Distant Voices

‘No.’ Caroline pulled away from him. ‘Please, let me go home.’

The two men looked at her. ‘She’ll not talk, sir,’ Jake said quietly.

Charles looked down at her, his face hard. ‘There is too much at stake.’

‘There is nothing at stake, sir!’ Caroline retorted, goaded into fury by his expression. ‘I have given my word. That should be enough for you. I shall not betray you. Whatever your motives are in doing this it is not my concern. Now, please let me go!’ She wrenched her wrist free of his grasp.

He frowned. ‘Men’s lives are at risk …’

‘I am well aware of that, Mr Dawson,’ she snapped. ‘I can guess what you were doing, though why you should be involved in this I cannot even begin to imagine –’

‘Then don’t,’ he said curtly. He hesitated for a moment then he stepped away from her. ‘Go, then, Miss Hayward. Go back to your bed. But I shall expect you to keep silence. If you don’t …’

‘If I don’t?’ His threatening tone enraged her.

‘If you don’t it will not only be these men and myself who suffer,’ he replied softly. ‘Because you and your father will find yourselves implicated as well.’

‘What do you mean?’ she flared. ‘That’s not possible. We had nothing to do with any of this!’

He smiled. ‘You need find out, Miss Hayward, only if you betray us.’ He turned away and began walking fast through the churchyard towards the gate. Jake hesitated for a moment, then he followed him.

Caroline closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her knees felt shaky and her mouth was dry with fear as she retraced her steps towards the Rectory. She was beginning to shiver. Her soaking dress clung to her and her shoes squelched uncomfortably in the mud. Softly she opened the gate and slipped into the garden. Avoiding the raked gravel of the driveway she tiptoed across the wet grass and round to the back of the house. The French window still stood slightly ajar. With relief she pulled it open and slipped through the curtains.

The candelabra on the sideboard had been fitted with fresh candles. Her father was sitting at the head of the table, swathed in his dressing gown. His Bible lay open on the table before him, the pages golden in the flickering candlelight.

‘I have been waiting for you.’ His eyes travelled up her wet form and she saw the lines on his brow deepen. ‘I am sure you have an explanation for your absence.’ He got up heavily and walking past her, he reached up to shoot the bolts on the windows. He closed the heavy curtains then he turned to face her once more. ‘I am waiting.’

Caroline shrugged. ‘I went for a walk in the gardens, Papa. When the storm came I thought I would shelter rather than try and run back.’

‘Your shelter was obviously sadly inadequate.’ He was staring down at the carpet where the sodden hem of her dress was seeping into a puddle round her feet.

‘The rain was very heavy.’

He sighed. ‘Indeed it was. Would it be too much to wonder why you felt the need to walk in the garden in the early hours of the morning just as a storm was breaking?’

‘I had a headache, Papa, and I couldn’t sleep. I thought the air might help it.’

‘And did it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I suggest that you go back to bed before you catch cold.’ He blew the candles out one by one, leaving a single flame burning in the candlestick by the door. ‘We will talk more of this tomorrow. I do not like the thought of my daughter wandering alone, even in the gardens, at night. It is most unseemly.’

‘I am sorry, Papa.’ Gritting her teeth, she lowered her eyes. ‘But there seemed nothing wrong in it, to me –’

There was mud all over her skirt – distinctive, chalky mud from the hillside, mud which could not possibly have come from the manicured beds and lawns of the Rectory garden. With a quick glance at her father Caroline clutched at the sodden green silk, trying to hide the tell-tale smears.

‘Forgive me, but I am very cold. I think I shall do as you say, and go to bed.’

‘Would you like a glass of ratafia to warm you?’ As she reached the door, he stopped her, his voice unexpectedly gentle.

She shook her head. ‘Thank you, no, Papa.’ She took the candle from him and turned away.

As she fled up the stairs, the shadows leaping round her, she was uncomfortably aware of his eyes following her in the soft lamplight from the table in the hall, and of the streaks of dirt left by her swirling skirts.

