Cynthia Bailey Pratt (4 page)

Jocelyn scuttled along behind Arnold. He could afford to behave so high-handedly. If caught, he’d only be sent once more to his room. Though Mr. Fletcher held no jurisdiction over her, a glance from him or anyone and she would feel forced to give an explanation of her boyish attire. She snuck rapidly down the cold corridor.

The Luckem family lived in an old house that had been a priory before the Dissolution under Henry the VIII. Jocelyn’s maternal grandfather had purchased it from the Duke of Carnare. Though much thought and effort went into remodeling and decorating the house, it still felt as if one might meet a cowled brother around any corner, the long galleries and high ceilings of the common rooms and huge kitchen much as they were when the house was still a religious one. The bedrooms were once two or three cells, the walls now knocked out to make large single rooms.

Jocelyn liked her room, with its tall, narrow windows that looked out toward the hills. The walls were white plaster, hung with rubbings from ancient carved axes, and the rosewood furniture had feminine curves. Though cluttered with needlework on the table, piles of books in the corner, and objects no monk would have recognized littering the dressing table, something recalled the room’s previous use to mind.

Jocelyn shut her door behind her and immediately started stripping off the male clothing, kicking it, for now, into an untidy heap. Her arm hurt as she pulled off the shirt, and she paused. Black circles stood out like footprints on the snowy skin. The angry officer’s strong grasp came back to her in memory. That moment now seemed so long ago, she was startled to find fresh bruises.

As swiftly as she could, she washed off the dirt of her busy day from wherever it showed, and hustled into clean shift, petticoat, stockings, garters, and book muslin gown. Only then did she feel as if she could draw a full breath. She tied a scarf the faint blue of the spring sky through her short dark brown hair. It would do no good to comb or brush it. Nothing made any difference to the thick springy curls covering her head.

Jocelyn picked up the coat and spent a few minutes removing the bloodstain from the sleeve with the cold water in the bedroom jug. When the mark faded enough to be indistinguishable from any of the coat’s other, varied stains, Jocelyn gathered everything together. Clutching the bundle to her chest, she peeked around the jamb of her door. When she saw no one, she walked quickly to Tom’s room. She hung the coat on a hook and lay the other things in the bottom of his wardrobe for now.

Having only worn boy’s clothes once before when teased into accepting a bet from Granville, she could judge how much she had grown up by the extent of her embarrassment today as compared with that of four years ago. She vowed that she would never be wheedled into such nonsensical behavior again. Her entire body shook when she considered how close she’d come to ignominy and disgrace.

To her shame, she realized she felt worse over dressing as a boy than she did about striking down a constable in the performance of his duty. That had felt splendid, now that she took an opportunity to reflect upon it. Opening a window to air the room, Jocelyn took a deep breath before going down to bid good evening to her aunt and uncle.

In the library every surface including some of the floor was occupied by objects of almost unimaginable use. Jocelyn’s uncle sat behind his U-shaped writing desk, staring out the windows, the end of his old-fashioned quill pen curling around his balding head like an angel’s wing. Unnoticed, Jocelyn kissed his cheek.

His wife raised her faded blue eyes from her work. Jocelyn’s uncle and aunt avidly collected Saxon artifacts, specializing in those items made just after the Romans departed from the British Isles. Arasta Luckem pushed the fine fair hair off her face, grubby from the soft lead she used to record the surfaces of ancient objects. Thus begrimed, she bore a startling resemblance to her youngest son.

She had been a pale, pretty girl when she married Gaius Luckem twenty-five years ago, but many of those years had been spent on open hilltops searching for evidence of ancient life. Her face, like that of her husband, was browned by the sun and roughened by the wind, with many small lines around her eyes from squinting at the things they found.

Mrs. Luckem said, “Phew, my dear, I cannot believe how far behind we are. I knew we’ve been terribly slack of late; I hadn’t realized the extent of the work still to be done.” Wiping her face with a handkerchief, she only spread the blackness farther down her neck. “You kept Arnold so quiet. I never even knew he was in the house.”

