Have you ever wondered why Jamila Gavin

wrote Coram Boy? Or where you can go to find out more about the Coram Foundation?

This Egmont Extras edition includes an exclusive,

never seen before interview with Jamila answering

these questions and more

– and you can also hear Jamila reading

an extract from the book.

FEATURES

Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin

An Interview with Jamila Gavin

A Reading from Coram Boy

Contents

Foreword

Prologue

Part One – 1741

1. The Coram man

2. The Black Dog

3. Meshak’s angel

4. Thomas and Alexander

5. Dawdley Dan

6. The orphanage

7. The cottage in the woods

8. Sir William returns

9. The ball

10. Jealousies

11. The Coram Hospital

12. When the voice breaks

13. A quickening

14. Autumn apples

Part Two

15. Mother Catbrain

16. Meeting in the chapel

17. Old friends

18. Partings

19. Mementoes

20. Apprenticed Out

21. A face from the past

22. Discovery

23. Child Slaves

24. Messiah

25. There came six boys

26. The Coram boy

27. Recognition

28. On the run

29. Everything is time

30. ‘Save him, sir!’

31. The river flows to the sea

32. The crying wood

33. Epilogue

An Interview with Jamila Gavin

A Reading from Coram Boy by Jamila Gavin

Foreword

It was a passing remark which triggered the story – as is so often the way with writers. A friend murmured something about ‘the Coram man’ in the eighteenth century: someone who collected abandoned children, ostensibly to deliver them to the newly founded Coram Hospital for the Maintenance and Education of Exposed and Deserted Children. But the Hospital had never employed such a man, and any so-called Coram man was acting on his own, and most likely in his own interests without any regard for either the abandoned children or the miserable women who had entrusted their pathetic offspring into his safe-keeping. Indeed, the highways and by-ways of England were littered with the bones of little children. Children in the eighteenth century were routinely brutalised, whether it was at home or at Eton College, whether it was in the parish orphanages, which were no more than dying houses, or in the cathedral choir schools. It was often entirely a matter of luck if a child was kindly and lovingly reared, and it was to redress this that Captain Thomas Coram opened his hospital in 1741. It was people like him who gradually changed the whole perception of child care and who touched the conscience of the nation.

When I heard this, it was as if my brain became a stage. The story seemed to have been there all along, and my characters made their appearances fully formed and demanding my attention. I think I have loved these characters almost more than any I have ever created, and I still find myself grieving for those who were not so lucky as the Coram boy.

Once I let it be known that I was writing a book set in the eighteenth century, so many friends and acquaintances fed me with historical facts and details, some trivial, some important – but all of which were of invaluable help to me as I tried to immerse myself in the period. I must thank Peter Patten from whom, over fifteen years ago, I actually first heard the name Coram and who sowed the first seed of the story; Robert Eagle, who thought there was a terrific story to be told; Vivien Richmond, Marlyn Leese, Robin Lunn, Rajan Chet Singh and John Irving, who went beyond the call of friendship in providing me with information and inspiration; Lowinger Madison, librarian at Gloucester Cathedral; and Jenny Uglow, for her encouragement and for taking the precious time off to read the manuscript. Most of all, I must thank my editors: Miriam Hodgson, who never wavered in her patient support through all the doubts and fears as I trod new ground, and Cally Poplak who, with her meticulous eye and rigorous attention to detail, constantly kept me on my mettle.

The Coram Foundation exists today in Coram Fields. A manuscript of the Messiah is held in their archives (the Messiah was performed at the hospital in May, but for the purpose of my story I have moved it to December) and the portrait by Hogarth of Sir Thomas Coram still hangs there. The foundation’s work on behalf of children goes on.

The following books were of invaluable help to me in my research: Coram’s Children by Ruth McClure, Hogarth by Jenny Uglow, A History of England in the Eighteenth Century by Roy Porter and The Singing Game by Iona and Peter Opie, from which I adapted a number of rhymes.

Jamila Gavin

September 2000

Prologue

‘Afine lady went to Stowe Fair. She was pregnant for the first time and, keen to know what the future held for her, she consulted an old gypsy woman.

‘“Why, my dear, I do believe you will have seven babies,” said the gypsy woman studying her hand. The fine lady went away and thought no more about it.

‘When the time came for her child to be born, a midwife was summoned to attend the labour. “What have we here?” she exclaimed as she delivered first one baby, then another and another.

‘“Oh no!” cried the young wife, remembering the gypsy’s prophecy. “That can’t be so!” She wept. But sure enough, one by one, seven little baby girls were born and laid into a basket.

‘The fine lady was upset fit to die. “I don’t care what the gypsy prophesied; I will only keep one baby. Take the other six away,” she begged the midwife. “Drown them in the river, but whatever you do, don’t tell my husband,” and she pressed a purse of silver into her hand.

‘So the midwife took the basket of six babies down to the river. But on the way she met the husband, a fine gentleman. He heard little squealings and noises. “Pray, what have you in that basket?” he asked.

‘“Oh it’s nothing but six little kittens I am going to drown in the river,” quoth she.

‘“I’m going that way myself,” said he. “Give them to me. I shall deal with them.” Whereupon, he took the basket and rode down to the river.

‘When the husband got to the riverbank and opened the basket, what did he see, but six little newborn girls. He frowned a dark, dreadful frown, then closing the basket took it away to a secret place.

‘Seven years passed. The gentleman and his fine lady prepared to celebrate their daughter’s birthday and to give thanks to God for preserving her through infancy. First they would go to church for a special service, then afterwards throw a party to which the whole village was invited.

‘“And what shall our daughter wear for this special day?” the husband asked his wife.

‘“Because she was born in October, I shall stitch her a dress of autumn colours,” the fine lady told him.

‘The little girl’s birthday dawned and she was all decked out in nut-brown velvet trimmed in red. The gentleman and his fine lady set off for the church with their pretty little daughter between them.

‘They sat in the front pew and said their prayers. The organ played, the choir sang. The minister raised his hand to give the blessing and make the sign of the cross, but he was interrupted. The east door of the church swung open. Everyone turned to see who had arrived so late. There standing in the threshold were six little girls, all dressed in nut-brown velvet trimmed in red. All were identical to the fine lady’s daughter.

‘At the sight of them, the fine lady gave one dreadful scream and fell down dead.’

The children clustered round the nursemaid were silent as she ended.

‘That’s a sad story,’ one whispered at last.

‘It’s a sad world out there,’ agreed the nursemaid. ‘Now come on, Nanny says it’s time for bed.’

There came six maids on their knee. When do they come? They come by night as well as by day, To take your little child away.

My little child is yet too young, To stay away from his mam. Whether he’s old or whether he’s young We’ll take him as he am.

Part One – 1741

Chapter One The Coram Man

‘Oi! Meshak! Wake up, you lazy dolt!’ The sound of the rough voice set the dogs barking. ‘Can’t you see one of the panniers is slipping on that mule there! Not that one, you nincompoop,’ as the boy leapt guiltily from the wagon and darted in an agitated way among the overloaded animals, ‘that one – there – fifth one back! Yes. Fool of a boy. Why was I so cursed with a son like you? I don’t have to have eyes in the back of my head to know that one of the mules had his load slipping. What goes on inside that addled brain of yours?’

A man and his boy were coming out of the forest with a wagon and a train of six mules. They were heading for the ferry at Framilodes Passage, which would take them across the River Severn and on to the city of Gloucester.

‘Why I don’t ditch you is more than I can say. Thank your lucky stars that blood is thicker than water. Tighten him up properly. Don’t want no hold ups now. We can just catch the ferry before nightfall if we hurry!’

Otis Gardiner, pots man, Jack-of-all-trades and smooth-tongued entrepreneur, ranted non-stop. It was a side of Otis that not everyone saw; he could be so attractive, so charming, so sweetly spoken. A young man still, he had wide, appealing, brown eyes and shoulder-length red-brown hair drawn back to show off his broad, handsome brow. He could barter the hind leg off a donkey – especially if the donkey was a lady. By flirting with the wives, bantering with the gentlemen, demonstrating magic tricks to little children, he could persuade a customer to part with twice as much money as they should, all the while making them think they had themselves a bargain.

