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The sturdy coldblood horse was built for stamina rather than speed, having more than a touch of Friesian in its heritage. It was mostly Cleveland Bay, and was a dark enough bay to pass as black. It had no problem pulling the two women in the curricle, the girl Molly being on board wages with a gratuity package for the Feast of Stephen, as was common, and permission to entertain if it were not too extensive. This meant that Molly could have her mother and younger sisters to stay for Christmas, because Arabella was soft-hearted. Anything breakable, like the figurine Arabella had inherited from her mother, and the pretty cut glass vase Lucy used for flowers, were packed away in the shop, where Molly had no reason to go.
It had been a cold journey, but they had wrapped up warmly, with a hot brick between them and one each for their feet. Lucy wore cotton gloves inside woollen gloves, and she wore a muff suspended round her neck with thick cords which did not drag on her neck, and she might put one hand at a time into it to warm up. Feathers, the gelding, was sufficiently placid that she might rest the reins in the muff most of the time, removing her hand only when she needed to tell him which way to go. Feathers would take verbal commands, being late of the artillery, and Lucy claimed him when her father, who owned him, died in battle.
He would also ignore all orders, verbal or by the rein, if there was a military band, which he followed if he could, and pranced in time to it in any event.
They had been held up briefly by a military parade as a new regiment entered Newmarket, and Lucy whipped out the bugle she had acquired to play ‘Taps,’ to make him stop and show respect.
“Silly old fool,” said Lucy, affectionately, extracting her silly old fool from making an exhibition of himself.
Escaping the parade, they headed north into fen country, and through the hamlet Fenwick-cum- Tadreth, and up the drive with the wide grassy green in front of the hall.
Arabella sniffed.
“I don’t know why there’s a sundial, there, it’s facing the wrong direction. And you’d have thought a pirate who must have navigated by the sun, would have realised.”
“The gnomen is modelled as a small version of a bowsprit and the figurehead,” said Lucy. “I expect he told the builders what he wanted, and then they built it facing the way they thought it ought to, and spoilt his design.”
“Oh, you could very well be right, my dear,” said Arabella. “But as it is mentioned in that frisky poem, I think it was probably deliberate.”
“Oh! The bowsprit, thin and aged length; you mean on the winter solstice, when shadows are long, it will cast a shadow to treasure?”
“I imagine so, though it will be hard to see where.”
“It said something about dizzying heights; I will have to go up a ladder?”
“If I was you, my love, I would spend tomorrow looking either side of that bowsprit in the hall, the real one, to see if there is a hidden door out onto the flat roof of the porch. As I recall, it is mounted about where the sundial is, on the other side of the wall.”
“It is all brickwork; surely that is unlikely?
“We shall find out,” said Arabella, firmly.
“I am glad you are here,” said Lucy. “Oh! There is a gardener; not old Mr. Henderson but someone young and... Henry? Mr. Jermyn, I mean?” she asked as the curricle drew level. She barely recognised her old playmate, whose normal sleek, butter-coloured hair had become a haystack of ginger hair with a ring beard.
“Hush!” said Henry. “I’m Harry Harris to the Hendersons; they were told that I had been sent for to care for your horse, and to do some gardening to make it worth paying my wages.”
“Do you have a ladder?” asked Lucy.
“I do; why do you need a ladder?” asked Henry.
“In case there isn’t a secret door through to the roof of the porch,” said Lucy. “Because we need to see where the shadow falls at noon on the shortest day.”
“Oh,” said Henry. “I’d say, ‘I see,’ but I don’t really. It doesn’t matter; I’m here to help you, and I have a bed in the servants’ quarters, so I’ll be inside, but as a technical servant. Like Miss Bellingham, I collect,” he added, bowing to that lady.
“Indeed,” said Lucy. “It’s not difficult, it’s just solving the poem, which means being on the roof of the porch at noon on the solstice.”
“And hope there’s some sun to shine,” said Henry, glancing at the overcast sky.
“I imagine we can work out where it ought to be casting a shadow,” said Arabella. “Drive on, Lucy; if unfriendly eyes are watching, they might wonder at us hobnobbing with the gardener.”
