The Flight of Swallows Read online

  The next time he was aware of himself, again in the same bed but with candles glowing about the place, he managed to turn his head, just enough to see her and there she was, sitting right next to his bed with her breast uncovered and in her arms lay a baby whose milky mouth was attached to her nipple. The most beautiful sight he had ever seen! His Charlotte . . . and a baby, his baby . . . what was her name? A lovely child, a little girl, and his . . . his . . . with his dearest . . . dearest . . . his love.

  ‘My love . . .,’ he sighed, the first time he had ever called her that out loud and even now barely above a whisper, and at once she rose to her feet and came to him, her smile dazzling, the baby still in her arms and bent over him and nothing was ever the same for them again.

  ‘Oh, my love’ she answered, the first time she had ever said those words. She began to weep. ‘My darling . . . Oh, Brooke, I thought I had lost you.’ Then she leaned over and kissed him and her tears fell on his face. The baby grizzled between them, her mouth searching for the friendly nipple but her mother was absorbed with her father and rather impatiently turned and put her down somewhere then, with the greatest delicacy, lay down next to him.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you, darling, and for this.’ Her breath was sweet and warm against his neck though she hardly touched him lest she hurt some damaged part of him.

  ‘How long?’ he asked hoarsely.

  ‘All my life, I think, but I didn’t know it. I needed to love someone; a man, and it turned out to be you.’ She sounded surprised and her voice was still choked with those amazing tears.

  ‘My love . . .’

  ‘Yes, I am and you are mine . . .’

  ‘Dear God, I’ve waited . . . and now I can’t damn well touch you. But I meant how . . . how long have I been . . .’ He was very weak and his voice was beginning to fade.

  She thought he might be drifting off again into that morphine-induced sleep Doctor Chapman had so miraculously achieved. ‘A week; the bull at Jack Emmerson’s . . .’

  ‘Yes, the bloody bull . . . I remember now . . .’ then he slipped away again. Carefully she eased herself from him and turned to the baby who was ready to let her know that it was her turn now. Moving slowly, mopping her eyes, for she was frail herself, she pulled the bell and almost at once Kizzie was there, bending over the master’s bed then turning to her and the baby, whose full-throated yell was getting under way.

  ‘’Od thi’ ’osses, Miss Charlotte, an’ give yon baby ter me. Aisling’s got some babby milk ter ’elp out so I’ll tekk ’er up. Now see, I’m ringin’t doctor an’ ’e’ll be over as soon as that gig can get ’im ’ere. Oh, my lass, my lass, what a worry the pair o’ thi’ ’ave bin. See, get thi’ ter bed; no, I know tha’ don’t want ter leave ’im but tha’ own little bed’s right ’ere next to ’is an’ when ’e wakes there yer’ll be.’

  Charlotte allowed herself to be tucked up in the truckle bed that had been brought to lie next to the one Brooke occupied, turning on to her right side so that she could see him but she began to doze and within minutes was asleep so that when Doctor Chapman arrived both his patients were out for the count. Kizzie helped him to pull back the covers on the injured man and gently remove the dressings on his wound. He sniffed at it and apparently seemed satisfied.

  ‘No smell of bad cheese,’ he murmured as though talking to himself.

  ‘Bad cheese?’

  ‘Aye, gangrene. Let’s hope there’s no infection, though this is a strong, healthy man and should recover.’

  Looking at the absolutely dreadful injury in Brooke Armstrong’s groin, Kizzie found it hard to believe, but if any man could mend her master it was this one.

  ‘Now Mrs Armstrong. I’m afraid we’ll have to wake her so that I can examine her stitches, which I might remove.’

  Charlotte sat up abruptly when Kizzie gently shook her, then, seeing the doctor smiling down at her, turned at once to Brooke.

  ‘No, Mrs Armstrong, your husband is doing well as far as I can see. It is you I wish to examine.’

  ‘He is . . . Doctor, make him better, please. I cannot bear it if . . . I love him so, you see, and . . .’

