The Captain's Daughter (13 page)

“I need to urgently speak to Sir
Benjamin,” she told the butler when he opened the door.

“I am sorry milady, but Sir
Benjamin departed for London a little over an hour ago.”

“Then may I speak to Pierre, or
Henri or whatever his name? It is really very important.”

“I am sorry, milady, but he is not
available.”

“If he is here how can he not be
available?”

The butler was taciturn as usual
and she got nowhere. Threatened danger seemed to mean nothing to him, nor did
French
comtes
real or fake.

On the way home, frustrated and in
some anguish, she stopped at the path to the river and led Pansy down to the
water’s edge. Amy sat and meditated with her head in her hands. She felt like
shedding tears of frustration. The waters had gone down some from a couple of
days ago, but were still perturbed. She recalled old Hubert’s mention of how
swollen the river was all these years ago. She would have been a baby then, but
whose baby?
Who am I?
In a way it was an exciting adventure and in a way
it was scary.

When Amy returned home, the trap
was in the stable. And the Frenchman and his companions were gone. As soon as
she went through the front door Emma stuck her head out of the door to the sitting
room. She had been watching through the front window for Amy’s return. Amy
followed her into the sitting room.

“I was up on Camp Hill today...”

“I know,” interrupted Amy angrily,
“and you know you must never go there alone.”

“I wasn’t alone. Mrs. Permberton
allowed Effie to go with me if we promised to return within the hour so Effie
could work on preparing dinner. But that’s not important. What I wanted to tell
you is that when you rode to Ben’s this afternoon someone followed you.”

“Who was it?”

“I cannot be sure, but he looked
like one of the men who accompanied the Frenchman’s coach.”

Chapter 13

To Amy
it seemed odd that she missed Ben as much as
she did. He had only visited from time-to-time and yet his absence seemed to
leave a giant emptiness in her life. He didn’t need to be present all the time,
it was just that he was nearby and within reach. That had given her some
reassurance. Now she felt completely alone and abandoned.

The marigolds were brightly in
bloom now with their orange and yellow heads bouncing in the breeze, as May
turned into June. Amy found herself listlessly wandering in the garden much of
the time, with an open book in her hand that she was not reading. Poor Pansy on
most days only got out of her stall when Daniel took her for a walk.

Amy could have sent a letter to Ben
at his club, but what would she say in the letter? She had no news. It would
have been far different if they were lovers. Lovers can always find something
to say, and friends can write to one another about small things, but interested
acquaintances like she and Ben can only communicate when there is something of
consequence to tell about.

Amy found herself envying Mattie
with her love of domestic pursuits such as her exacting needlework. She even
envied Emma as the recalcitrant student worked under the falcon-like dominance
of her jailer. From time to time she would pass the open door of Emma’s study
room with the cool breeze wafting out into the hall now that the weather was
warmer and Mrs. Parkhurst kept the window and door open. With the breeze
keeping her erstwhile snoozy teacher awake, Emma had less opportunity to
escape, although Amy suspected the work Emma was absorbed in was not always
what Mrs. Parkhurst had assigned to her.

What was she supposed to do? Amy
knew what her mother would like her to do, but she disliked sewing and her
mother’s other preferred pursuits for girls and young ladies. She decided to
write a letter to her cousins.

Amy’s window seat was quite
different from most, which were backless sofas with spindly legs. When she was
small, her father decided she needed a place to store her toys and school
materials and so he had a seat that curved around the pre-Georgian window
alcove in her room built atop what resembled box-like storage trunks.

As she sat down at her desk to
write a letter she was not in the mood to craft, she sadly recalled when she
was a student like Emma. Two years ago she would have been deeply involved in
her studies or intently listening to Mr. Coleridge her tutor. He had a love of
letters and poetry and had awakened it in her. She suspected that somewhere
deep in his soul he would have liked to have been an actor because he could
keep her and Emma, who was younger and much less active back then, spellbound
while he read poetry and great novels, and the letters and speeches of famous
men.

Amy drifted over to her window seat
and sat on the carpet next to it. So much had he inspired and encouraged her
that she had avidly written many poems, and decided to become a poet, and she
had started to write an account of her father’s time in the army. She would sit
with him in his study while he recounted his adventures and displayed his
artifacts which had once been meaningless shelf decorations but which had grown
to have a much deeper meaning.

