The Flight of Swallows Read online

  Brooke was totally recovered now and even Wallace Chapman was pleased with the way in which his wound had healed, causing no permanent damage to his upper thigh. He had a very slight limp which Wallace said he thought would disappear altogether with exercise and he was back in the saddle with Arch’s help. For the first few weeks, to his chagrin and in his opinion totally unnecessarily, Charlotte insisted that Arch went with him when he resumed his rounds of the farms on horseback. It was over a year since he had been attacked by Jack Emmerson’s bull and the first time he visited the farm Mrs Emmerson wept tears of joy, obliging him to dismount and sample her latest elderberry wine or perhaps a glass of ale. Jack and Mrs Emmerson had always felt they were to blame for Mr Armstrong’s accident, but their landlord would have none of it, making light of his year’s convalescence, laughing and making a joke of it all. And it hadn’t stopped him from getting his lady wife with child, had it, though none of them spoke of it except Jack and his missis after he had gone. Eeh, he were a grand chap, were Mr Armstrong.

  His other tenants, too, were overjoyed to see him back, insisting he sat in their kitchens and have a sip of this or that until he complained to Arch on the way home it was a good job Arch was along or he would have fallen off his bloody horse he felt so merry!

  Charlotte was alone in the office, her head bent over one of her account books, her mind marvelling at their success, when the door from the courtyard opened and then closed again quietly. She heard the door open and close but she did not hear the key turn in the lock.

  ‘I can’t get over how well that stall in Wakefield is doing,’ she remarked, not looking up. ‘You and I will have to get over to Huddersfield soon, Jenny. When Hetty’s baby arrives I shall see if she is willing to take it on. Perhaps Cassie or Edna could do it at first and Hetty go to Wakefield with one of them until she gets the hang of it. What d’you think?’

  She lifted her head and smiled into the amused face of her father!

  ‘Quite honestly, my dear, I don’t give a damn what you do with those trollops you employ. I just want you to know I don’t approve and my approval or disapproval could make a great deal of trouble for you. Yes, you, my dear. You must remember my disapproval and the punishment that went with it. Please, Charlotte, close your mouth, you look quite absurd with it hanging open like that. Did you think all those men you have lolling about the grounds would keep me from you? Oh, they were very responsible at first. Everywhere. I went there was one of the louts on the lookout for intruders but as time goes by and nothing untoward happens they become careless and I’m sure that if I attempted to snatch back my young daughter I should have no trouble at all.’

  He leaned his back against the door, lounging with his usual arrogance, his hands in his pockets, his mouth lifted in a contemptuous sneer.

  Charlotte knew she must look foolish with her mouth hanging open, her pen poised in one hand, but she was so astonished she could not help it and wondered why she felt no fear. The blood had drained from her face and her mouth was so dry she could not speak, but after all there were men within shouting distance, for as she had crossed the gravel drive at the front of the house, no more than a stone’s throw from where she now sat, she had seen John and Ned carefully pruning branches from a lime tree at the beginning of the mile-long drive. And there were five girls with their heads bent industriously over their work in the workshop.

  Charlotte sighed as though at the tantrums of a naughty child and Arthur Drummond’s face hardened. ‘Father, I don’t know how you got in here but please leave by the same way. You know you can do nothing to harm the children, or your daughter. Ellie is—’

  ‘Ellie, as you call her, is my daughter. Child of my wife’s body and put there by me. She is mine, legally, and no court on earth would take her away from the good home she would have with me. You have no rights over her, nor has that opinionated husband of yours. Oh, I know he has consulted a lawyer, but so have I. But it need not come to that, my dear. I just want to . . . to be friends with you again.’ His voice was silky with menace. ‘To be admitted into your circle, though it has come to my notice that you shun good society these days. They tell me they never see you, the Ackroyds and the Dentons, but it has not gone unnoticed that Wallace Chapman and his wife have become . . . intimate with you. But that is no concern of mine. You are, Charlotte, if you get my meaning. I saw the boys at Christmas riding in the woods, by the way. They are growing into fine young men, I see. Henry at Cambridge and William in his last year at Barton Meade so I have been told. You have done well with my children, Charlotte, and are to be congratulated. But I would like to remind you that I can put a stop to this charade any time I feel like it.’

