On the night before the court case Caroline Easter couldn’t sleep at all. She lay in her white bed, hot and uncomfortable and fidgeting, while the house slept all around her. She listened to Euphemia’s soft breathing and the crack and creak of the cooling stairs and the occasional muffled thud of soot falling in the chimney, and the more she strained after the rest she needed, the more it eluded her. Finally she got up, easing herself carefully from the bed so as not to wake Euphemia, and went to open a window, so that she could cool herself while she looked down into the garden in the middle of the square.
It had been warm and dry over the last few days and the pavements were so thick with dust that now, in the moonlight, they looked as though they were covered with sand. The plane trees were dusty too and from time to time, when a slight breeze caught them, they rustled like tissue paper.
She was doomed, Caroline thought miserably as she leant out of the window. By the end of that day she would be named and known for a ‘purveyor of filth’, just as that awful man described her in his letter. She would never live it down. Even if the judge found for the firm she would still be tarred with it. Purveyor of filth. It was a horrid thing. And there was no escaping it. There in the clarity of moonlight, looking down on the uncompromising emptiness of the square, there was no escaping the truth of anything. How was she to endure it?
And as if in answer to her questions the baby moved for the first time. It was such a little tentative wriggle that had she not been standing so still she might have missed it. But there was no mistaking it. There it was again, flicker, flicker, flicker, but stronger now, and more like a pulse than a wriggle. A reminder that life went on, that there was always hope, that she carried both within her, even in a moment as bleak as this.
She stood at the window for a long time enjoying the sensation of this new life she carried, rejoicing in it, despite her anxieties. Even if the judgement went against her, even if she never saw Henry again – would she ever see him again? – there was always this life, this new precious life. When she finally climbed back into her bed, she slept almost at once.
The next morning Euphemia brought her breakfast upstairs, as though she were a bride. She was touched to be so tenderly treated and kissed her cousin most lovingly to thank her. But it was doomsday come at last even so.
And such a peculiar day. The breeze that had stirred the plane trees during the night had become a gale by daybreak, hurling the dust into the air in choking grey-brown clouds. The sun rose slowly through the murk that morning, and the sun was red as blood. It made Caroline shudder to see it. It was a horrid day for a horrid deed.
The journey to the law courts was unpleasant too, even though Nan and Will and Euphemia were all with her. There was dust everywhere, kicked up by the horses’ hooves, swirled into the air by the carriage wheels, blown high by the gale, coating their shoes, dirtying their gloves, settling visibly on hats and jackets, clogging the very air they tried to breathe. By the time they reached Temple Bar, Caroline even had grains of it under her tongue.
Dust hung in the air inside the Law Courts too, suspended in sunbeams, powdering the legal volumes on the clerk’s desk, speckling the legal ink in all those legal inkwells, settling silently on all those antique black robes and play-acting wigs.
‘This dust!’ she complained to Mr Brougham, trying to sneeze without drawing attention to herself.
‘The Courts are dusty by definition, my dear,’ Mr Brougham said, trying to make light of it with a joke. ‘We call it the obfuscation of the law.’
Jokes were lost on Caroline that morning. She had her mind set on one thing and one thing only. The sooner their case began, the sooner it would be over.
But as she was slowly to discover during a long bewildering morning, the law took its course in a tortuous way. She expected to be tried, found guilty and fined within an hour, but instead of that she sat on a very hard seat beside Mr Brougham while various lawyers talked interminably and boringly about the Vagrancy Act of 1824, quoting cases and verdicts from the intervening years. None of it made any sense to her at all.
By the time the court adjourned for lunch her head was dizzy with bewilderment, and nothing had happened. Or at least nothing that she’d noticed.
In fact her husband had been in the court all morning, watching her quietly from the public gallery, but as she’d sat, equally quietly, watching Mr Brougham and the Counsel for the Prosecution, she hadn’t seen him.
