Chapter Twelve

They were gentle with him—which surprised him. They seized him by the arms from behind when they caught him, put a knife to his throat and told him to obey them or worse might befall. Their faces were covered in coal dust so that he could not recognise them. Then they blindfolded him and walked him rapidly for quite a long distance, before he was led up a steep hill.

Part of Alan was exhilarated in a mad way—danger always affected him so. Another part, the stronger, was beginning to fall into the thrall of the berserker rage, although what use that might be, outnumbered as he was, he did not know. Nor could he imagine what they were going to do with him—although he was sure that he would not like it!

Finally they spun him round and removed the blindfold. He was on the moor, above the town. There were men carrying flambeaux and the place was lit like day. There was a mass of people assembled there, and they cheered when he blinked at them in the light after enduring the lengthy dark.

‘A big bruiser,’ shouted one. ‘You had the right of it, lads.’

Their leader came forward and thrust his dirty face into Alan’s. He thought that some of them were probably colliers, joining the mill hands in comradeship. The face opposite to him had shining teeth, and the whites of its eyes glinted in the light of the flambeaux.

‘So, you made Bob Sutcliffe choose again and again, my fine young gentleman,’ he said, his accent so strong that Alan could barely understand him. ‘Now it’s your turn to choose.’

A cheer went up then. ‘Choose! Choose!’

Alan wrenched away from the men who were holding him, still lightly, and he wondered why. He had expected blows.

‘Choose?’ he said, and his voice surprised them. There was neither fear nor anger in it, only a kind of savage joy. ‘Tell me what I must do, and I will gladly choose.’

‘Oh, it’s a hard choice,’ said their leader. ‘Either we give you a good hiding to pay you back for trying to close the mill, or you fight Jem to entertain us. A good choice, boy. A thrashing for you either way.’

The crowd shouted again. ‘Choose, Maister Dilhorne, choose.’

Now Alan understood why they had held him so lightly, for they wanted their fun, and Jem was the Brinkley bruiser whom Ned and Robert had seen overcome the man from London.

He came forward laughing, ready to fight, stripped to the waist, saying, ‘Choose, Mr Dilhorne, sir, choose.’ And the crowd cheered again and again.

At that Alan threw his head back and laughed with him, saying, ‘There is no choice, and I’ll not keep you waiting like Bob Sutcliffe kept me. Since it’s a beating either way, I’ll have my fun if I fight—and I hope to make your head sing a little, too, Jem.’

Without more ado he peeled off his fine coat, cravat and waistcoat. He sat down and pulled off his splendid boots from Lobb’s, which Ned had helped him to buy, and his silk socks. After that he stood ready when Jem came for him and the crowd roared at them both.

It was far harder than fighting Ralf, for Jem was his age, and savagely fit and ready, while Alan was hungry and tired. He had neither eaten nor rested since breakfast. He knew that he was bound to be beaten in the end, but he meant to make it as hard as he could for Jem to win.

He would be dam’d if he did anything to disgrace himself, or the gentry whom he was supposed to represent. Sparring and then fighting with Ralf had sharpened him, and he had the advantage that Jem probably thought that Ralf had had the easy beating of him. Alan had no illusions, though: he was facing a fighter at the top of his powers—and at the top of the tree.

Jem began by being a little careless with the gentleman amateur, and Alan swiftly caught him with two punishing lefts before Jem became more wary and the fight began in earnest. The berserker rage which had gripped Alan on the walk came to his aid while he held Jem off, laughing at the other man’s frustration that he was not the easy meat he had expected.

The crowd, which had thought that he would be felled straight away, fell silent. Suddenly there were some who cheered him when Jem came in too soon and was caught again. After that there was uproar, with cheering and counter-cheering. The crowd was relishing the battle.

Nevertheless, for all his skill Alan knew that the end was simply a matter of time—and Jem knew it, too.

‘I’ll down you yet, Maister,’ he whispered at Alan.

Alan grinned at him when they came together, and retorted, ‘Not until I’ve marked your face for you, too.’

