Abbeyford Read online

  “I’ve come to see—to see …” she faltered and then took a deep breath and finished boldly, “… her ladyship about Lady Caroline.”

  The gardener said soberly, “The little maid has the disease.”

  “I know—that’s why I’m here.”

  He resumed his brisk sweeping movements. “It’s an unhappy house. They’ll not want to be troubled wi’ likes of you.”

  “We’ll see,” Sarah said, confident that she would be heard if she brought hope for their beloved daughter.

  Moments later she was facing the forbidding figure of the housekeeper at Abbeyford Grange. Mrs Hargreaves folded her hands neatly in front of her severe black dress and looked down upon the village girl who had presumed to present herself at the Grange.

  “Well, and what do you want, girl?”

  Though her knees trembled beneath her long skirt, Sarah said, “I wish to see Lady Royston, if you please?”

  The housekeeper’s gasp of surprise was plainly audible. “Do you indeed? And what makes you so certain that her ladyship will condescend to see you?”

  Sarah stuck out her chin defiantly. “Because I’ve come to help her—to help Lady Caroline.”

  Mrs Hargreaves gave a snort of contempt. “If the best physicians in the county can do naught for the poor child, what can a chit like you hope to do, eh, miss? Tell me that?”

  Sarah’s clear violet eyes met the cold gaze of the housekeeper unflinchingly.

  “Besides,” Mrs Hargreaves continued, “ her ladyship is far too distraught to talk to anyone, let alone …”

  “Then I’ll speak to his lordship. I’m not afeard.”

  “No, and more’s the pity! A bit more respect for your betters, my girl, that’s what …”

  Sarah ignored the tirade of abuse and her sharp eyes spotted the staircase leading from the kitchens to the upper landings of the house. With the swift suddenness of youth, she dodged around Mrs Hargreaves and darted up the stairs before the housekeeper had realised what she was doing.

  As the door swung to behind her, cutting off the indignant screech of the housekeeper, Sarah found herself in a vast, high hall, the staircase curving round and round, up and up. Ancestral paintings lined the walls, their cold, staring eyes reproving her bold entry into their world.

  A young footman, hovering in the hall, almost dropped the tray he was carrying at the sudden arrival through the door of a village milkmaid.

  At that moment the double doors leading to one of the rooms off the hall opened and Sarah found herself staring open-mouthed at the tall figure she knew to be Lord Royston. He, too, stopped in surprise to see her there, but there was neither the anger nor contempt on his face that she had seen in the expressions of the housekeeper and, even now, the footman.

  She ran forward and bobbed a curtsy. “ Beggin’ your pardon, m’lord,” she began breathlessly, “ but I heard Lady Caroline has the smallpox and I had to come, you see, perhaps I can help …”

  At that moment a flustered Mrs Hargreaves arrived through the door and the footman too hurried forward and grasped Sarah roughly by the shoulder.

  “I’m sorry, m’lord, I can’t think how she got in …” he began, whilst behind them Mrs Hargreaves cried apologetically, “Oh your lordship, I …”

  Lord Royston raised his hand to quieten them both, his eyes upon the clear unwavering gaze of the girl standing before him. “No—wait,” he said, his deep, soft tones instantly demanding respect and obedience. “I wish to hear what this child has to say.”

  “But, your lordship, she’s naught but a village girl …”

  Lord Royston’s eyes burned fiery for a moment and the housekeeper fell silent.

  “I will listen to anyone—anyone—who can perhaps help my daughter. Come, girl, come in and let me hear what it is you have to tell me.”

  Standing in front of a blazing log fire with Lord Royston seated in front of her, Sarah explained.

  “M’lord, my two sisters have had the smallpox an’ me ma wrapped them both in red flannel, like her own grandma told her, to stop the scarring, m’lord.”

  “And?” he questioned softly. “Did it—help?”

  “Well—Beth, she was that bad she tore off the binders and scratched at her face and, m’lord, she’s terribly marked.”

  “Poor child,” his lordship murmured, but Sarah knew his thoughts were more for his own daughter than for Beth Miller.

  “But Ella, the youngest, she’s a good li’le thing, she lay quiet and never moved the flannel me ma put on her.”