There were dark rings under her eyes when she confronted her father over the breakfast table next morning. Her hair was tightly knotted at the back of her neck, her dress neat and irreproachable.

‘I have not learned the Bible passage, Papa.’ She met his eyes defiantly. ‘There has not been time.’ She held her breath, waiting for the outburst she knew would come, but to her surprise her father merely shook his head. ‘Tonight, then, tonight. You are none the worse for your soaking?’

‘None the worse, thank you, Papa.’

Her father was helping himself from a dish of eggs beneath one of the silver covers on the sideboard. ‘I thank the Lord you were not tempted to stray beyond the garden last night,’ he went on, not turning. ‘The smugglers were out. My verger was here at eight. He said the excise men failed to catch them.’ He sighed as he sat down. ‘These rogues must be caught. They killed a man down on the foreshore last night.’

‘No!’ Caroline’s distraught cry made him look up.

He frowned. ‘I am afraid so. But don’t distress yourself. They will be caught.’

All night her brain had been whirling with the events at the castle and in the churchyard. Each time she had closed her eyes she had seen Charles Dawson’s tall figure – wet through, wild, dressed in shirt and breeches, his hair tousled by the storm, his eyes alight with anger. And her body had remembered the hard touch of his fingers with a strangely disturbing glow of shame.

She shivered imperceptibly again now at the thought.

‘Is it known where they come from?’ she asked cautiously as she sat down.

‘Local,’ he replied. ‘It would surprise me if some of them didn’t come from this village. The rogues! They deserve to hang!’ He frowned at his daughter. ‘Do you not wish to eat?’

She shook her head. ‘I’m not hungry, Papa.’

‘I trust you are not sickening for something. Take some hot chocolate at least. I am going into Larchester later this morning to consult with my fellow magistrates. There must be something more we can do to catch these men. It is a scandal that they are still free!’

Caroline watched her father ride away an hour later with mixed feelings. Half of her was relieved that he was so distracted by his anger against the smugglers that he had forgotten his indignation at her; the other half was eaten up with anxiety over what was to happen about the smugglers. How could Charles Dawson be involved with them? How could he, a man of God, be a thief and a murderer?

Miserably she paced the floor of the morning room, oblivious to the beauty of the day outside. Still his image rose before her eyes. The anger and hardness in the man, his determination, his ruthlessness. If Jake had not been there to restrain him, what would he have done to her? Her mind shied away from the answer to that question. But the truth remained. He or his men had killed that night. And if they had killed once, why should they not have killed again?

Suddenly making up her mind she ran for her bonnet and taking her basket, loaded with jars and packets, on her arm she let herself out of the Rectory. The lane was already drying in the hot sun, the muddy ruts hardening beneath chalky crusts as the hedgerows steamed, glittering with raindrops.

Jake Forrester’s cottage was at the far end of the village, a tiny run-down hovel. She hesitated only a second before she knocked at the door. It was several moments before it opened.

Mrs Forrester peered out, blinking in the sunlight. She was a thin, stooped young woman, her heavily pregnant figure obvious beneath her threadbare gown and flimsy shawl. ‘Why, Miss Hayward!’

‘How are you, Susan?’ Caroline groped in her basket for her jars of calves’ foot jelly, her honey and her loaves of fresh baked bread from Polly’s oven. ‘I thought I would come and see how you are. Is your cough still bad?’ She followed a flustered Susan Forrester into the cottage and peered round the small dark room. It was empty. She could feel the chill striking off the walls. ‘How is your husband, Susan? Is he here?’

Susan shrugged. ‘Jake’s all right, Miss. He’s gone over the hills today and tomorrow to help with some droving.’ She sat down heavily. ‘I don’t like him going so far and leaving me so long, but we need the extra, with another baby on the way.’

Another baby. Caroline had noticed the empty cradle by the window. Three babies had been born in this house in the last three years and all had been dead within six months. She felt a clutch of pity at her heart. ‘He’s a good man, your Jake.’

‘Aye.’ The woman’s thin face broke into a smile. Then as swiftly as it came it vanished and Caroline saw fear and worry in the woman’s eyes.

‘What is it, Susan?’