Charles put his hand to his cheek, in some surprise. He seldom remembered the scar. “Well, what do you suggest?” he asked slowly.
“Keep off the main roads,” said Errington. “Go west to the Durham fells, then up to Dilston through Blanchland. And by the bye, don’t think of visiting your aunt at Durham town.” Errington went on to explain at some length that old Lady Mary Radcliffe was having trouble with the Commissioners, who were still trying to impound her estates and inflict the Catholic penal laws. She did not wish to be embarrassed with an attainted exile.
“I certainly will spare Lady Mary,” said Charles dryly. He glanced at Jenny, who was sitting by the inn fire mending a rent in her riding cloak and humming to herself. Before they started the journey he had told her of her mother’s death, and she had cried a little -- though it was evident that she felt no great sense of loss. The relatives she had known in her early childhood seemed of far less importance to her than memories of the Dale itself -- of moors and hills and burns.
“You know very well the chief reason for my visit to the North,” he said, in a low voice. “I want official proof of Meg’s death; you didn’t send it to me.”
“I couldn’t get it,” said Errington. “She’s dead, I’m sure, but those Snowdons -- they’re wild as wolves and mad as March hares. They’re Covenanters, won’t go near the parish church, won’t tell where she’s buried.”
“Then what am I going to do?” Charles frowned, unable to keep the anxiety from his voice. “Go up and force a certificate out of them?”
“I don’t think that necessary. Rob Wilson is getting it. He’s gone to Coquetdale with his widowed sister-in-law -- Meg Snowdon’s sister -- that Nan Wilson who used to work for Cotesworth and warned you of the bailiffs coming to Dilston at the beginning of the ‘Fifteen.”
“I remember,” said Charles flatly, and turned as Jenny gave an exclamation.
The girl put down her mending and leaned forward. “Did you say Robbie Wilson?” she asked, her cheeks very pink, her eyes alight. “Oh, where is Rob?”
Errington was startled. “I didn’t know you knew him, miss. I presume that he is on his way to Dilston where he will meet your -- err -- Mr. Radcliffe.”
“Then I’ll see him!” Jenny cried. “I was so hoping that!”
Charles was astonished and not pleased by this enthusiasm, though fair enough to admit that Jenny had reason to remember the boy kindly. Still, he wasn’t a boy any longer. Wilson must be twenty-three, and hadn’t Betty said he’d gone north with a small fortune?
“What has Wilson been doing of late?” Charles asked, still frowning.
“Working the keelboats,” answered Errington with a shrug. “ ‘Twas either that or the pits, though he had money when he came back to Tyneside, big ideas too. Bought land near Gateshead, began to build himself a manor house. Then the South Sea Company did for him, as it has for plenty of others. You’ll find out, Radcliffe! Times are bad. We had floods last year and a drought this one. Dilston tenants all cry ‘poor mouth,’ and won’t pay their rents. As I wrote Lady Derwentwater in my last accounting, I can’t get out near the revenue I did when I first became her agent.”
“Oh, then,” said Jenny, her face clouding, “Robbie’s not got what he wanted after all. He hasn’t got the land he craved.” She looked at Charles with such innocent certainty of his sympathy that he smiled at her, and said, “Yes, it seems he’s right back where he started. It is a pity.”
Jenny said nothing more, but her lovely face was solemn for some time.
Her face wasn’t solemn now, Charles thought, as he twisted around in the saddle to see how she was doing. “Come up here, dear,” he called. “I think there’s room for us to ride abreast.”
She nicked Coquet and trotted up beside her father. “Are we nearly there?” she asked. “Not that I care. I could ride through the moors for ever and a day, and never weary of them.”
“You’re an odd child,” said Charles smiling. “And would you like riding the moors for ever and a day as well, without me?”
“Oh no, sir,” said Jenny earnestly. “You’re part of it -- the--” She searched for words, and couldn’t find the exact ones to express this new feeling of being sustained and cherished. “Part of the ‘belonging,’ “ she said. “I never had that before.”
“I know,” said Charles quietly. “Jenny, do you think you could begin to call me ‘Father,’ or ‘Papa’ -- if you prefer?”
