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  That’s no earthly good you sayin’ have a care. He weigh a ton, so he do,’ the second servant complained. ‘Hold that light up, Jenny. You’re a-droppin’ wax all over his head.’

  Nan put out a hand to steady herself against the wall and found she was holding an unobtrusive doorknob. ‘What’s in here?’ she asked.

  ‘The office,’ Jenny said. ‘That’s the office, en’t it Matt?’

  Matt, who appeared to be the second of the two clumsy servants, grunted at her as though he didn’t care what it was. He was supporting his master’s back with one knee while he tried to manoeuvre the trailing arm back onto the poor man’s chest, but for all his efforts he was only making matters worse. Now the top half of the merchant’s body was crumpling towards the floor, and there was a scale of grey wax congealing on his forehead.

  I don’t care what it is, Nan thought. If I don’t do something soon, they’ll drop the poor old gentleman on his head. And she couldn’t have that. Not after he’d rescued her so kindly. She opened the door quickly, before they could tell her not to, and there was just enough light from the candle for her to see a day-bed and a footstool just inside the room. ‘Bring him in here,’ she ordered. ‘Put him down. Easy does it.’

  They obeyed her as well as they could, and the maid with the candle endeavoured not to shed any more wax on her master, but once they’d arranged him on the day-bed none of them seemed to have any idea what to do next. He was such a proper-looking gentleman too, in his buckskin breeches and his cut-away waistcoat and his fine velvet jacket. ‘Well then,’ Nan said, looking at the three blank faces around her, ‘what you generally do when he faints away?’

  ‘We get the housekeeper,’ the coachman said.

  ‘Get her then, great fool! Hasten you up!’

  ‘That’s not my job. Matthew has to do that.’

  She snorted her impatience at their foolishness. The poor gentleman’s neckcloth was wound far too tightly around his throat. No wonder he looked so green. She knelt beside him and began to unwind it quickly to give him air. ‘Run and get her, Matthew,’ she ordered. ‘And you,’ glancing at the maid, ‘put down the candlestick, there on the table, and get me a blanket and a linen cloth and a bottle of brandy.’ The gentleman’s fingers were bloodless and chill to the touch. His feet and hands should be chafed with brandy as quickly as possible or he’d take a chill, poor soul. ‘I suppose you can take his boots off,’ she said sarcastically to the coachman, ‘or do Matthew have to do that an’ all?’

  The boots were removed. Sheepishly. And the poor man’s feet were as cold as his fingers. But fortunately Jenny was soon back with two linen cloths and a decanter half full of brandy, followed by Matthew bearing a blanket, so the three of them set to work to rub and chafe, and presently the gentleman opened his eyes and said he was much obliged. So they wrapped him up in the blanket and made him comfortable, and he said he was sorry to cause them so much trouble.

  ‘That’s no trouble,’ Nan told him briskly, to reassure him.

  ‘I thought to rescue you, child, and now you rescue me,’ he said ruefully. ‘Matthew, you must escort her home. It is beyond my power now, I fear. All the way to her door, mind.’

  She was touched by his concern and thought what a very pleasant smile he had. It quite altered the shape of his face, rounding his long pallid cheeks, lifting the corners of his eyes and even curving his lips, which until then had been so thin as to be little more than a pale line in the bland oval of his countenance. That’s a nice old gentleman, she thought, and smiled back at him.

  But then the housekeeper arrived in a blaze of candles, with two more men-servants carrying a wide chair. She took over the minute she stepped into the office, giving rapid orders to everybody in the room, except her master, and, after one brief disparaging glance, ignoring Nan completely. ‘Your bed is warmed and ready, Mr Easter, sir,’ she said. ‘If you could just sit in this chair …’

  ‘Stay there,’ he said to Nan as he was borne away. ‘Matthew will return for you presently.’

  But Matthew took a very long time. And now that all the excitement was over, she began to realize that her face was stinging and that her arms ached and that she had a dull pain in her ribs. Never a one to waste time in self-pity, she took off her cloak and examined it carefully, promising herself that she would start repairs the very next morning. It was very badly torn, and the lining looked frayed. She picked up the candle and set it on the top of the desk in order to get a better light, and the change of position illuminated the ceiling. There were four thick oak beams quartering the space above her head, and she was intrigued to see that they were decorated by elaborate writing, tall letters picked out in red and gold. That’s a rhyme of some sort, she thought, and she lifted the candle above her head to read it.

