At that moment there was the sound of someone knocking
violently on the house door. Everyone looked up and
exchanged startled glances. James woke from his latest doze
and said 'Eh? What? Who's that?'
‘
Who on earth can that be, at this time of night?' Edward
said.
Mathilde looked apprehensively at Héloïse. Sudden alarms
usually meant bad news, and bad news in her case meant
something that would affect her wedding plans. Héloïse
reached across the table and patted her hand reassuringly,
but she looked uneasy. No matter how far in the past it was,
her experience of living through the Terror always made her
fear the worst from sudden interruptions at night.
There were voices out in the hall, Ottershaw's measured
tones, someone answering, agitated. Mathilde's eyes widened.
She was sure it was John's voice. Old Mrs Skelwith has died,
she thought, and the wedding will have to be cancelled. I
knew something like this would happen!
Fanny thrust herself abruptly out of her chair. 'For God's
sake,' she growled, 'what's going on?' She walked to the door
and opened it, and vented some of her irritation by shouting
for Ottershaw. A moment later he appeared with John
Skelwith behind him, tousled and wind-blown, his face red
from the sharpness of the night air, his person liberally
splashed with mud. What a clown! Fanny thought. I'm glad he
was never a beau of mine.
‘
What's all the noise about, Ottershaw?' she said sharply.
'And what are you doing here at this time of night, Mr
Skelwith? Can't your passion contain itself until morning?'
‘
Oh, I beg your pardon, ma'am —' Ottershaw began flut
teringly, but Skelwith thrust past him and stood before
Fanny, looking hard into her eyes.
‘
I'm sorry to disturb you, Mrs Hawker, but some news has
come to my hand — very grave news. I felt I must take the
first opportunity of letting you all know.’
She smelled the ale on his breath. 'This news came to you
in the Hare and Heather, I take it?' she said, poisonously
sweet.
‘Fanny, dear, ask Mr Skelwith to come in,' Héloïse suggested
gently from within the drawing-room. Fanny returned to
the fire with a bad grace, and Skelwith stepped in, while
Ottershaw hung about outside the door, which no-one had
remembered to shut, hoping for enlightenment.
In the full light of the drawing-room, Skelwith looked
white and shocked. Everyone's attention was on him — even
James was wide awake now.
‘
I was in the Hare and Heather,' he said. He licked his lips, which seemed dry. 'That's how I got the news so soon. I made
sure you wouldn't have heard it yet, off the main road as you
are. I rode straight here across the fields
‘
In the dark? Oh John, that was dangerous!' Mathilde
couldn't help exclaiming. 'You might have gone into the
beck.’
He glanced at her distractedly, then turned his attention to
James, to Edward, and then to Héloïse. 'The news is from
London. It's — I don't know how to tell you. Boney's out!
He's escaped from Elba, and landed in France.’
Héloïse gave a little cry, and stood up, and her chair fell over with a thud. 'Dear God, no!' she cried. 'The monster is
loose again?'
‘Is it true? Good God, man, is it sure?' Edward cried.
Skelwith nodded. 'Sure enough. It was known by our agent
in Florence a week ago, but apparently everyone thought he would make for Italy, and the news got held up somewhere.
He headed instead for France — that's why our ships didn't
intercept him. The whole thing was obviously planned to the last detail. He landed near Antibes on the first of March with
an army — I don't know how many. God knows where he is
now.' He passed a hand over his face wearily. 'Wellington's in
Vienna. There's no army anywhere near him — I don't know
what's to stop him reaching Paris. London's in turmoil —
they say 'Change has gone quite mad, and Lloyds is in a
panic, and wanting to double their rates. It's clear what
they
think is going to happen.’
Héloïse was staring at nothing, her eyes wide and shocked.
'Now it will begin all over again,' she whispered. 'Another
twenty years of bloodshed! God help us all!’
And then Fanny gave a strange cry, and they all turned to
look at her, and watched in disbelief as the colour drained
quite visibly from her face. Even her lips were white, and her
eyes seemed to be starting from her head.
‘
Fanny, what is it?' Miss Rosedale said quickly, rising to
her feet.
‘
A pain,' Fanny whispered, hardly moving her lips. Her
whole body was rigid, as if she feared any movement would
shatter her.
‘
Where? What sort of pain?' Héloïse asked. Fanny said
nothing, only stood there, her eyes bulging with terror.
'Fanny, answer me!'
‘
It's the baby!' she cried out in a terrible voice. 'It's too
soon! Not now! Oh not now! It can't be!' She turned to her
father, thrusting out her hands at him pleadingly; instinc
tively at this moment, it was to him she turned, like a child. Her voice rose to a scream. 'It's too soon — it'll die! It's too
soon! Papa, make it stop!
Make it stop!’
