It took them until three in the afternoon to complete their tour. Antonia sat at the kitchen table and sorted the disappointingly short lists of the remaining furniture, while Donna sliced bread and butter for a belated luncheon.
‘Father must have either sold a great deal or it has had to go to satisfy the creditors. All the lovely French pieces from my mother’s chamber and the blue drawing-room have gone. By the time we have thrown away the things that are too full of worm to keep we will be rattling around like two peas in a drum.’
Donna put down a platter and paused on her way to fetch the butter to con the lists. ‘You know, my dear, this furniture would be quite adequate if only we were in a modest house. I do not say that everything is of the first height of elegance, but it will be passable with polishing and some repairs. The linen needs darning but it is of good quality.’
‘If wishes were horses, Donna. We are in a mansion with twenty rooms, to say nothing of the servants’ quarters. Unless we move into the stables there is no smaller accommodation.’ Antonia cut a piece of bread and butter and tried not to frown as she thought. With all the problems facing them she’d have wrinkles if she wasn’t careful.
There were positive things to think of, she reminded herself. ‘The one saving grace is that, with the exception of those few slates off on the west wing, the fabric of the house appears remarkably sound. It needs cleaning and many minor repairs, but nothing beyond the skill of the village craftsmen, I’m sure. We must fashion ourselves a small suite of rooms and close up the rest of the house. Oh, Jem – what have you got there?’
The lad was looking mightily pleased with himself as he dumped down two wicker baskets, one of which was brim-full of provisions, the other spilling over with kittens.
‘Good heavens, Jem, I asked for one cat, not every stray in the village.’
The boy extracted a fine tabby from the centre of the basket. ‘But she's just had kittens, Miss, and she’s a good mouser. With all the kittens she’ll work even harder, Miss, and when they grow up, they’ll be catching too.’
‘Well done, Jem, that is a sensible thought.’ He grinned at the praise. ‘There are certainly enough mice in this house to feed such a hopeful family. Put the basket in the scullery and find her a saucer of water.’
Donna inspected the shopping while the cat was settled into her new home. ‘This is excellent, Jem. Did you manage to engage the charwomen for us? And the rat catcher?’
‘Widow Brown and her daughter will be coming up first light tomorrow. The rat catcher can’t come until Wednesday, but he’s bringing his dogs and a boy, so they’ll do the house and the stables and all. And my dad says, I ought to do the chimneys for you.’
‘There’s a good boy.’ Donna put a platter of bread and cheese in front of him and he set to with a will, talking with his mouth full.
‘I got the provisions from Berkhamsted, my mum saying I should, you being quality, like. Everyone is pleased to hear the Hall is occupied again. I ’spec you’ll have lots of tradesmen come calling.’
Antonia went outside leaving Donna pinning old sacking over the fireplaces while Jem readied a motley collection of brushes and sticks to attack the chimneys. The sunshine was warm on her shoulders and she slowed to a stroll until, after a few minutes, she found the gate into the kitchen garden.
The warm brick walls still supported their trained fruit trees, and the shape of the beds could be traced under the rank growth of weeds and long-dead vegetables. Antonia walked up and down the brick paths, hopeful of finding something edible, but she could recognise nothing except some mint and thyme. The fruit trees needed pruning, she thought, but the new growth on the fans was vigorous and were promising for later in the year.
That exhausted her sum of horticultural knowledge, which was a worry, because a flourishing kitchen garden would make all the difference to their meals.
When she returned to the house she found Jem outside the kitchen door shaking soot out of his hair. ‘ls there anyone in the village who could tend the kitchen garden for us, Jem?’
He stood fidgeting on the piece of sackcloth to which Donna had banished him whilst she swept up his sooty footprints. ‘Old Walter Johnson, who used to do the gardens here, he’s still alive, Miss. He’s got the rheumatics something awful – leastways, he moans about them enough – but he knows what he’s doing and he could bring a lad with him for the heavy digging.’
‘That sounds excellent, if you think the old man can manage.’