It upset him to see how gaunt she looked, sitting below him in the well of the court in her decorous blue dress and that neat lace cap, and he loved her quite desperately because she was being so courageous and pig-headed and stubborn and altogether admirable. Like everyone else in the Easter headquarters, he’d heard how Edward had offered to take her place in this court and how firmly and finally she’d rebuffed him. Old Billy Easter had told Mr Jolliffe about it, thus making certain that the story was given the widest circulation, for it showed both his son and his niece in the best possible light. And Henry had recognized the truth of it at once. It was so like her, his dear determined Carrie, so exactly like her. Oh, how passionately he was waiting for this trial to end! Perhaps then he could visit her, and tell her how very sorry he was and how very much he loved her, and pet her perhaps, and praise her, and put all this long separation behind them. Now that he’d seen her again he was torn with love for her. Somehow or other he must earn her forgiveness. It was true she’d ignored all his letters, but when this case was over …
There was a stir in the court as Mr Brougham’s junior rose to leave ahead of him and Caroline stood up too, to make way for the man. With an exquisite shock of surprise and delight, Henry realized that she was pregnant. The dear girl! Oh, she must accept him back. Surely!
The judge was making a pronouncement; ‘… perfectly proper for the case to proceed.’ Mr Brougham and Mr Prosecution were bowing.
‘As Your Lordship pleases.’
‘I suggest we adjourn for lunch.’
It was necessary for Henry to get out of the building quickly or he and Caroline might meet on the stairs or in some other inappropriate place, and he couldn’t have borne that. He would return that afternoon, he promised himself as he sped off through the dust of the Strand, and he would see the end of it. But there was so much work waiting for him in his office that he didn’t finish it all until nearly seven o’clock. Never mind, he thought, as he left the office to drive to Clerkenwell. He would attend again in the morning. And meantime there was Matty’s dinner to enjoy, which was a sign that things were getting better.
The case resumed that afternoon at quite a different tempo. Within minutes of her arrival in court the charge had been read and Caroline had been called to the witness box to be asked whether she represented the company and how she intended to plead. She declared that she was guilty because that was what Mr Brougham had advised her to say, and because she felt guilty, oh indeed she did, very, very guilty, standing there in that awful court with the judge glaring down upon her.
Then the Prosecuting Counsel rose to make a fiery speech in which he denounced the firm of A. Easter and Sons for ‘tampering with the morals of our society and allowing the twin evils of literary turpitude and creeping obscenity to fly loose and corrupt the unstained innocence of our young’. She noticed that Uncle Billy was so incensed by all this that his face turned puce and Aunt Matilda had to put a plump hand on his arm to restrain him.
But then it was Mr Brougham’s turn as he rose to plead mitigating circumstances.
‘Firstly,’ he said, ‘I feel that I should tell the court that as soon as the evil nature of these books was known to the firm, copies were instantly withdrawn from all shops and bookstalls.’
‘Instantly, you say, Mr Brougham?’ the judge enquired.
‘Within five days, m’lud.’
‘Five days. Yes I see,’ the judge said, making a note of it.
‘I should also point out that A. Easter and Sons have put all available resources at the disposal of Mr Furmedge and the Society for the Suppression of Vice, to ensure that the person responsible for publishing the said volumes should be apprehended by the police and his entire stock impounded, which, as I daresay your Lordship is aware, has already been done. There is, I am reliably informed, a case pending.’
‘Indeed,’ the judge said, noting that too. ‘I was not aware, but I’m uncommon pleased to hear it.’
‘Moreover…’
‘Is there a moreover?’ the judge said, sounding surprised. ‘Ah well, proceed, if you please, Mr Brougham.’
‘Moreover,’ Mr Brougham said again, ‘I understand that the two persons responsible for suggesting the initial purchase of the said books to my client, Mrs Caroline Easter, have now left the employ of the company.’
Somebody was on his feet in the public gallery, shouting at the top of his voice. ‘That is a lie, sir. A monstrous lie!’
All heads swivelled towards him and Caroline saw that it was Mr Jernegan who was shouting and that Mr Maycock was climbing onto the seat beside him waving his arms in the air and shouting too. ‘Monstrous! We are victims, sir! Innocent victims!’
‘Clear the gallery!’ the judge said with splendid calm. ‘I will not have unruly behaviour in my courtroom.’