  Kizzie put her hand to her face, since if anybody knew how Miss Charlotte had felt about her husband it was she. Miss Charlotte had married him for the sake of others, her brothers and at the insistence of her bullying father. Now, it seemed, he had become dear to her and Kizzie felt the emotion well up in her, for did this mean her young mistress was to find the happiness and fulfilment she had previously lacked?

  ‘He will need careful nursing.’

  ‘I will nurse him,’ Charlotte said eagerly.

  ‘No, my dear, a professional nurse.’

  ‘That one for the baby was—’

  ‘I know, but I do believe the young woman – Aisling? – is doing a good job which will give you more time to . . . to cosset your husband. Your love is his best medicine, but now let me look at you and see if those stitches can come out; then, when your husband is himself again you and he will be able to . . . to . . . resume . . .’

  Kizzie turned away and was ready to weep as she had seen Miss Charlotte do only an hour or so ago because it seemed there was to be a happy household again and with Jenny as her deputy at the Dower House her mistress and master could be the husband and wife, the friends, the lovers Kizzie had always wanted for them.

  In an untidy and none too clean bedroom in the home that had once been Charlotte’s and her five brothers’ a woman bled slowly to death, almost drowning her newborn child before the slovenly midwife in attendance noticed the infant was born.

  ‘Oh bugger,’ she groaned, heaving herself from the chair before the good fire she herself had built up. She hastily lifted the baby from between the thighs of what she could see was a dead woman, cut the cord and placed the child, still smeared with the detritus of birth, in the cradle that awaited it. Hastily she rang a bell and when, five minutes later, a young maid appeared, she told her to run for the master.

  ‘’E ain’t in. Gone off on ’is ’orse, Cook ses. There’s only me an’ Tilly. Cook’s restin’ her legs, she ses, an’ can’t get off ’er bum, no, not for nobody. What’s up?’

  The midwife’s voice dropped to a whisper. ‘She’s gone.’

  ‘Gone where, fer God’s sake?’ The maid’s voice was impatient. How could a woman in labour have gone anywhere?

  ‘Dead, that’s where.’

  The maid moved slowly across the room and looked at the poor bedraggled figure on the bed. ‘Jesus wept. An’ babby an’ all?’

  ‘No, it’s in cradle but—’

  ‘Girl or boy?’

  ‘Nay, I never noticed.’

  ‘Poor little sod. Livin’ in this ’ouse wi’out a mam . . .’

  ‘Or a pa, most like!’

  ‘What shall us do?’

  ‘Send fer’t doctor.’

  ‘Nay.’ The maid reared back. ‘I ain’t using that there machine.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got ter do summat. ’Appen send the lad from’t stable.’

  ‘Aye,’ the maid said eagerly, ‘but what about babby?’

  ‘’Appen yer’d best ask lad ter fetch master’s lass. ’Er what lives at . . . where is it? Married that feller . . .’

  The maid looked relieved, speeding from the room as though being chased by the devil, leaving the midwife shaking her head in total disbelief.

  19

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, you cannot possibly leave your bed, not for a while. You are still not healed completely and I cannot answer for the consequences if—’

  ‘Doctor Chapman, my stepmother has died giving birth to a child and I must go to . . . to my old home to see if there is anything I can do for my father and the baby. There is no one else to . . . we have no family, only myself and my brothers and I feel—’

  ‘Mrs Armstrong, I know it is none of my business but your father . . . people are talking; and there is your husband to consider. He needs you here.’

  ‘I shall l
eave Nellie to look after him and Aisling can manage Lucy for an hour or so. It’s not very far, Doctor. I shall take Kizzie with me; she is reliable and kind and will make sure I come to no harm.’

  ‘But it is only just over a week since you were delivered. I cannot allow—’

  ‘Doctor, please, I must go and I beg you not to tell my husband. He is asleep and need not even know I have gone. Nellie will stay with him and I shall be back before he wakes.’