Back at the beginning of last year,
when the snow was still on the ground, he’d sat in his big stuffed sofa chair
and thrilled her and Emma with tales of derring-do as they snuggled beside the
roaring fire. She didn’t know if the years that had passed had caused the tales
to grow, but a little embellishment didn’t hurt. And later, when she was alone
in her room, she had written it all down. But that was all over and gone now.
Tears of sadness ran down her face mingled with tears of anger and frustration
at Turpin and what he had done to her father.

She raised the seat of the trunk
where she kept her papers. For near onto a year she had been unable to bring
herself to look at them. They were too much a reminder of happier times when
she still had her father. When her father was still whole and not the shell he
was now. She grabbed the deep stack of papers about half way down and struggled
to bring the bundle out onto the carpet where she could see them better.

Setting them on the floor beside her,
she started to lower the lid but stopped. Uppermost on the remaining stack of
papers was a drawing of a horse. It was a sleek young stallion, shiny and
black. Well he wasn’t shiny in the charcoal picture, but that is the way she
remembered Turpin all these years ago when she was the same age as Emma was
now.

She picked up the picture as she
fought back tears with a sniffle. Her teacher back then was Abbé Berjon, a
slight, intense, pale man who looked like a youth but was considerably older.
He taught her and Mattie the prerequisite subjects but his first love was art.
What the significance of the title was, if it was a title, she had no idea.
Almost anyone in France who spends any time as a novitiate can use the title,
and from what she had learned almost every Frenchman above the station of a
ploughboy has been a novitiate in his youth.

Berjon instilled in her a love of
drawing, especially with charcoal and pastels, but he didn’t remain long. His
place was taken by Mrs. Poundstone, a friendly middle-aged lady who was
slightly overweight but jolly and friendly. When old Aunt Hyacinth, her
mother’s maiden aunt, was no longer able to teach Emma, then Emma joined Amy
and Mattie in Mrs. Poundstone’s little class.

Mattie was especially fond of the
teacher since she only gently dispensed the academic subjects but loved
especially to teach more domestic subjects. But everyone loved Mrs. Poundstone.
No one disliked her. Amy had been inspired by Abbé Berjon and his almost
fanatical love of art, despite the fact that she never saw him smile and was
puzzled by his almost feminine appearance and demeanor. And she was inspired by
Mr. Coleridge, who was somewhat more human and was a true scholar. In a way
they had been like bookends to Mrs. Poundstone’s much longer tenure. Her early
teacher had been Great Aunt Hyacinth whom she mostly remembered as a bit fussy,
just like her mother. Amy didn’t know what had happened to Aunt Hyacinth. She
hadn’t thought of her in years. She decided she must ask her mother.

Amy got up from the carpet with her
armload of literary papers and carried them over to the desk. As she worked her
way through them, she became determined to finish her father’s memoirs. She
owed it to him as a tribute and an expression of her love. If he really was her
father.

The moment the thought occurred she
felt as if she were a traitor. How could she even think such a thing? He was
her own beloved father. Emma and Mattie were her sisters, and her mother
was...” But were they? They certainly had never treated her as other than an
intrinsic part of the family. Or was she just trying to convince herself of
that? She turned that thought over and over in her mind, but could not recall
anytime they had treated her even a tiny bit differently. Yet, if she were
adopted, her mother knew and her father knew, or he did before his accident
last year.

One sunny June morning, a few days
later, Amy sat on one of the wrought iron benches amidst the roses and blooming
summer flowers. She had put a wad of papers from the time Mr. Coleridge was her
tutor in a portfolio that belonged to her father. The poet and writer was
beginning to arise from the dead. In the last few days she had reread her
father’s adventures and was stimulated to begin work on them once more after
her nearly one year hiatus.

So occupied was she with her father
and Sir Frank’s adventures in Flanders that it was a few moments before she
snapped back to the here and now and woke up to the fact that someone was
calling her name from the vicinity of the stables. It was a strange, croaky
voice.

Carefully placing her precious
papers back in the portfolio and latching it shut, she went over to the stables
clutching her leather bundle.

“Did someone call me?”

“Yes. Over here.”

It was Emma’s voice this time that
was coming from the stable.

So Amy went over to the stable. In
the stable, standing just inside the empty stall that normally housed
Bucephalus, was her sister.

“You’re not a horse, why are you in
your horse’s stall?”

“I can’t be too careful. Mrs.
Parkhurst has been way too wide awake lately.”

Amy looked around.

“Where is Bucephalus anyway?”

“I had Daniel hitch him to the
trap. It’s around behind the stables.”

“And I suppose you would like me to
go with you to the back of the stables?”