“Not if he follows us to the front of the house and then drives the curricle round to the stables, and takes in our valises,” said Lucy. “And I’ll be occupying my old room, over the boudoir, not the master suite.”
She flourished the whip and drove on, leaving Henry to run behind as a stable hand might be supposed to do. Feathers sensed something of a festive nature and stepped out briskly with a parade trot.
Lucy alighted, and Arabella stayed in the carriage. Lucy frowned.
“I’m your servant, remember? So I help with your baggage at the servant’s entrance,” said Arabella, serenely.
“Oh! I suppose so,” said Lucy. “I don’t like you being demeaned.”
“No, my love, nor do I, but I wager I get more out of Mrs. Henderson if she can gloat over me going down in the world.”
“Beastly woman,” said Lucy.
“Lucy Amabel Fenwick! Language!” said Arabella.
“Sorry, Belle,” said Lucy, from habit.
“Don’t let me hear such nasty words in your mouth again,” said Arabella.
Chastened, Lucy entered the big porch, left open for her anticipated arrival, and rang the great bell, which was the old ship’s bell of the ‘Black Snake.’ It clanged forcefully within, with a voice used to being raised against storm and wind.
Even so, Henderson took his time to answer.
“Whoi, Miss Lucy!” he said, as if surprised. “I didn’t reckon yew’d of come in the end, tergither, orl on yor lonesome bravin’ ghosties.” Lucy raised an eyebrow at this burst of his native dialect.
“Henderson, if servants can brave ghosts, I do not see why you would consider that I should be so feeble as to fail to do so,” said Lucy, who felt a set-down was in order for studied insolence.
“Ar, well, yew better come on in, then,” said Henderson, reluctantly.
“And you had better shape up,” said Lucy. “I am not sure that you and Mrs. Henderson might not be better off enjoying your Christmas in the retirement cottage, if doing your duty is now beyond you.”
“I am sure we can manage to stay and care for you properly, Miss Lucy,” said Henderson.
“I was hoping so, but if you have been declining I will see,” said Lucy. “I understand that your wife was foolish enough to give medicine to my uncle without verifying it with his doctor. My maid will help out in the kitchen, and we will have nothing of anything unauthorised added. Is that clear?”
“Quite clear, thank you, madam,” said Henderson, stiffly. She was not the little girl to be pushed around anymore, when her father dumped her here when he went off on his fool expeditions. “Will there be anything more, madam?”
“I assume you have a fire lit in the boudoir in anticipation of my arrival?” said Lucy.
“No, miss, I didn’t think you’d really come,” said Henderson.
“Henderson, I was directed to stay here by my uncle; you have no business thinking for me. Get a fire lit in the boudoir as soon as possible, and in my bedroom over it, to air it.”
“You’ll be staying in the master bedroom, surely, Miss?” said Henderson.
“I hardly think so,” said Lucy. “That would be for any husband I took, and for me to move to after marriage. I shall be quite happy in my old bedroom, and, Henderson! I know fine well that if you light a lopsided fire on the right in either the boudoir of my bedroom that it is inclined to smoke, so please don’t play any stupid games. And inform your wife that the solicitor has a letter from my uncle in which he complains that she was trying to poison him; if I even become ill here, Bow Street will be informed. No unauthorised medicine, whoever tells you to do it. Is that understood?”
“Yew du talk as though Maggie and me have it in for you, madam,” said Henderson, resentfully.
“Well, yes,” said Lucy. “You and she made it quite clear how you felt about me when I stayed here when Papa was in foreign parts, and until Uncle Lucius noticed and laid down law, my cousin Luke got treats whilst I got bread-and-milk for tea, and Luke was thrashed for throwing a tantrum when Uncle Lucius swapped what we had been given. I am well aware you want me to fail and want to have him as a master; but consider this, Henderson! My cousin’s parents indulged him and spoilt him, and Maggie aided and abetted in that, and he is now, thanks to her and his parents, a thoroughly nasty young man, and don’t for one moment suppose he would treat you well. He’s the sort who throws things at a butler, and the moment you show to be infirm, Henderson, you’ll be fired by him, and he’ll say with a straight face that you refused a pension and a cottage to reclaim the money. I have asked the solicitor to place the money for your pension in escrow, to preserve it, so that it can’t be touched by anyone but you, and your name is on the deed as a tenant-for life, with rights for your wife to live out her life too. So just consider who has looked out for your interests, and think about how much Luke would do so.”