But damage had been done. There were several recognizable reporters in the public gallery, and as the ushers arrived to march the two protestors away, they got up and followed the struggling party out.
The Easter family shot anxious messages from eye to eye, Caroline to Nan, Nan to Billy, Matilda to Edward, Will to Caroline.
‘Leave it to me,’ Billy said to his wife. ‘I’ll attend to ‘em.’ And he eased himself out of his chair and left the courtroom as quickly as he could.
Mr Jernegan was holding forth to a group of reporters, all of whom were writing eagerly, while Mr Maycock stood beside them nodding agreement.
‘We were all asked to recommend books. Who asked us? Mr Edward Easter. Mr Billy Easter’s son. You saw Mr Billy in court. He is known to you, I believe. Well, Edward was the fair young man sitting beside him. We were totally innocent of any misdemeanour. As I say …’
Billy waded into their midst. ‘Now write this down,’ he said to the reporters. ‘I’ve heard enough from the mouth of this gentleman to sue for defamation of character. Have you got that?’
‘Hold on!’ one reporter said. ‘Do you mean it ain’t true?’
‘Pack of lies from start to finish,’ Billy said trenchantly, speaking loudly to cover what Mr Jernegan was saying.
‘You see how we are treated! You see! Mr Maycock will confirm …’
But Mr Maycock was already walking away.
‘Mr Maycock will confirm nothing,’ Billy said scornfully. ‘Mr Maycock knows the truth of it, don’t ‘ee Mr Maycock?’
Mr Maycock’s plump shoulders were disappearing through the far doors.
‘I wonder that you’re all out here when the truth of the matter is being told inside the court,’ Billy said.
The heat in the lobby was making him pant. But they were moving off, thank the Lord; the danger of scandal was passing. Now if he could just get shot of that damned Jernegan feller.
‘Don’t you want to hear my story?’ Mr Jernegan called after their departing backs.
‘Of course they don’t,’ Billy said to him. ‘Be off with ‘ee, sir! Ain’t you done enough damage for one lifetime? Be off or I’ll not be answerable for the consequences.’
‘Oh yes!’ Jernegan mocked. ‘It’s all swagger and bully out here but you’ve had to plead guilty in there, you and your precious firm, and that’s what counts. That’s what people will remember. Well, I hope you’re all ruined, so I do. Letting women run a firm. It’s downright unnatural.’
‘If I had a horsewhip, sir,’ Billy said, purple in the face with fury, ‘I would use it on you, sir, here and now, so I would.’ He could see the ushers moving towards him. Perhaps it was just as well, because he was feeling too ill to deal with this wretched man on his own. I should have brought Edward with me, he thought. And then a wave of nausea made him stagger, and a second wave of weakness and breathlessness took the strength from his legs, and he knew he was falling, into heat and red light and a sudden terrible pain across his chest.
By the time the ushers reached him he was unconscious.
‘What are we to do?’ they asked one another. ‘His Lordship won’t like his case disturbed twice in one afternoon.’
But somebody would have to come out and attend to the poor gentleman, judge or no.
‘We’ll get a note to Mr Brougham, discreet like,’ the Court Usher decided. ‘He’ll know what to do.’
Mr Brougham’s speech was over, and the judge was giving his verdict when the Usher crept back into the court.
‘I have considered all the mitigating circumstances mentioned by learned counsel…’
‘Give this note to the lady in red silk,’ Mr Brougham whispered, writing his message quickly.
‘… However, I am duty bound to say that given the serious nature of the charge, even instant action of the kind described is not sufficient…’
Matilda got up, moving so quickly that the swish of her skirt was as loud as a handclap. She sent a quick glance of appeal to Edward and was gone.
‘… It is no excuse to claim ignorance of the quality of these books. Their quality should have been known. It is the responsibility of a bookseller to know exactly what it is he is offering for sale …’
Edward was on his feet, following his mother.
‘There’s a deal too much unnecessary traffic in this court this afternoon,’ the judge said. ‘Do any further members of the Easter family wish to leave my presence before I proceed to judgement?’