Meshak tightened the straps round the mule’s belly. He ignored the faint kitten-like wails which came from the sacks and tried not to look at the sneering face of the man he called his father. From his driving seat Otis peered round the covered wagon and flicked his whip at him. Jester, the brown scraggy lurcher, shadowed Meshak among the mules as the boy tried to compensate for his negligence by meticulously checking all the panniers. The other dogs, tied to the wagon by bits of string, barked their heads off and leapt and twisted in a frenzied bid to pull free. They didn’t calm down till Meshak and Jester were back on the wagon.

Meshak was an awkward lad. At fourteen he was taller than his father and growing. But he looked as if he had been put together all wrong; his body was all over the place, his head too large, his ears too sticking out, his lips never quite closing. There seemed always to be a sleeve at his runny nose. His arms and legs dangled from his body, uncoordinated and clumsy; he dropped things, tripped over things, fumbled and stumbled. All this meant that people – especially his father – shouted at him, cuffed him, jeered and sneered at him, so his whole look was that of a cowering dog. If he had had a tail, it would have always been between his legs, as he slunk by waiting for the next kick. He had a vulnerable, infantile look, with his pale-freckled face beneath a stack of wild red hair, and his large, watery, blue eyes, which often stared round at the world with incomprehension. But no one ever saw him cry or laugh. People called him a simpleton – a loon – and wondered why his father hadn’t abandoned him years ago. People assumed that he was nothing but an empty vessel, lacking in all substance, feeling or emotion; neither able to love nor in need of being loved.

How could Meshak speak of his terrors? There was no one to tell except Jester. He saw trolls and witches; evil creatures crouching in shadows, lingering round trees, hanging in the sky; demons with hairless heads and glinting teeth. He never knew when they would come to poke and prod him, to torment his sleep and rampage through his head. Even now, the darkness of the forest they had just left behind seemed to be creeping down the road after them, gobbling up their tracks, soon to consume them too.

His father was mean with the lamps and only kept one up in front for the road ahead, so Meshak hated being out on the highway at night. He was afraid of the dark. It was not just the spirit world which frightened him, but the real world of robbers and highwaymen, especially near the forest. And then there were the wild animals. He hated the green eyes which glimmered in the dense undergrowth, and the scufflings and gruntings of unseen creatures stalking among the trees.

Most of all he hated the pathetic squeals which came from the sacks bumping against the scraggy flanks of the mules, and the task Otis and he often performed at night in some bleak lonely place. He never told anyone of the frightful nightmares he had, and how he had learnt to smother his gasping whimpers lest he woke his father. He never told anyone of the faces and voices and clutching fingers of all those children, who drifted like lost spirits through his dreams.

He glimpsed the tall towers of Gloucester Cathedral in a distant smoky haze, and his heart leapt. He loved churches because there were angels there, sometimes within gleaming stained-glass windows or out in the graveyards; stone angels with gentle hands and loving faces. He would go to the cathedral as soon as he could and find his favourite angel. His father would usually abandon him in the city and go off for days on end, making his deals, meeting his contacts, disappearing into the pubs and taverns to indulge in gambling, dog-baiting, womanising and furthering his career. Meshak knew his ambition was boundless. He would not stay a pots man. Meshak, mean-while, would live and sleep in the wagon. With the few pence he was given, he could fend for himself, especially as he always had Jester.

‘Get on up front, boy!’ A yell from his father indicated that he had spotted someone on the roadside. Otis liked to have his ‘idiot’ son up next to him during certain transactions. It gave him the air of being a devoted and caring father; a man you could trust and entrust with secrets. Meshak dutifully climbed up next to him.

With a shock of pleasure he saw the vast shining back of the river, so close now. The first tremulous lights of the fires and torches were being lit along the riverbank as dusk deepened into evening. Great hulks of ships brooded at anchor, and small craft scuttered like insects to and fro across the surface. Silhouetted tall and stiff as a scarecrow was the ferryman standing on his punt with pole in hand, about to embark with a full load of passengers, sheep and mules and baskets of goods. Corgis barked and scuttled in and out of the other animals’ legs to keep them from bunching together.

Otis and Meshak were in a queue of at least three drovers’ trains ahead of them, each with their thirty or so head of cattle, so they would be lucky to get across before nightfall.

‘Pots, pots, pans and pots, griddles and ladles, kettles and skillets, mugs and jugs, knives, forks and spoons, farming tools, all Cornish tin and Newcastle iron,’ Otis sang out in his trader’s patter.

‘The charity man’s here!’ A murmur went round. Word had gone on ahead that he was coming and some had waited for him.

In recent times, Meshak had got used to his father being called a ‘charity man’, though it had puzzled him. A wayfaring minister to whom they had once given a lift told him that in the Bible the word ‘charity’ meant ‘love’. It was true that a lucrative part of his father’s business as a travelling man was to collect abandoned, orphaned and unwanted children – many from local churches and poorhouses – and take them to the ever increasing number of mills that were springing up throughout the country. Otis always called the children ‘brats’ – as if, like rats, they were really vermin – but he made money out of them. Older boys, he handed over to regiments and naval ships, which were always on the lookout for soldiers and sailors to fight whatever wars were going on with the Prussians or the French abroad or the Jacobites up in the north. Down at the docks of London, Liverpool, Bristol and Gloucester, he made deals with ships who took both girls and boys to North Africa, the Indies or the Americas, along with their cargoes of slaves, cloth, timber and metal.

That may have been considered by some to be an act of charity, but Meshak wasn’t at all sure that it was love. He only had a vague idea about what love was. He thought he had been loved by his mother, though he could hardly remember her. She used to hug him and kiss him; she had played with him and told him stories. Then one day she had died and was gone for ever, and no one ever hugged or kissed him again, except for Jester – if you count face-licking, tail-wagging and jumping up a dog’s way of hugging and kissing. Meshak knew he loved his dog and that Jester loved him, but he would never have called that charity.

The children whom his father picked up on the open road or in small villages, towns and cities, and took into his wagon as an act of charity, never looked happy or grateful. They were usually handed over roughly, received roughly, fed little, beaten often. All in all, Meshak couldn’t say that either they, or indeed himself, were loved. If this was love, it was also business. Money changed hands, sometimes a lot of it.

But Meshak accepted that his father was a good and Christian man because everyone said he was. He was admired for this most Christian virtue, charity.

The sky was darkening not just with evening, but with a cloud bank of dark, purple rain expanding across the sky. A spiral of gulls circle-danced across the surface of the river; the evening light turned their white underbellies to silver. A few foresters and farming people converged eagerly on their wagon, bearing tools which needed sharpening, mending or exchanging.

Meshak knew what to do. He pulled back the flaps of the wagon and lifted out the pots and pans, knife-sharpeners, meat hooks, scissors, graters, mincers, goblets, griddles, knives and axes, as well as knick-knacks like combs and beads, bobbins and cottons, balls of string, trinkets and baubles. He spread out a large piece of sail cloth in a clearing by the side of the road and laid everything out so they could finger and question and calculate their terms for bargaining.

Meshak was up to dealing with simple transactions so, while he bartered, his father moved away in deep conversation with a well-dressed man, who led him into the cottage. He was not a wigged gentleman but a parish man with his hair drawn back under a broad-brimmed hat and wearing brown wool breeches and leather boots.

The skies darkened further and the first plops of rain thudded to earth. The queue for the ferry had shortened to just one wagon in front now, and Meshak had already repacked the wagon by the time Otis reappeared.

‘Get these brats in,’ he muttered. He referred to five solemn, poorly clad children in tow: a girl and a boy as young as three and five, who clutched each other’s hand tightly, and the rest – all boys – aged eight and nine years old. The children were silent, as though they had been born learning to stifle their fears. They allowed Meshak to herd them into the back of the wagon.

When the children were in place, tucked round the sides, still mute, still staring, Meshak and Otis began to separate the train of mules from the wagon. The ferryman was impatient now, looking anxiously at the stormy sky and the low sun, and urged them to hurry.

