Philippa Carr - The Drop of the Dice

‘Oh no, no,’ she moaned. ‘Not… here… Never… never…’

Anita touched her forehead and although she closed her eyes her expression was disturbed.

It seemed a long time before Benjie came back with the doctor.

When he saw her he said: ‘She will lose the child.’

Those were sad days at Enderby. Damaris recovered but she was in despair.

‘It seems I shall never have my own child,’ she said.

Priscilla came over constantly to see her but it was Anita who nursed her and made herself indispensable in the household. Benjie stayed on. He would not go until he knew that Damaris was out of danger.

I heard the servants whispering.

‘It’s this house,’ they said. ‘It’s full of ghosts. How did the mistress come to fall? I reckon it was someone, some thing— that pushed her.’

‘There’s never going to be no luck in this house. There’s tales about it that go right back into the past.’

I began to wonder whether there was anything in it. When it was quiet in the house I would stand below the minstrels’ gallery and fancy that the shadows up there took shape and turned into people who had lived long ago.

Benjie rode over often during that spring and summer, and during one of his “visits Anita came to me in the schoolroom looking radiant.

‘I have news for you, Clarissa,’ she told me. ‘I’m going to be married.’

I stared at her in amazement and then suddenly the truth dawned on me. ‘Benjie!’ I cried.

She nodded. ‘He has asked me and I have said yes. Oh, most joyously have I said it. He is the kindest man I ever knew. In fact, he is a wonderful man and I can’t believe my good luck.’

I hugged her. ‘I am so pleased… so happy. You and Benjie. It’s obvious… and absolutely right.’

I felt that a great responsibility had been lifted from my shoulders. This concentration on responsibility was becoming an obsession. Benjie was no longer someone to whom I owed something. He had lost Carlotta and myself—well, now he would have Anita.

Arabella’s comment was: ‘Harriet would have been pleased.’

They all agreed that it was the best thing possible for the pair of them.

‘Of course,’ said Priscilla, ‘we shall have to think of getting a new governess for Clarissa.’

‘We shall never get anyone like Anita,’ sighed Arabella.

Damaris said she would teach me in the meantime and added that Anita must be married from Enderby, which was, after all, her home.

So the wedding took place. The preparations absorbed Damaris, for she was determined that Anita should feel that she was one of the family. I think we were all especially happy for Benjie’s sake. He had changed; his melancholy had dropped away from him, and it was wonderful to have something happy taking place.

So they were married and Anita left Enderby Hall to set up house with Benjie at Eyot Abbas. I had passed my eleventh birthday when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. There was a great deal of relief about that because it meant that the war was over. Great-Grandfather Carleton discussed it constantly and at the dinner table at Eversleigh Court we heard little else. He would bang the table and expound on the iniquities of the Jacobites and how this was their coup de grâce.

‘Best thing that could have happened,’ he said. ‘This will teach those traitors a lesson. Louis will have to turn them out of France now. There’s no help for it. We shall have them sneaking back to England.’

‘Everyone has a right to his or her views, Father,’ Priscilla reminded him.

He looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows and growled: ‘Not when they’re treacherous Jacobite ones.’

‘Whatever they are,’ insisted Priscilla.

‘Women!’ muttered Great-Grandfather Carleton.

We were all glad that the war was at an end, and as Philip of Anjou was now King of Spain it all seemed pointless that it had ever taken place. Priscilla’s brother Carl would probably be home now, for he held a high position in the army, and that would be a source of delight to Arabella and Carleton.

The year passed peacefully. I went in the summer to Eyot Abbas and was delighted with the change since my last visit. There was no doubt that Anita and Benjie were happy. The house was more like it had been when Harriet was alive.

It was September, a rather chilly day, for the mists had continued through the afternoon and we had not seen the sun. I had ridden over to Eversleigh Court as it was a Sunday and it became a habit for us to dine there on that day. Grandmother Priscilla was insistent that we keep up the habit. It cheered Arabella, she said, who had never really recovered from Harriet’s death, and whose health was not as robust as it had been.

Even I could see the change in both great-grandparents. Arabella looked very sad sometimes, as though she were looking back into the past, and her eyes took on a misty look as she remembered. My great-grandfather made a show of being more irascible than before but at times he was a little unconvincing.

I remember we had dined, and were sitting back sipping elderberry wine which had come from Arabella’s stillroom, and she and Priscilla were assessing its quality and comparing it with the last brew. Carleton was rambling on about his favourite topic—Jacobites. The fact that my father had been one of the leaders made no difference. Whenever he thought of them his face would grow a shade more purple and his eyebrows would quiver with indignation.

I always felt a need to defend them because whenever he talked in this way it brought back vivid memories of Hessenfield. Sometimes I wondered whether Carleton knew this. He had a mischievous streak in his nature and when he was interested in young people he would tease them more persistently than if he liked them less. I would often find those bright eyes peering out from the bushy brows which seemed to have sprouted more hairs every time I saw him.

Even now, although he was supposed to be talking to Leigh and Jeremy, his eyes were on me. He had probably noticed my rising colour and a certain flash in my eyes.

‘He, ha!’ he was saying. ‘“Get out,” said the King of France. Court of Saint Germain! What right has James to set up a court of his own when he’s been drummed out of the only one he could lay claim to!’

‘He had the permission of the King of France to do so,’ Jeremy reminded him.

‘The King of France! The enemy of this country! Of course he would do everything he could to irritate England.’

‘Naturally,’ put in Leigh. ‘Since he was at war with us.’

‘Was! Ah… was!’ cried Carleton. ‘Now what will happen to our little Jacobites, eh?’

I could not bear any more. I thought of Hessenfield, brave, strong, tall. He became taller in my mind’s picture as time passed, and so had I magnified his virtues, so diminished his faults, that he had become the perfect man. There was none like him and if he had been a Jacobite then a Jacobite was a wonderful thing to be.

‘They are not little,’ I burst out. ‘They are tall… taller than you are.’

Carleton stared at me. ‘Oh, are they indeed? So these traitors are a race of giants, are they?’

‘Yes, they are,’ I cried defiantly. ‘And they are brave and…’

‘Just listen to this,’ cried Carleton. His eyes opened wide so that the bushy brows shot upwards, and his jaw twitched, which usually meant he was suppressing amusement. He looked fierce, though, as he banged the table. ‘We’ve got a little Jacobite in our midst. Now, my girl, do you know what happens to Jacobites? They are hanged by the neck until they are dead. And they deserve it.’

‘Stop it, Carleton,’ said Arabella. ‘You’re frightening the child.’