  “And?” There was a note of pathetic eagerness in the earl’s tone.

  Sarah smiled. “ She’s scarcely a mark on her, m’lord, not that won’t fade given time, an’ yet she had just as many spots as Beth at the start.”

  “Red flannel, you say?”

  “Yes, m’lord.”

  He pondered a moment and then, with sudden decision jumped up and pulled violently on the bell-cord, shouting at the same time. “Mrs Hargreaves—Mrs Hargreaves. Red flannel—have we any red flannel?”

  Mrs Hargreaves appeared in the doorway. “Why yes, m’lord. I believe so, but …”

  “Wrap Lady Caroline in red flannel. See that her face is covered—particularly her face—but her hands and arms too. All must be wrapped in red flannel!”

  “Yes, m’lord.” Mrs Hargreaves, peeved by her master’s enthusiasm for this peasant girl’s wild notion, nevertheless hurried to obey his orders.

  More calmly, his lordship turned back to Sarah. “And you—did not catch this dreadful disease?”

  “No, m’lord. Me ma thinks it’s because I caught the cowpox when I began working as milkmaid for Sir Matthew Trent. She’s heard say as those as gets cowpox dunna get the smallpox.”

  “Ah yes, yes. Indeed, I’ve heard of Mr Jenner who—now what do they call it?—vaccinates against this smallpox—and uses cows to do so. Ah, if only I had known in time, had thought …” Then he added, “You’re not afraid of catching the disease then?”

  Sarah answered truthfully. “At first I wur, m’lord. But now—well, I reckon if I wur goin’ to get it I’d have it by now.”

  “Yes, yes. Now listen, you have been a thoughtful girl to come here. Whether or not your idea works, I appreciate your concern for my daughter. Now—how would you like to become her personal maid, eh?” The earl even managed to smile, despite the heavy weight of anxiety he carried. “She’s been pestering me these last few months to allow her to have her own maid, just like her mother, instead of a governess.”

  Sarah’s mouth dropped open and she gaped in astonishment at Lord Royston. Never in her wildest daydreams could she have imagined herself, a lowly milkmaid, being offered such a position.

  “Now, what do you say?” the earl prompted.

  Chapter Two

  “No, no, no!” Joseph Miller thumped the table with his clenched fist. “She’s not going up there. I won’t have her going into service. She’ll mix wi’ bad company.”

  Ellen Miller’s spinning-wheel whirred all the faster. “Joseph Miller, you’re a good husband and father, I’ll not deny, but do you want to see your daughter a milkmaid all her life? Dun’t you want a better life for her? Why, at the Grange as Lady Caroline’s personal maid, she’s almost equal to Mrs Hargreaves. Just think—she’s stepping straight into a good position, when most girls would start as kitchen-maid.”

  “She’ll still be a servant,” he muttered. “We Millers call no one ‘master’ …”

  Ellen sighed. She’d heard all this before.

  “We hold our heads high, we’re our own masters.” He thumped the table again. “But between the pair o’ them,” he gestured to one side of the valley towards Abbeyford Grange and then the other way towards the Manor. “Between the two, they’re trying to make lackeys out on us, on land we used to call our’n!”

  “Joseph—it’s better this way. The crops is better than when all the land was divided into strips. I remember me pa for ever complaining his land was rui
ned by couch-grass spreadin’ from his neighbour’s strip …”

  “But it don’t belong to us.”

  “We still have the common land and …”

  Joseph thumped the table again. “ Not for much longer it seems.”

  Ellen’s eyes widened and the rhythmic whirr of her spinning-wheel faltered. “ What do you mean?”

  Joseph’s voice became a low growl. “ Not content wi’ robbin’ us of our strips of arable land, they’re going to enclose the common.”

  “No!” Ellen gasped and the wheel stopped completely. “ I dunna believe it.”

  “Well, it’s true. But this time they’ve a fight on their hands! We didn’t fight last time because a lot o’ the villagers thought Trent’s arguments for increased production were sound. But we’ll not let it happen this time!”