Otis tugged the reins down over the wagon mule’s ears and roughly cajoled it on to the ferry. The nervous animal resisted, unwilling to step on to the rocking craft, until a sharp stroke of the whip made it leap aboard with a clatter of hooves. Otis pulled a sack over the animal’s head to blinker it from the heaving water. He had just about cajoled a fourth mule on to the ferry when a woman’s voice called out softly, ‘Are you the Coram man?’

Meshak turned to see. He was surprised that his father reacted instinctively, as if that had always been his name. Meshak had never heard it before. Otis tossed Meshak the reins. ‘The boy will see them on,’ he yelled to the ferryman, and as Meshak took the reins and soothed the frightened mule, his father had already leapt ashore.

It was no housemaid or potato picker, like so many others who had hailed him, but a gentlewoman who, though trying to look modest and inconspicuous, was unmistakably a lady. Even had her refined voice not given her away, the cut and cloth of her cloak betrayed her. Her head was lowered into a basket, which she hugged tightly to herself, and she hung back in the shadows of the trees on the riverbank, trying not to be seen or identified.

The transaction was rapid. A heavy purse of money went into Otis’s pouch and he took the basket with a great show of reverence and concern, as if he would protect it with his life. Meshak heard the lady give one short, pitiful shriek of grief, quickly stifled. Otis leapt back on to the wagon and thrust the bundle into Meshak’s arms. ‘Look caring,’ he muttered, ‘till we’re on the other side.’

The ferry pulled away, but the woman continued to stand stiffly at the water’s edge, watching them. Meshak felt her eyes fixed on them all the way across. She was still standing there when they disembarked.

Chapter Two The Black Dog

The rain came down with a vengeance. The wind swished through the trees, making them bend and sway. The road turned to mire, and they still had two or three miles before they reached Gloucester city centre. The mules bowed their heads into the driving rain. The squeaks and mewlings in the sacks ceased. The wooden wheels ground along the deep, water-logged ruts, heavy with wet, sticky, clinging mud which sent out a spray with every turn and coated the dogs outside. Their legs kept running incessantly, also sending out muddy sprays; running, running, because they had no choice but to keep their legs moving, tied as they were to the axle. Jester was lucky; as Meshak’s dog he was allowed in the wagon.

Meshak pulled the flaps tightly shut to keep out the damp cold. The brats all looked at him with long, doleful glances as he snuggled up to Jester for warmth. He shut his eyes so as not to witness their despair. He felt hungry. They felt hungry. They were starving, probably hadn’t eaten since dawn. He didn’t want to know. Didn’t want to think about it. He had an apple in his pocket. He took it out with his eyes still closed and began to munch. He knew they were staring at him, their eyes huge with longing. He ate it as quickly as he could and fed the core to Jester. There was a shudder of repressed envy from the brats. They would have fallen eagerly on it and eaten every scrap if they could. Jester swallowed the core in a gulp.

It was dark now. The rain still beat down on the canvas covering and, for a while, they were mesmerised by the rhythmic swish and sway of the wagon and the hollow slurpy plod of the animals’ hooves. There was a stir of surprise and a quiver of anxiety among the children when the creaking of the wheels stopped and they came to a halt. Apart from the sound of the rain and the snorting of mules, blowing away the rain from their nostrils, there was no other sound.

They were not yet within earshot of the city. Meshak sat up, his arms still clasped round Jester. The brats’ eyes gleamed in the darkness. They seemed not to have moved a muscle since he had climbed inside to get out of the rain half an hour ago. He heard Otis jump down. The light of his lantern swung a yellow shaft across the canvas. Then the flap opened and his dark drenched face looked in. Rain was spangled through his thick, straggly hair, reflecting in the light like so many diamonds. He nodded curtly to Meshak. ‘Get the spade. There’s a good ditch just here. We’ll dig them in,’ he jerked his head in the direction of the panniers strapped to the train of mules. ‘I don’t want to take them into Gloucester.’ Meshak jumped out and had to tie the flap to keep Jester in, so he then set up a continuous barking. Meshak knew from many, many times before that they couldn’t have Jester digging anything up.

It was a hurried affair in all that wind and rain and darkness and the swinging light from the storm lantern, which Otis hung on a branch directly over the ditch. Otis plunged in his spade. Nothing too deep or careful. There was a lot of water. Just dig a hole deep enough to submerge the bundles. Foxes would do the rest. He wouldn’t have bothered burying them had he not taken money for them and given undertakings. Otis dug and Meshak went from mule to mule, extricating one bundle after another from the panniers to hand to his father, who dropped them like seeds into the ditch. Meshak stared wonderingly as they sank into the mud and vanished even before his father had shovelled a few spadefuls of earth over them. What was it like to be dead? Meshak tried to imagine. What did they see under the mud? Would they find angels there; angels like the ones he saw in church windows?

They came to the last one – the one the lady had given them on the other side. Meshak hesitated. ‘Come on, lad – drop it in!’ rasped Otis.

‘Moving. Still alive,’ stammered Meshak. Usually, if they weren’t dead, they at least tried to sell them off first.

‘Not worth it. Drop it in, I say.’

Meshak let go the feebly moving bundle. He heard it splosh into the ditch. He backed away whimpering. He never did like burying the live ones. He felt the apple he had just eaten rise with the bile up his gullet. He vomited against a tree, leaning his head into the bark so that it left its imprint on his brow.

‘Don’t go lily-livered on me,’ snarled Otis, grabbing his coat and herding his son back to the wagon. Jester was still barking. ‘Go on, get in. Mrs Peebles is expecting us tonight at the Black Dog.’ Jester stopped barking.

Meshak didn’t need eyes to know they had entered Gloucester. Despite the constant thud of rain on to the canvas covering, he heard the swell of sound. It came towards them like a distant wave and then crashed over them; an overwhelming cacophony of babble, all the stuff of humans and their animals and their livelihoods. He had been dozing, lying with his face still partly buried in Jester’s fur, relishing the sounds of the city while not yet ready to face it. He didn’t even open the flap when he heard the wagon and the mules’ hooves clattering over cobblestones; nor when he smelt the stench of open sewers and foraging pigs, and the manure of horses and mules, and wet straw intermingled with women’s perfume and polished leather and charcoal fires and grilled fish. He knew without looking, by the heavy smell of beer and the raucous sounds of fiddling and singing, that they had entered the courtyard of the Black Dog inn.

No good getting too excited yet. There were jobs to be done: the wagon unhitched, the mules unloaded, water pumped, hay gathered, stable space negotiated . . .

‘I want to piss,’ whimpered a child.

Oh yes, and the brats seen to. He would have to rope them all together so they wouldn’t run away, and lead them out of the far gate to relieve themselves in all that rain and mud, and then go to the kitchen and get them some gruel. It reminded him of how hungry he was.

It was still raining. Girls in bonnets and shawls slopped across the yard to and from the kitchen, fetching and carrying water for the cook, or chickens for the slaughter, and buckets of swill and scrapings for the animals. Young lads, eager to make a few pennies, rushed forward to grab the bridles and lead the mules to the barns, clamouring to offer their services. Otis selected three of them, yelled out orders, and then made for the door of the inn. ‘See to things. I’ll be inside,’ he yelled, leaving Meshak squelching about in the yard, ankle-deep in mud and manure.

Meshak ‘saw to things’ as he always did, but began to feel his stomach tightening with hunger, especially with a smell of roast beef coming from the kitchen. He was almost tempted to eat the gruel dolloped out from the kitchen for the brats, though just looking at it made him want to puke. He was sure even the pigs wouldn’t eat it. But the brats fell upon it. He took the wagon and children into a barn to stay for the night. As he closed the huge wooden doors, one of the brats called out plaintively, ‘Can’t we have a light, mister?’ Meshak didn’t bother to answer and, pulling the doors to, dropped the great latch and locked them into the pitch, rat-scuttling darkness.

He went to look for Otis and pushed his way into the dark inn with Jester at his heels. The atmosphere was choking with smoke and stuffiness. In a corner by the roaring fire, red-faced musicians and sailors, entwined with young women, jigged and sang, glad to be on dry land after months at sea. Others played cards and, in a further room, serious gambling was going on.

