Chapter 16
“Well, young Penelope, wha’s tae dae wi’ ma bonny Daisy?” said Dr. Macfarlane.
“Come awa’ ben, and I’ll gi’ ye the whull bawr forebye,” said Penelope.
Graham raised an eyebrow. Penelope was not a girl to mock, for all her facility with mimicry. So she was using it to conceal what she said from anyone who was unfamiliar with his idiom.
“Aye, iph’m,” he said, with a nod.
Penelope waited until they were on the first landing before filling in Graham fully.
“And though it’s the shooting at Julian which has upset Daisy, that wretched bishop is downstairs, arrived before breakfast if you please!,” she finished.
“Is Daisy abed voluntarily?” asked Graham.
“No, she’s spitting nails, but Julian is very firm at times,” said Penelope. Graham heaved a deep sigh of relief.
“Ma bonnie ween, you relieve my mind wonderfully. I was sair worrit tae think of Daisy choosing bedrest.”
“Oh, I am sorry, Dr. Mac! I didn’t mean to worry you, but Julian didn’t want her killing a bishop or calling him any of the things in the works by Horace most of us aren’t allowed to read.”
Graham laughed.
“Definitely you set my mind at rest,” he said. “Tell Lady Herongate I’ll join her in the breakfast room shortly.”
“Had you eaten? Only they were clearing.”
“I hadn’t, but I’ll manage.”
“Havers! I’ll put a sandwich together for you,” said Penelope, running off to leave him to tap at Daisy’s door.
Graham laughed. Penelope had come on no end, and had almost lost her stutter.
She found that Henderson was about to clear the table.
“I need to make a sandwich for the doctor,” she said, absently snagging a rasher of bacon to eat.
Henderson assisted as Penelope put together an egg sandwich, well peppered, from the left over buttered egg, and a bacon sandwich, putting both between two plates. She ran up with it, and a fresh cup of tea, and knocked.
Julian answered.
“For Doctor Mac,” said Penelope.
“Oh, good girl,” said Julian. “He’ll be down presently.”
Daisy was chuckling at something Graham had said to her, so Penelope felt much heartened.
Hermione stuck her head out of her bedroom.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“The bishop turned up,” said Penelope. “Get all the girls to wear demure muslins and loan Veronica one if she has nothing plain, hair in plaits, and tell Miss Wyatt to try to be dowdy. Lady Herongate is set on making the bishop feel as guilty as possible; she remembers him as a little boy.”
Hermione giggled.
“One gaggle of demure schoolroom misses coming up; shall I help you plait your hair?”
“Yes please: he rather took me by surprise,” said Penelope.
When she got back into the breakfast room, it was to find Lady Herongate and Sir Brabazon on high, uncomfortable looking high-backed chairs, which she knew by experience were more comfortable than they looked. They were back to the window, along with the other men. Henderson and a footman were putting out chairs for the other girls. A chair was set for the bishop, more or less facing the men and Lady Herongate. It was one of the delicate Louis Quattorze chairs Lady Herongate kept in the vestibule for unwanted visitors, being as uncomfortable as it was decorative, with a shiny satin seat which was hard to stay sat on without sliding.
Abby stared at the demure figure she made with shock.
Penelope beamed.
“I am sure Dr. Mac and Julian will be down shortly,” she said. “Should Henderson bring in a day bed and put it to the other side of the tribunal, with a chair for Julian to further conceal m’lud’s intentions?”
“You are a bad girl, Penelope,” said Lady Herongate happily. “Henderson!”
“I’ll bring in the bishop so he can witness Daisy carried in,” said Penelope.
Hermione would lurk for a good strategic time after the Bishop had been conveyed through.
Penelope privately thought it might be fun to do this to the vicar, but if the bishop was sufficiently intimidated, the vicar would suffer for it.
She went into the blue salon.
“Lady Herongate is ready to speak to you now, my lord,” she said, bobbing a curtsey.
“Are you the same child I met before? Miss Belfield? Surely you are not old enough to get married?” demanded the bishop.
“Oh, quite old enough in law, my lord, but Aunt Augusta wants me to have another year of schooling and a season,” said Penelope, who was well aware that her stunted size allied with wearing her hair in plaits made her look no older than twelve. “I am sorry that you caught me in relative dishabille this morning; I was not looking for visitors so early.”
