Antonia Hodgson - A Death at Fountains Abbey

‘ Molly! ’ Sneaton’s voice broke the spell.

‘It was such a small thing, Jack. Such a small fire. I never meant…’

She never forgot it, the look Jack Sneaton gave her in that long, silent moment. ‘You were my jewel, Molly,’ he said, quietly.

The cobbles tilted beneath her feet. She never knew. He’d never told her. If she could just go back half an hour. That was all she needed to make things right again – just half an hour. But it was too late.

Sneaton snatched up a bucket and soaked his neckerchief in the water. ‘Where are they, Harry?’

Harry pointed to a window on the second floor. ‘You won’t reach it, Jack. The smoke’s terrible.’

Sneaton put the wet cloth to his mouth and ran inside.

Harry pulled her away. She stumbled along with him until they reached a ring of neighbours, clinging to each other in horror as the house burned down in front of them. They watched as Mr Aislabie was dragged out by his servants empty-handed, screaming his wife’s name. Saw the last few men beaten back by the smoke and flames.

‘Nothing to be done, now, God rest their souls,’ one of the neighbours said. ‘Just pray it doesn’t spread.’

Harry dug his fingers deeper into her shoulder.

Then someone gave a shout and pointed to a window on the second floor. ‘There! Look!’

Jack Sneaton stood at the window, clasping a tiny bundle to his chest. He clambered on to the ledge, smoke pouring all about him like a thick grey cloak. No way to clamber down, not from such a height. He gestured fiercely to the men below with his free hand. They gathered beneath him, huddled together. He raised the bundle carefully in both hands, then let go.

They caught it. Safe. A cheer rose up. Someone called to Mr Aislabie. ‘Your son! Mr Aislabie! Your son is saved!’

At the same moment a fresh burst of flames swept out through the window, engulfing Jack Sneaton. With a great cry, he dropped from the ledge and fell twenty feet to the ground.

‘Jack!’ Harry rushed forward to help his friend, forgetting her in his hurry. She couldn’t see Jack, but she could see men beating at the flames with their coats, and a man rushing forward with a bucket of water. She could hear screaming.

Molly glanced about her. None of the people standing around her knew what she had done. She was just another servant, caught up in the tragedy. The crowd surged forwards, anxious to see if the night’s hero had survived his fall. Mr Aislabie was holding his baby son, and weeping. Amidst the chaos, the shouts for aid, the men running back and forth with more water, Molly stood alone, forgotten.

She took one step away. Dared another.

No one stopped her.

No one even noticed her leave.

Numb, half blind from the smoke, she walked away. Beyond the press of spectators, the street had fallen eerily still. She drifted past the stone watch tower at the end of the square as if in a dream.

Behind Red Lion Square lay a dank alley. It was too narrow for the grander carriages, too muddy and noisome for the better folk to use. This was where the week’s coal was delivered, and the night soil was collected. And it was here that Molly Gaining stumbled now, weighed down with a pocket full of jewellery and gold coins. How long before she was missed? How far could she run, and where should she go?

She had reached the back entrance to Mr Aislabie’s home, burning as hard as the front. No one had thought to fight the fire from here. Or perhaps there were not men enough to spare. The flames had begun to spread along the roof to the neighbouring house. She thought of the Great Fire, the tales her father had told her of it tearing through the streets for days.

‘I never meant to hurt no one,’ she whispered, to the flames, to the smoke. The emptiness had returned, a hollow feeling deep in her chest. She didn’t know, yet, that it would never leave her.

As she stared at the house she had destroyed, she caught a glimpse of something small and pale shimmering at a window on the ground floor. And Molly knew – she knew - what it was.

Redemption.

John Aislabie was in trouble.

‘I believe my life is in danger,’ he wrote, in a letter to the queen dated the 22nd of February. And then, when he received no reply, again on the 6th of March. He reminded her of the great service he had performed on her behalf, the sacrifices he had made to ensure that the royal family’s honour – that the crown itself – had remained intact. He underscored the words honour and crown with a thick line, making the threat explicit. A determined man, to threaten the royal family. Determined and desperate.

The queen responded a week later. ‘We are sending a young gentleman up to Yorkshire to resolve the matter. We do not wish to hear from you again.’

It was a measure of Mr Aislabie’s poor standing at court that I was the young gentleman in question.

‘Mr Hawkins?’ The coachman jumped down from his seat, boots thudding on the cobbles.

I took my hands from my pockets and nodded in greeting. I had arrived in Ripon late the night before, taking a room at the Royal Oak rather than travel the last few miles to Aislabie’s house in the dark. After breakfasting this morning I had sent word of my arrival. The carriage had raced from Studley Hall within the half hour. Clearly my host was anxious to meet me.

I couldn’t return the compliment. I had travelled to Yorkshire at the command of Queen Caroline – a command presented as a gift. It would be pleasant, non , a short trip to the country? A chance to recover from your recent misfortunes? Fresh air and long walks? This from a woman who scarce moved from her sofa. I had declined the offer. The offer was transformed into a threat. So here I was, against my will, preparing to meet one of the most hated men in England.

John Aislabie had been Chancellor of the Exchequer during the great South Sea frenzy eight years before. He’d proposed the scheme in the House of Commons. At his encouragement, thousands had invested heavily in the company’s shares. After all, what could be more secure? Mr Aislabie had put his own money into the scheme. He had invested tens of thousands of pounds of King George’s money.

And for a few giddy months that summer, shares had exploded in value. Overnight, apprentices became as rich as lords. Servants abandoned their masters, owning stock worth more than they could earn in five lifetimes. Thousands more scrambled to join the madness as the price of shares rose hour by hour. In the coffeehouses of Change Alley, trading turned more lunatic by the day. Poets and lawyers, tailors and turnkeys, parsons and brothel women scooped up every last coin they could find and joined in the national madness.

Then the bubble burst, as bubbles do. The lucky few sold out in time, holding on to their fortunes. The rest were ruined, catastrophically so. How many took their own lives in despair, rather than face the consequences of their unimaginable debts? Impossible to say. But the South Sea Scheme had been the Great Plague of investment – and Mr Aislabie had spread the disease.

The nation shouted for justice. Aislabie was found guilty of corruption and thrown in the Tower. When the public mind had turned to other things, he was allowed to slink away to Studley Royal, his country estate. Bankrupt , he insisted. Scarce able to feed his poor family.Sacrificed to spare more noble-blooded men.

No one listened and no one cared.

I had been eighteen at the time, studying divinity at Oxford. I am a gambler to my marrow, but I did not have the funds to dabble in stockjobbing, having invested my father’s allowance in the more traditional markets of whoring and drinking. I had watched in astonishment and frustration as two of my friends built dizzying fortunes in a matter of weeks. One of them had been wise enough to sell his shares before the final subscription, leaving him with a profit of ten thousand pounds. The other, a young fellow named Christopher d’Arfay, lost everything. He joined the army soon after, and I never saw him again. But I thought of him on the road north. One life destroyed, among tens of thousands.