Traitors Gate - Anne Perry [54]
“Thomas?”
Charlotte’s voice cut across his thoughts and he turned and followed her out onto the bright road, and they set out the half mile or so to the village street, and the church beyond.
“Who were they?” she asked.
“They came to the inquest.” He did not add in what capacity and she did not ask. Almost certainly his tone of voice had told her.
It was a short walk and they did not speak again. There was no sound but that of their feet on the roadway and the faint whisper of breeze now and then in the hedges and trees, and birds calling. Far away a sheep bleated and a lamb replied, sharper, higher pitched, and a dog barked.
The village too was unusually silent. The grocer, the ironmonger and the baker were all closed for business, blinds drawn, and wreaths or black ribbons on the doors. Even the smithy’s forge was cold and tidy, and deserted. A small child, perhaps four or five years old, stood in the doorway of one of the houses, its face solemn, wide-eyed. No one was playing outside. Even the ducks on the pond drifted idly.
Pitt glanced at Charlotte and saw the awe in her face, and the soft sadness, for a community in mourning, and for a man she had never known.
At the farther end of the main street there were half a dozen villagers dressed in black, and as Charlotte and Pitt approached them they turned. At first all they saw was Charlotte’s black gown and Pitt’s black armband and black tie, and they felt an immediate fellowship; then after a second look one of them spoke.
“Young Tom, is that you?”
“Zack, you didn’t ought to speak like that!” his wife whispered quickly. “He’s a gentleman now, look at him! I’m sorry, young Thomas, sir. He didn’t mean no disrespect.”
Pitt scrambled through memory to place the man whose dark hair was streaked with gray and whose face was burned by weather and lined with screwing it up against the wind.
“That’s all right, Mrs. Burns. ‘Young Tom’ is fine. How are you?”
“Oh, I be fine, sir, an’ Mary and Lizzie too. Married and got children, they ’ave. O’ course you knew as our Dick joined the army?”
“Yes, I heard.” The lie was on Pitt’s tongue before he had time to think. He did not wish her to know how completely he had lost touch. “It’s a fine career,” he added. He dared not say any more. Dick might have been maimed or even killed.
“Glad ye’ve come back for Sir Arthur,” Zack said with a long sniff. “I s’ppose it’s time we went. Bell’s started.”
And indeed the sound of the tolling of the church bell was carrying over the fields in a sonorous, mournful knell that must have reached the next village in the still air.
Farther back along the street a door closed and a figure in black emerged and started towards them. The smith came out of his house, a huge-chested, bowlegged man. He wore a rough jacket which barely fastened, but his black armband was new and neat and very plain to see.
Pitt offered Charlotte his arm, and they began to walk slowly away from the village along the road towards the church, which was still some quarter of a mile away. They were joined by more and more people: villagers, tenants and laborers from the local farms, the grocer and his wife, the baker and his two sisters, the ironmonger and his son and daughter-in-law, the cooper, the wheelwright, even the innkeeper had closed for the day and turned out in solemn black with his wife and daughters beside him.
From the other direction came the hearse drawn by four black horses with black plumes over head and shoulders, and a driver with black cloak and top hat. Behind it Matthew walked bareheaded, his hat in his hand, his face pale, Harriet Soames by his side. After them were at least eighty or ninety people, all the servants from the Hall both indoor and outdoor, all the tenant farmers from the estate with their families, and after them the neighboring landowners from half a dozen miles around.
They filed into the church and those who could not find a seat stood at the back, heads bowed.
Matthew had saved a place in the family