  The poor that live in needie rate

  by learning do great riches gayne

  The rich that live in wealthy state

  by learning do their wealth mainteyne

  There’s truth in that, she thought. For hadn’t Mistress Howkins taken her on as lady’s maid because she could read and write a fair hand? And the rich grew richer no matter what. But then again, Mr Howkin’s clerk was the most learned man she knew, and he was as poor as a church mouse in his old patched coat and his broken shoes. If I could be certain sure to gain great riches just by learning, she thought, I’d learn everythin’ and anythin’, so I would. Needie rate was a miserable life. But, young as she was, she already knew there’d be a great deal more to it than that.

  There was a crunch of boots at the door and Matthew came blundering back.

  ‘Master says I’m to take ’ee home,’ he said, and to her annoyance, she saw that he was looking at her torn bodice. She swathed herself in the cloak immediately and carried the candle out into the inner hall, determined to be brisk and discouraging. She’d had quite enough to cope with for one evening.

  But she needn’t have worried, for he escorted her stolidly, saying little except that the master was safe a-bed, and that he hoped she would sleep sound after all her troubles.

  It was a relief to be back in Plum Row again, in the warmth of the familiar kitchen. Cook had returned and she and the two kitchen-maids were hard at work kneading tomorrow’s bread and grating hartshorn for tomorrow’s jelly, but they stopped what they were doing the minute they saw the state she was in.

  ‘Lawk’s a mercy!’ Cook said, throwing up her floury hands. ‘What’ve they done to ’ee, gel?’

  She was busy telling them the tale when the bedroom bell rang. That’s the missus for you. Bound to be,’ Abby said, grating hartshorn again at once, just in case the lady were to follow the bell. ‘She been on an’ on. Was you home? Was you home?’

  ‘Best tell her quick and get it over with,’ Cook advised.

  But that was easier said than done, for when Nan had climbed the back stairs to Mrs Howkins’ bed chamber, the sight of her bruises sent her mistress into hysterics, and the hysterics soon had Mr Howkins crashing up the stairs to see what was wrong.

  ‘What’s this? What’s this? Control yourself, woman! Have you no pride?’

  ‘Attacked by sailors!’ his wife screamed. ‘I knew it! I knew it! We shall all be murdered in our beds!’

  ‘What! What! What!’ the master roared, as if he were firing off shotguns. ‘Did she take the message, what!’

  ‘’Course!’ Nan said, coolly, looking him straight in the eye.

  He nodded brusquely. ‘Dammit!’ he said, as Mrs Howkins’ screams subsided into sobs. ‘It ain’t safe to walk the streets. You should never have sent her in the first place, ma’am. I told you so, you remember, but you would have your own way. Well, on your own head be it! You have no one to blame but yourselves, the pair of you. Good night to ’ee, ma’am.’ And he marched across the landing to his own room, well satisfied with himself, leaving Nan furious and his wife annoyed out of her tears.

  ‘Men,’ Mrs Howkins said, sniffing, ‘are the most detestable deceivers. How
I endure this life I truly do not know. The human frame was not made to withstand such incessant perfidy. I wonder my heart did not stop beating when I saw you, Nan. I declare I thought it had. What a state of perturbation to be forced to endure. It is very hard, is it not? How shall I sleep in such a state?’

  ‘We will try a hot possett,’ Nan said, keeping calm as well as she could. It was extremely difficult because her bruises were becoming more painful and her mistress more irritating by the minute.

  ‘I shan’t sleep a wink,’ Mrs Howkins promised. But when the possett had been made and drunk and the warming pan removed and the lady was finally brought to bed, she was snoring before the bed curtains were drawn.

  It was another hour before Nan could get to bed herself. There were still her mistress’s gloves to clean with fuller’s earth, and her skirt-hem to be brushed, and her clean chemise to be ironed and set before the dying fire to air. By the time she took her candle and climbed the spiral stair from the kitchen corner to the attic room where all the women servants slept, she was aching all over.