“Well... Yes, but we must be
careful. There are those who seek my soul.”

“I am sure there are... is.”

Bucephalus, who was in fine spirits
that morning lightly galloped in the direction of Camp Hill. The poor horse was
probably glad to get the opportunity since he had been largely confined for the
last two or so weeks, except for the short walk Daniel took him on each day.

With the portfolio against the
footrest and her feet resting securely on it, Amy looked at Emma.

“I reckon we’re headed to Camp Hill
since I notice your telescope lashed to the tail board. Another lazy morning
surveying the surrounding country, or are we here to spy on Hillfield House? If
so, it isn’t my doing this time.”

“Neither Sister Amy. We have
purpose this morning.”

“Really, and what is that purpose?”

“Do you know who William Roy is?”
asked Emma.

“No, I don’t know who William Roy
is.”

“I found some papers in father’s
study that Sir Frank left father. They’re from the Royal Society.”

“How do you
just
find papers
in father’s study? He may not be well, but he is still neat.”

“I’ll explain later.”

“No you won’t, Emma Sibbridge.
You’re impossible.”

“Actually they’re from a couple of
years ago. Anyway, William Roy is a Scot who has been working ever since the
rebellion of 1745 on creating ordnance maps of the Scottish Highlands and later
the rest of Britain. Among the papers was an ordnance map drawn by Mr. Roy that
includes this part of England. The map hasn’t been published yet but Mr. Roy
left a copy with the Royal Society when he gave a speech there.”

“So Mr. Roy left it with the Royal
Society and Sir Frank purloined it from the Society and stashed it in father’s
study and you purloined it from father. It seems we have a matter of miscreant
behavior going on here. Wait until Mr. Roy hears about that.”

“It’s nothing like that,” said Emma
firmly, ‘besides Mr. Roy died last year. But if you will just listen to me
instead of continually interrupting me and treating me like a child, I’ll
explain why we are here.”

She looked accusingly at Amy who
just smiled innocently.

“I was looking at the map this
morning while Mrs. Parkhurst was... What I noticed was that we should be able
to see the village of Etting Howe from atop Camp Hill according to Mr. Roy’s
map.”

Whether it was their power of
observation, or lack of it, or an imperfection in Mr. Roy’s preliminary
ordnance survey map, the village of Etting Howe refused to make an appearance
and so after about half an hour the master spy Emma Sibbridge had to admit
defeat and sadly agree to return home to the open arms of Mrs. Parkhurst.

On the way back home, Amy suggested
they take a look at the River Arne. So they left Bucephalus, whose enthusiasm
for galloping had substantially abated, munching the grass by the side of the
road. As all horses and smarter cows can tell you, the grass always taste
better if it is somewhere else.

When they made their way along the
path to its bank they found the River Arne was almost back to normal. Rivers,
especially gurgling, rippling, bouncing ones, tend to be a little spellbinding.
After watching it for a few minutes, Emma was ready to go home.

Amy had been looking at the old
mill. This was the mill where Ben in peasant guise had made insulting drawings
of her. This was the mill where she and Emma had seen the strange light, or had
they just imagined it?

“We need to take another look at
the mill,” said Amy with a frown.

“We need to get back home. It’s
almost time for lunch,” Emma observed.

“It’ll just take a few minutes.
Remember the strange light we saw in it.”

“I am remembering the strange
light. The more I think about it, the more I think we better get away from
here.”

“Don’t be silly, Emma. Do you hear
anything? Do you see anything?”

“If you mean, do I see the crazed
killer hiding in the mill, of course not. That’s why he is hiding so we can’t
see him until we fall into his trap. Do I hear anything? Yes, I hear a little
voice saying: Get away. Run before it’s too late.”

But Amy was already fording the
river. Reluctantly, Emma followed.

Inside the old ruined mill the
berserk killer was nowhere to be seen.

“If someone has been using this to
hide from the king’s men, there should be some evidence of it.”

But Amy could find nothing. Taking
a stick, she methodically dragged it through the dirt of the mill floor but
could find no sign of a fire that someone might have covered with dirt to hide
the evidence of their use of the old building.

She was about to suggest they head
home for lunch when Emma said: “Take a look at this Amy.”

Emma was looking at something that
was gleaming in the dirt. She scratched away the dirt with her hands to reveal
a lady’s pendant. She lifted the golden pendant from the dirt of the mill floor
so Amy could see it better. Immediately, Amy began to dig with the stick to see
if she could uncover more hidden treasures, but there was nothing else there.