Jocelyn flushed guiltily. Mrs. Luckem did not remark it. Having lived with her uncle and his wife for most of her life, Jocelyn knew their blind spots. They were in another world when evidence of early people was before them. Chances were good that Mrs. Luckem would never hear of Arnold’s poaching. She certainly would never know that Jocelyn connived with Granville to aid Arnold in an escape from justice, unless some unhappy circumstance brought it forcefully to her attention.

Jocelyn wished she could have told her aunt all about her day’s adventures. The air of mystery about the man who called himself Hammond intrigued her almost to the exclusion of worrying about Arnold. However, to tell about Hammond would mean betraying not only Arnold’s escapade but also revealing her shameful behavior.

“It must be getting near the dinner hour. Aunt Arasta.”

“Is it?” Mrs. Luckem looked vaguely at the clock ticking cheerfully above a cold fireplace. They believed the influx of hot air and smoke would damage their specimens, as the damp spoiled the books. Even in February’s Great Cold, when it snowed for six weeks without stopping, they worked contentedly in coats and gloves, rather than expose their treasures to the hazards of a fire.

“Go and see if dinner is ready, will you, Jocelyn? I can’t spare even a moment. We must get away tomorrow. I can see that this and the packing will take half the night.” Her gaze was drawn irresistibly down, as she covered the shield on the table with paper, and began to rub lightly with her stick of lead. Her husband, with an expression of enlightenment, wrote three words of his speech, to be delivered in London at the great Preservation Society dinner in three days.

Leaving the library, Jocelyn crossed the Great Hall and passed down the nine wide steps behind the screen in the dining room. Entering the kitchen, she found no fire, no smells of cooking, and no cook.

Jocelyn sighed and squared her shoulders. She opened the door to the pantry and found a cold joint of boiled beef and most of a salmon pie (without lobster), as well as some preserved asparagus and a large spice cake. She would serve the boiled beef reheated, with her own mushroom ketchup.

On the back of the stove sat a kettle of what appeared to be hotchpot, stone-cold and with a thick skin on top. Whether their most recent housekeeper stayed long enough to put in all the ingredients could only be told when it warmed. After setting the beef down on the scarred table in the middle of the kitchen, Jocelyn went to collect kindling to light the iron stove, huge in itself but looking very cowed in the center of the cavernous mouth of the monks’ old fireplace.

A pile of sticks and larger pieces of wood was stacked handily outside the door. She paused to look around the kitchen garden. Snow had hidden in the shadowed comers until almost the last week in May. Although now the second week of June, spring seemed determined to have its moment before summer came. A green haze covered the garden as though the plants were eager to escape their over-long imprisonment in the ground. At the end of the garden the line of cedars screening the back of the house seemed fresher and greener than they had for months.

Jocelyn caught the scent of a pipe and looked for the Luckem family’s gardener and man-of-all-work. “Good evening, Mr. Quigg,” she said when she saw him standing beneath the old elm by the garden gate.

“Good e’ening. Miss Burnwell. Can I be bringin’ in that little bit o’ wood for ye?” Even as he asked, he stooped, his smoke-colored pipe never varying from its outthrust position between his teeth.

Jocelyn found it difficult to tell how old Mr. Quigg might be. He had been there when her grandfather bought the house. His hair was of no particular color. His skin was smooth and red-flushed, though she did not know whether this enviable condition was due to his outdoor life or the private bottle he kept by him in his little stone house near the orchard. During the winter when the wind cut coldly through the chinks of the best-built house, he complained of his aching back.

On days like this, though, it was as if the years dropped away. Last spring a housekeeper left after complaining that Mr. Quigg pinched her in the dairy house. Why she had been there, since Mrs. Luckem kept no cows, she had not volunteered.

“I’ve smelt the wind all the day and I still be here,” Mr. Quigg said in response to Jocelyn’s question about his health. He bundled the wood into the stove and set it blazing with a chip lighted from his pipe.

“Time was, in my young life, such a wind would have blown me clear away. Did, too, more than once.” He chuckled. “Except that’s what happened to Mrs. Who-sit. She opened the door and blew right ‘way.”