Meshak squinted through the haze and at last discovered his father deep in conversation with a naval man. These days, Otis made more from selling boys on to the ships than anything else. They would sell the three older boys he had just brought in.

Meshak managed to squeeze himself on to the bench next to Otis, who grabbed a passing barmaid. ‘Hey, darling!’ He pulled her down on his knee, causing ale to splash out of the four tankards she was carrying, two in each hand.

‘Now look what you’ve made me do,’ she giggled. As it was Otis, she wasn’t cross. ‘Good to see you, Otis,’ she purred.

He burrowed into her neck and then murmured, ‘Is Mrs Peebles in her parlour?’

The barmaid tut-tutted with exaggerated disappointment and wriggled off his knee. ‘Why is it you always fancy her more than me?’ she pouted.

‘ ’Cos she’s prettier!’ He slapped her bottom and they both laughed.

‘She’s back there. Shall I tell her you’re here?’

‘Do that, my sweet, and while you’re about it bring me and the boy some ale and meat.’

‘Hello, Meshak,’ she purred, tweaking his chin before weaving her way through the crowd and disappearing into the kitchen.

It was an hour later, after Meshak and Otis had drunk several pints of ale and consumed a full plate of meat and potatoes and dumplings, when the barmaid came and said Mrs Peebles could see him. Otis got to his feet and, like shadows, Meshak and Jester followed him through the dense crowd and out of a far door which led into a dark narrow passageway at the back. It was instantly chillier and Meshak shivered. He knew Mrs Peebles’ parlour. Whenever they passed through Gloucester, Otis always called in.

Otis reached her door and was about to knock when it opened. A woman holding a flickering taper stood in the doorway taking her leave. Meshak gawped up at her. She was not young and the bright colours of her clothes, her body squeezed in at the waist and bodice, her flounced-up hair and rouged face, were all part of an effort to knock a decade off her age. ‘Ah yes . . . Lady Philomena,’ she spoke in a heavy confidential way, ‘now that young woman is one to watch, Mrs Peebles, you mark my words. There’s powerful talk of goings on up at the house with the tutor. A German, you know and-’ The woman stopped abruptly. ‘What you staring at, you insolent pup?’ she said sharply, pushing Meshak away, but then she saw Otis standing there, a slight smile on his face. She held her taper up as if to see him better. The shadows wavered around them, encircling the flame. ‘Oh! It’s you,’ she simpered. ‘The boy’s got bigger. I didn’t recognise him. I think you have a visitor, Mrs Peebles,’ she called over her shoulder. ‘Good to see you, Otis. I hope you’re keeping in good health. Will you be coming up to Ashbrook this time? We could do with our knives sharpening and a few new pots, perhaps?’ The woman in the doorway tipped her head flirtatiously.

‘Nothing would keep me away, Mrs Lynch.’

‘Goodnight, Mrs Peebles,’ Mrs Lynch called out, without taking her eyes off Otis. ‘See you in the morning.’ As she sidled past, Meshak shrank back in case he received another blow and watched her go, looping her skirts over her free arm as she climbed the narrow winding stairs to the bedrooms above the inn.

‘Sleep well, Mrs Lynch,’ answered Mrs Peebles from within.

‘Mrs Peebles!’ Otis greeted her from the doorway, leaning nonchalantly, one arm up against the lintel as if he held it up.

Meshak peered beneath his father’s arm into the parlour beyond, where a lady draped in a veil sat at a round table. No one crossed Mrs Peebles. She had been born nothing but a bargee’s daughter; no education, no position. But she had such intelligence, such a snake-like ability to target a person’s weaknesses, such an ear for gossip, scandal and innuendo, that people feared her. It was said she had been employed as a spy in her youth – when she was beautiful, and able to mix with any company, especially the foreigners who came through the city – and was clever enough to entrap or compromise anyone targeted by her paymasters. Now she wasn’t beautiful; although she was old enough to be Meshak’s grandmother, it wasn’t age which had spoilt her looks, but smallpox. He sensed his father wince and drop his eyes as she pulled her veil across her ravaged, pitted face.

Pushing Meshak into a corner to sit and wait, Otis strode towards her, smiling that restrained half-smile which usually did more to soften the hearts of women than the effusive lace-handkerchief-sweeping charm of so many men trying too hard to please. He knew she despised them anyway, for if it’s one thing a woman with such a disability can cut through with a knife, it’s cant and false flattery.

He kissed her hand. She waved him to sit down opposite her. The double candlestick with its broad flapping flame favoured him, while leaving her in a kinder shadow from which she could scrutinise her visitor without effort.

Meshak settled on the floor with his arms clasped round Jester. The ale had made him sleepy.

‘What about him?’ Mrs Peebles indicated Meshak.

‘No need to trouble yourself. His body’s got bigger, but his brain is still soft as it always was. He won’t say nothing.’

Meshak knew that his father and Mrs Peebles had been doing business together since before he was born. Otis had just been a lad when she spotted him. He was born a wheeler-dealer, already knowing how to make himself useful, dependable and indispensable. She took him on as a boy and liked to think she turned him into a man – the kind of man she could use and control. She liked to gather young men around her – those she felt she could groom and manipulate and trust to get involved in her various enterprises.

‘I hear they’ve given you a new name,’ she said, pouring out some gin from a large earthenware jug.

‘Pots man, charity man – even Mrs P’s man – so? What’s in a name?’ He shrugged.

‘They are calling you a Coram man. What’s that?’

Meshak looked up. How did she know? He himself had only heard it for the first time today by the river.

Otis shrugged.

‘Come on, Otis, don’t play coy with me. What does it mean?’ demanded Mrs Peebles. Her eyes gleamed at him with intense curiosity. ‘What have you been up to that I don’t know about?’

‘Nothing that you don’t know about, Mrs P.’ Otis leant back, still smiling. ‘It’s the same old business: brats. Just another angle. Haven’t you heard of Coram?’

‘I know of a Thomas Coram, the sea captain. I thought he was in America. Came this way sometimes. Didn’t have anything on him though. Clean as a whistle. Do you mean him?’

‘Look, Mrs P,’ said Otis, leaning forward conspiratorially. ‘I think I may have hit on something good, something which can benefit us both, if we cooperate.’

‘You have always cooperated with me in the past,’ muttered Mrs Peebles. ‘Are you asking me to cooperate with you?’ She cackled scornfully.

‘Suit yourself. Yes, it is Captain Coram. He’s in London now. Given up seafaring and turned to good works. He’s something of a benefactor!’ There was derision in his tone as Otis said, ‘Wants to save the poor children of England. He’s set up a hospital, an institution for foundlings. But I tell you something, it’s not just the poor children he’s saving but the brats of the rich. Word has spread about the thousands of pounds being poured into his enterprise to feed, clothe and educate bastards – thousands, Mrs P. Money coming from the wealthy to salve their consciences and purchase their respectability. I saw it for myself. I was in London last year. I saw the rich carriages, the fine weeping ladies hiding their faces behind Spanish lace veils, leaving their illegitimate babies in satin-lined baskets with a pouch of gold coins tucked under their pillows. “Otis,” I said to myself, “if there’s not something to be gained in all this for me, I’ll eat my hat.”’

‘So? And have you turned this to your advantage?’ enquired Mrs Peebles softly. ‘Blackmail?’

‘That – and other sidelines.’ He took another swig of gin straight from the jug. ‘You know things develop for themselves if you let them. I’ve been developing my sidelines.’

Mrs Peebles leant forward into the light. ‘Tell me more.’

Meshak’s head lolled as he drifted into sleep. He thought about Captain Thomas Coram, a charity man like his father. Loves little children. His brain filled with images; dreams overwhelmed him. He saw angels and children soaring among the stars, but he was drowning and, as he drowned, he called out, ‘Save me, save me!’ But no one heard him.

Then there came a great galleon with billowing sails, tossed in an ocean of sky and clouds. Meshak could see the outline of a captain at its helm. ‘Save me, save me!’ he yelled, but his voice was lost in a chorus of singing angels and children, their voices mingling with the gulls as he sank down, down beneath the waves.