“Er, no, indeed,” said the Bishop. He and his equerry followed her meekly through, and Penelope went to take her place on one of the chairs set out for the girls, after the pattern of twelve good men and true.
“Take a seat, Tommy Trotter, and when my nephew and the guardian of the orphans is here, you can tell me your plans for hell’s vicar,” said Lady Herongate.
The bishop seated himself gingerly on the spindly chair and the equerry looked for a moment as if he was going to collect a chair for himself, received a glare from Lady Herongate, and stood behind his employer’s chair.
The other girls trooped in, shepherded by Miss Wyatt, whose auburn hair was strained back and hidden under an ugly cap. The bishop rose, perforce, as did the other gentlemen, but the bishop had to overcome the tendencies of his chair to slide him off rather than to rise. The girls sat silently and demurely, looking down at their folded hands. Then Graham Macfarlane stalked in and went to the empty seat, followed by Julian carrying Daisy, wrapped in a quilt. This necessitated the bishop rising again for Daisy.
Daisy had been outraged at playing the invalid, but Julian had pointed out that any woman with less fortitude might have lost a child from shock, and that she owed it to all womankind to get rid of Gore-Sheldon.
Daisy sank onto the daybed managing to look exhausted.
“Daisy, should you have come down?” Lady Herongate did not have to dissemble her concern.
“I don’t want to lie up there alone, not knowing if that horrid man is going to attack us again,” said Daisy. “He’s a madman! Suppose he chose to accuse us of not being properly married because we were married in Brighton, not by him? He has some unreasoning antipathy to the family! And I don’t know why, because my sisters and I never saw him before!”
“Sshh, my love, the bishop will get rid of him,” said Julian. “Perhaps he just gets a thrill out of attacking little girls, especially if he thinks them orphans and so unprotected.”
“I don’t suppose for one moment that the Reverend Gore-Sheldon intended to attack anyone ...” began the bishop.
“Oh, are you going to try to cover up slandering the blameless girls my aunt invited as company for young Pen?” demanded Julian, leaping up and louring over the bishop.
“How dare ye, ye shilpit wee sumpf, juist because ma girrrrls are orphaned and a’ alone in the worrrld, and nae doot ye think the same of wee Daisy, Mrs. Nettleby, that is?” demanded Graham.
“And I wonder at you condoning calling any young girl debauched and licentiouous, and to do so in front of the two of us who are fathers of two of the girls, implying that we have sold their honour takes defamation to the King’s Magistrate, namely me!” roared Sir Brabazon. “A ‘so-called house-party encouraging debauchery and licentiousness’ is what he said. How do explain that as not meaning an attack? I wrote down his words at the time, and I asked every village worthy to sign that it was a true deposition of what he said.”
“The fine legal mind,” said Lady Herongate, approvingly. “So, Tommy, what are you going to do about him?”
The bishop was spluttering.
“I ... I did not realise it was so ... so bad,” he said. He so was dead when he gave the report to the Archbishop. “I ... I thought that if an apology was read out in church ...”
“Insufficient,” said Lady Herongate, coldly. “It will go to law.”
“But Lady Herongate! The scandal!” cried the bishop. “It ... it might damage the prospects of the young ladies ...”
“The scandal is in a malicious attack on the reputations of the young ladies in public,” said Lady Herongate. “I have to take it to law or there will always be whispers of no smoke without fire, and their prospects have already been damaged by your vicar, appointed by you, your representative.”
Bishop Trotter had never felt so much in need of Divine Intervention. He wiped his sweating brow with a kerchief.
“I ... perhaps your lawyers can meet with mine ... settle out of court ...”
“I doubt any court in the land would set damages at less than three thousand apiece for the loss of reputation,” said Sir Brabazon. “Including the unfortunate Miss Wyatt, a governess of impeccable character, who is essentially, along with Lady Herongate, accused of being an Abbess.”
“I ... yes, three thousand apiece for the eight ladies ...”
“No, my lord bishop, nine ladies; you forget Lady Herongate. Plus her niece by marriage and her nephew, whose heir is threatened by the stress and strain; myself and Wincanton for being accused of selling our daughters, and my son and the other four young men, including your own curate, another employment-affecting accusation, who are essentially called rakes,” said Sir Brabazon. “And I echo Lady Herongate’s question, what are you going to do about this fellow?”
