Authors: Matthew Plampin
They spoke together in their rooms, late at night
.
We can only guess as to the topics that might have dictated such confidentiality
.
Far better to remain unobserved. Besides which, Will is dressed for stealth, in his Vandyck-brown coat, which is rather darker than the blue, and a pair of black breeches. He’d been wearing his evening shoes, due to their lightness, but at the base of the stairs they let out a plaintive squeak, obliging him to stuff them in a pocket and continue in his stockings. He steps onto the state floor and heads for the hall, intending to cross over it to the main staircase. Candles still burn there, however – a footman is dismantling a flower arrangement on the marble table – so he plots an alternative route through the reception rooms that line the southern front. They’ll be empty at this hour. They must be. He decides to chance it.
The first room is vast and quiet. Will feels the bumps and seams of the carpet pattern sliding beneath his toes. Watery moonlight spills across gilt and damask; and portions of several canvases, portraits on the grand scale, from the hand of Sir Joshua Reynolds. One stands out, almost fully illuminated against the western wall. It shows an arresting lady of no more than twenty-five, dressed for the outdoors in a black feather hat, tight jacket and skirts. This suit is the colour of port wine; in daylight it must be a bright, military scarlet. She is arranged in a dueller’s pose, her left arm brought back behind her waist; and in her right hand, in place of a rapier, is a riding crop, as if to whip at the calves of any gentleman who displeased her.
Lady Worsley, Will thinks, the wild stepdaughter of the first baron, who so misused the great house and its guests. What Beau said of this portrait is true; Sir Joshua has certainly captured the lady’s wilfulness, and her youthful vigour. Will had known the name. There had been a divorce in the early eighties, when he was but a young boy, with all manner of lurid public revelations – a scandal of such enormity that it was still cited in Father’s shop as one of the perils that could befall a marrying man. She’d been ruined, of course, jettisoned in disgrace; and although her portrait hung in this majestic chamber, receiving the admiration of connoisseurs, if she were actually to appear at the door of Harewood House – and she couldn’t yet, by Will’s reckoning, be so very old – the Lascelles would no doubt have her chased off without delay.
From further along the southern front comes a swell of masculine conversation, several voices raising good-humouredly to contest a point. The gentlemen have not yet retired. Will’s self-possession falters. He knows what this will mean. Leaving Lady Worsley, he eases open the heavy door that leads to the saloon, where Beau showed off his French porcelain. There is less moonlight in here, but a greater sense of occupancy; he smells scent, liquor and the oniony whiff of overheated bodies. The door opposite, perhaps forty feet away, has been left ajar. The room on its other side is empty, unlit; the gentlemen are installed in the one beyond. Will steals into the saloon, convinced that Tom will be among them, lounging about in the lions’ den, laying himself bare in a hundred tiny ways. Before he can confirm it, however, the door to this distant room opens, admitting a blast of noise and light that is swiftly sealed off again.
Mr Cope has come through, bearing a candle holder. Will tenses, poised to retreat; but the valet is not headed for the saloon. Setting the candle on a sideboard, Mr Cope walks to the room’s rear. He is talking now, addressing an unseen companion. His voice is too low for the words to be discerned but his tone is strangely tender. Will edges forward, keeping to the shadows, curious to see who warrants such uncharacteristic warmth.
It is Beau Lascelles. The baron’s eldest son is packed skilfully inside a patterned waistcoat, his complexion flushed once more by the evening’s indulgences. Mr Cope appears to be running down a list, stressing certain details. Their entire demeanour is altered; they are like confidantes, Will thinks, the most intimate of friends. Then Beau, who has been nodding with the weary air of one very familiar with what he is being told, lays his rosy face on Mr Cope’s chest. The valet responds with an embrace, his head bending down towards his master’s. Will can hear them laughing softly together.
There is another sound, far closer: that of a large person pushing past a chair. Someone else is in the saloon. Will’s fear buffets against him, makes him catch his balance as if the carpet were being wrenched from under his feet. It is a trap. Men have been placed around the house, ready to spring out, to seize him in the act of reaching Tom. The Lascelles know everything – and their vengeance would surely follow.
‘Be easy, sir. Why, I can hear your little heart from over here.’
