question feel less heavy.
“Of course. No one here is half as quick in his wits as you. Who shall I chum with then, Abel Cain and his gang?” She scoffed.
Something tightened in Ren’s chest as he watched her.
It was a typical cloudy day, warm but breezy, and her hair frizzed about her face in its usual fashion.
Her cheeks held yet the round softness of the child, but Ren thought he saw, for an instant, the outline of the woman she would become: strong, beautiful, confident.
“You’ll grow up and forget all about me,” he said.
She shrugged. “Like as not. And you’ll forget me the moment you set foot in Harrow or Eton or wherever her ladyship chooses to send you.”
“I won’t,” he vowed, and the force of his own words surprised him.
She was a half-orphaned girl of no family, and he was destined to take his seat in the House of Lords.
It was fated that they would part and have no more to do with each other.
He wanted to go to school, no matter how much he expected he would be teased and humiliated and beaten further. He longed for it.