He awoke suddenly, just when he thought he had drowned. Jester had jumped to his feet, his body taut, his fur raised, his ears pricked, and he whined softly between bared teeth. Meshak looked around. The room was empty, the candle almost out. His father and Mrs Peebles had gone. In the predawn darkness, when most of the city was finally silent, even the people of the night were subdued. The gambling had ceased, the drunkards were asleep, the servants, lackeys, labourers and traders had all surrendered their limbs and brains to the secret world of the unconscious. Only sailors watching for the dawn tide were up, and the nightwatchmen, huddled near fires in between doing their rounds. They could be heard whistling at regular intervals all over the city or calling out the time on the hour to reassure their employers that they were still alert and that all was well.

One of the inn dogs started to bark frantically. It set off the other dogs, including Jester. His fur bristled all along his spine. ‘Hush, boy, hush!’ Meshak clamped a hand over his muzzle. Wide awake now. Keeping his hand over the dog’s mouth, Meshak staggered to his feet. He should check the mules and the wagon. He peered out into the yard. The wind buffeted a lantern hanging from a hook, causing shadows to swing like a ship tossing at sea. Then from an upstairs window he saw another light, a steady flame which lit up the pale face of Mrs Lynch peering out into the night. Meshak thought she would close her window and return to bed, but she didn’t. She seemed to be observing something going on in the lane, which only she could see from upstairs. Curious, Meshak wandered across the yard with Jester padding silently beside him.

He pushed open a door in the wall and stepped into a side lane. In the clouded moonlight, he dimly perceived a small carriage harnessed to a single white horse. He glanced up and saw that Mrs Lynch was watching it too.

The cathedral clock had just tolled four. Someone moved out of the shadows carrying a low light; it was the cloaked figure of a woman. Could it be Mrs Peebles? He edged closer. Certainly it was roughly her height. The carriage door opened and the woman went forward. Meshak couldn’t see who was inside. All he saw by the light of the lantern was a basket being passed out. The hands that gave the basket stayed outstretched – the empty fingers seeming unsure – then, abruptly, they were withdrawn and the carriage door was slammed shut, and Meshak glimpsed the coat of arms of a leaping deer entwined in letters he couldn’t read. The figure turned away with the basket as the carriage moved off swiftly. Meshak pressed himself hard up against the wall, hugging Jester into silence as Mrs Peebles hurried past him. Then the tavern dogs stopped barking and the lane was empty again. The transaction lasted a minute.

Meshak looked up again at the window but it was closed. He tapped his thigh softly, ‘Come on, Jester,’ and went back to finish the night in the stables.

Meshak had been dead asleep when he was woken by a fierce kick.

‘Get up, damn you,’ snarled Otis. He looked red eyed and short of sleep himself. ‘We’ve got to get rid of these brats before we take on any more. Get ’em up.’

Meshak got the children up, snivelling and sniffing with anxiety, afraid of what was going to happen to them. He took them into the yard. Otis had already got the mule harnessed up to the wagon. ‘Get ’em inside,’ he snarled.

Meshak bundled them in and Jester too, then went over to the pump to drink and splash his face. As he did, Mrs Peebles and Mrs Lynch passed each other in the yard.

‘What the deuce was all that about in the lane last night? It was you, wasn’t it?’ he heard Mrs Lynch say. ‘Out there in the lane last night?’

Mrs Peebles stopped short, looked hard at Mrs Lynch, paused for a split second and said without batting an eyelid: ‘Not me, dearie. I was tucked up and dead to the world all night.’

Meshak saw that brief pause and thought, She’s lying, I wonder why?

Mrs Lynch saw it too, but decided she would bide her time. If there was anything important to learn, she would find it out.

Chapter Three Meshak’s Angel

‘Come on!’ roared Otis, and flicked his whip across Meshak’s back to hurry him up. Meshak clambered into the wagon and they rumbled out into the street, heading for the dockside.

Down at the docks, Otis found a press gang and, for a fee, handed the three older boys over to the navy. What a palaver that was. One of the little ones – a younger sister – had screamed and clung to her brother, and would not be prised off until Otis struck her such a blow, she had fallen unconscious. As Meshak carried her away, he could hear the boys hollering and fighting and kicking, and they had to be carted off and tossed down a ship’s hold to cool off. They would be well down river now, heading out to sea and then North Africa.

Otis came back, grumbling and snarling. Meshak knew to stay well out of arm’s length when his father was in this mood. If it weren’t for the fact that there was money to be earned in this area, Otis wouldn’t have touched snivelling brats with a barge pole. But there was money – much money – especially if he could tap into those wealthy families who would pay any amount to protect their respectability. Having dealt with the older boys, there were the little ones to see to. Once more the wagon rolled on, this time into the city. Mrs Peebles had told him of a weaver and a milliner both requiring small children to work for them.

Later, Meshak wandered away from the docks among the pedlars and traders, often pausing wide-eyed to gawp at a street entertainer, a dancing bear or a tinker juggling with a dozen plates while yelling out his prices. He headed for the cathedral and at last arrived at the south door. He picked his way through the hordes of homeless children who congregated at evening, like the starlings, to look for the most sheltered niche into which they could huddle for the night.

It was a late rehearsal after evensong. Boys’ voices drifted through the deep shadows among the massive stone pillars and pinnacles which lined the nave. The sound lapped round the walls, translucent and as cool as water. The cathedral was dark, except for the soft fall of candlelight gleaming in the alcoves.

He stepped inside. ‘Look, Jester.’ He knelt down to be level with his dog and gazed up at the huge stained-glass windows, awesome in the dark night, their brilliant colours almost absorbed into black. The faces of saints and martyrs bent down to him in their suffering and ecstasy; they reached to clasp his outstretched hands. They drew him through their windows into the throng of all the spirits of the dead, who rose up from beneath the stones and stepped out from their entombment within the walls. But it was the angels he loved, with their huge curving wings and gentle smiles. They were his friends. Sometimes, they leapt out of their lead-encased glass windows and swooped round him, enveloping him in feathers and gentle hands and caressing fingers, and they would fly with him up into the stars above the towers and steeples of the city. ‘Why can’t I stay with you for ever?’ he would cry.

There was one angel in particular, with blue eyes, auburn hair and a face of the utmost beauty, who, whenever he stood before her, seemed to look directly into his eyes. Often, he would talk to her in whispers. ‘You are my angel. I would die for you,’ and he would lie down on the hard cold flagstones of the aisle so he could see her better and think himself dead. He was always doing that, ever since his mother died, though Meshak wasn’t always sure about the difference between being alive and being dead; wasn’t sure which was best.

He often looked at dead people – old people, poor people, babies and abandoned children. He sometimes saw them huddled in ditches or crouched in the forest trying to find shelter. They had died from cold or illness, or such strength-sapping poverty that they had lost the will to try to live. And then he would think about his mother and wonder whether she liked being dead. When he was awake, he couldn’t always remember her face, though he had an impression that it had been sad. But in his dreams, she would sometimes come, stroking his head, showering him with kisses, and her face would be smiling. She seemed so happy that he would wake up crying, ‘If being dead makes you so happy, should I not be dead too?’

When Meshak had ‘dead’ days he would lie for hours, stiff as a board, with open eyes but not seeing anything in this world. Otis gave him such a beating for his ‘stupidity’, but nothing would rouse him, even when his father kicked him and tried to beat him into activity. Gradually, even Otis had to accept that Meshak had dead days and leave him to it, especially when Mrs Peebles told him his boy had fits and that he should leave well alone. What no one knew was that Meshak stepped out of his body and into a paradise where he would meet his Gloucester angel. She would lead him through beautiful gardens of lawns and flowers and playing fountains, and sometimes show him his mother. Somehow, he was never able to touch her or talk to her, but he would see her from a distance, smiling and being happy. Once she waved at him with such sweetness, and he called out, ‘Why can’t I be with you?’ and she said, ‘Because you’re not dead.’ He would have tried to be dead then and there, but the Gloucester angel would lead him away and say, ‘Not yet, Meshak.’

