It was Louisa who woke me.
‘Charlotte!’ she coughed. ‘Charlotte, wake up!’
‘What . . . ?’ I threw off her hand, peering into the gloom as I lifted my head. ‘Go ’way . . .’
‘There’s smoke, Charlotte! Can’t you smell it?’
I could. At once. And I knew instantly that something was wrong.
‘Where’s Mama?’ I swung my legs out of bed, pushing back covers and curtains. There was smoke in the room, and a frightful stench. It set me coughing. ‘James! Emily! Get up!’ (How hard it was to breathe!) ‘Wake them, Louisa!’
When I opened the door, I saw only smoke. It was illuminated faintly by an orange glow, which seemed stronger to my right than to my left. ‘Mama!’ I cried, before the vapours caught in my throat. But someone else was yelling too. I could identify George Barton’s voice, though it was hoarse and high. ‘Fire! Fire!’ he shouted.
There was swirl of movement through the smoke. I heard thudding footsteps and the crackle of burning wood. My mother coughed a few feet away. ‘Charlotte!’ she choked. ‘Downstairs!’ She was beside me suddenly, hacking her lungs out.
I cannot convey to you how frightened I was. To be wrenched from a deep sleep and thrown directly into a scene of utter confusion—of raised voices and deep shadows and suffocating fumes—is a truly dreadful experience. I had very little understanding of what was going on. I recollect that Emily clutched me at one point, sobbing and retching. We must have been dragged or pushed downstairs, past the seat of the conflagration. My mother was with us. She screamed for help, though not with much force. The atmosphere was too thick; it strangled her cry.
We were fortunate that no nightshirts caught alight. There were cinders in the air, but they did not hurt us. The vestibule was full of smoke. The front door stood open and we stumbled through it, heaving and spluttering, our eyes awash. The air outside seemed immeasurably fresh and cool.
‘Mrs Barton!’ someone yelled. A dark figure approached us, faintly visible in the meagre moonlight. It was one of the servants; my mother grabbed his arm.
‘Water!’ she croaked. ‘Fetch water!’
He vanished into the shadows as more servants came running. Some of them must have brought full buckets, because they plunged into the house. Raucous shouts were answered by further shouts. My mother turned to me.
‘Stay here,’ she gasped. ‘All of you. Do not move from this spot.’
‘No! Mama!’
‘Stay here! I’ll be back directly.’
And she hurried off, though not through the front door. Instead her dim white shape disappeared around the side of the house, heading for the kitchen. A lantern appeared then, swinging from the hand of James Barnett. But he took it inside with him.
‘Where is Louisa?’ Emily whimpered.
I reached out, groping, and found only two other bodies pressed against mine. Both were shivering violently. Here and there a tearful eye glinted, or a glossy lock gleamed—but none belonged to Louisa.
‘Louisa?’ I exclaimed, peering into the night. ‘Louisa!'
‘She came out!’ James said. ‘I know she did!’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Louisa!’ Emily shrieked. ‘Oh no! Oh no!’
‘Shh. It’s all right . . .’
‘She came out!’ James sounded shrill. ‘I saw her! She’s not in there!’
‘MAMA!’ I bellowed at the top of my voice. No one seemed to notice. There was too much activity. ‘Stay here,’ I ordered. ‘Don’t move.’
‘No!’ Emily grabbed my sleeve. ‘No! Charlotte! She told us not to!’
‘Louisa is missing! She has to know!’
‘You mustn’t go, Charlotte,’ said James, clinging to my other arm.
‘MAMA!’ I put the full force of my lungs into this cry, and it attracted some attention. Charley, our native servant, seemed to materialise out of the shadows.
‘What, Miss?’ he said.
‘Louisa!’ I wailed. ‘Where is Louisa?’
He stared for a moment. ‘With the Missus?’ he suggested.
‘No! No, we don’t know where she is, Charley, you must tell her! You must tell the Missus! Quickly!’
He bolted, but in the wrong direction. We saw him go into the house.
‘No! No, Charley!’ I screamed. ‘She’s in the kitchen! In the kitchen!'