Mrs Lamb is in an alcove, a black shape only, positioned behind a column that does almost nothing to hide her. Will starts, then sags with relief. He is baffled, utterly mystified, as to why the still-room maid would be up here, padding about in the darkness. The plain note of sarcasm in her voice is vexing. It suggests a grievance, as if he has disappointed her somehow – as if those obscure manipulations of hers, the rumours so carefully shared, the candle packages and the pamphlets that had wrapped them, had a result in mind that he has failed to supply.
‘Madam,’ he hisses, ‘what the devil is this?’
Mrs Lamb does not reply. Leaving her alcove, she passes through a narrow band of light cast across the saloon by Mr Cope’s candle. Her expression is deadly: mocking, contemptuous even, an unpleasant contrast indeed with the favour she has shown Will up until now. As she turns towards the hall doors, he notices a scratch, angry red and quite straight, running diagonally around her forearm.
One of the double doors opens. Footman and flower arrangement are gone; the hallway beyond is clear. Mrs Lamb walks out. She stops, shifting her shoulders slightly, a hand still on the door. Will realises that she is mustering her strength.
The slam resounds through the state floor, a firework bursting in an empty church. Will stands dazed in the deep hush that follows. He knows that he must flee, get to the portrait room, to the service staircase, to the casket chamber, as speedily and surreptitiously as he is able; but his limbs are insensible to the frantic urgings of his brain, seeming at once impossibly heavy and weightless. Light breaks over him, wobbles around him, lapping against a pair of gold-green chairs. Mr Cope is at the doorway on the opposite side of the saloon, the flame of his candle swaying atop the wick. There’s no sign of Beau or anyone else. All laughter, all tenderness are gone from the valet; he has reverted so absolutely to his regular self that it makes Will doubt what he just saw.
‘Mr Turner.’
Will is caught. He looks down at the carpet – at his stockings, nestled in the loop of a huge silvery leaf. He wriggles his toes inside the grubby cotton. ‘Shoes was pinching,’ he says.
Mr Cope seems to accept this. ‘Did the castle meet your requirements?’
‘I took studies.’
‘And yet you remain at Harewood. Forgive me, sir, but my impression was that you were eager to depart. May I ask what altered your plans?’
The explanation arrives in Will’s mind fully formed, miraculously almost; he only has to voice it. ‘A natural subject,’ he says, a touch too quickly. ‘I have ruins, Mr Cope, and I have the house. But I need nature. Something with … with scale. Something outside of man.’
Something outside of man. These sound like Tom’s words. No matter: Mr Cope appears to believe them. He walks into the saloon and closes the door. Will detects the same dry sympathy the valet had shown him in the servants’ hall, when he delivered his warning about Mrs Lamb. Did it arise from a sense of kinship, perhaps? Might Mr Cope feel that they were on similar paths – low-born, industrious men trying to advance themselves in the world of the rich? He calms a fraction. There’s no trap here; not now, at least.
‘I’ll talk to the groundsmen and see what they recommend. I’m afraid, however, that Mr Lascelles has retired. You cannot speak with him today.’ Mr Cope hesitates. ‘I assume this was your purpose in coming up here?’
Will swallows; he feigns regret. ‘Indeed it was. A shame. Much to report.’
‘He will be in the flower garden tomorrow afternoon, with a party from Harrogate.’ Mr Cope and his candle cross to the double doors. ‘Would you have me escort you to your chamber?’
This isn’t a question. Will, in truth, is desperately tired, sustained chiefly by his fear. Two hours’ rest, he tells himself, then back up to find Tom, after everyone else in this damn house is in bed.
‘Too kind, Mr Cope. Too kind.’
The knocks sound barely three feet from Will’s head. He throws back the sheet, squinting at his window: the sky is pearl grey, the colour of early dawn. He’s been asleep for longer than he intended. The house will be rising. It’s too late. His chance is gone.
The knocks sound again, louder this time. Will climbs from his pallet and opens the door. One of Harewood’s gardeners is leaning against the frame, the large, bearded man who’d been in Mr Noakes’s office on Will’s first afternoon – Stephen. His eyes are directed firmly along the corridor; his voice is empty of interest or civility.
‘I’m ’ere to take ye to Plumpton. Wi’ Mr Cope’s compliments.’
Will stiffens; his heart drums beneath his shirt. ‘What’s that, then?’
‘Plumpton?’ Stephen grants him a second’s scrutiny, of the kind one might give a hopeless dunce. ‘It’s rocks.’
