Hope - Lesley Pearse [174]
The smell of burning flesh and hair made Matt retch. He knew Sir William must be dead already and he’d be killed too if he didn’t get out right now. So he shut the door and fled back downstairs.
‘Joe, ride into Keynsham and get the constable!’ Matt yelled as he came staggering into his farmhouse, supporting Lady Harvey with one arm and Baines with the other. ‘Henry, you ride for the doctor!’
The two brothers came tumbling out of the room beside the kitchen bleary-eyed, pulling on their clothes. ‘What’s happened?’ Henry asked, looking at Lady Harvey in her mud-splattered nightgown as if she were a ghost.
‘Albert set fire to Briargate,’ Matt said tersely. ‘Sir William is dead and these two are lucky to be alive. I must go and round up some men to try to save the house.’
Amy appeared on the stairs in her nightgown. ‘Be careful, Matt,’ she said, and then coming on down the stairs she went straight into the boys’ room, returning with two blankets.
‘You are safe now,’ she said, wrapping the blankets around Baines and Lady Harvey and nudging them on to chairs. They were silent and motionless as statues and looked too deeply shocked even to know where they were. ‘Just give me a minute to stir up the stove and I’ll see to you.’
Anne lay in the hard, narrowbed staring at the low, stained ceiling, thinking that this was like one of the terrible nightmares she used to have as a child. She remembered how she used to force herself to wake up, sometimes even to walk around the bedroom, but the moment she got back into bed and closed her eyes again, it would come back.
This nightmare didn’t relent for even a moment though. She could still hear the crackling of the flames, feel the heat, smell the burning, and picture William lying there on the landing in his night shirt.
It was her fault he had died. If only she’d got a grip on herself when Matt arrived to save them! She could have shown him where the backstairs were straight away, and the pair of them could easily have dragged William to safety.
But then, if she hadn’t goaded William into getting tough, Albert would have had no need to resort to burning Briargate down. What kind of fool was she that it never occurred to her he would take some form of revenge?
She had been here three days now, lying in this hard little bed with its scratchy sheets, so full of remorse and sorrow that she was barely aware whether it was night or day. Just the other side of the door Amy and her four children were carrying on with their normal life. From time to time she heard ordinary family sounds, laughter, chatter and arguing. She could smell food being cooked, heard dishes being washed, the stove being raked, chairs scraping on the stone floor. They were familiar enough sounds and smells, yet they seemed alien, as though she’d been transported to a foreign land where everything, language, customs and behaviour, was strange and frightening.
She had never met Amy, Matt’s wife, before the night Matt had brought her here, and she couldn’t fault the kindness the woman had shown her. She’d washed her as though she was one of her own children, bandaged up her feet because they’d been torn to ribbons walking through the woods to get here, even lent her one of her own night dresses, yet Anne hadn’t even been able to thank her, much less explain how she felt, or even ask why she could still smell smoke.
It was so strange. The soap Amy had used on her was strong enough to banish any lingering smells on her skin and her nightgown was clean. If she felt no pain from her cut feet, why should she still smell smoke?
Yet even in her almost trancelike state she was very aware of how remarkable Matt had been. He’d rescued her and Baines from Briargate, and got them both back here to safety, no mean feat when they were hardly able to walk. He’d then summoned men from the village and gone back to Briargate