  And so it was that eighteen months after she had left to marry Brooke, Charlotte was driven in the carriage by Todd, the coachman, through the gates of the Mount, her old home, Kizzie beside her, stalwart, sensible and her head filled with instructions from the doctor and dire warnings if she should allow her mistress to become upset. Kizzie was not sure exactly what the doctor meant by that, for Kizzie had no influence over Mr Drummond nor indeed any of the servants at Mr Drummond’s home, but as they drew up in front of the house, she took Miss Charlotte’s cold hand in hers. They were both wrapped up against the raw winter cold, the mistress in a fur-lined cloak and Kizzie in her own warm winter coat, as was Todd in a huge, many collared cloak and it was clear from the expression on the face of the maidservant who opened the door that she was amazed to see them. She had been kitchen-maid when Miss Charlotte lived there but now, it seemed, she had been elevated to parlour-maid, and where, Charlotte wondered, was Nancy who had once opened the door to visitors.

  ‘Miss Charlotte,’ Dolly stuttered, ‘us wasn’t expectin’ visitors.’ She wiped her hands down her soiled apron and hastily stood to one side as Charlotte stepped into the hall.

  ‘I can see that. Where is your master, if you please?’ From the corner of her eye she could see Kizzie glancing round the hallway which, when Charlotte and Kizzie lived there, shone with cleanliness but now, though not noticeably dirty, was hazed with a general air of dust, of somewhere that was not given a great deal of attention and Charlotte remembered that her father’s second wife had not been domesticated.

  ‘’E’s not in, miss . . . ma’am. Gone off on ’is ’orse, if tha’ please, ma’am.’

  ‘His horse! Do you mean to tell me he is out hunting?’

  ‘Nay, miss, I don’t know.’

  ‘Where is Mrs Banks?’ who had been housekeeper when Charlotte lived there.

  ‘In’t kitchen, if tha’ please, ma’am,’ and for good measure she bobbed a curtsey.

  ‘Send her to me at once. I will wait in the drawing room. Come, Kizzie.’

  The drawing room was as neglected as the hallway and there was no fire. The chill was numbing and their breath hung on the air as though they were in the garden! Charlotte reflected that if this was the general standard here in the main hallway and drawing room what might the conditions in the nursery be?

  It took Mrs Banks five minutes to arrive and she had clearly been taking her ease in the kitchen, for her dress was somewhat dishevelled. ‘Miss Charlotte . . . Mrs Armstrong, ma’am. We weren’t expecting . . . the master said . . . well, visitors weren’t expected.’

  ‘Clearly! And visitors is hardly the word I would use. There has been a death in the family and surely . . . surely Mrs Drummond’s family are . . . should be . . . here.’

  ‘No, ma’am, at least not yet. Sir Clive has been informed but it is believed he is infirm and . . . well . . . her mam died a few months ago so . . .’

  Mrs Banks’s expression faltered but it clearly said that this was nothing to do with her. It was up to the master to attend to such things. The body of their mistress had been laid out carefully by some woman the midwife had recommended and was lying in one of the spare bedrooms. The baby was in the nursery and Mrs Banks was awaiting further orders.

  ‘When is the funeral to be?’ Charlotte asked her sharply, for she and her brothers must surely attend; this was their father’s wife and they owed him some sort of duty, despite his previous cruelty to them.

  ‘I’ve not been told, ma’am,’ Mrs Banks answered primly.

  Charlotte stood for a moment while Mrs Banks and Kizzie watched her, then, her mind made up, she walked purposefully towards the drawing room door.

  ‘I will see the child if you please,’ for this was, after all, her half-sister or -brother.

  Mrs Banks sprang into life, the hands that had been folded across her apron suddenly waving in denial.

  ‘I’ll send Dolly up to see if it is—’

  ‘No, you won’t. Come with me, Kizzie. What I would like to know is where are Nancy and Mary? You seemed to be ill-served. Dolly, if I remember, was kitchen-maid when I was here last and now she is answering the door. My . . . my stepmother surely . . .’

  Mrs Banks could have told a few tales of what had been happening here since the young mistress left to marry. The neglect, the total disorder that had prevailed, since it seemed the new Mrs Drummond had not been brought up to run a household and it was well known that the servants of a house without a competent mistress soon learned to drift through the days at their own pace. That was why Nancy and Mary had left, being decent girls with a proper idea of how a house should be run. Then there were the parties, the drunkenness and . . . and other things that Mrs Banks dared not speak of. At first they had disliked their new mistress with her high-faluting ways but gradually they had begun to feel sorry for her as things had gone from bad to worse. She and the master had had terrible rows but the master was the master after all and would have his own way and now the poor lady was dead.