Today, as he looked at his angel, he didn’t lie dead. The choir was rehearsing and he always loved hearing the singing. He edged further down the nave, wanting to be closer. Beyond the wooden carved Kent screen, in the chancel, men and boys stood in their stalls. He peered round, catching glimpses of their faces in the flickering candlelight as they concentrated on bits of paper held in their hands, with wriggly symbols which they translated into music. Tears welled in his great sloppy eyes. Music always affected him. He wished he could sing as they did. He opened his mouth. A frightful squawk came out. Some boys looked up and giggled.

‘Hey, you! Go on, get out of here and take that hound with you!’ A cleric came flapping down the aisle like some clumsy bird, waving his hands at them. He was always on the lookout for vagrants, who would endeavour to sneak into the church out of the cold rain for the night. Meshak and Jester ran out, little as ants beneath the huge flying buttresses and stone walls rising high as the walls of a canyon. They scuttled away across the great paved entrance and out into the mud and mire and filth of the city streets.

Chapter Four Thomas and Alexander

The cathedral bells chimed. ‘Home, home, tomorrow we go home,’ the boy choristers murmured excitedly.

Thomas and Alexander shuffled in their stalls in line with the other boy trebles. They nudged and pushed and exchanged boyish insults, while the lay clerks, older men – the tenors and basses – cuffed their ears and told them to mind themselves.

‘Ummum, now boysum . . . we’llum sing through psalmum 48 . . . Sssh . . . ’ Dr Smith, the choirmaster, rapped the lectern fiercely with his baton. The great organ boomed out the opening chords of an anthem by their old organist, William Hines. The boys, with eyes fixed on the choirmaster, opened wide their mouths and sang with piercing sweetness.

Treble voices rang round the great cavernous cathedral. The candles flickered softly in the evening light, which barely penetrated the cathedral. They had been up since five, working to earn their keep by scrubbing floors, digging vegetables, feeding the livestock and cleaning out the sheds and stables in the cathedral close. Now they were yawning but excited, wanting to sleep so that the next day came quicker.

Alexander’s voice soared above the others as he took the solo – always causing a shiver of wonder at its purity. When he hit the very highest note, it cracked slightly. Thomas felt his friend shudder beside him, though Alexander didn’t falter and continued strongly to the end. Everyone knew that, no matter how glorious the treble voice, the time would come when it would break. And no one – but no one – could prophesy which boy could make the transition and become an equally good tenor or bass.

Alexander’s face was pale as he concentrated on producing a clear sound.

He had already begun to confide his fears to Thomas. ‘Once my voice has broken, that will be the end of my musical life,’ he had said with anguish.

‘But that’s not possible,’ Thomas had exclaimed. ‘Surely, you will play and compose. You’re not just a singer, you are a musician!’ Thomas glanced up at Alexander who, at fourteen, was tall now – almost manly. He wasn’t handsome in the normal way; he had thick, dark-brown, curly hair which fell round a broad-boned face, heavy lips, a protruding brow and eyes which, though blue, could look almost black and gave him a dazed, inverted look, as if he lived more inside himself than outside. Thomas noted the faintest shadow round his jaw and above his lip, and knew that his friend would not sing as a treble much beyond Christmas. But Thomas couldn’t understand how that would be the end of his life in the cathedral. Surely the cathedral wouldn’t want to lose him, and Alexander would teach, conduct and continue to compose as other gifted pupils had done when their voices broke?

But Alexander was gloomy and just said, ‘My father forbids it.’

‘Home, home, home.’ It sounded like the low buzz of honey bees. It was August and for a whole month there would only be ‘said’ service instead of ‘sung’ so that the boys could go back to their farms and help with the reaping and hay-making. Not since they became choristers had the boys been at home for Easter or Christmas Day, because that was when their music was most needed.

Alexander nudged Thomas in the ribs. ‘At last you’re coming to Ashbrook. At last you’ll see my dog Bessie and my new wolfhound pup Zanzibar – well not a pup any more. Isobel writes to say he’s nearly full size and very naughty. I hope he’ll know me and react to my commands . . . We’ll go shooting with him – yes?’

‘Ummum now, boysum . . . we’llum sing through psalmum 48 again.’

Thomas was saved from having to try to look enthusiastic when inside he was uneasy about his forthcoming visit to Alexander’s house. It would be the first time that he had ever left the city of Gloucester. Most of the other boys came from all corners of the county, one as far away as Dursley and others from Wotton-under-Edge, Bibury, Minchinhampton or Cirencester. Thomas had been born near Gloucester docks, and the first time he had ever been away from home was when he became a chorister and came to live in the cathedral. With the cathedral being barely a stone’s throw away from the docks, it hardly felt like leaving home, for Thomas was often able to escape to see his mother and father and all his brothers and sisters. So he was full of apprehension at the prospect of leaving the city for the very first time. But more than that, he was nervous about going to the home of a boy the others called a ‘gentleman’. He wasn’t sure that he had ever met a gentleman, although he could recognise a gentleman if he saw him on the street by the cut of his clothes and the deference with which he was treated. They were people far removed from him, who rode round in carriages and lived in remote big houses which he had only heard about, but never seen. He knew that the clergy at the cathedral were gentlemen but, somehow, enveloped in their clerical robes that was different. What would it be like to go to the home of a gentleman, be under the same roof as a gentleman – especially someone like Alexander?

It was five years now since he joined as a new chorister aged eight. Alexander had already been a scholar for a year. Only slightly older, it was Alexander who had been put in charge of him and ordered to show him the ropes. A dour and unsmiling boy, he had dutifully led Thomas round the cathedral precincts, showing him the schoolroom and the song room where they learnt their music, and Miller’s Green, the schoolmaster’s house. He told him where he could and could not go, where they practised, where they worked, ate, slept and studied, the times of the services and practices. But once the tour was over and they were back in the schoolroom with the other boys, Alexander seemed to relinquish his responsibility for him.

It was in the schoolroom that they slept, on thin mattresses on the floor and lining the walls, and Thomas would never forget that first night. The boys had jumped on him. Not Alexander – he had disappeared – but the others. Then had followed a few hours when he was sure he was going to die. They had held his legs and tipped him head first out of the window; they had dunked his head in the piss pot; they bundled him out of the room and into areas of the cathedral he had never been; they had pushed him up steep spiral steps till they reached the tower, and there they made him stand, blindfolded on the parapet, knowing that one false step could cause him to plunge to his death. The next night and the next, there were more trials and tribulations. Where was Alexander, his supposed protector? he wondered bitterly. He was never around during this torture, either to take part or intercede for him.

Thomas was so miserable that it was almost in his mind to run away back home. After all, it hadn’t been his idea to be a chorister. He would have been quite content to follow his father’s trade as a ship’s carpenter. He was only there because someone heard him singing in a tavern and urged his father to let the boy try for a scholarship as a chorister at the cathedral. But then he thought of all the high hopes his mother had placed on him, and how humiliated his father would be if he got to hear that his own son couldn’t put up with the tauntings of a bunch of choir boys. So somehow he got through each day and each night, having no notion of when it would end and who, in the end, would be his friend or his enemy.

It all changed suddenly. One night, Thomas was hanging by a rope, upside down from the beam, when he became aware of Alexander watching from a corner. He lounged against one of the wooden posts as if he were carved out of it, half in shadow, his face chiselled into a mask. Only his eyes glimmered darkly. He did nothing while two, three times, the boys twisted the rope then let it go, so that he spun fiercely like a top, helpless, dizzy, sick, while the boys laughed uproariously. Alexander’s movement was unexpected. Even his torturers paused and turned. As if to show he was one of the lads, Alexander came forward. He grabbed Thomas’s wrist and roughly tied one of the knots but, while doing so, he whispered in his ear, ‘Make them laugh. If you can make them laugh, they’ll never trouble you again.’

Thomas spiralled slowly from the beam as Alexander retreated to the shadows once more. ‘Make them laugh!’ They were the first words that had been spoken in kindness to him since he arrived. Another boy stepped forward. He was about to start the twisting of the rope all over again, when Thomas mimicked:

‘Err . . . rrum . . . now then . . . errum . . . boys . . . errum . . . let usum turn . . . errum to psalmumm 48 . . . errum . . . ’ he said from upside down in a voice exactly like Dr Smith, the choirmaster.