  Ellen was silent. The arable land had been enclosed long before her marriage to Joseph, when they had been village children together, but she well remembered the anger of her own father and of Joseph’s and the meetings they had held in their cottages to try to get all the villagers to unite against the Bill of Enclosure. But opinion had been varied. Some believed that they would be better off working for the Trents and the rebellion Joseph’s father had tried to bring about had not happened.

  Now she was to go through all that again.

  They were silent for a moment, then his wife said tentatively, “But you’ll not stop Sarah going to the Grange, Joseph, will you?”

  “I’d like to, but they’d turn us out of our home if I go agen them in every way. I reckon I dunna have no choice but to let her go,” he said bitterly, then added, clinging to a last, vain hope, “Mebbe she’ll not take to the life anyway.”

  Sarah lay tossing and turning in the bed trying not to disturb her two younger sisters sleeping alongside her. She was far too excited for sleep! More than once she reared up on her elbows to look at the new grey dress and white lace cap and apron spread neatly over the box at the foot of the bed.

  Tomorrow she was to begin working at Abbeyford Grange as Lady Caroline’s personal maid. Of course, at sixteen—almost seventeen as she was quick to emphasise—it was not her first job. Since the age of nine she had worked in the fields gleaning after the harvesters; picking potatoes; bird-scaring; tending her father’s livestock on the common land or driving them into the woods at the top of the hill. Then she had become a milkmaid at the Manor. But now …!

  Sarah, in her shared bed, wriggled again.

  “Go to sleep, our Sarah,” murmured Beth sleepily. But Sarah could not sleep. Tomorrow she would be up there with the gentry, part of their lifestyle. Never again would she have to suffer the backbreaking fieldwork, shed tears of pain over cold hands, chapped until they bled, or be driven half-mad by stinging chilblains, or risk being kicked by a stubborn cow. No longer for her, life in a farm-labourer’s cottage.

  From tomorrow onwards she would be sleeping in a soft feather-bed and have a room of her own. No longer would she bear the indignity of sharing a bed with her younger sisters.

  Tomorrow she was to become a lady’s maid.

  She was up before dawn, creeping across the cold floor of the attic bedroom in her bare feet to dress herself in the uniform of her new life, her fingers trembling with excitement.

  She couldn’t swallow any of the usual thick breakfast porridge and for a time she stood in the quiet confines of the small kitchen listening to the sounds of the cottage. She could hear her father snoring in the next room, the thrum of the wind in the chimney.

  Sarah looked ruefully towards the almost cold grate of the kitchen fireplace. She ought to blow the fire back to life, but dressed now in her finery, her hands scrubbed to an unusual cleanliness, she refused to scrabble about with ashes and faggots.

  She pulled her cloak around her and bit her lip with indecision. She was ready to go, anxious to be off, but knew she should say ‘goodbye’. Not that she wouldn’t be coming down to see them every week but her mother would never forgive her if she left without a proper farewell. Her pa, too, would want to warn her yet again to be a good girl and not to allow herself to be led astray.

  She heard a movement in her parents’ room and moments later her father appeared in the doorway, scratching his head and yawning. His bare feet stuck out below the shirt he wore day and night.

  “Lord! You up already, me girl?”

  “Yes, Pa. I couldna sleep.”

  He yawned again and grinned at her. “ You’re lucky! I reckon I could sleep for a hundred years and then some.” He paused and his eyes roved proudly over her heart-shaped face with its smooth rosy skin, the pert nose and generous mouth. Her violet eyes were shining with excitement and her cascading unruly black hair was gathered neatly now beneath the white lace cap. Then, as he noticed her new finery, his smile faded. “ You’re off then?” he said gruffly.

  “Aw Pa, dun’t spoil it for me.”

  He sat down on the hard chair and began to pull on his working boots. “You’d do better to settle down and marry Henry.”

  “I dunna want to marry Henry, Pa, nor anyone else. Not yet.”

  He wagged his finger at her. “ Don’t you go gettin’ fancy ideas about yoursel’, me girl.”

  “No, Pa. I’ll work hard—and I’ll be good,” she added impishly.

  “Aw,” Joseph Miller doubled his fist and landed a gentle mock blow upon her chin, but now he was smiling. “Go on wi’ you! You’d best say ‘ goodbye’ to your ma,” he jerked his thumb towards the next room, “then you can be off.”