  She trailed after Miss Charlotte and the woman Mrs Banks remembered and who, so far, had not spoken, sighing for what they might find in the nursery; even before they reached the closed nursery door they could hear the weak wailing of the baby. Charlotte opened the door with such force the woman lolling by the fire almost fell into it. She had no idea who Charlotte was, obviously a lady, and at first she tried to brazen out her own neglect of the child in her keeping, babbling that it was weakly and would not take the milk offered. She had risen hastily to her feet, pushing them into well-worn shoes. She bobbed a curtsey and made haste to go to the baby in what Charlotte recognised as the family cradle.

  ‘I were just goin’ ter try an’ feed poor wee mite,’ she declared slyly but Kizzie, with a raised hand, waved her away.

  ‘Leave t’ bairn,’ she told her peremptorily and the woman fell back, but she had not yet given up hope that this was a temporary interruption and that she could resume her shiftless care of the baby about whom nobody seemed to care.

  ‘’Ere, ’oo d’yer think you are, tellin’ me what ter do? I were employed ter care fer the babby—’

  ‘Yer doin’ nowt o’t sort. Now lass,’ turning to Charlotte, ‘sit down by t’ fire and I’ll see t’t child. Mrs Banks will bring yer a hot drink. We’ll wrap bairn up and tekk it ’ome wi’ us. Does anyone know t’ sex of the baby?’

  ‘Wha’?’

  ‘Boy or girl, fer God’s sake?’ Charlotte sat down thankfully and pondered briefly on how Kizzie had become so accomplished in the managing of . . . of things. The months she had spent supervising the girls and children and activities at the Dower House had evidently given her an authority she had not had when they lived at the Mount.

  ‘Girl.’

  ‘Where’s milk?’ Kizzie asked sharply.

  ‘Warmin’ in’t pan,’ the woman answered sullenly.

  ‘An’t’ bottle?’

  ‘Ont’ dresser.’

  ‘I’ll have some ’ot water an’ all.’ She rang the bell and when a wan-faced maid whom she and Miss Charlotte did not know appeared at the door ordered her to bring up a kettle of hot water and a cup of hot chocolate for the master’s daughter.

  ‘Wha’?’ The girl looked bewildered.

  ‘Jesus God,’ Kizzie blasphemed. ‘Are all t’ servants in this house ’alf-witted?’

  ‘Wha’?’

  Kizzie turned to Charlotte. ‘D’ost think tha’ could nurse baby fer five minutes while I run down to t’ kitchen. This woman ’ere’ – indicating the woman who had ha
d care of the child – ‘can’t be trusted.’

  ‘Now see ’ere. I’ll not be spoken ter—’

  ‘Tha’d be wise ter keep tha’ mouth shut, lady,’ Kizzie snapped.

  The baby, her half-sister, was placed carefully on Charlotte’s lap while the woman, highly indignant and muttering she had no intention of stopping where she was not wanted, scampered for the door, followed by Kizzie.

  Charlotte held her tiny half-sister in her arms, looking down at the wisp of a face and saw there not her father or Elizabeth, but Robbie, Robbie as she remembered him from years ago.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ she whispered and put her fingertip on the pale cheek and at once the child stopped whimpering and stared with milky, unfocused eyes into the face that leaned over her.

  When Kizzie returned, without a word Charlotte took the bottle from her and guided the teat into the little pursed mouth and at once the baby started to suck. Her little hand clenched round Charlotte’s finger and Kizzie watched, knowing exactly what was to happen next.

  ‘As you said we can’t leave her here.’

  ‘No. I’ll wrap ’er up and we’ll tekk ’er ’ome.’

  She was put in the nursery, her crib next to that of the baby who was her niece, her half-niece, was it, Charlotte wanted to know. As soon as she was settled, they lay side by side sleeping, warm, fed, bathed, and the question of who was to help Aisling with two babies came up.