‘Perhaps he went to see . . .’ Emily sobbed. ‘If—if Louisa—’
‘Louisa is not in the house!’ James stamped his foot. ‘I told you!’
‘Shh!’
You cannot conceive of our fear and despair. Where was Louisa? I tried to comfort the others. I assured them that she must have become separated from us in all the fuss and flurry. Perhaps she had gone to the kitchen. Perhaps she was with Mama. More lanterns had appeared on the scene, borne by half-dressed convicts who must have run down from the huts. I saw my mother amongst these people. She had returned from the kitchen with a brimming bucket, which she handed to one of the men.
‘Mama!'
But she was occupied. Streams of hurrying figures were moving in and out of the house, forming a kind of irrigation chain. My mother stopped at one knot to consult Robert.
‘MAMA!’ I bawled.
This time she heard me, and abruptly broke off her conversation. She strode across the lawn towards us, her white robe flapping.
‘Where is Louisa?’ were the first words out of her mouth.
‘Mama, we don’t know!’ Seeing her expression, I began to cry. ‘Is she not with you?’
My mother caught her breath. She whirled around to face the house, while James insisted: ‘She came out! I saw her! She came out, Mama, she did!’
‘Robert!’ my mother called, beginning to run. We followed her. ‘Miss Louisa is missing! Oh God . . .’
‘Nay, Mam.’ Someone’s soft Irish voice wafted across the smoky air. ‘Nay, there’s not a soul up there.’
‘Are you sure? Did you check? Louisa!'
‘She bail inside, Missus.’ This was Charley, who had suddenly reappeared, coughing. ‘I look.’
‘Then where is she?’
No one knew. And no one could help, not with a fire to extinguish. It seemed at first as if our beloved home might burn to the ground, though we soon realised that the flames were not as voracious as we had feared. Even as we stood there, I noticed a certain easing of the frantic, scurrying activity that had been so apparent only minutes before. There was still a great deal of smoke, but blankets and buckets had been brought to bear on what was, essentially, a rather small fire. James Barnett said as much when he staggered out the front door, coughing.
‘We broke its back,’ he wheezed. ‘It’ll not be going further, God be praised.’
‘Did you see Louisa?’ Mama demanded. ‘Is my daughter up there?’
‘No, Mam.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Sure and certain. We cleared the beds, Mam.’
‘Then where is Louisa? Louisa!’ All at once Mama spotted George Barton, and hurled herself at him like an avenging fury. ‘What have you done?’ she screeched. ‘Where is my daughter?'
Barton had not burned to death in his bed. I must have been expecting something of the sort, for my heart sank when I saw him; subconsciously, I must have assumed that he had gone to sleep with a pipe in his mouth, dead drunk (as was his habit), and set his own bedclothes alight. Unhappily, though, he was safe. A later inspection revealed that the source of the fire must have been one of the many candles that he had placed on the upstairs landing. My mother, in trying to snuff them all out, may have inadvertently knocked down a single wax taper, or simply failed to extinguish it. Whatever the cause, it had ignited a portion of the Indian mat, which in turn had set fire to the finish on the skirting. A portion of wall, the door frame and some floorboards suffered badly, but the damage was contained. In general terms, the house remained sound.
Unfortunately, my mother was ignorant of all this at the time of the fire. Perhaps she believed, in her overwrought state, that George Barton had set it deliberately so as to kill us without fear of reprisal. Whatever the cause of her fury, it utterly transformed her. She rushed at her dishevelled husband and began to slap him around the head.
‘You cur, you sot, God damn you to hell!’ she raged. ‘What have you done, you—murderer! Assassin!'
It was an immensely stupid thing to do. Barton hit back; he punched her in the face, and she dropped like a stone. People rushed at them from all sides. I reviled him at the top of my voice as I threw myself onto my mother’s collapsed form. Barton tried to kick us both, but lost his balance instead, staggering sideways. James Barnett finished the job with a discreetly timed push.
Barton fell on one knee.
‘Who did that?’ he yammered. ‘Who was it? I’ll have you flogged!
Some of the men immediately melted away into the shadows. James Barnett, however, stood his ground. His fists were clenched and he was breathing heavily.