The boy stopped short. The others looked at each other in amazement, and even checked to be sure it wasn’t in fact Dr Smith, and then they burst out laughing. ‘More, more!’ they demanded. Despite being swung and prodded and spun round and round, still dangling from the beam, Thomas managed to scramble through his repertoire of jokes and rhymes and imitations.

As Alexander predicted, they cut him down, still laughing. But his ordeal wasn’t quite over – perhaps they were having too much fun. They stood him on top of the bookcase and told him to sing. So Thomas sang; he sang all the songs he had ever sung in taverns and inns to make extra pennies for the family; the sea shanties, the mummers’ and morris songs, and foreign songs he’d picked up from sailors and travellers in the inns round the docks, imitating the characters and their accents, which had the boys splitting their sides. Finally, when he felt he had got them sufficiently on his side, he leapt down from the bookcase and went into a dance, accompanying himself with foot-tapping and thigh-slapping. And he even found a pair of spoons which he then played with incredible skill, to everyone’s amazement. Soon all the boys were also foot-tapping and thigh-slapping and making such a rumpus that Mrs Renshaw, the matron, came hurrying in to put a stop to it.

Later, lying on their mattresses side by side in the darkness, instead of dropping wet toads on his face or inserting wriggling spiders into his bed, the boys begged him for more imitations of Dr Smith and the Bishop. He duly obliged, and added Mrs Renshaw to the list, which had everybody giggling and sniggering in the darkness until, gradually, all but Thomas himself subsided into sleep. He lay long into the night, staring into the darkness, wondering if at last his troubles were at an end. They were as far as teasing was concerned; from then on, Thomas was not only accepted but he became the most popular of boys, at least with all except Alexander.

Alexander was a loner and didn’t seem to want any close friends. He often disappeared for hours at a time, and if discovered it was usually at the schoolroom virginals with his nose in a musical score or scribbling on a page of manuscript, much to the scorn of the other boys. In the school it wasn’t always good to be different. Most boys, wearing as they did their uniform jacket and tails and mortar board in school, or the black cassock and white ruffs for cathedral services, managed to seem like a single organism. They conformed to a group mind and a group purpose – except Alexander. He didn’t care. He didn’t try to conform or attempt to be one of them. Where they spoke with the same soft, broad, Gloucestershire dialect, he spoke like a gentleman; where the other boys got up to larks and laughed at the same jokes, he would be standing apart, watching but not joining in; and though they slept side by side, ate together, practised together and studied together, he was never quite one of them, and they referred to him as ‘Gentleman Alex’.

It was not just because he seemed a gentleman that made Alexander different. Although the boys joked about him, they never laid a finger on him and Thomas soon realised they respected him after all, for no one doubted that Alexander had the finest voice of them all and, more than that, was the most musically gifted. Even the bishop treated him with awe and called him ‘our little genius’. Not only did Alexander have the voice of an angel, but he played the harpsichord and virginals precociously well and had composed obsessively from the age of six. His anthems and choral pieces were often sung at services and concerts.

At first, Thomas was disappointed to find himself ordered to sit next to this surly, uncommunicative boy in the schoolroom. Strange that Alexander, who had advised Thomas to make the boys laugh, seemed impervious to jokes and wise-cracking. When Thomas tried to get even a smile out of his companion, his attempt was received with a blank uncomprehending stare. But Thomas was gifted at algebra, and when he saw Alexander drifting helplessly over a calculation, he offered to help him. Alexander grudgingly accepted his assistance and, in due course, reciprocated by helping Thomas with Latin, Greek and French. Then, when Thomas took up the violin, he soon showed himself to be such a skilful performer, Alexander began writing pieces for him. Without realising it, they had become friends.

It was a strange friendship. No two boys were more unlike each other: Alexander introverted and gloomy, Thomas popular and sociable; Alexander able to enchant people with his voice, Thomas to make them laugh. But the difference which troubled Thomas the most was their difference in class and status and when, with each summer, Alexander began to invite Thomas to spend the holidays with him, Thomas always found excuses. Until now. Perhaps it was because Alexander was so sunk in the depths of depression as August approached, so certain that the life he loved was coming to an end, that Thomas agreed to spend the summer at Ashbrook.

The vaulting rang with the sounds of the opening chords of an anthem. The great sound of the organ resonated among the vaultings. The choirmaster’s raised hand demanded attention and, at his stroke, the choristers’ voices burst into song like a dawn chorus.

‘Tommy!’ a voice hissed from behind the pillar. A small bare-footed girl peered round shyly, carrying a bundle in her apron. ‘Our mam’s sent some clothes for you. Wants for you to look like a gentleman.’ She giggled at the thought.

Thomas peeled away from the choir, embarrassed. He pulled his little sister out of sight. ‘What are you doing here, Lizzie?’ he asked roughly.

‘Mam wanted you to be dressed proper for going away. She sent you these.’ Lizzie thrust a bundle into his arms, wrapped in a piece of sail cloth.

Thomas wondered how his mother could possibly afford to send anything decent that he could wear. He had intended going in the clothes provided by the cathedral: his choir school breeches, stockings and tailed jacket.

He prised open a corner and peeped inside. There was a jacket and breeches made of sturdy broadcloth, a shirt of not too coarse a cotton and a woven waistcoat. He looked up, puzzled. ‘How did she come by these?’

Lizzie giggled again. ‘They were our uncle Martin’s clothes. You don’t mind, do you? Mam thought you would fit them now – being as how you’re the same age he was when he died.’

‘Thanks, Liz,’ he dropped a kiss on her bonneted head. ‘Thank Ma for me, and tell her I’ll take care of the clothes. Now, go – or you’ll get me into trouble.’

‘Tommy – are you going to be a gentleman?’ teased Lizzie. ‘You will come home and tell us all about it, won’t you? You’ll never be too grand for us, will you?’

‘Shoo – you silly little goose,’ laughed Thomas, and pushed her off. ‘And don’t forget to give our mam a big kiss from me,’ he called after her.

‘Mother has promised us a feast to make up for Christmas and Easter,’ Alexander told Thomas. ‘We will eat duck, roast lamb and Easter almond and simnel cake. We’ll eat ourselves silly to make up for all that eel pie, stewed fish and vegetable broth we get day in day out.’ Suddenly the talk was of food as the boys packed their bags and put on their walking boots. Those who didn’t live in the city were preparing to walk up to ten or fifteen miles home. Thomas was getting ready to do the same when word came to Alexander that the Ashbrook carriage was here and that John Millman, the head groom, was waiting.

‘We’re going by carriage?’ murmured Thomas with awe. Silently, he followed Alexander out into the close where a two-horse carriage was waiting. The shiny dark green painted body of the carriage had a coat of arms with the letter A in gold, swirling round the symbol of a white swan.

There were warm greetings as the boys emerged. Alexander shook the groom’s hand warmly and introduced him to Thomas. ‘This fellow, John, is my dearest friend, so I hope you’ll look out for him and show him the ropes if he seems lost.’ John Millman nodded courteously and opened the carriage door to reveal Mrs Lynch, swathed and bonneted, looking more matronly, and her face quite free of rouge. She smiled ingratiatingly and struggled to get out in deference to the young master.

‘Stay, stay, Mrs Lynch. Don’t disturb yourself. We’ll sit up with John. I hope you don’t mind just having our bags for company – oh, and this is my friend Thomas Ledbury. I trust you have prepared his chamber and will make him comfortable.’

‘We have been making preparations for his arrival ever since we heard you were coming home with a friend,’ replied Mrs Lynch reassuringly. She nodded briefly in response to Thomas’s polite but dream-like bow. In a daze, Thomas followed Alexander, clambering up on to the driver’s seat next to John, who flicked the pair of black horses with his whip and set off along the road beyond the city walls towards the hills. Behind them, laughing and chortling and yelling cheerful abuse, several of the choristers chased behind and leapt on to the back bar of the carriage for a lift part of the way. One by one, at different junctures, the boys fell away with shouts of, ‘See you in September,’ and soon the carriage was out on the open road, lurching through the ruts and ridges and mudpools left by the bad weather of the night before, towards the hills and Ashbrook.

