Death at Dawn - Caro Peacock [63]
Dear Mandeville,
Yours of the 23rd ult. has only just come to my hand. I am writing in haste to urge you to desist from this most dangerous folly. You are aware of the extent to which I share all the concerns of yourself and others about the deplorable weakness of the present administration and the threat to our dignity, profits and rights of property which must inevitably result if they continue cravenly to appease the masses. But there are remedies which are more perilous than the disease and, if I understand your hints aright (which I am very much afraid I do, greatly though I should wish otherwise), your proposed cure is one such.
If in the past my too-great warmth on such subjects has led you to the erroneous conclusion that I might in any way support what you propose, I can only apologise for unwittingly misleading you. Bluntly, I want no part in this. If indeed a wrong was done, then it was done twenty years ago. To attempt to right it in these changed times would be no service to our country or to him you wish to serve. Let him not cross the Channel. If a pension must be discussed, then – provided that stretch of water remains for ever between him and England – I might be prepared to say a word in certain ears. Otherwise I must ask you not to correspond with me on the subject again.
Believe me, your most alarmed well-wisher,
Tobias
I added a postscript to the note I’d written to Blackstone and sealed up the letter along with it. Then I put the note and Celia’s letter into my reticule and went stocking-footed down the back stairs so as not to wake the maids.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Even so early in the morning it was unthinkable to walk down the main drive, with all those windows watching me. The back road was reassuring by comparison. After passing a big, lightning-scarred tree it dipped between high banks crowded with cow parsley, wild geraniums and red campion, the air so sweet after a long time inside that it began to raise my spirits.
Once clear of being seen from the house, my mind was free to think about other things, like the letter I’d taken from the fireplace. Let him not cross the Channel. The man who had written that was scared, and the reason for his fear – as the reason surely for my father’s death – came from France. So did the unknown, unfortunate woman that the fat man was hunting. And yet my last letter from my father, hinting at a secret, had not mentioned danger, rather the reverse: … one most capital story which I promise will set you roaring with laughter and even perhaps a little indignation … Blackstone could probably make sense of it all, but he wouldn’t tell me. Well, I was being his good spy. After only a few days under the Mandeville roof, I was bringing him a fat packet of news.
The banks on either side flattened out and the back road joined the main road that I’d travelled on from Windsor. Half a mile in that direction were the great gates of Mandeville Hall. They were closed, but a trail of smoke rose from the chimney of the gate lodge into the blue sky. I turned in the opposite direction, making for what I hoped was the heath. For half a mile or so I had the road to myself, then four figures appeared, coming towards me. I fought against the impulse to jump into a ditch and went on walking. They were three haymakers, walking with their scythes over their shoulders, and a boy scuffling his boots in the dust behind them, trailing their long shadows as the sun came up. They nodded to me and the boy gave me a sideways look. If I’d had more confidence I might even have asked them the way, because I wasn’t sure I was on the right track for the livery stables.
After a while a lane went off to the right, deeply marked with hoofprints, and a signboard with a horseshoe pointed to the stables. The heath opened out, with skylarks singing overhead and from far away a vibration of drumming hooves that