My mother sat up. ‘You’re insane!’ she lisped, through a stream of blood. ‘Your mind is gone! How could you do such a thing?’
‘I? I?'
‘You would kill us all!’
‘You’re trying to kill me!’
‘You are mad! You’re a madman!’
‘Shut your bloody mouth! ’ Barton roared. He went for her, and I went for him. When I tried to push him back, he knocked me aside as if I had been a curtain. ‘Ah, the bairns . . .’ someone muttered in protest. Still, however, nobody intervened. Nobody except my brother, that is; he picked up a heavy rock from one of the borders and hurled it against Barton’s ribs.
Then he ran. He simply ran. Without waiting for Barton to recover from the blow, he shot away into the night.
‘No! James! Wait!’ cried my mother. ‘Don’t you touch him!’
‘I’ll break his bloody neck!’ Barton howled, and fetched me such a box on the ear that I fell to the ground, stunned. He hit out again and again as we tried to restrain him. I remember curling up to ward off his flailing foot, which (to my eternal gratitude) was bare. Had he been shod, I might have suffered irreversible injury.
He lost his mind, I think. He became irrational at that moment, no doubt viewing his attack as self-defence. I have never seen such terrifying, unrestrained, inexplicable violence. At one point, reeling back, he encountered a small bush and trampled it underfoot, with deliberate yet uncontrolled venom, as if it had been his worst enemy.
Shielding Emily, my mother sobbed and screamed. I could hear James Barnett’s hoarse voice pleading: ‘Jesus, sir—you’ll hang for it if you kill ’em—ah Christ, Henry, what’ll we do?’
‘Where’s the gun?’ Henry drawled, from out of the darkness.
The word ‘gun’ had an effect like a pistol-shot. Barton froze. Then he bolted. One moment he was there, on the lamp-lit front lawn. The next moment he was gone.
James Barnett went at once to my mother’s side.
‘God have mercy,’ he protested. ‘Just look at you . . .’
‘Where is my son?’ Mama struggled to her feet, pushing Barnett away from her. ‘Charlotte? What has he done to you? Can you hear me, Charlotte?’
I nodded, unable to speak. The nod made my head pound like a drum.
‘Go and find my son!’ Mama ordered shrilly, addressing the convicts who stood motionless, watching us. ‘Find James! Find Louisa! You must find them before he does!’
‘Find the gun first,’ Henry suggested, and I knew that he was right. James Barnett instantly got up and disappeared. Emily was weeping without restraint. I turned to my mother.
‘Perhaps Louisa is hiding!’ I said brokenly, my hand clamped to my throbbing ear. ‘Perhaps she is scared to come out, Mama.’
‘Perhaps.’ My mother’s voice trembled. Pressing Emily to her, she looked around in a helpless fashion, her face a mess of blood and tears. ‘Yes, you may be right. Perhaps she is hiding.’
But we were wrong. And I will tell you what did become of Louisa, because the matter was soon enough resolved. It may not surprise you to learn that, when my siblings and I emerged from the house, Louisa kept running. She must have been so frightened that her feet refused to stop, carrying her across the front lawn, through the gate and into the bush. You will recall that it was Louisa who woke me with news of the fire. Before doing so, being a good and obedient child, she had put on her slippers. Consequently she was able to run without hurting herself on stones and thorns, though she was very lucky not to have rammed her head into a tree, or fallen down a slope—for despite the gibbous moon it was very dark.
Poor Louisa ran and ran. Eventually she must have looked around for sisters, and realised that she was alone. I cannot tell you the exact sequence of events, because Louisa never described them. She never once spoke of her wanderings that night. Her family were left to piece them together as best we could.
I do not know if she turned back or went on. But with so many large trees and dense thickets separating her from the house, she could not have seen her way back with any certainty. Instead, she would have been forced to rely on distant noises to plot her path—and such noises can be very misleading. They can bounce off hillsides, and bury themselves in scrub. Furthermore, they can be unhelpfully intermittent.
At any rate, Louisa got lost. I am certain of this, though she would not admit to it. Mr Ash heard her sobbing and moaning as he rode towards our house. And he stopped and called out, and finally told the servant who was lighting his way to follow the sound of Louisa’s voice.