Salvation came suddenly, and saved him from a coup de grâce worse than the one he had received from Ralf when his tiring legs had begun to betray him. His damaged body was one vast ache. The cheering stopped. There was a noise and a roar. The Peelers had arrived, alerted by the inevitable informer.

The crowd scattered, and Jem, from being an enemy, became a friend.

He seized Alan’s hand, pulled him along, and they and the men who had organised the kidnap ran down the hillside and into the town, the two bruisers still barefoot.

They stood, panting, under a dim lamp. Jem shook Alan’s hand and said, ‘You’re game, Maister, I’ll say that for you, bastard though you are. I doubt whether I could do for you if you were trained and fresh.’

‘And that’s a lie,’ said Alan gaily. He had never felt more alive than he did then, half-naked, with his body damaged and aching. ‘If only I had my purse I’d buy you a drink on it.’

His captors had changed towards him because of the way in which he had accepted the fight and his performance in it.

‘Here’s your purse, Maister,’ said one. ‘We are not thieves.’

Another handed him his coat, but his shirt and boots were gone. Yet another, regretfully, handed him his watch, and he slipped it in his pocket.

There was an inn nearby and he bought them ale, throwing his purse to the landlord and telling him to spend it all on drinks for the house.

Some twenty were with him, and one of them, as he had thought, was Brough, his face and hands black. Sitting there, his body burning with pain, shivering slightly when reaction set in, Alan caught Brough’s eye on him as he drank, not sparing the liquor for once.

‘You’ll not blackmail me, Brough,’ he said, smiling through his pain.

‘No,’ said Brough. ‘You’re a right bastard, Dilhorne, but you’re a man for all that. What in God’s name do they make of you at the Big House?’

‘What you do, Brough. The Queen’s cousin used your exact words.’

‘Knaresborough, eh? You could have stayed and peached on us to the Peelers. You could still do so.’

‘What—and spoil the fun?’

His laugh was painful, and the shivering grew worse. The day had been long and hard before the fight, and he could not remember when he had last eaten. The drink suddenly hit him, and, since pride did not matter any more, he laid his head on the table and fell asleep, exhausted.

Jem looked at him. ‘Ralf could never have beaten him were he ready and fit,’ he proclaimed drunkenly.

The rest of them stared at him in silence. Brough said, ‘Do any know where he lodges?’

‘Aye, at The Nag’s Head,’ said one.

‘Then we’ll get him there,’ Brough said. ‘You’d best help us, Jem.’

They hauled him to his feet and walked him down the ill-paved road, past the place where they had kidnapped him and upstairs to his room, where Gurney undressed him before he lay upon his bed, lost to everything, dreaming that he was back home in his room, a boy again and his mother calling.

 

Alan was waiting for Brough and his friends at noon the next day. He was carefully dressed. His body was still one vast ache. He had been unable to eat properly, and had drunk spirits to ease the pain. He had a dreadful desire to vomit and only pride kept him on his feet.

Gurney had shouted at him, been insubordinate, and had told him that he ought to rest.

‘I won’t answer for the consequences if you don’t,’ he had roared.

In short he had gone on, as Alan had finally complained, holding his head, ‘as though you were my dam’d nanny’.

‘God, are we?’ Gurney had howled rudely, forgetting all differences between master and man while he eased Alan into his clothes. ‘Life’s your bloody chessboard, is it, sir?’ And the ‘sir’ had come out as an insult. ‘First you let Ralf knock you about instead of doing for him, and now this!’

He had refused to be silent and insisted on accompanying Alan into Wilkinson’s office—‘Because, sir, damn your eyes, sir, you need someone there to look after you, if you won’t do it for yourself. Left to myself I’d see those bastards who kidnapped you last night hanged, and their heads where they belong—on Tower Hill.’

‘Just get my clothes on, and spare me the sermon,’ Alan had said wearily. ‘My head hurts me enough as it is without you making it worse.’

Swearing and muttering, Gurney had pushed his way into the office, and now sat there glowering at Brough and his men when they arrived.

If they were surprised to see Alan at work, spruce and beautifully turned out, and apart from his bruised hands and face apparently normal, they were not to know that only his resolute will kept him upright at all. They, too, were respectable again. Brough particularly so. He was dressed like the superior clerk he was.