She gave a little chuckle, and looked up at him from under the green riding hood. “It comes hard,” she said. “I’ve had no practice all my life, and you don’t look much like a ‘Papa.’ “
Charles straightened himself, and said with mock severity, “Nonetheless, Miss Impudence, I’m sixteen years your senior; in fact I’ve just turned thirty, so I demand proper filial respect.”
“Yes, Papa,” said Jenny, her eyes dancing, and she made him a formal bow, from the saddle. They both burst into laughter.
Alec, watching from behind, thought, aye they’re happy those two, and ye can’t begrudge it to them, since neither’s had much of it, and God knows what the future’ll bring. What a pair they were -- so bonny, with their big gray eyes, their fair hair, cleft chins, the grace with which they both carried themselves; even their laughs had the same ring. You’d think they were brother and sister. But they weren’t. The girl had other blood in her too, for all the master wanted to forget it. The blood of that strange grim Border woman. It was bound to show sometime, and when it did would likely mean sorrow for the master. Alec shivered. He, too, was approaching the county of his birth, but he was not enjoying the moors as
Jenny did. With each mile they covered, he felt an increase of foreboding and reluctance. And he thought of the last time he had seen Dilston. Right after the shameful defeat at Preston, when he had had to break the news to Lady Derwentwater. Aye -- her poor little ladyship -- so fired with joy she’d been when from the tower she saw old Monarch coming through the gate, and had thought it was her lord a-riding home.
Alec thought somberly of that night; how they’d loaded the chests of Radcliffe papers into a wagon, which he had driven all the way to the Swinburnes at Capheaton. The chests were still there, hidden in a secret room in the attic. Her ladyship had done all she could, yet if there ever was a broken heart ‘twas in her ladyship’s breast.
Alec shivered again, and chided himself. Going all nervish and wambly he was, getting fey like his old granny used to be, the one that had “the sight” and was forever yammering about “presences.” It was Granny who’d scared off Molly -- canny wee Molly Robson years ago. “Alec’s na the mon fur thee, lass,” the crone had said, glowering. “Ye’ll niver hould him, fur his weird’s to follow Radcliffes, he mun iver follow alang wi’ Radcliffes!” Wuns! The old woman spoke true enough, thought Alec, but I wish master an’ me was somewhere else, even with those jibjabbering foreigners across the water.
Ahead of him the two riders drew up on the brow of a hill, and Jenny cried, “Why, there’s mist down below in the valley!”
“Yes,” said Charles. “There’s often mist in Blanchland. There was thick fog the night hundreds of years ago that Scottish raiders destroyed the monastery, and murdered all the monks.”
“Ah -- those Scots again!” said Jenny. “The bloody false thieving Scots!”
“My dear child!” cried Charles. “Your language is a trifle strong, and have you ever really known a Scot?”
She shook her head, slightly startled. “Why no -- but ‘tis what -- what the Snawdons used to say. What happened at Blanchland, Papa?”
“A fog like this one came down and hid the monastery from the marauding Scots, who lost themselves on the moors and could not find Blanchland. Then the wretched monks rejoiced too soon at their escape. They rang the monastery bells in Te Deums of thanksgiving, and thus guided their enemies through the fog. Pillage, fire, and murder was the result.”
“An’ yet ye wouldna ha’ me hate the Scawts!” Jenny cried indi
gnantly.
“No sense in kettle calling pot black,” Charles laughed. “An’ I wouldna ha’ ye slipping back into a Nor-rthumbr-rian dialect either! Lady Betty’s taken far too much pains with your education for that.”
Again Jenny was startled, she had not been aware of the change in her speech. “Je vous demande pardon, monsieur mon pere” said Jenny in passable French, and she gave him a sweet, half-mocking smile, very like his own.
What a darling she was, Charles thought. An April child of quick enchanting moods. With her he forgot that he was a condemned man in hiding. He forgot the sad little household in Brussels. He forgot his intended marriage. Almost he forgot the Cause to which he had dedicated his life. The Cause which Jenny must be made to share. That she should had become of great importance to Charles.