I would, Caroline thought, staring at him boldly, if only I could. The nearer his judgement came, the more frightened she felt, her heart banging against her ribs and her hands shaking and her mouth so dry that she had to keep licking her lips to be able to swallow. Now I know what the poor bears felt like in the old days, tied to the stake and waiting for the mastiffs to tear them to bits. Hurry up, she willed the judge, say it, get it over with. You’ve drawn this out quite long enough. She wasn’t a bit surprised that Edward and his mother had made a run for it. At least I’ve stayed the course, she thought proudly. I didn’t run.
‘I find for the plaintives,’ the judge boomed, looking down at the remaining Easters. ‘I find the firm of A. Easter and Sons guilty as charged, consequently the firm of A. Easter and Sons through their representative, Mrs Caroline Easter, is fined £1,000 which will I trust persuade it to exercise more care and discretion in the future.’
A thousand pounds, Caroline thought. It’s a fortune. We shall all be ruined. And it’s all my fault. I caused it. I meant to increase our trade, make Papa proud of me, help the firm, take the burdens away from Nan. And now instead I burden her with this. How could I have done such a thing?
She stood up, shakily, aware that her belly was trembling, and that Euphemia was still holding her hand. Everybody in the court was talking, standing, walking. The place seethed with movement. Dust was leaping into the air from every gown, brown choking dust, hurtling towards her to choke her to death, brown as mastiffs. She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t …
Will and Euphemia caught her as she fell, and Nan and Frederick who were discussing the payment of the fine with the Clerk of the Court turned to see her slumped across her brother’s arm. Before they could push through the crowd, Caleb Rawson was leaping to help her, springing over the benches as though they were hurdles, his grizzled hair bouncing with every step, quick and urgent and to Nan’s observant gaze peculiarly graceful. Where had he come from? She’d had no idea he was in the court.
Caroline was groaning as he reached her and Will and Euphemia were struggling to support her sudden weight, Will aware of his present miserable weakness, Euphemia loosening her cousin’s bodice and chafing her hands but knowing that there was no way she could lift her without help. They were both grateful when the weaver scooped her up in his arms and carried her out into the gangway as though she were a baby. ‘Put tha little arm about my neck, lass. Aye, that’s it. I’ve got thee. Tha’s safe wi’ me.’
Nan and Frederick were beside him.
‘First Billy and now Caroline,’ Frederick said.
‘He was taken ill in the lobby. That was why Matilda left the court.’
‘Was he bad?’
‘A fainting fit, so the usher told me.’
‘We will attend to Carrie first,’ Nan decided. ‘I will find out about Billy later. Home if you please, Mr Rawson.’
‘I must return to Chambers, my dear,’ Frederick said.
But she hardly noticed him go.
Caroline was still groaning in and out of consciousness when they reached Bedford Square and Caleb carried her into the house. Although Euphemia tried to assure them she would be better once she was out of her heavy clothes and brought to bed, Nan sent for the doctor.
‘I don’t like the looks of her at all,’ she said. ‘Better safe than sorry to my way of thinking.’
Dr Owen arrived within the hour and was taken straight upstairs to see his patient for by then she was running a high temperature and muttering with nightmare.
‘How wise you were to send for me, dear lady,’ he said to Nan. ‘Your granddaughter is suffering from brain fever, I fear. We must take action at once. There is not a moment to lose.’
‘What is to be done?’ Nan said, much alarmed by the news.
‘You must send for a barber,’ the doctor told her. ‘All that hair must come off for a start, and then I will bleed her. That should bring some relief. I brought my cups, just in case. Fortunately I never travel without them.’ He was a great believer in the value of bleeding.
‘I will cut her hair,’ Euphemia offered. She would be more gentle than a barber.
So the treatment was begun, with Euphemia in nursing attendance, and Nan and Will and Caleb waiting in the parlour to hear the outcome, and the servants gathered in the kitchen subdued and eager for news.