Alan began without preamble. ‘I want this strike no more than you do, and we all know it. I see no point in pretence. Mind me. If you push me too far I shall close the works and sell up. By now you should know that I always keep my word. I spent yesterday going over the books and I saw the shop at work. If you change your practices a little on the floor, and work with Wilkinson—instead of against him—with what we save on that the books show that I can offer you something midway between what I wanted to give and you wanted to take. That is my last word. Wilkinson will keep me informed of your progress when I return to London.’

Brough stared at him and knew that he meant what he said. ‘So, that is why you were late leaving last night. Well, something is better than nothing.’

He knew that if he refused the offer Alan would carry out his threat and close down. After last night Brough knew that this man was no puling gentleman.

‘I think that the men will agree,’ he replied cautiously.

Alan laughed, a dreadful mistake. The room half-disappeared before him. ‘Don’t cozen me, Brough. The men will agree to whatever you tell them. But have it your way. Count heads, if you must. I want an answer by six o’clock tonight, and all the men back at work first thing tomorrow. Pay starts from then.’

He rose. He knew that if he stayed any longer his tight control would fail. ‘Wilkinson here will show you the terms; I assure you that they are fair.’

Somehow he reached the door and, straight-backed, walked out. Gurney, following, took him by the arm and steered him down the stairs to the courtyard at the back.

Speculation in his eyes, Brough watched him go. He turned to his second-in-command and whispered to him to take over. He ran lightly down the stairs and into the courtyard where Alan lay prone—Gurney holding his head—vomiting into a drain in the corner. Gurney glared malignantly at Brough.

Alan croaked between spasms, ‘Come to gloat?’

‘If he has, I’ll kill him for you,’ Gurney snarled.

‘No,’ said Brough slowly. ‘No, I saw that you were out on your feet in the office.’

‘And no wonder,’ snorted Gurney. ‘It’s more’n twenty-four hours since he’s eaten. He came straight over t’other morning to save your dam’d mill for you, and then, after you’d made sure that he was knocked nearly senseless last night, he got up early to finish his sums so that you bastards needn’t starve.’

‘Give over, Gurney, do,’ said Alan, who was feeling a little better after heaving up his heart. ‘I’ve told you once already today, you’re not my nanny.’

Brough walked over and looked down at him where he lay against the wall, ‘Is that true?’

‘What? Be plain. I’m in no condition to solve riddles.’

‘That you came to save the mill?’

‘I’m no dam’d philanthropist, Brough. Save it or sell it, whichever was best for business.’

Brough knew that he’d get nothing from him. He hesitated. Gurney suddenly roared at him, ‘Help me to get him to his feet, man. He’s too big for me to do it on my own.’

‘Two dam’d nannies, then,’ said Alan pleasantly when he hung between them. ‘Get me to the inn, Gurney, and you can satisfy your passion to be my nursemaid. I don’t think that my legs will carry me any further.’

Without warning he gave way at last, and fell against them, unconscious, Gurney cursing until they got him to the inn and finally to bed.

 

Eleanor was lonely and bored when Alan had gone. Stacy and Jane had each other—she was an extra wheel on their coach. The chatter of her mother, her aunt Hetta and Mrs Chalmers was scarcely bearable. The only amusing episode had been the quarrel between her mother and Mrs Chalmers. Her mother had expressed her disapproval of Alan, and Mrs Chalmers had immediately gushed back at her, ‘But he’s so handsome, and possesses such charm—one wonders if all young men from New South Wales are the same!’

Beastly Beverley had to be evaded, too, although Charles’s tutor helped his charge to escape the worst of him by increasing his hours of tuition. This was no hardship for Charles, who was eager to learn and, insofar as such a good-natured child was capable of it, hated Beverley. His grandmother had left for a visit to friends in Northumbria.

Eleanor joined Charles when she could, although the Triumvirate, as she nicknamed them to herself, disapproved acutely.

‘How can you wish to be shut away there?’ wailed her mother sorrowfully. ‘What use is it? We could be visiting the Lorimers. Polly Lorimer was saying only last week that she has not seen you since the Flood.’