‘He’ll do right enough, and be glad of the money. You could have had his eldest son, but he’s in Hertford gaol.’
‘Goodness.’ Donna came out behind him, broom in hand. ‘I do not think we would want to employ someone of that kind.’
‘Was only poaching, Miss. Caught red-handed, he was, and him up at Brightshill sent him down. He’s devilish hard on poachers, is himself. Bit of a shock, really, ’cos he’s not usually around long enough to make life difficult that way.’
‘The Duke, you mean?’ Antonia felt her colour rise at the memory of her own experience of Renshaw’s treatment of poachers. When Jem nodded, she asked, ‘Is poaching much of a problem around here, for him to be so strict?’
‘It has been, folks have got to eat, when all’s said and done, but it’ll be all right now you are here, Miss,’ Jem said confidently. ‘There’ll be work again on the land and the grounds and in the house, I’ll be bound.’ His cheerful face screwed up and for a moment Antonia thought he might be about to cry. ‘But all your tenants have had it hard the last few years, Miss. A lot of families would have starved if it hadn’t been for the odd pheasant or rabbit off your land or himself’s.’
Antonia was shaken by a blaze of anger against her father and brother for their negligence, their uncaring, profligate behaviour. She had been all too aware of the effect their ruinous ways had had on the family fortune and name and on her own prospects. Now she realised just how they had betrayed their responsibility to their tenants. People were on the verge of starving at the very gates of the Hall.
And as for the Duke of Allington, how could one defend a man who was willing to imprison breadwinners for putting food into the mouths of their children? It was iniquitous. The man is inhumane, there is no other word for him, she fumed. She knew that all landowners took a hard line over poaching, as they did over any offence against property, but surely a rational man could show some leniency when people were in need?
Jem edged away from her and she realised she must be frowning. With a smile she found some coppers from her reticule for his day’s labours and sent him off home with an apple to munch and a reminder to approach the old gardener in the morning.
After supper Donna set-to cutting up hopelessly worn sheets to make pillowcases while Antonia remained at the table with a pile of papers and a quill pen.
After an hour Donna, looked up. ‘Another heavy sigh, my dear. What are you doing? It cannot be good for your eyes and it certainly seems to be giving you no satisfaction.’
‘I am reviewing our financial position. You recall we calculated that we should be able to afford to engage a maid, a footman and a cook?’
‘Indeed. Were we mistaken? Do we have less money than we thought?’
‘No, we were accurate in our calculations. But, Donna, how can we in all conscience bring in smart town servants to look after our comfort and consequence when the people on the estate are in such straits? We must spend the money on charwomen and gardeners and men to do the repairs, then, at least, the money will be going to as many families as possible. You and I must look after our own clothes and do the light cleaning and the cooking.’
Donna removed her spectacles and polished them carefully on her apron. ‘I applaud the sentiment, my dear, but I do at least think you should have a maid to lend you some consequence and to answer the door. It is going to make receiving guests most difficult and what any prospective suitor would think to find one of us answering the knocker, or a charwoman…’
‘It will give any prospective suitors a very clear idea of my true position,’ Antonia said briskly. ‘I hardly feel, in view of my father’s reputation locally, that the local gentry will be beating a path to my door.’ Let alone suitors. At her age and in her financial position, the sooner she resigned herself to spinsterhood, the better.
‘That is true,’ Donna agreed with a shake of her head. She put the spectacles back firmly on her nose and glared at the torn sheets. ‘It is such a pity that the Duke is unmarried. His wife would be just the person to introduce you to local Society.’
‘She would, if a duchess were to condescend so far. And if Renshaw were married, I am certain his disposition would be considerably more conciliatory.’
Donna opened her mouth as though to say something, then shut it with a snap, folded her sewing away and rose from her seat by the fire. ‘I think we should retire, my dear, we have another long day ahead of us tomorrow.’
‘Antonia, what are those chimneys over there through the trees?’ Donna’s voice floated faintly down the stairs from the servants’ attics. A week after they had arrived they had settled into a routine of cleaning and the upper storeys had been left until later.