Will is led out into the morning; like a man brought to execution, he thinks. Has it happened? The series of events is easily reconstructed. Tom’s been found in a corridor, or even within the curtains of Mary Ann’s bed. Judgement has been pronounced and Tom himself already dealt with. And now Will, his presumed accessory, is to be dispatched as well. This gardener has not been ordered to escort him to the rocks at Plumpton, but something altogether more sinister. Will looks at the broad back ahead. The fellow could crush his skull in the palm of his hand if he had a mind to. His doom would be assured.
They go downhill, following the curve of the driveway to the stable block. It is a two-storey quadrangle, built simply in the Doric order, but larger than many London mansion houses. Horses are brought through the gates, a pair of bay mares, finer than any Will has ridden before. He is not, in truth, a natural equestrian; and as he mounts he is trembling so hard that it takes him four attempts to get his boot in the stirrup.
The two men ride north, soon leaving the Harewood estate. Will wonders whether an accident is to be engineered, out on some remote lane or bridle path. Would his horse rear on that bridge there, dumping him into the river below? Would a branch whip round, dragging him from his saddle? Or would his so-called guide just slip a blackjack from his sleeve, crack Will’s pate and blame it on a fall?
There’s little indication of any of this. The gardener, riding in front, seems to go to sleep, his head dipping forward, his shoulders rocking with his horse’s steps. Will’s apprehension for his wellbeing is coupled with the more immediate worry that they are travelling blind, wandering out into the raw Yorkshire countryside. This scenery would have pleased him on a different day, at dawn especially: a landscape of ridges and sweeping banks, mist lingering in its hollows; of undulating pasture and narrow clusters of pine, the trees black in the low light; of reddish rock formations, poking through folds in the turf like knees from a robe. Now, though, he pays it only cursory attention, occupied mainly with arranging and rearranging his drawing equipment, in case a rapid dismount is required.
After half an hour the horses stop to drink at a stream. The water ripples over a shallow, stony bed, winking in the first rays of the sun. Stephen is roused, by the noise perhaps; he speaks without looking around.
‘Spofforth.’ He nods downstream, to where chimney smoke stripes the pink sky. ‘Castle there. Mr Cope said ye’d want to see.’
The ruin is at the edge of a quiet village, a long, roofless hall sunk into a hill in a similar manner to the one at Harewood. Will’s only course is compliance. As he selects his spot, he finds that he recognises the style: this is a Percy castle, like several he’s sketched before, and certainly worth a page from the smaller book. He fits together a composition. The lone surviving tower, just off-centre; a stretch of wall to its right, including a double row of fine arched windows; and to its left, a short distance away, a huddle of farm buildings that have been thrown up in the ruin’s shadow.
Three minutes into the study, it occurs to Will that Spofforth Castle might in fact be the site of his demise. A gang of the Lascelles’ men could be hiding in a barn, planning to come at him while he’s working. He’d have to notice their approach, get to his feet, decide which way to flee – by which time they could be on him, pounding out his brains with stout sticks. The village is stirring, it’s true, but its inhabitants wouldn’t be in any hurry to oppose Lord Harewood. Will could count on no rescue from that quarter. Stephen is nearby, his cloth cap pulled down, smoking a clay pipe. He could be standing guard, waiting until the young painter is fully absorbed in his task before making a signal …
Will shivers; he squeezes the porte-crayone until the metal screws bite into his skin. This is
nonsense
. The Lascelles would hardly go to such lengths if they meant to end him now. It would have been done back in the casket chamber, or somewhere in the park. The affair hasn’t yet been uncovered, or at least it hadn’t when they left – and here lay the morning’s real hazard. Every hour that Will is away from the house is one in which Tom Girtin could destroy them both. Mr Cope’s willingness to help him may prove his undoing. He regrets that lie in the saloon, so God-given it had seemed; why hadn’t he just said that he needed another day on the estate? The sketch is finished as quickly as he can manage. He closes the book and waves to Stephen, announcing his readiness to move on.
The second leg is shorter, less than half the distance between Harewood and Spofforth, leading them from the fields into a band of wooded hills. Morning breaks bright and warm; the net of branches overhead dissolves in the white sunlight. They round a summit and start to descend. Will glimpses a body of water between the trees, reflecting the drifting pattern of the clouds. Soon afterwards, Stephen dismounts and tethers the horses to the bough of an oak.