Eleanor restrained herself from saying acidly that Polly Lorimer, her mother and brother Fred were all hearty boors, if not to say bores, whose brains were in their seats on their horses, and that she and they had little in common.

‘I like helping Charles,’ she said, ‘he’s lonely.’

‘He needn’t be, said her aunt Hetta indignantly. ‘He has Beverley to play with.’

As well play with a scorpion, thought Eleanor, whose private thoughts grew nastier the longer Alan was away. She had seen the satiric twist to his lips whenever Beverley rampaged through the House—Beverley was rapidly recovering from the effect of his enforced exile to the nursery by Sir Hart, and was now nearly as rudely headstrong as he had been when he had arrived.

Sir Hart was absent, too. He had rarely left his room while Alan was visiting Bradford and only came down for dinner, leaving as soon as it was over. Ned was often away as well. He had made a good friend of Robert Harshaw and they roistered around the Riding, drinking together.

Eleanor had been in the library one afternoon after Charles and Mr Dudley had gone fishing—a new amusement for Charles. She’d had no mind to go with them. She had pulled out one of the great folios of Sir Joseph Banks’s original journey to the South Seas in order to look at the plants and animals he had seen in Alan’s homeland.

Mr Rivers, the librarian was having a protracted tea in the housekeeper’s room, when Sir Hart arrived, to find her studying the folio which was propped on huge oak lecterns.

‘I thought that I heard you, Granddaughter.’ He came over to see what she was studying.

‘Oh, Grandfather,’ she exclaimed. ‘It is very wrong of me to be so bored and so lonely when, as Alan says, I have everything. But there is nothing for me to do, nothing. I don’t know how Mother and the others bear it. When I try to find occupation they look at me as though I have run mad. I cannot chatter, and embroider and unpick it and do it again, and listen to Aunt Hetta reading Mrs Gore’s latest novel—or something even sillier—every day.

‘Mother can at least pretend to instruct the housekeeper—who doesn’t really need instructing. I thought that I might like to go into the garden and help with the plants, but Mother wailed at me that I should ruin my hands. When I try to study with Charles she comes in and chatters at us in order to pry me away. Then she takes me out to visit Polly Lorimer, who only cares about dogs and horses, which I suppose is something—but it is not enough.’

Her voice rose at the end and she thought that she might cry or throw herself about if she were not careful.

‘You are missing him,’ said Sir Hart gently. ‘But, Granddaughter, even so, were you never to have met him, you would still feel as you do.’

She began to cry at that. ‘Oh, you do understand me. What am I to do? Why could not Ned have been like me and I like Ned? Then I could have chattered away to Mother and the rest and you would not have been disappointed in him. I should not be saying this, it is so wicked and disloyal, but it is true, and I cannot help my thoughts. Sometimes I feel like a changeling.’

Sir Hart gazed helplessly at her. He could not tell her that, in effect, she was a changeling. A changeling to whom her father, Knaresborough, had bequeathed his rare and challenging intelligence which sat so ill with what society thought a young woman of gentle birth ought to be. He tried to comfort her, but he had long ago decided that she should never know the truth—it would simply be one more burden for her to carry.

‘It is painful for you, I know, and there is little I can do. If you marry, and your husband is kind, you may make your own life, and fix yourself on something which interests you.’

‘And that is all,’ she said sadly. ‘To wait to be asked and then hope.’

If Alan asked her to marry him she knew that she would be able to share his life in a way that few women did. But suppose he were not to ask her. What then?

She did not speak to Sir Hart of that. Sir Hart must know how she felt about Alan, she had made no secret of it.

‘I will not marry an old man or a man for whom I do not care in order to gain a position and a title,’ she said. ‘I had rather remain single—and be an aunt to Ned’s children, if he has any.’

Sir Hart put an arm around her, he had never done so before. ‘It is the lot of women at which you rail, Eleanor. Yet men’s lives are bound by duty, too.’

‘Oh, but they may choose their duty, and there is so much that men may do and so little for me. I am trained to nothing, yet my mind is as good as Charles’s and a great deal better than Ned and Robert’s. I would run Temple Hatton more carefully than either Ned or Beverley. It’s such a waste. It’s a pity that I am not more like Mother.’