“Master!” called Alec, trotting up to them. “The mist’s bad. We’ll not safely make Dilston tonight. We best find shelter in Blanchland?”
“I suppose so,” said Charles reluctantly. The clinging gray dampness now swirled around them, there was not even a sign of the village below, except orange blobs which came and went like witch-fire and must be candle-lit windows. “If this place were still Tom Forster’s,” Charles added fiercely to Jenny, “I’d not stop here for all the gold of Indies -- but Errington said Blanchland’s now part of Lord Crewe’s estate.”
“Who’s Tom Forster?” asked Jenny, pulling up Coquet as they groped across the Derwent River’s ancient stone bridge.
“Forster’s the cowardly swine who betrayed us at Preston,” said Charles through his teeth. “Ah, child, you don’t know! I shall see that you do -- see that you understand!”
Jenny was silent. This Jacobite pother was the chief thing about her new-found father which she did not understand. In fact she resented it. Because of that so-called “King” in Rome, her father was in constant danger -- though she had so far seen no evidence of it. Because of the Pretender, she had not even known who her father was until last month, nor now could publicly acknowledge the relationship. And why wasn’t one king as good as another anyway? Especially when one was Protestant, and the other a Papist who, according to Miss Crowe, was not even legitimate. Miss Crowe fully believed that the Pretender had been smuggled into his mother’s bed in a warming pan. And even if that weren’t true -- Charles had violently denied that it was -- still the “Cause” had been lost eight long years ago. Why not forget it? Jenny thought. Why not accept what all of England wanted, or so it seemed to Jenny, whose opinions had been formed by the Lees and the school, and also by unconscious memories of the talk she had heard amongst the Snowdons in her babyhood. And if Papa would only give up all this treasonable striving, Jenny thought, would go to King George and say he was sorry, then surely he would be pardoned. Everyone knew that Lord Bolingbroke had just been pardoned and returned to England from exile. Why even that Mr. Errington they’d met at York had been pardoned, though he was a Catholic. Then if Papa were free, everyone could know she was his daughter, they could live together openly, here in England, and be always as happy as they had been these last days. Thus Jenny reasoned, nor did she know of Charles’s commitment to Lady Newburgh, for he had not told her about it. I’ll coax Papa to change his ideas, Jenny thought, well aware of her power over him, and of his love, which she was beginning to reciprocate.
As they entered the village of Blanchland the fog lifted and changed to drizzle. They saw the ghostly shapes of gray houses, with their mossy stone roofs, they saw the dim outline of the old gatehouse, and guided by Alec, whose memory of Blanchland was surer than Charles’s, they stopped by a square crenelated tower which had once been the Abbot’s lodging four hundred years ago. “This was Forsters’ manor house, sir,” said Alec. “ ‘Twould be the place to ask for lodging.” He pulled the iron doorknocker, which gave out a hollow bang.
Presently the door opened a crack, and a stout woman in a white mob-cap and apron stood warily behind with a candlestick in her hand. “What d’you want?” she called in a clear incisive voice.
Charles had dismounted and he walked to the door. “We’re benighted,” he said. “Is there room in the village to lay our heads?”
The woman held the candle higher and peered out. “We might have room,” she said uncertainly. “Though we don’t take in strangers, and besides --” She turned towards Charles, the light fell on his face. “Good God!” cried the woman. The yellow light trembled violently. “It can’t be,” she whispered, and slumped against the doorpost.
Charles took the candlestick from her limp hand and examined her closely. “Saint Mary and the angels,” he said with a rueful laugh. “I believe ‘tis Dorothy Forster! I’m not best pleased to find you here, and that’s the truth.”
“Come in,” she said. “Come in out of the rain, your man can take the horses to the stable.”
Alec was already on the cobbles, holding the stallion. He twitched at Charles’s sleeve. “Have a care, sir! Can ye trust her?”
“Needs must--” said Charles. “I’ll not have Jenny soaked and chilled any longer.” Besides, he added to himself, he could manage any woman, and Dorothy had always seemed trustworthy, whatever her despicable brother was.
