Anne Perry - Traitors Gate

Perhaps it was the sheer indignity of it which stopped him, and the knowledge that it would embarrass Charlotte-although she would understand-and even more, Wilkie, the stationmaster. But it was also his own sense of guilt. Had he been back here more often he would have been in a position to deny the slanders from knowledge, not merely memory and love.

“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 pew for Pitt and Charlotte, as if Pitt were a second son. Pitt found himself overcome with emotion, gratitude, guilt, a warmth of belonging that brought tears to his eyes and prevented him from speaking. He dared not look down in case they spilled over. And then as the bell ceased and the minister stepped forward it became purely grief and a profound sense of having lost something irretrievable.

The service itself was simple, all the old, familiar words which were both soothing and deeply moving as the mind repeated them over in silent poetry, the terms of brevity of life like a flower in its season. The season was over, and it was gathered into eternity.

What was special about this particular funeral was the number of people who were met, not because it was required of them, but because they wished to be there. The gentry, the men from London, Pitt ignored; it was the villagers and tenant farmers who held the meaning for him.

When it was over they went to the burial in the Desmond family vault, at the far side of the churchyard under the yew trees. It was silent in the shade, even though there were above a hundred people still there. Not one of them moved or spoke as the coffin was placed inside and the door closed again. One could hear the birds singing in the elms on the far side, in the sun.

Next came the long ritual of thanking people, the expressions of sorrow and condolences.

Pitt glanced at Matthew where he stood on the path back towards the lych-gate on the road. He looked very pale, the sun catching the fair streak across his hair. Harriet Soames was beside him, very close, her hand on his arm. She looked somber, as befitted the occasion, but there was also a gentleness in her when she looked up at Matthew, as if she had more than an ordinary understanding of his anger as well as his grief.

“Are you going to stand with him?” Charlotte whispered.

He had been undecided, but in that moment he knew. “No. Sir Arthur was a father to me, but I was not his son. This is Matthew’s time. For me to go there would be intrusive and presumptuous.”

Charlotte said nothing. He was afraid she knew that he also felt he had forfeited his right to do that by his long absence. It was not Matthew’s resentment he feared but that of the villagers. And they would be right to resent him now. He had been gone too long.

He waited a little while, watching Matthew’s face as he spoke to them with great familiarity, accepting halting and deeply felt words. Harriet stood beside him smiling and nodding.

One or two neighbors paid their respects, and Pitt recognized Danforth, who had given evidence so reluctantly. There was a strange play of emotions over Matthew’s face: resentment, caution, embarrassment, pain, and resentment again. It was not possible from where Pitt stood to hear what each of them said before Danforth shook his head and walked away towards the lych-gate.

Others followed, and then the men from London. They looked oddly out of place. The difference was subtle, an unease in the wide spaces with the view of fields beyond the churchyard and giant trees in the sun, the sense of the seasons and the heavy physical labor of turning the earth, plowing and reaping, the comfortable familiarity with animals. It was nothing so obvious as a difference in clothes, but perhaps a more closely barbered head, thinner soles to the boots, a glance as if the road winding away towards the trees and boundaries of the Hall were an enemy and not a friend, a distance one was not happy to walk when one was more accustomed to carriages.