‘No,’ he said sharply. ‘Do not say that. Should you wish it I will ask Rivers to allow you to help him. He is cataloguing the books here and in London and needs an assistant. You could help him in the mornings. I will silence the complaints which your mother is sure to make. You must understand that once you have begun this work you will need to do it properly and continue it—even if you find it hard. I will not have Rivers played with.’

‘Oh, yes, I understand that,’ she cried passionately. ‘But Mother will be sure to complain.’

‘For once, your mother will do as I say.’

Eleanor had thought that there was a touch of Sir Beauchamp in his manner then, and, like Sir Beauchamp, he kept his word. He had been right to warn her that it might be difficult, for Mr Rivers was a hard, if just, taskmaster. She soon began to understand why Alan was so secretly contemptuous of them all, however much he tried to disguise it. For actually working and doing things correctly, as Sir Hart had warned, was quite different from playing.

Her mother was particularly annoyed by the brown Holland overall she wore when at her work, but that counted for nothing against the approval of both Mr Rivers and Sir Hart.

‘She learns quickly, and retains what she learns,’ Mr Rivers told Sir Hart. ‘She is better than anyone we could hire, for she is learning to love the books and her interest is true and genuine.

‘Excellent,’ said Sir Hart, delighted to learn that he had made his granddaughter a gift which would last her all her life. She knocked at his door to tell him so that evening.

Her equals, though, apart from Jane and Stacy, who occasionally joined her, were not impressed at all, and her mother made her promise that she would not tell their friends.

‘Such a strange thing for a young lady to wish to do with her time. I am surprised at Sir Hart for encouraging you.’

Secretly she thought that Eleanor was more like her true father than was comfortable. It would not do if her resemblance to him, already strong, were detected through this latest freak of conduct. Knaresborough was the subject of gossip for being a bibliophile as well as a sportsman, and spent a great deal of time in his library at Castle Ashcourt.

Eleanor longed to tell Alan of her new life, for he was one of the few in the House, beside Jane and Stacy, who enjoyed the library. She wondered what was happening in Bradford which was keeping him so long.

 

Alan was staying away longer than he intended in order to allow his face to heal before he returned to Temple Hatton. He saw the deal through with Brough and his men, and spent part of his time mixing with the other mill-owners. They invited him to dine in their brash new houses, full of shining new furniture and dark brown paintings which looked as though the gravy which they served in such quantities had seeped on to the canvases.

The story of the fight on the moor had spread round the district, but no one spoke of it to him, although the knowledge was canny in their hard faces. Some reproached him for raising his hands’ wages. He met that with, ‘It’s so ordered that it doesn’t touch our profits. Outhwaite’s was badly run, as you all know. I would have closed the mill rather than give way to their original demand—I could not carry a strike. A little rearrangement served to save all.’

They grunted dissent at him. Surrounded by new-won wealth, they were aping the manners of the gentry in more ways than one. For their sons—like Ned—were soft, and were forgetting the hard work and industry which had created their fathers’ fortunes. Life’s patterns and cycles recreated themselves, just as the old Greeks had said.

 

Eleanor was on her way to the library to do a voluntary afternoon stint when she heard the noise of Alan’s return. She ran down the great staircase, wearing her Holland apron, in order to be the first to greet him.

‘Oh, I am so glad that you are back, Alan. Did all go well with you?’

She saw the fading bruises on his face, and later she would see the remnants of the fight written on his knuckles, but, smiling joyfully, she said nothing to him, other than ‘Oh, I have such things to tell you—later, that is. Doubtless you have things to tell me. We can talk at tea.’

Her welcome of him was so frank and free that Alan was lifted by it, even when her mother said crossly, ‘Miss Hatton, you forget yourself. And I wish that you would stay downstairs with us. Rivers must learn to do without you this afternoon.’

‘Oh,’ said Eleanor gaily, much to Alan’s amusement, although he did not quite understand what they were talking about, ‘it is not Mr Rivers who forces me to labour in the library, it is I who go there willingly, as I shall explain to you later, Alan.’