They came upon my sister halfway between Oldbury and Swanton.
We were very, very fortunate that Mr Ash was so alert. He had heard faint but suspicious cries in the distance, carrying through the still, dark night from the direction of our house. Perhaps they had awakened him, though I have my doubts; it seems more probable that he had been lying sleepless in bed, pondering the difficulties that lay ahead of him. Whatever the case, on being thus disturbed, he had quickly risen, dressed, and saddled his horse. He had then set off to discover the cause of the commotion—and had encountered my sister along the way.
It was some time before he reached us. Riding even the most placid horse through bush at night is not something that should be attempted with any haste or impatience. At last, however, he arrived, and was accompanied to the kitchen by some of the men who had been sent to scour the estate with dogs and lanterns.
News of Mr Ash was conveyed to my mother before her youngest daughter was. Mama had found refuge in the kitchen with myself and Emily and James. (My brother had been discovered hiding under the kitchen table, carving knife in hand.) While her children sat huddled around the hearth, my mother tried to dress her own wounds, quite frantic with worry. My own head was aching, and my ribs as well, but Mama was in a far worse state. Her split lip continued to bleed. Her eye was swollen. She hissed in pain whenever she was obliged to stoop. Yet she would not rest, constantly pacing and fidgeting, fussing with lint and vinegar, moving to the window and back again.
She had barred the door against her husband, and jumped when she heard Charley’s knock.
‘What is it?’ she said. ‘Who is it?’
‘Miss Louisa come, Missus,’ Charley replied.
‘What?’ My mother ran to the door, unbarred it, and hurried into the dimness. ‘What? Charley? What do you say?’
But no explanation was required. Even as she spoke, Mr Ash rode out of the shadows, exhausted convicts illuminating his path. Louisa was perched on the saddle in front of him.
My mother shrieked.
‘Louisa!’ she cried. With a foolish disregard for the feelings of his horse, she rushed straight at Mr Ash, her arms outstretched—and received Louisa into them.
Mr Ash dismounted carefully.
‘She was wandering in the woods,’ he said, adjusting his reins. ‘I heard her crying.’
‘Oh, Mr Ash . . . oh, thank you,’ my mother sobbed.
‘There was a fire, I am told?’
‘Yes, but it was put out. Louisa? Do you hear?’ Mama and my sister were by now tightly entwined. ‘The fire is out. We are safe, my love, you must not be afraid.’
‘Where is yer husband?’ Mr Ash inquired, and my mother looked around nervously.
‘I—I am not entirely sure . . .’ she stammered.
‘Was he responsible for yer face, Mrs Barton?’
This was more direct an inquiry than I would have expected. It certainly affected my mother, who was struck dumb—whether from shock or shame I have no way of knowing.
As she struggled to reply, Mr Ash surveyed the scene in front of him. Though his eyes were engulfed in shadow, I could feel his gaze travelling over me before it moved on to Emily, and James, and the dark, smoky shape of the house.
‘Mrs Barton,’ he said, in reflective tones, ‘this state of affairs cannot continue.’
‘No, I—no.’
‘If I were you, Mrs Barton, I should take my children and go. As soon as possible.’ Mr Ash was standing with one hand wrapped around his horse’s reins. The other he placed on his hip, pushing back his coat to reveal, once again, the butt of his pistol. ‘It will then be my responsibility to deal with Mr Barton.’
‘But this is our home! It is our home, Mr Ash!’
‘Is it?’ Having thoroughly examined every aspect of his surroundings, Mr Ash brought his wandering regard back to my mother’s face. ‘I do not know how you would define a “home”, Ma’am, but this looks nothing like one to me. This looks like a battlefield, in my opinion. And I’m a-wondering if the battlefield is worth the cost of the battle. All things considered.’
In response, my mother opened her mouth. But no sound emerged. She simply stared at Mr Ash with her one good eye (the other having practically swollen shut) as Mr Ash returned her stare blandly. Around us, the assigned men shuffled wearily from task to task. A dog barked somewhere nearby. The air was heavy with foul-smelling fumes.
Suddenly, my mother sighed.
Two weeks later we packed up our dray and left Oldbury.