  He smiled at her and moved across the office in a way she remembered from her days as a child and a young girl and there was no doubt in her mind what he had in his! She didn’t know what form it would take but it was all there in his manner and the way his eyes glowed hotly as they ran over her. He would not force her – force her to do what, for God’s sake? He had no need, had he? She would go along with whatever he asked of her and go willingly. He had only to mention Ellie or even his sons and the fight would be over. She could defy him. She could tell Brooke, who would probably kill him and the constables would come and take him away and he would hang and . . . Sweet Jesus . . . Oh, dear, dear God, this was her father, her father, threatening that if she did not submit to . . . to whatever his foul mind had in store for her he would destroy his family, as there was no doubt that not only would Ellie suffer but also his sons who were still minors and must do as he said. They could fight, she and Brooke, but then Brooke would be in danger.

  She tried to outface him. Her lion heart pumped hot blood through her body and she stood up, her expression as contemptuous as his. Her face was the colour of pipe clay and her eyes a brilliant blue as madness took over and if she had had a knife, or even the letter opener that was usually on her desk there was the distinct possibility she would have sliced it into his body. She stiffened her back, lifted her head challengingly and glared at him.

  ‘What do you want from me?’ she spat at him.

  ‘Come now, daughter, is it too much to expect some show of affection for your father? I would find it most enjoyable to meet you now and again in the . . . say in the woods now that the summer is coming and the weather will allow us to . . . to . . .’

  Here he spoke words of such obscenity, such odious, scarcely understood grossness that Charlotte felt her senses begin to slip away as he smeared her with filth and she could only think she was mistaken. She must be. He could not possibly mean what he was saying, but then she remembered the girls who had crept into her house to escape the wickedness, the lewdness, the abuse their own fathers had offered them. They bore children their fathers had forced upon them. And had not her own father, this man who taunted her, had he not always been perverted in his treatment of herself? He had beaten her on her bare buttocks as she stood with her drawers round her ankles, her skirts pushed up about her waist. She supposed he had treated his wives, her mother and the dead mother of the happy little girl growing up in the nursery beside her own children, in the same way. He was depraved and for some reason his depravity was directed at Charlotte Armstrong, his own child. He must have access to almost any woman he wanted, for he was a handsome, well-connected man with a few bob in his pocket as they said in the north. And there were whores, pretty ones who would be pleased to accommodate his perversions, but for some reason he was after her. He did not want his baby daughter back as she meant nothing to him and his sons, especially the two older boys, were young men now and would not be as pliable as they had been three years ago.

  But from somewhere she found her strength and all the girls in the other room looked up, startled, as their mistress shouted something, they couldn’t hear what, at the man who stood before her.

  ‘Get off my property, you loathsome creature, you beast, and don’t come back or my husband will shoot you where you stand when I tell
him what you have just said to me. Self-defence it will be called and he will not be punished—’

  ‘Will he not, my dear?’ Arthur Drummond’s smile was lazy.

  ‘And if he doesn’t kill you I will. I will defend my children—’

  ‘Really, Charlotte, how dramatic you are. I am not threatening your children. I just want us to be friends as once we were.’

  ‘We’re not friends and never, never will be.’ The memory of their last encounter nearly a year ago now was vivid in her mind and she felt a violent need to vomit as her stomach churned. Then he had abused her as he had done before she married Brooke, punishing her for some malevolent thing that wriggled like a worm in his damaged mind. She couldn’t even remember what he had said to her, for she had simply turned off her own awareness and allowed him to beat her, but just for a moment his hands, without the cane, had smoothed across her bare flesh and his breathing, which had already been harsh, quickened and it was from that, and for that he wanted her.

  ‘Well, my dear, we shall see about that. Look out for me in the woods or indeed anywhere I wish to go. You will need eyes in the back of your head, my love, if you are to avoid your loving father.’