The only person in the house who didn’t know what was happening was Caroline herself, and for her, nightmare and reality were so horribly entwined that she had no idea where she was or what she was doing. She was tied to a stake inside a circle of fire with a red sun burning her and mastiffs howling towards her, fangs dripping. Or was it Edward holding that horrid book under her nose, saying ‘top and tail ‘em’? What did he mean? The mastiffs had seized her by the arm. She was being torn limb from limb. She could see locks of her hair lying on the counterpane. Who was tearing out her hair? The mastiffs were running wildly about her with dark hair trailing from their mouths like weed.
‘Don’t let them pull off my arms!’ she begged.
Euphemia’s gentle face gradually grew into focus before her, saying, ‘Hush, my dearest. It’s all right. I’m only cutting your hair, that’s all.’
But somebody was hurting her arm. It was Mr Jernegan, stabbing at her with a knife, shouting ‘Monstrous lie. Let her be fined a thousand pounds.’ There was blood all over the sheet, pumping out of her arm into a horrid little china cup. ‘Oh Pheemy!’ she moaned. ‘I feel so bad. So bad. Am I going to die?’
And Euphemia’s face returned, speaking softly as though she were a long way away. ‘It will soon be over, my dearest, soon.’
‘I don’t want to die,’ Caroline said, as the mastiffs sprang upon her again, knocking her backwards, falling and falling. Oh, where to? Where to? Not into death. I won’t fall into death. Whatever else, I won’t fall into death. Pheemy, where are you? But she couldn’t see her cousin because the blackness was sweeping her away.
‘We have done our best,’ the doctor said to Nan when he was shown down to the parlour at last.
‘My dear heart alive!’ Nan said in horror. ‘She en’t dead, is she?’
‘No, ma’am. No indeed. We are in time. But she is much weakened. Brain fever is a most serious condition. I will return tomorrow to purge her, ma’am, with your permission. Meantime she is to be kept completely quiet. No excitement of any kind. Excitement would be fatal, you understand.’
‘May we go up and see her?’ Will asked.
‘You may peep in upon her now that she is asleep,’ the doctor allowed. ‘But just this once, mind. I daresay she will sleep a great deal. Brain fever patients often do. When she is awake she is to see no one except Miss Callbeck, who has undertaken to nurse her. No one at all. Not even you, ma’am, otherwise I will not be answerable for the consequences. She is in a most serious condition.’
‘I will do as you say,’ Nan promised. ‘We’re beholden to ‘ee, sir.’
As soon as he’d gone she and Will and Caleb tip-toed upstairs to see if Caroline was sound enough asleep for them to see her, and Euphemia let them in, one at a time. They were all profoundly shocked by the sight of her, for she had changed so much in such a short time. She was deathly pale and unnaturally still and shorn of her hair she looked pitiably young and frail.
‘I cannot bear to see her so,’ Will said when he and Nan were back in the parlour again.
‘Henry must be told of it,’ Nan said, thinking aloud. No matter what their quarrel, he ought to know. ‘I’ve a mind to send Tom down to Richmond tonight.’
‘He won’t be there,’ Will said, suddenly remembering the plans he’d made for the evening. ‘He’s dining with Matty and Jimmy. I was supposed to be joining them later. I’d clean forgot.’
‘Is it any wonder?’ Nan said grimly. ‘Never mind, I will tell him first thing tomorrow.’
‘No,’ Will said. It would be heartless to keep him in the dark so long. ‘He ought to know now, Nan. After all he is her husband. I’ll cut across to Clerkenwell to see him. In any case, they’ll all be wondering where I am. I should have sent a message long before this.’
‘Make it a round trip while you’re about it,’ Nan said, remembering things too. ‘Your Uncle Billy was took ill this afternoon as well as Carrie, and I en’t sent to enquire after him yet.’
‘We’ve had too much else to think about,’ Will said. ‘I’ll call in on my way back from Clerkenwell Green.’
The wind had dropped at last and the sky was streaked with sunset colours as the carriage took Will to Clerkenwell. If it hadn’t been for his anxiety he could have enjoyed the journey, for the city was at its best in autumn, and Clerkenwell Green could have been in a village in the heart of the country with its sheep resting under the yellowing chestnut tree and people gossiping beside the columns of the Sessions House.