‘Which chimneys? And what are you doing up there?’ Antonia called back, puzzled. She pushed back a wayward strand of hair behind her ear, put down the polishing cloth with which she had been attempting to restore some lustre to the newel posts of the main stair, and climbed towards the sound of Donna’s voice.
She found her was leaning on the sill of one of the dormer windows that looked out across the flat leads of the roof to the woods that lay to the west of the house.
‘How green and lush the countryside has become in the three weeks we have been here,’ she observed. ‘I feel spring has come at last – it quite fills one with hope for the future.’
Antonia looked at Donna’s thin cheeks, usually so sallow, now touched with colour. It seemed she was flourishing in the face of this new challenge. The daughter of an impoverished East India Company army officer, she had been left with no choice after his death, when she was in her early twenties, but to become a governess.
Although Donna rarely spoke of her previous employers, Antonia knew she had not found the role a congenial one. Becoming companion-governess to the fourteen-year-old Antonia had better suited her temperament and the two had soon become fast friends.
‘Yes, it is lovely.’ Antonia leant on the ledge next to her, and for a moment neither spoke as they breathed in the fresh smell of the breeze wafting softly across the beechwoods from the Downs. ‘What brought you up here?’
‘It occurred to me that we gave these rooms only the most scant inspection that first day and I wanted to see if we had missed anything useful. But there is only a chair with a broken leg and another damp spot we had failed to notice. But then I noticed chimney stacks. See?’
Antonia followed the pointing finger to where ancient twisting brick stacks just broke the tree-line. ‘Good heavens, that is the Dower House. I had quite forgotten it. The last time I was there, I was very young. My father’s elderly cousin lived there for years but, since they had quarrelled violently ages ago, we never visited. She is long dead now.’
‘Will the house be yours, then?’ Donna enquired.
‘Well, yes, it must be. It is part of the estate.’ She met Donna’s eye and they spoke as one. ‘Furniture!’
‘Of course, it may have been cleared out by your father and sold when his cousin died,’ Donna said with the practical air of someone who was determined not to be disappointed.
‘Perhaps not. They were on such bad terms and he had other things to occupy him…’
‘Such as his wine cellar,’ Donna supplied waspishly. ‘Well, we must go and have a look, and the sooner the better. Just let me glance in at the kitchen first, I left Widow Brown preparing the vegetables for dinner.’
A scene of chaos greeted them as they crossed the threshold. The charwoman was chasing the tabby cat round the kitchen with a broom, a badly mauled, skinned rabbit was bleeding damply on the hearthrug and a pot of giblet stock boiled over on the range.
‘Mrs Brown, whatever is the matter?’ Donna demanded.
The charwoman grounded the broom and stood panting, red in the face. ‘That dratted cat, Miss! It’s the rats it’s meant to be eating, not what's in the pantry.’
The cat, seizing its opportunity, dragged the rabbit off into the scullery and Antonia darted across to save the stock pot before it boiled dry.
‘Oh, dear,’ Donna lamented. ‘That rabbit was our dinner. Did the boys leave any other game this morning, Mrs Brown?’
Shortly after they had arrived, Antonia had the idea of encouraging her tenants to ‘poach’ the plentiful game that infested her neglected lands. She had struck a bargain: she would take a cut of the animals they snared or shot and, in return, they could keep the rest to feed their families. She had laid down the strict condition that they did not stray by so much as a toe into Brightshill or any other estate in the neighbourhood.
The scheme was already starting to work well. Her tenants would be better fed and she felt confident that they were now safely removed from all temptation to run foul of the law – or the Duke’s gamekeepers. In return, she and Donna would dine well on rabbit, pheasant, pigeons. Yesterday there had even been venison.
They had become adept at plucking, skinning and stewing to the great benefit of the housekeeping account. Perhaps more importantly, she felt she had begun to heal the rift between landlord and tenant that her father’s behaviour had opened. Whenever she met any of her tenants Antonia had been warmed by their obvious gratitude.