Henderson’s face had been working hard as Lucy made this crisp little speech.
“I... will consider your words, miss,” he said.
“Do,” said Lucy. “If you go out of your way to be helpful, if I find the pirate treasure, you will have a share. Though I suspect it has probably already been long since plundered on the quiet, if it existed in the first place.”
“Mr. Luke believes in it,” said Henderson.
“And he is likely to share even a keepsake from it with you?” said Lucy.
“.... No, madam,” said Henderson. “It keeps the wife sweet, pandering to Mr. Luke!” he burst out suddenly. “And it was a nuisance, having a child in the house, never knowing where you’d take it into your head to go exploring, and getting lost.”
“I never got lost!” said Lucy, stung. “I went places to read, and I found the secret stair beside the fireplace to the linen closet, and it was a convivial place to read. And I recall one summer it was hot, I discovered it was cool in the box room behind the water-tank, and another cool spot was up the oak tree in the bluebell glade.”
“We never knowed where yew moight git tu,” said Henderson, his local vernacular breaking out again.
“If you had asked me to tell you where I intended to go, I would probably have told you,” said Lucy, mildly. “Unless Luke was here in the School Holidays, when I might have been more reticent, as his idea of fun was taking books from me, and taunting me for not being able to run fast enough to catch him. And Uncle Lucius thrashed him for that, when he tore one up, because it was from Uncle Lucius’s library, and my uncle knew I would never tear up a book.”
“He told my missus you’d done it and laid blame on him,” said Henderson.
“And he lied about it being you who had broken a window, too,” said Lucy, “And you had a nasty half hour whilst Uncle Lucius questioned you, before he decided he knew who to belive.”
“Arr, thass roight,” said Henderson, thoughtfully. “Well, don’t yew worry yor hid, miss, I’ll see yew roight and toight. I’ll hev them ow fire going directly, and a cup o’ tea.”
“And tea for my maid-companion,” said Lucy.
“Yes, miss,” said Henderson, who had recognised the governess, and felt pity that she had to be a servant now.
Lucy left her pelisse and bonnet in the cloakroom under the stairs, and used the bramah closet in there. She met Arabella, engaged on the same mission, and waited for her, to go to the boudoir together.
Here, Henderson was coaxing the fire into life.
“Thank you, Henderson,” said Lucy. “That looks like being a merry blaze.”
“You’ll be warmed up in no time flat, Miss Fenwick, Miss Bellington,” said Henderson.
“Thank you, Henderson, your courtesies are appreciated,” said Arabella, flushing slightly, since Maggie Henderson had called her ‘Bellington,’ without any honourific, and crowed over ‘How are the mighty fallen.’
“Stand to reason, you’re still a lady, even if you are acting as a paid companion,” said Henderson. “Don’t you mind Maggie; she ain’t got much up top to think with, and she’s low, bein’ a mole-catcher’s daughter.”
“Why did you marry her, Henderson?” queried Lucy.
Henderson flushed, and muttered something which sounded like, “Caught handlin’ the goods.”
Lucy winced.
“A harsh sentence for the act,” she said.
“Ar, and entrapped me, she did, wantin’ a good position once Mr. Luke was out o’ the nursery, and bethinkin’ her that married to me would do her well enough, an’ leavin’ the door open an’ screamin’ fit to wearken the dead so’s Master Lucius come to see wass gooin’ on, an’ yew know what a stickler he wuz.”
“True enough,” said Lucy. “I can’t think of a way round it.”
“Well, I been punished for my transgressions,” said Henderson gloomily. “I’ll get that tea.”
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