But there were no lights in Matty’s dining room and the house seemed ominously quiet.
‘Oh, Mr Will sir,’ the parlour maid said when she opened the door. ‘They ain’t here, sir. All gone off ter Torrington Square so they ‘ave, more’n an hour since, on account a’ Miss Matty’s Pa being so ill. Mortal bad, so Mr Edward said when he come.’
‘Thank you Ellen,’ Will said, taking refuge in politeness because alarm was gripping his heart for the second time that day. ‘Did Mr Henry pay a call?’
‘He come not ten minutes after they was gone. Didn’t stay though, not after I told him about Miss Matty’s Pa.’
‘Do you know where he went?’ Will asked. One of the sheep was bleating, and he wished it wouldn’t, for the sound was too ordinary and peaceful for such a dreadful day.
‘Couldn’t say sir, I’m sure. Have I ter give ‘em a message?’
‘No, thank you Ellen, I’m off to Torrington Square myself directly, so I daresay I shall see them before you do.’
But what would he find when he got there?
In Bedford Square Nan was still sitting wearily in her parlour when Caleb came downstairs to say goodbye.
‘We’re much beholden to ‘ee, Mr Rawson,’ she said. ‘You’ve been a true friend to us today and no mistake.’
‘I could have done no other, Mrs Easter,’ Caleb said, and there was a breathless quality about his voice that made her look up at him sharply. Why, the man was trembling with excitement, bristling with it. ‘Not now. Not after tonight. Not now I’ve seen her shorn t’ way she is.’
‘She will recover,’ Nan said, misunderstanding his emotion and feeling she ought to comfort him.
‘Oh aye. I know that,’ he said. ‘She’s a fighter. It’s not that.’
‘Then what is it?’
‘Why, she’s my daughter, Mrs Easter. I’ve thought it all along, but now I’m sure. Wi’ her head shaved, she’s t’ spit and image of the face I saw in a mirror once back in t’ convict days. She’s my daughter.’ Then he caught his breath and stopped, looking suddenly shamefaced, as he realized that what he’d just said was an insult to this lady and her family, a slur on her dead daughter-in-law; the worst possible thing to say and at the worst possible time.
But she surprised him. ‘Yes,’ she said calmly. ‘She is.’ She’d always known this moment would arrive sooner or later, ever since he first walked into the house.
‘You know it?’ he said when he could find his voice.
‘Oh yes. I have always known it. Sit down, Mr Rawson, pray do. I don’t want another collapse on my hands today.’
He sat obediently and gratefully, wondering how she knew and how many others knew too.
‘Harriet kept a diary,’ she said, looking straight at him, shrewd and level-headed and truthful in the gilded light of the sunset. ‘When she was a-dying she gave it to me to burn, to protect her husband from what it contained, you see, poor child. I read it before I put it in the fire, and I’ve kept the secret of it to this day.’
He was lost in shame at his own actions and admiration for hers. She was a very great lady, this Nan Easter.
‘What are we to do?’ he asked.
‘Nothing,’ she said, giving him that straight look of hers again. ‘She’s been bred an Easter no matter what her parentage may or may not have been, and mighty proud to be one, I can tell ‘ee. And she’s married an Easter, and bred an Easter of her own, and is like to breed another if she survives the fever. There en’t a thing you can do for her now, Mr Rawson, beyond what you’ve done for her today.’
‘I would not have told her any of this, ma’am,’ he said humbly. ‘That would have been a slur on her mother’s good name. I make no claim upon her. It was just t’ shock of t’ resemblance made me speak, and now I’m sorry for it. You have my word.’
‘She is very like you, Mr Rawson,’ Nan said. ‘She has your courage, I think, and your generosity. Let us pray she has your strength too, to pull her through this illness. And now, you must forgive me if I ask you to leave. I’m an old lady and I’m tired to the bone. We will speak of this again on some other occasion.’
‘Yes,’ he said, rising to go as she rang the bell. ‘It has been a terrible day. I’m only sorry to have made it worse by speaking out of turn. A terrible day.’