*
It was all over. Dawn came at last: no sunrise, little more than
a slight alleviation of darkness, a grey wet sky hanging low
over the mute earth. The house was silent and cold. In the
drawing-room, the fire had sunk to a handful of embers, and
no-one had remembered to make it up. The candles had
burnt out in the sockets. They had been sitting for the last
two hours in the creeping light of morning: Mathilde had
drawn the curtains back, the only movement anyone had
made for some time.
James sat as though he would never move again. It was
impossible to believe. She was so strong, so healthy. He
relived, wearily, the moment when Héloïse had come out
from the bedchamber to where he waited in the passage, and
looked at him, and he had known that where his child was
before, now there was nothing. How could someone exist one
moment and not the next? It was impossible to believe. His thoughts trudged wearily round the same circle. Last night,
only last night, she had sat there opposite him, full of life and
energy_ and vigour. It was she who had stood up and gone to
the door when Skelwith came. She had shouted, with that
edge of irritation to her voice, to find out what was going on.
She of all of them was filled with vital force. She couldn't, she couldn't be dead.
Héloïse came in, and they all lifted their heads dully to look
at her. She pushed her hair from her face in a tired gesture
and walked across to sit heavily in the chair opposite James.
‘
It's all finished,' she said. 'You can go up, if you want.'
She and Marie had been laying out the body. Sarah and
Jenny had helped clean up the room. There had been a great
deal of blood: she had not given up her life easily. Matty had
washed the baby, weeping her easy, healing tears over it.
Héloïse could not bear the force of the pity that pulled at her
at the sight of it. A boy after all — Fanny had said all along it
was a boy, and she was proved right. Perfect, but so tiny, too
tiny ever to have lived. It had never breathed air, dead
already when it came, three months too soon, into this harsh
world.
James looked up. 'She's not alone? You didn't leave her
alone?’
Héloïse shook her head. 'Miss Rosedale is with her. You
can go and see her, if you want.’
But he shook his head. He didn't want to see her dead,
while she was still warm and alive in his mind. He wanted to
keep her as he still remembered her from last night, alive
enough to be bad-tempered. All too soon, he knew, she would
fade and be gone; but not yet, not yet.
The long, long silence went on.
‘
What do we do now?' James asked at last, speaking to
Héloïse, as if there were no-one else present. For him, there
was no-one. Everything else he had loved was lying cold and still in the blue bedchamber, all life spent in one last, fierce,
heroic struggle.
Héloïse met his eyes. 'I don't know,' she said. She sounded exhausted beyond thought. 'I don't know what there is to do.’
And James knew there was no escape, that she really was
dead, and that there was nothing to do any more, only sit
here, in silence, and endure this pain. He folded his hands in
his lap, and let it have its way.
*
While the world shook with terror at the escape of Bonaparte
from his prison of Elba — too fragile a cage, surely, ever to have held such a powerful eagle — Morland Place brooded,
barely aware of the cataclysmic events that were convulsing
Europe, turning its face from the world and looking inward
on its own grief. Comprehension was hard to achieve. If it
had not been so sudden! If it had been anyone but Fanny!
The house had rung with the sound of her healthy young
voice and the tale of her misdeeds since she was first able to walk. She had caused everyone so much trouble and anxiety;
the words 'Where's Fanny?' had so often been uttered in
trepidation; she had been so very much
there,
sometimes hard
to love, but always impossible to ignore; that a world in which
she did not exist seemed simply implausible.
Edward remembered every harsh word he had ever said to
her, particularly the last ones; and though he had never loved
her, he felt the emptiness she had left behind. Father Aislaby
remembered the times he had only just managed to restrain
himself from slapping her, and the times he had failed. Sophie
grieved for her sister with the simplicity of her open nature,
and the little boys clung to their mother's skirt, bewildered by
the atmosphere in the house. Miss Rosedale went over every
treasured memory of her stormy pupil, every little triumph,
every small token of Fanny's growing love and esteem.
Héloïse remembered how much closer they had grown lately,
and remembered that affectionate, grateful look Fanny had
given her when she had offered her the lace for her wedding-
gown.
And James remembered the day Fanny was born, when his
mother had placed her in his arms, only minutes old, her
transparent skin still pulsing with the force of new life flowing
through her. From that moment onward, she had held his
heart in the palm of her small hand, and he had watched her grow and change, bud and flower, with astonishment that he
could have had any part in making something so strong and
separate, so utterly unlike him, so full of vigour. She had
never ailed a thing in her whole life. She had never known ill
ness. She had raged and stormed through their lives, brought
James grey hairs of anxiety over what she might do next, and he had loved her absolutely. For twenty years, there had been
Fanny, first and foremost and unforgettable. Now her strong life had been cut off, and there was no Fanny. She was dead,
gone, finished. All that was left was the shroud and the coffin,
the painful words of the mass, and the dark vault, and the
forgetting.