Jocelyn smiled at a vision of the heavy-figured woman flying away like a peeved angel. They came and went, these women. Mrs. Luckem insisted on their using only Saxon cooking utensils, and one woman did make the effort, until caught using a fork. During another’s stay, Granville turned away in disgust from anything other than boiled eggs and toasted wheat bread, because some London dandy suggested this diet to cultivate a pale and interesting complexion. Mr. Luckem shouted at one for dusting the library, and she left, muttering imprecations. Arnold, too, contributed to the parade of departing housekeepers by keeping a live snake in the kitchen, the warmest part of the house.

The stove heated well. Jocelyn took down a large cast-iron pot and filled it with settled water from the bucket that stood beside the dry sink.

Mr. Quigg warmed his hands a moment longer at the stove and then said, “Don’t you mind putting out a place fer me, miss. I been eating boiled beef too long to relish it much.”

“I’m going to give you a piece of this pie I made just two days ago, Mr. Quigg.”

“Give it me now, then, miss. I’ll eat it under the trees.” He held out his large blue-spotted handkerchief, none too clean, and Jocelyn cut him a wide slice. He thanked her and left, knowing she did not have the key to the cellar. The drink that went with his pie would have to come from his private source.

Sliding the slab of beef into the hot water, Jocelyn tried to remember how long to heat preserved asparagus. Was it to steaming or to roiling? She supposed that if she made enough white sauce, no one would notice if the timing was off.

She could scarcely wait until her own fresh vegetables were ready for picking. Jocelyn had grown tired of last year’s produce in March, when it seemed as if spring would never come. She felt she should not complain. Some of the older and poorer people perished in the midst of the interminable snow. The Luckems had been very fortunate. Only the one week had been very bad, when the firewood gave out and they’d burned the old game table. Putting her cool fingers against her hot face, she recalled the recipe for white sauce with an effort.

Cooking made Jocelyn irritable. She thought of Arnold reading or messing about with one of the animals in his room. She entered the servants’ stair, where steep steps lead straight to a tiny closet on the next floor. The acoustical properties of this hall were well known. Anything said in the kitchen could be clearly heard at the top of the stair.

Jocelyn called, “Arnold!” loudly and impatiently. She knew summoning Granville was pointless. If he was not lying down with a cloth over his eyes after his difficult day, he was undoubtedly trying new ways of tying a cravat to amaze his family at dinner. Arnold, however, would not be able to resist finding out what was happening in the house.

Arnold appeared, clattering down heedless of his limbs. He grinned as he said, “Another one gone, eh? Good, I didn’t like her; mean eyes.” He puffed up his face and squinted his bright eyes in imitation of the vanished housekeeper.

But Jocelyn didn’t care to be amused. “Watch that pot,” she said sharply. “Don’t let it boil.” With fair meekness, for he knew well cooking did not improve his cousin’s temper, Arnold did as he was told. He began to tell her about his plans for the week, something about a river he’d been meaning to explore.

“I would have thought,” she replied, “that you were planning to spend the next week or so at your books.”

“Huh?”

“Don’t grunt, Arnold. I mean, of course, that you cannot go out for ... yes, for two weeks. Until your parents come home, I’m responsible for you. How would they feel if you were hauled off to gaol? Again.”

“You can’t restrict me to the house! I was going . . .” He mumbled the rest of the words.

“Poaching? Thieving? Or some other activity that will once again bring Constable Regin’s hand down on your shoulder? He’s going to be watching for you, Arnold. I don’t think he’s the kind that forgets quickly.’’

“He won’t forget you bringing that vegetable marrow down on his head. Constables ought to wear helmets or something, don’t you think? Like Roman soldiers, or the Coldstream Guards.”

“Constables’ headgear aside, Arnold, you are staying indoors until our constable finds something else to think of. Remember, if you please, that he took a long look at me just before—”

“Crash!” Arnold shouted jubilantly. The sight of the massive constable falling was evidently one of the high spots of his young life.

Jocelyn’s lips tightened. She could not possibly reveal to Arnold that she had been accused of another crime within moments of assaulting the parish officer. He would find it too funny.

Her concern for her cousin, to her surprise, mingled with worry over the stranger, Hammond. If Arnold were once more arrested, surely Constable Regin would come to the house to inform Mr. and Mrs. Luckem. And, should he see her, he would undoubtedly recognize her as the “boy” wanted in two street crimes. A boy who went off with a man in black.