‘It has,’ she said, ‘but it’s nearly over now, thank heavens.’
‘Once Mr Will is home,’ she said to her maid when the weaver was gone, ‘we will have a little light supper and get to bed. Cold meats and such. Will you tell Cook? And you’d better light the lamps in here. It’s grown quite dark.’
But dark or not the day wasn’t finished yet.
Nan was dozing in her chair when she heard the carriage return, and Will’s voice in the hall talking to someone. Another young man? Surely he hadn’t brought somebody home, she thought irritably. Not at a time like this. It wasn’t like Will to be so thoughtless.
But then they both came striding into her parlour and she saw that the visitor was Henry and she thought she understood.
‘Henry, my dear,’ she said. ‘I don’t know whether you’ll be able to see her, you know. We en’t allowed in, except when she’s asleep.’ And what if she were to wake and see him? What a shock that would be.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know that. Will has explained, but I had to come.’
She realized that they were both looking strained and uncomfortable. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘It’s Uncle Billy, I’m afraid,’ Will said and his handsome face was pinched with distress.
She knew, instinctively, before he told her. ‘He is ill?’ she said.
‘Very ill, Nan. Very very ill.’
‘Is he like to die, Will? Tell me the truth, my dear.’
‘I am so sorry to have to tell you this,’ Will said, kneeling before her and taking her hands in his, ‘but I cannot soften it. There is no way to soften it.’
‘He is dead,’ she said flatly.
‘Yes. When he was taken ill in the court, it was an apoplexy. He died in the carriage on the way home. Matilda and Edward were with him.’
‘Poor Matilda,’ she said. Then her face creased and she began to cry, terrible pent-up tears that she’d carried all through the day. ‘Oh, how are we to bear it? It is too much.’
Henry was beside her in one movement, sitting with his arms about her and her poor white head on his shoulder. ‘There my dear, brave, darling Nan,’ he said. ‘There my dear!’ And she leant on his shoulder and cried like a child, with the tears running off her nose onto his shirt, and Will still kneeling at her feet, stroking her hand.
‘You are such good boys,’ she said when the worst of the crying was over. ‘I don’t know what I should do without you. You ought to be going up to see how Caroline is, Henry my dear, and I’m keeping you. And making such a mess of your shirt. Oh dear.’
‘The shirt will wash,’ Henry told her, ‘and I shall see Carrie eventually. Shan’t I? When she’s better.’
‘Go now, my dear,’ Nan said, kissing him, for his anxiety was too touching not to be answered. ‘Will will stay here with me.’
So he went, and because Caroline was sound asleep, Euphemia allowed him into the room ‘for half a minute’ and he stood close enough to his darling to have touched her if only he’d been allowed to. Even in the lamplight he could see how hot and ill she was, and that poor cropped head made him yearn with pity for her. We are more apart than ever, he thought, for now we may not even look at one another. How cruel life is.
‘She will recover, won’t she Pheemy?’ he whispered, when the two of them had retreated to the door.
‘Yes,’ Euphemia whispered back. ‘She will. I promise.’
And as she sounded so sure, and seemed strong enough to accept even more bad news, he told her about Uncle Billy.
‘Carrie mustn’t know of it,’ she said. ‘That’s the important thing. I shan’t wear mourning. Nan will understand.’
‘Yes. Poor Nan.’
‘What a fearful day this has been.’
‘Yes,’ Henry said. But it had brought him within a hand’s breath of his darling again, even if they weren’t allowed to speak, and she would recover, Pheemy said so. Even in the midst of distress, there was hope in that.
They all had a long way to go before Caroline was well. And the biggest obstacle to her recovery, as Euphemia began to suspect after a week of his ministrations, was Nan’s trusted doctor.
He came to the house every morning either to bleed his patient or to purge her, and sometimes he did both and departed very well pleased with himself. His visits left poor Caroline so weak and distressed that Euphemia became more and more alarmed each day. On the morning of Billy’s funeral, when Caroline had been bled and purged she was so ill she couldn’t speak. At that point Euphemia decided that something would have to be done to stop the torture.
She would speak to Will as soon as he got back from the service.