  With a suddenness that startled her, he turned his back on her, unlocked the door and slipped through it, making his way across the yard to the gate that led into the lane. He had said nothing more but then did he need to? Even if she avoided the woods, the walks, the lanes, the meadows where she, Aisling and Rosie liked to take the children, would she ever feel safe again? And not only for herself but Brooke, her servants, the girls who worked for her and trusted her. The three new girls went home at night to their families in the village and since they were simple, innocent, trusting girls might he not wheedle one of them . . . Oh, dear God, what was she to do?

  An hour later Kizzie found her curled up in a corner of the house, her husband’s house, so lately a place of refuge, love and happiness, high in the roof where all the furniture bought by previous Armstrong wives and discarded by others was neatly stored. She had hidden herself deep in a small recess made by a tall chiffonier and a wardrobe from another time. She was the colour of a mushroom and she was shivering though the day was warm.

  Had Kizzie not gone up to the attic to retrieve a small set of drawers that she remembered and which would do nicely for the new girl’s bedroom, they would have grown worried as to the whereabouts of the mistress who had not been seen since first thing that morning. Hetty’s baby was due any day and she would need somewhere to keep the new baby’s garments, tiny things saved from the previous babies born at the Dower House. Kizzie was sure the drawers had been put into the attic and if she found them she would get a couple of the men to fetch them down and carry them over to the Dower House.

  Instead she found Charlotte. For a moment she was dumbstruck by the sight of her young mistress – who was her mistress despite Miss Charlotte’s declaration that Kizzie was her friend – weeping silently but in a way that said she was heartbroken, in the overhang of the roof.

  ‘Lass, lass, what is it?’ She pushed her way through the conglomeration of old furniture as quickly as she could, kneeling down to sweep Charlotte into her loving arms. ‘What tha’ doin’ up ’ere cryin’ tha’ eyes out? What’s up, chuck? ‘As someone ’urt thi’ ’cos if they ’ave they’ll ’ave me ter deal with. Tell us, lass, what’s up? Nay, give over, tell Kizzie. Tha’ know what they say, a trouble shared’s a trouble ’alved. See, come ’ere ter Kizzie. Wipe tha’ eyes, blow tha’ nose an’ tell us what’s up. There, there, I’m ’ere, tha’s all right . . .’

  She rocked the distraught woman to and fro in the way a mother rocks a hurt child and after a while Charlotte was calm enough to speak.

  ‘I don’t . . . know what to . . . do, Kizzie,’ she got out between sobs and hiccups. ‘He’ll never let go . . . and I’m frightened . . . not just for me . . . though that is terrifying enough . . . but for . . . for the children . . . Brooke . . . even my brothers . . . he’ll destroy . . . them unless I . . . Oh, sweet Jesus Christ, watch over me and . . . and those I love . . . Kizzie . . . Kizzie . . .’ She began to moan, throwing her head back in despair and Kizzie had a hard job to hold on to her but she did, gripping her in arms of steel, arms of protective love.

  ‘Tha’ faither?’ For who else could have such an effect on this young woman, this brave and resourceful young woman who had been in her care for almost ten years. ‘Tha’ve seen ’im?’

  ‘Yes, he caught me in the office. I don’t know how . . . the men have been . . . but I suppose after all this . . . this time they thought he had given up. Dear Lord, how little they know him and how careless I myself have become. He simply came up the lane, in through the side gate and seeing I was alone came into the office.’

  ‘What did ’e want?’

  ‘Me . . .’ Charlotte began to whimper, a frail piteous whimper that nearly broke Kizzie’s heart. ‘He wants me to . . .’ She hid her face in Kizzie’s shoulder as though ashamed to show it. ‘I am to be his . . . friend! He wants us to be friends. He wants to use me . . . use me . . .’ Her voice began to rise hysterically.

  ‘Hush, lass . . . hush, my lass, dost think I’d let ’im? Dost think Mr Armstrong’d let ’im?’

  ‘No . . . No, Kizzie.’ Her voice rose to a scream and in the stable yard the dogs rose to their feet. With the acute hearing of animals they heard it though the human ear could detect no sound.

  ‘What’s up wi’ you lot?’ Percy asked them, pausing from the tender grooming he was giving the master’s horse. They remained restless and it was a while before they settled uneasily in a sunny corner of the yard, the four of them in a jumbled heap, their ears swivelling, their eyes watchful.