She ran lightly up the stairs, leaving him wondering at the apron, the reference to forced labour, and the Triumvirate’s openly expressed annoyance at her behaviour when she had gone.

All three women felt that Eleanor’s occupation and her interest in it was a vague threat to their pleasant, easy lives. ‘For if,’ as Aunt Hetta said, ‘Sir Hart can compel Eleanor to do such strange things, what might he not ask of us?’

Alan gathered that Eleanor had found something to fill her idle days, and with Sir Hart’s help, no doubt. He looked forward to seeing him again, although he half feared the revelations which might flow from him when he did.

Sir Hart did not come down to dinner that night, but sent word to Mr Dilhorne to be so good as to visit him in his study at ten-thirty the next morning.

‘And that’s a relief,’ said Ned frankly to Alan. ‘That he’s not coming down. For much though I like the old man he’s a bit of a death’s head at the feast, you know. You see, I did learn something from those intolerably boring old men at Oxford, even if I’ve forgotten most of it. Now you may tell me of your adventures in Bradford, for I see by your face and hands that you have been fighting again.’

Eleanor raised internal eyebrows while Ned was speaking, and silently enjoyed watching Alan dodge Ned’s questions. He was helped in this by the presence of Knaresborough, who was an unexpected visitor that night. He was on his way to London.

‘Out of season,’ Ned said. ‘Wouldn’t you know? Just like him to be different from everyone else.’

His splendid train of coaches, servants and wagons were being put up at Temple Hatton overnight—and all of it was going to be loaded on to a special train at Leeds. He was debating whether to stay in his coach on the train journey, or use an ordinary railway carriage, and gravely asked Alan’s advice.

‘I’m afraid that I may not entertain you at Castle Ashcourt after all, Master Alan, but you shall come to Knaresborough House in Piccadilly when you return to London. I’ll brook no refusal from you, for if you do I shall get little Vic to put you into the Tower for contempt!’

Seated at dinner, and before Ned could quiz Alan again, Knaresborough said, ‘So, you set Bradford by the ears, young man. It is all over the Riding that you fought with Jem Briggs on the moor above Bradford, until the Peelers broke it up. Now, how came that about?’

Eleanor turned white while Ned, Stacy and Charles said together, ‘Oh, famous, Alan. How did you fare with him?’

‘I narrowly missed a real beating,’ Alan told them cheerfully, and gave them a highly edited version of his trip to Bradford. He did not tell them that Brough had visited him before he left to offer him his hand in friendship, and had told him that he was a true Yorkshireman for all that he came from the Antipodes.

‘Your name’s a give-away, young fellow,’ he had told Alan. ‘And you’re as like the old man at the House as he must have been in youth to make more than one man think.’

‘Don’t think about it too hard,’ Alan had replied. ‘It wouldn’t do to strain yourself overmuch. Your men need you.’

He avoided Knaresborough’s satiric eye now, while he placated Ned, but he could not avoid Eleanor’s tongue when they joined the ladies after the dinner.

‘I thought that you had promised me not to run any unnecessary risks,’ she said reproachfully, ‘and there you were fighting the man Ned and Robert have been ranting about.’

Alan looked soulfully at her. ‘I didn’t intend to,’ he said, ‘but needs must when the devil drives.’

‘I suppose that he was driving pretty hard around Bradford, judging by the state that you’re in.’

‘True—but you’ll be happy to learn that we all became friends in the end, and drank together afterwards.’

Knaresborough, who had strolled up and was listening to them, drawled, ‘Brough? Was it Brough you were dickering with? At least he’s an honest rogue, unlike some.’

Both Eleanor and Alan stifled laughter at this typical pronouncement, and Alan wondered where and when Brough and Knaresborough had crossed swords and what they had made of one another. Fortunately the Belted Earl abandoned the topic of Alan’s exploits and engaged the three of them in a discussion of Eleanor’s new duties in the library, of which he heartily approved.

Ned and Robert remained in the dining room drinking, and did not emerge until after Alan had retired to bed. Once there he could not sleep for thinking about what Sir Hart might have to tell him on the morrow.