And there was still the river and the lake to consider, although that might have to wait. She had looked at her late brother's fishing rods, but after becoming entangled in hook and line before she had even got them out of the cupboard, had regretfully decided she needed lessons before threatening the local pike and perch.
‘I believe there is still a brace of wood pigeons.’ Donna peered into the larder. ‘I had better stay here and see what I can retrieve. Will you go on to the Dower House without me, Antonia? Now, Mrs Brown, let us see what we can do here.’
Antonia slipped out of the back door with relief, glad to escape from the smell of burnt stock. Rain earlier that day had given way to sunshine, although she had to watch her step with the mud as she picked her way across the freshly gravelled paths through the walled vegetable gardens.
Old Johnson was hoeing between lines of seedling vegetables, grumbling at the skinny lad who was putting in pea sticks along newly dug trenches. Knowing full well that the gardener could, and would, hold forth at length with incomprehensible gardening questions if she gave him the opportunity, Antonia gave them a cheery wave and went out through a wicket gate into the ruins of the pleasure grounds beyond.
She negotiated clumps of brambles and nettles, remembering with sadness the smooth sweep of lawn and well-tended shrubberies that had once occupied the area. Her mother had loved to stroll in the cool of the evening in the formal rose garden she had created. Now Antonia could not even recognise where they had walked together.
She swallowed hard against the almost physical pain of remembering and walked on towards the belt of trees that fringed the pleasure grounds and separated them from the gardens of the Dower House and the pastures beyond.
A small group of fallow deer started away, almost under her feet, reminding her that the fences must be in disrepair. The animals were lovely to watch, but would swiftly lay to waste any efforts to civilise the gardens. Gloomily she attempted to calculate how much fencing would cost, not only for the grounds but, more importantly, the fields and pastures.
The Dower House was hidden behind a rampant hedge of briar and thorn, taller than her head, that made her think of the tale of the Sleeping Beauty. She was approaching the rear of the house, she realised as she came to the garden gate. It hung crazily from one hinge, the wood quite rotten and covered in lichen. Antonia lifted it aside gingerly and walked through to find herself in a paved yard with a well in the middle.
The house had been the original farm on the estate, she recalled. Built in the reign of the first James, it was a two-storey building of two wings constructed of local red brick, under a tiled roof capped by the twisting chimney stacks Donna had seen from the attic that morning.
Where she stood had once been the farmyard, she supposed. Presumably, when the house had become the Dower House and the new Home Farm was built, the outbuildings were demolished and the yard became part of the gardens.
The small mullioned windows reflected light only dully, despite the bright sunshine. As Antonia approached she saw the leaded panes were thick with grime and festooned with cobwebs.
There was a low back door under a heavy porch. She tried it and found it, not surprisingly, locked. She should have thought of that, but they had found no keys that could belong to this house and she would probably have to ask young Jem to break in.
That was disappointing, because by now she was quite excited at the prospect of exploring. Antonia had half turned away when she saw the key hanging on a hook on a beam in the porch. It was red with rust and obviously not, judging by its size, the key to this door. She turned it in her hand, staining her fingers with the rust. It could be the front door key, it was worth trying. Picking her way, she took the drive that led round the side to the front of the house, facing across overgrown lawns to the main gates beyond.
Antonia could vaguely remember the only occasion she had visited the house. She had been with her mother and they had driven in the carriage the short distance down the lanes from the Hall. There had been this old house and the crabby lady who, in her antiquated clothes, had seemed just as ancient. She had pinched Antonia’s cheek painfully, she recalled.
Antonia tried the key in the front-door lock without much hope. It grated and resisted, then suddenly turned with a loud click and the panelled oak swung open. The hall beyond was dark and gloomy with shadowed recesses and the black gaping holes of opened doors.
Every unwelcome memory of every Gothick tale she had read welled up in her mind as she hesitated. She stood, one hand on the door frame, her toes safely on the outside of the threshold, poised to run at the first ominous creak.