  ‘The master must know, lass,’ Kizzie told her gently. ‘’E must be warned ter be on’t lookout, an’ men an’ all.’

  ‘Don’t you see, if Brooke knew he’d go over to the Mount and beat my father senseless. He might even kill him. Nothing would contain him.’

  ‘’E could tekk some o’t men wi’ ’im.’

  ‘And do what with them?’

  ‘Nay, see to it ’e can do nowt ter any woman again.’

  Charlotte was no longer listening. She was aware as Kizzie was not, being an ill-educated woman, that her father had right on his side as far as his children were concerned. Perhaps not right, for no father was allowed to treat his children as he had done, but the law would uphold him in his demand to supervise the upbringing of his own children. To have his sons and his baby daughter under his roof. Perhaps Henry might escape him, being almost a man and at Cambridge, but the others, if he said they must, would be brought home under his protection. He would bring the might of the law to bear and she and Brooke would be helpless.

  She stood up and brushed down her creased and dusty skirt and Kizzie did the same.

  ‘Where tha’ goin?’ Kizzie asked her suspiciously. ‘’Cos wherever it is I’m goin wi’ thi’. Unless the master is by tha’ side I’m stickin’ to thi’ like a burr. An’ I’m tekkin’ no arguin’ sitha’. An’ no matter what tha’ say I’m warnin’ t’men ter be on’t lookout. Them bairns’ll stop in’t nursery.’

  ‘What about the boys?’

  ‘Nay, cannot tha’ go over there and tell ’em? They’re big lads an’ the teachers’ll listen ter thi’ if tha’ was ter let on.’

  ‘Robbie is only nine and if—’

  ‘’Teacher’ll watch out fer ’im.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  ‘What girls?’ Kizzie was genuinely puzzled.

  ‘He threatened the girls as well as me. Remember Maudie? Josie, Betty and Nellie walk home at night on their own.’

  ‘One o’t men can go wi’ ’em.’

  ‘And how do you mean to keep all this secrecy from Brooke? Do you think he will not notice the extra precautions?’

  Kizzie sank down on to a small stool that had been discarded by some Armstrong lady who had decided it was not fit to grace her drawing room and put he
r head in her hands and groaned. Then she lifted it, a curious look on her face and stood up again, squaring her shoulders and, baring her teeth and hissing like some feline creature defending her young, took Charlotte by the shoulders.

  ‘Lass, my dear lass, tha’ve not ter worry over this. There’s many a farmer what’s got good reason ter resent tha’ pa. Me mam an’ pa ’ad a crop o’ barley what were ter mekk family a few bob until bloody Drummond an’ ’is pals were out ’untin’ an’ rode through it one day an’ ruined the lot. A tenant farmer what’s ’ad a crop spoiled can do nowt ter stop it. ’Appen summat can be—’ She bit off her words, conscious that Charlotte was watching her questioningly but with a loving smile she put her arms about the young woman who was as a daughter to her though there were no more than four years between them. ‘Stay close ter’t’ ouse an’ mekk sure when them bairns go inter’t garden John or Ned’re close by. Now’ – giving them both a shake – ‘let’s get down them stairs an’ ’ave us a nice hot drink. The master’ll be ’ome soon so go an’ pretty tha’self up. An’ tha’s not ter worry. D’yer ’ear?’

  ‘I’ll do my best, Kizzie, but—’

  ‘No buts, d’yer ’ear?’

  The three brawny men, armed with nothing but their own fists, working men by the look of them, with the wide, muscled shoulders of those who are used to manual labour, crouched in the undergrowth at the very edge of Beggers Wood. It was almost two in the morning and there was a moon darting in and out of the clouds that raced across the sky with enough light for them to see should anyone be coming along the lane. They had been waiting for a long time and were thankful that it was a mild night.

  They heard the approach of the horse first, its hooves chinking against the occasional stone, and at once they were more alert, waiting for one of them to give the signal. When it came they crept from the bushes into the lane and stood shoulder to shoulder as the horse and rider came towards them. The man on the horse was momentarily astonished but not afraid, since he was a man who was afraid of nothing.