  ‘I shan’t need no possett to lull me to sleep,’ she said.

  But she was wrong. For the first time in her life she slept badly, kept wakeful by sore ribs and tender arms and terrifying dreams.

  Chapter Two

  When Matthew came blundering into his master’s bedroom at seven o’clock the next morning, the squall had blown itself out. The River Yare was peacefully green, rippling easily seawards, and the sky above the bare lime trees was as blue as a duck’s egg.

  ‘That’s a fine mornin’, Mr Easter, sir,’ he observed, trying to fold the shutters without crashing them. And failing.

  ‘It is, Matthew,’ Mr Easter said, wincing at the clumsiness and the sudden dazzle of sunlight. His skull felt as fragile as an egg shell this morning. ‘Is my hot chocolate …?’

  ‘All ready, sir. On the table.’

  ‘Ah!’, closing his eyes and adjusting his night-cap. ‘What day is it, Matthew?’

  ‘Thursday, sir, as ever is. Due to meet that there Mr Pullinger eleven o’clock, sir.’

  ‘Ah!’ Mr Easter said again, his eyes still shut. ‘Then I shall rise in – um – ten minutes. Kindly require Mrs Mather to send warm water if you please, Matthew.’

  There was no need for them to look at each other, for their conversation was always the same. There was something very comforting about their early-morning ritual, this necessary pause between dream and reality. It made no demands on Matthew’s sluggish understanding and it allowed his master a few private moments to digest the events of the last twenty-four hours and to ease himself into a good humour for the day ahead.

  Matthew relinquished his noisy struggle with the shutter and crashed from the room, banging the door behind him, and Mr Easter sighed and sat up. Gradually, of course, and very gently so as to preserve the egg shells. Then he leant across the counterpane to test the heat of his chocolate with a tentative forefinger. It was always exactly the right temperature, but he was congenitally cautious.

  Left to his own devices he would have preferred to stay in bed till midday. He wasn’t at all sure whether he’d recovered from his fainting fit, and wondered, briefly, whether he ought to send for Mr Murdoch, his local physician. But as Mr Murdoch would be likely to prescribe leeches and prolonged rest, he decided against it. Being bled was beneficial. There was no doubt about that. But it always made him feel so wretched afterwards. And besides, he’d promised to meet Mr Pullinger, and a gentleman’s word was his bond. That was something he was quite sure about.

  Caught in the middle of an important family, between his older brother Joseph who was an exact copy of his father and his little sister Cecilia who was just like her mother, only more charming, William Henry Easter had always been an oddity, never really certain about anything and perpetually anxious, a creature apart, with no discernible character of his own and very little idea of how to acquire one. He had grown up privately, hiding away as much as he could, enduring his schooldays stoically, going to Oxford because it was expected of him, and avoiding his parents whenever possible.

  When he was twenty-one his mother decided that the time had come to settle him in life. She saw no necessity for consulting him on the matter, in fact she only mentioned it to his father once. He was given an annual allowance and consigned to the merchant’s life, which he had followed ever since. Now he lived in one of the family houses in Yarmouth, where he pretended to trade in herring, and had another of his own in Chelsea, where he dabbled, equally unsuccessfully, in the importation of tea and sugar. He accepted his lot without query and although he could hardly be said to be making a living, at least he gave the appearance of being busy. He enjoyed travelling, providing it was undertaken between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon, when he was well enough, and his wandering lifestyle enabled him to restrict his visits to the family seat at Ippark to two uncomfortable weeks at the end of every year.

  Nevertheless his anxiety grew with the strength and persistence of an oak. By the time he was thirteen it had crystallized into a daily consideration of the state of his health; by the time he was thirty he had become a complete hypochondriac. Now at the settled age of forty-four he employed three physicians, Mr Murdoch in Yarmouth and two others in Chelsea, and his personal medicine chest was carried with him wherever he went. It was the first reassuring thing he saw when he opened his eyes in the morning.

  But this morning he’d barely given it a glance. He was too busy remembering the extraordinary events of the previous evening. Had he really horse-whipped a gang of ruffians? And rescued that little maid? Who could have imagined such a thing?