“I ... my diocese could not afford that,” whispered the bishop, calculating rapidly.
“That’s not my problem,” said Sir Brabazon. “Remember, it might be more if it goes to court, plus the costs of the case. Mrs. Nettleby may be an orphan technically, but she is also the granddaughter of a duke, and can bring a lot of pressure to bear. I am not badly connected myself. However, we might permit ourselves to be argued down a little if we know that the Gore-Sheldon fellow is going to be duly punished for his contumely.”
“I ... I was thinking of sending him to sea,” he said. “And I will personally apologise from the same pulpit next Sunday.”
“Why should poor sailors have to have him?” said Hermione. “My brother’s a midshipman and he doesn’t want someone like that horrid man.”
“Sea? The only sea I want to see him in is the Marshalsea,” growled Mr. Wincanton, naming the notoriously unpleasant debtors’ prison. “That’s my little girl he defamed, as well as essentially saying my son and I are debauchers.”
“I want him unfrocked,” said Daisy. “I want him to know what it’s like to be destitute, like the people he is always castigating as ungodly and blasphemous for caring more about where the next meal is coming from than in worrying about the right form in which to cast their prayers. And I want to make sure that he cannot hide behind the skirts of the Mother Church to spread his calumnies so that nil disputandum cui mendax est.”
“Nobody disputes who the liar is, my love, my flower,” crooned Julian. His voice sharpened to address the bishop. “Send your lawyers to talk to ours; we will all be represented by my lawyers who also represent the orphanage, Mr. Andrew Embury, who has received the deposition carried by my friend, Matt Hobson, who came to see you. And see that Gore-Sheldon is unfrocked, and that the apologies comes from you, directly, on Sunday. I am sure your lawyers will extract as much as they can from Gore-Sheldon for his failure to fulfil his contract as a man of God.”
“Yes ... indeed,” said the bishop.
He almost stumbled out, not daring to ask for another cup of coffee.
“Vae victor, vae victis,” said Daisy.
“You’re more interested in the ‘woe to the vanquished’ in getting him defrocked, than the ‘spoils to the victor,’ I know,” said Julian, “But it is right and proper that those people who could really suffer from his words, like Miss Wyatt, Mr. Golightly, Matt Hobson, and any of the girls should have compensation. And, for that matter, Miss Vane’s mother, who could be accused of sending her to a house of iniquity it could affect her remarriage chances. Sir Brabazon’s name as a magistrate is called into question; and no man wants to be called the unpleasant names which were implied. If I weren’t a personal friend, I could lose my contract to write children’s books for the orphanages, Abby and Sin could be unable to marry and carry on their family names, consider the insult if someone asked Mr. Wincanton how much he charged for a night with Sylvia! The money counts. It has to hurt the bishop to make sure he is more careful in future; if it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t count.”
Matt Hudson came into the room.
“Was that the bishop, leaving?” he said. “I filed all the paperwork. Mr. Embury was very pleased to represent everyone.”
“The bishop wants to settle out of court,” said Daisy.
“Of course he does, Mrs. Nettleby,” said Matt. “The clerk of the court was almost salivating at how much he might get out of such a juicy case, he didn’t think the damages would come to much less than five zeroes.”
“More than my estimate,” said Sir Brabazon. “Indeed, around twice as much, but a clerk of the court will know more about what sort of damages are set for such things than a country magistrate. Does Mr. Embury know?”
“Oh, yes,” said Matt, happily. “He was rubbing his hands gleefully.”
“We agreed to let him pay a little less for giving a personal apology and unfrocking the fellow,” said Daisy. “But that’s to be argued over by lawyers. You look uncommonly happy, Matt.”
“I am; it was most enjoyable representing persons of standing in court, not being in a situation to be looked down upon,” said Matt. “Moreover, as I rode back up here, I heard a rumour that Ned Atherton is taken. Only I thought I’d bring the news that I have completed my commissions before going out to verify the rumours.”
“Have you had breakfast, Mr. Hobson?” asked Lady Herongate.
“I had some gruel and coddled egg some hours ago,” said Matt.
“Henderson will send you up coffee, and eggs and bacon,” said Lady Herongate.
“Thank you kindly, ma’am,” said Matt.