Dorothy silently led the way down a long passage to a lofty whitewashed taproom where a coal fire was burning. A frowzy little barmaid was playing with some beer mugs. Dorothy dismissed her at once. “You may go, Mab. We won’t need you.”
When they were alone, Dorothy bolted the door. Then she turned to Charles. “What are you doing here?” she said sharply. “Where’ve you come from?”
“Do you run an inn now, Dolly?” said Charles, watching her narrowly. “If so, is’t your custom to question all your guests?”
“This alehouse isn’t mine,” she said. “It belongs to Lord Crewe’s estate, but, as was his dying wish, I live here for a while each summer. What are you doing here?” she repeated. “Have you turned Whig at last, that you dare travel about in England?”
Charles’s eyes glinted, he examined her warily. She had grown much heavier, her cheeks were crimson with tiny broken veins; there was a drift of gray through her chestnut hair, yet there were still signs of her former beauty, and her gaze was direct and fearless as ever. Charles put his hand slowly in his pocket, and drew out a white cockade. He fastened it with a flourish to his hat. “Does this answer you?” he said. “And you, Dorothy Forster, there was one member of your family not noted for steadfastness, have you followed his example?”
She opened her mouth, then snapped it shut. Color surged up her full neck. “We’ll not speak of that!” she said. “Tom has suffered for all his blunders. As for your question, though there’s no occasion for it any more, well, I can sing this as heartily as I once did.” And she hummed the Jacobite song, “When Jemmie Has His Own Again!”
“So--” said Charles with relief. He took Dorothy’s hand and clasped it warmly.
She smiled, and released her hand. “Who is this lass?” she said indicating Jenny, who was warming her back at the fire, and watching in some bewilderment the interchange between the woman and her father. “You were ever a gallant, Charles, yet this one seems o’er young to me.”
“She is my daughter,” said Charles curtly. “Jenny, come here and make your curtsey to Miss Forster!”
The girl obeyed. “How do you do, ma’am.”
“Aye,” said Dorothy looking at the fair young face with a pang of envy. “I can see she’s a Radcliffe. Pray take off your wet things, later we’ll sup. Here’s something to warm you.” She poured them each a mug of October, and heating the poker at the fire plunged it into the ale.
Charles thanked her with a bow, then held his mug high. “Long life to James the Third of England, our rightful sovereign!”
“To our king-over-the-water!” Dorothy replied. “Ah, it’s been long since I’ve toasted him.” She sighed.
Jenny did not drink, though the others were unaware of this. It wasn’t right, she thought unhappily. That toast was treason. And t
his Forster woman -- to Jenny she did not look like a lady -- how unfortunate that Papa should have found her here, to aid and abet his wrong views. How can I make him see? Jenny thought.
Charles and Dorothy were talking. He told her something of his life abroad, and she said sadly, “I suppose you never ran across Tom?”
“I took pains to avoid it,” said Charles. “I believe he’s living at Boulogne. I needn’t tell you he’s not welcome at King James’s court.”
She shook her head. “My poor brother. He had never the wits for aught but hunting and drinking, you mustn’t be too hard on him.” She sighed again and turned away. “It was lonely when I no longer had him to care for. Charles -- I’ve not told you -- I’m not Miss Forster any more. I wed an Armstrong, one of the Bamburgh lot.”
“Indeed!” said Charles, astonished. Except for Alec he had known nobody of that name. “I trust you’re happy? Where is your husband now?”
“Sailing in his coble, I suppose,” said Dorothy lifting her chin. “He’s a fisherman. A good one,” she added defiantly. “Aye, I know what you’re thinking, Charles. But he wanted me, and I’d no mind to struggle on alone.”
“Of course not,” said Charles without conviction. He was shocked when he thought of the suitors who used to woo Dorothy Forster, the young Widdringtons, the Swinburnes, Collingwood and Ridley, even a Percy once -- the great names of Northumberland. Yet most of these were dead! he realized with a start. Still a mésalliance like this, for a Forster, a niece of Lady Crewe’s! As bad as his own mis-mating, worse -- since Dorothy’s had been voluntary.