  As she pulled the cottage door shut behind her, Sarah breathed deeply in the fresh morning air. Directly in front of her was the village green with its duck-pond and on the far side the vicarage and the church and churchyard.

  She turned left and walked along the lane, past the line of cottages which bordered the green. The lane curved to the right and then swung sharply left away from the green. More cottages lined the road on either side now and amongst them on the right-hand side was the village’s one inn, the Monk’s Arms. Sarah walked on, the road curving left towards the bridge over the stream. The last two buildings of the village, close beside the stone bridge, belonged to the smith and his brother, the village wheelwright. Already she could hear the clanging sounds of the smith’s heavy hammer. Beyond the bridge the trees overhung the lane, almost touching at the top and forming a shadowy, natural tunnel.

  Sarah took another deep breath and gave a little skip of sheer delight. More sedately, as befitting her new position, she walked on, climbing the hill on the eastern side of the valley towards Abbeyford Grange standing proudly just below the summit of the hill, sheltered from the cold easterly winds.

  She paused at the huge wrought-iron gates leading into the grounds of the Grange and gazed in awe at the black and white mansion, with four gables at the front and one over the porch entrance. The house was built of wood and plaister, reminiscent of the Tudor age, but had been built in the early part of the seventeenth century by the first Earl of Royston.

  Sarah turned to look back down into the valley. Her own home looked minute now, almost lost to the eye amongst the row of cottages nestling around the village green.

  Directly opposite the Grange about halfway up the western hill stood Abbeyford Manor. It was a square, solid house with stables to one side and farm buildings at the rear, and had been built by the fourth Earl of Royston for his younger son and his bride and completed in 1741, but the young couple had died without heirs. Then, after the Bill of Enclosure, the house had become the home of the Earl’s tenant farmer. To young Sarah the Manor was a fine house, but nothing like as grand as Abbeyford Grange.

  Robert Elcombe, the sixth Earl of Royston, owned Abbeyford Grange and all the surrounding farmland and woodland upwards of a thousand acres. He owned all the cottages in the village, even the vicarage and the Monk’s Arms. His tenant farmer, Sir Matthew Trent, who occupied Abbeyford Manor, now farmed the land, though the earl himself took an active interest in the running
of the estate and employed a forester and a gamekeeper to tend the woodland, the game-birds and trout-streams. Only the common waste-land belonged by feudal right to the cottagers—and now it seemed even that was to be taken from them.

  But Sarah was not worrying about such things on this most important day. Her mouth curved in a small smile as she surveyed the valley beneath her, her eyes fondly following the twisting paths of the streams, one which ran down the hillside on which she stood, the other running from the north-west corner of the valley and through the common. The lane leading from the village up to the Manor ran through this stream, literally, for there was only a narrow footbridge across the water at this point. Farm carts, or the gentry’s carriages, had to splash through the ford in the lane, which in times of heavy rain could become treacherously deep. At the southern end of the valley the two streams joined together and ran as one out of the valley through a natural pass between the hills to join a river some miles away.

  Above the Manor and a little to the south, gaunt and black against the skyline stood the abbey ruins on the very top of the hill. Sarah’s gaze finished its roving and with a last glance towards the tiny cottage she called home—as if to draw courage from it—she turned her back upon the valley and entered the gates of Abbeyford Grange.

  “So you are to be Lady Caroline’s personal maid, Sarah Miller?” Mrs Hargreaves, the housekeeper, stood before her.

  “Yes’m,” Sarah whispered. Mrs Hargreaves’s hair was stretched tightly back from her face beneath a white muslin cap with a ruffled frill. Her cold grey eyes bulged slightly and beneath her small mouth her chin sloped sharply inwards so that her overlarge nose dominated the whole of her face. She launched into a seemingly endless list of a personal maid’s duties, most of which flowed directly over Sarah’s head. The night’s excited anticipation was giving way to dread now.

  “… And finally, you will be allowed one half-day off a week and every fourth Sunday.” The housekeeper paused and looked keenly into Sarah’s pert face. “Servants are not allowed followers. Do you know what that means?”