  Sipping his chocolate, he wondered how she was. It would be cruel if she had taken any harm. Not that such a thing was likely. She’d fought back with such force, fine eyes blazing, standing up in the carriage, screaming abuse. What amazing strength! And he remembered how firmly she’d unbuttoned his chemise and sent poor Matthew about his business. A fine, healthy child.

  ‘I have it in mind, Matthew,’ he said, as his servant returned with the hot water, ‘to send some little dainty or other to the little maid. To enquire after her health, you know. A custard cup or some such restorative. She did give us good service last night, did she not? ’Twould ill behove us to ignore it.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ Matthew said, trying to look as though he understood.

  ‘A bewitching child,’ his master said, caressing his empty cup with his fingertips. ‘She puts me in mind of the Angel Gabriel in the painting at Ippark.’

  ‘Calves’-foot jelly,’ Matthew observed, laying out his master’s clean chemise.

  ‘For an angel, Matthew?’

  ‘That’s a restorative, that ol’ calves’-foot jelly,’ Matthew explained. ‘Do her a power of good.’

  ‘A fitting choice,’ Mr Easter approved. And smiled. ‘How it will please her!’

  It didn’t. In fact it didn’t please anybody. Cook was very annoyed. ‘Don’t he think we feed you gel, or what?’ she said angrily. ‘That’s a downright insult, that’s what. If that weren’t a rich man, I should give un a piece of my mind.’

  ‘That ol’ sarvant feller was makin’ sheep’s eyes at our Nan,’ Abby said, grinning at Nan. ‘I seen him.’

  Nan was sitting at the kitchen table bathing her bruises. The left side of her face was covered with purple blotches and her feelings were as tender as her flesh. ‘I wouldn’t take him even if he offered,’ she said. ‘Not if he was the last man in Christendom, great dumb ox!’

  ‘He got it bad for you, I reckon,’ Abby persisted. ‘All that standin’ round the door gawping.’

  ‘More fool he,’ Nan said, holding the cloth against her cheek and glaring at Abby across the top of it. ‘Now you change your tune, do. I en’t in the humour for that sort a’ squit.’

  In the sharp light of early morning she could see how disfiguring her bruises were and what a lot of damage those foul sailors had done to her one and only good set of clothes. I
t was going to take hours and hours to repair her cloak and her bodice was downright unsightly, cobbled together with an old ribbon and the rapid tacking that was all she’d had time for when she got up.

  ‘Well,’ Cook sniffed, ‘seein’ he’s been so gracious as to send it, I suppose you’d better eat his precious jelly. There’s your spoon.’

  But there wasn’t time for Nan to eat or answer, for the parlour bell was clanging. ‘That’ll be missus,’ she said, putting down her cloth. ‘Pamela till breakfast, I’ll lay any money,’ Mrs Howkins always required ‘a restorative reading’ from her favourite novel whenever the master had upset her. Personally Nan thought it was a foolish tale and had no patience with the heroine who professed to love the hero and yet spent the entire novel keeping him at arm’s length. It seemed an uncommon silly thing to do when she could have stayed where she was and enjoyed his love, and in all probability persuaded him to marry her into the bargain.

  ‘Are we to keep un for ’ee, then?’ Cook asked, looking down her nose at the jelly as though it were a dish full of cockroaches.

  ‘Give un to the cat,’ Nan said lightly as she reached the door.

  ‘That’s wicked waste, you ask me,’ Abby said, looking longingly from the spoon to the dish.

  ‘You have un then,’ Nan said. ‘That’s all one to me. I don’t mind. Put some flesh on your poor ol’ bones!’ Abby was already plump for her thirteen years and bid fair to be a hefty woman when she was grown. ‘You have un. I got other things to attend to.’

  The first volume of the expected novel was already on the side-table.

  ‘A little reading,’ Mrs Howkins explained. ‘By way of a restorative, my dear. To lift our spirits, which you cannot deny we both stand sorely in need of.’

  ‘Whereabouts shall I begin?’ Nan asked, knowing very well.

  ‘The seduction, my dear,’ Mrs Howkins said, as if it had just occurred to her. ‘The supreme moment when virtue is triumphant and the barbarous deceiver is forced to desist. Such a comfort to us, don’t you think?’