They didn’t speak much, though every now and then Thomas couldn’t resist calling out, ‘Hey, look at that!’ Or, ‘Did you see that?’ The raucous sounds and smells of the city gave way to the more harmonious and gentle tones of the countryside. He listened and watched enchanted: stone-pickers and farm labourers – men, women and children – moved down the furrows of newly ploughed fields, calling to each other and singing together as they tossed in the seed – barley or millet, wheat or rye. Wheatear, chiffchaff and swallows who, in the winter, emigrated to warm lands where oranges grow dived and swooped, as if delighted to see the folds of Cotswold hills rising and falling from valley to valley and upland to high common. Long shadows of beeches streaming with sunlight slatted the wold and ribbons of stone walls, now gold, now silver, meandered through light and shade down the meadows, dividing flocks of snowy sheep from grazing cattle.

Thomas wondered what Alexander was thinking; he sat so silently, not looking round, impervious to the countryside as they rumbled through. Only once did he turn and gaze back intently at the city walls, as if he couldn’t bear to leave the cathedral behind him. Then he looked forward again, his head dropping to his chest, humming under his breath, his brain unable to contain all the melodies which flowed from it.

‘This will be the first time you’ll be meeting Mrs Milcote and her daughter, I take it, Master Alexander?’ Mrs Lynch’s overly high voice broke through their thoughts as she leant out of the carriage window. ‘She’s a pretty young thing, and there’s no mistaking . . . ’

‘Who?’ retorted Alexander tartly. ‘The mother or the daughter?’

‘Ooooh, you are become quite a wag, sir, if you don’t mind me saying,’ tittered Mrs Lynch. ‘Why, the young lady, to be sure – Miss Milcote. She and your sister have become quite bosom friends.’

‘Hmmm . . . ’ Alexander grunted and glanced at Thomas with a bemused look.

Thomas grinned and shrugged. ‘Nowummm . . . ummum . . . Look here . . . ummum, Alexander me boy . . . ummum . . . about young ladies . . . ummmummmumm . . . ’

Alexander laughed. To make him laugh was always a triumph and Thomas laughed too.

They left the soft lowlands and the road began to climb up and up into a dark wilderness of dense woods. Thomas shivered with apprehension as they seemed to leave civilisation behind them. The road became rougher and narrower. The trees loomed over them as if they would swallow them up. No wonder he had heard such stories of wild brigands roaming the hills.

Ahead, a coarse voice swore and cajoled. John reined in the horses. A wagon was half up on the bank trying to get out of a deep rut and a train of pack mules snorted and attempted to munch the hedgerow as they waited. A large, red-headed boy was trying to push the wagon from behind as, in front, a man on foot cursed and shouted and whipped the lead mule impatiently, then ran round and laid the whip across the back of the boy as well.

‘Oi, Otis,’ John yelled to the man. ‘Be that you blocking the way? Shall us give you a hand?’

A stream of expletives preceded Otis shouting, ‘We’ll abandon the wagon at the Borham barn,’ he shouted. ‘No good trying to get the darn thing up into the hills till the road’s drier. But if you’d be so good as to help my boy with giving it a shove to get us going, I would be greatly indebted.’

John jumped down, followed instantly by Thomas and Alexander. They joined Meshak in putting their shoulders to the wagon, while Mrs Lynch leant out of the carriage window calling out encouragement. The huge wheels crunched into motion, creaking and groaning, and, with a jerk which nearly sent them tumbling face down, was suddenly free.

‘We’ll not be in your way for long now, John!’ shouted Otis, climbing up on to the wagon. ‘The barn is just beyond the corner.’ Thomas and Alexander stood in the road, brushing themselves down. For a moment, Otis towered over them. With an exaggerated sweeping bow he said mockingly, ‘Good day to you, young master, and my thanks for your help.’

Alexander nodded an acknowledgement and climbed back on to the carriage. ‘I dislike that man. He’s insolent. What’s more, he treats his animals abominably and his son not much better,’ he muttered. They looked at Meshak running behind now with the mules, as Otis drove the wagon on at speed.

‘Otis Gardiner! Otis!’ Mrs Lynch called out as the mules and wagon reached the Borham barn. ‘Don’t forget to call at Ashbrook! I would be most obliged.’

‘Rest assured, Mrs Lynch! I’d as soon forget my right hand. I’ll be calling by in a day or two,’ and Otis turned into the barn, leaving the road free.

John Millman coaxed the carriage onwards. They began to climb and their pace was slower now. They entered the depths of thick beechwoods, where knotted roots thrust up through the earth. The track became more pitted and rutted and, had there not been two strong horses, the carriage would have got bogged down and abandoned. As it was, the boys, feeling sick with all the swaying and tossing, jumped down and said they would walk.

Alexander guided Thomas to a track. ‘I want to show you something,’ he said. They climbed and climbed. The path rose, twisting gradually round the edge of the hillside until, suddenly, it levelled out and the woods gradually thinned.

Alexander took Thomas to the edge of a knoll and grasped him by the arm. ‘Look down there!’ Far, far below, shining amber in the noon sunlight, he saw Gloucester Cathedral gleaming like a jewel. ‘Now let me show you something else,’ cried Alexander. He left the path and began to scramble almost vertically up the hillside. On hands and knees, they scrambled and slid and sometimes clung to creepers which hung from the branches to haul themselves upwards. Finally, they surfaced like swimmers out of the dark wood into the bright open reaches of a heath. The sky was wildly blue; it surrounded them as though they stood on the rim of the world.

Far below them, in the middle of all that Cotswold wilderness, stretched a landscape of smooth, deforested slopes which extended into cultivated lawns, hedgerows and paved walkways culminating in an artificial lake. In the middle of the lake stood a small Greek temple. Beautiful ornamental gardens were bursting with summer flowers and elegant walks entered shady pergolas and secret bowers. It looked like a hidden kingdom, guarded by the overlapping wooded hills which encircled it. Dominating it all was the finest house Thomas could ever have imagined: a huge honey-stoned mansion of steeply pitched stone-slated roofs, gables and elaborate cornices, of tall ornate chimney stacks and mullioned windows.

‘That’s a fine house. Who could possibly own that?’ murmured Thomas. ‘I can’t imagine anyone normal living there.’

‘Can’t you, Thomas?’ said Alexander lightly. ‘Come, let’s get back to the carriage,’ and, oblivious of his fine clothes, Alexander led the way, slipping and sliding down through the dense undergrowth till they dropped back on to the track.

In due course, the carriage came lurching and bumping into view with Mrs Lynch walking alongside. ‘Oh goodness me,’ she wailed when she saw them. ‘I swear this must be worse than being at sea. The tracks get more and more impossible.’

‘You will find it easier going as from here,’ John Millman assured them. Soon the road levelled out and ran evenly between avenues of elm and whitebeam. They entered Ashbrook village with its church and inn, where hordes of bare-footed children and scraggy dogs came bounding towards them, cheering and hollering. The road climbed the gradient once more and they broke the brow of the hill. There, at a crossroads, stood a huge oak tree with the remnants of a gallows rope still tossed over its highest branch. A fifth track passed between two tall stone gates which flanked a long avenue of lime trees. And there, at the end of the avenue, was the house Alexander had shown him from the top of the moor.

‘Welcome to Ashbrook House,’ exclaimed Alexander.

‘Oh!’ Thomas gave a small gasp. Then was silent. This was worse than he had imagined. Alexander wasn’t just a gentleman, he was more like a prince. Thomas could have leapt from the coach and run away. This was no place for the likes of him – where he was lower born than the servants themselves.

‘Am I not normal any more, now that you see where I live?’ asked Alexander with a smile.

‘You are normal for your kind and I for mine,’ answered Thomas warily, not wishing to offend. He couldn’t imagine such a place being a home, not home as he knew it: a one-up, one-down, and his mother smoking her herrings, the chickens and hens strutting in and out of the door as if they owned the place, and all his brothers and sisters tumbling around, the big ones in charge of the little ones, each with their tasks, and his father with shirt sleeves rolled above his elbows and bibbed apron, hammering and sawing, and the geese honking demandingly, the pig snuffling in its box out in the yard and a cow tethered in the shed. That was his home.

As the carriage wound round the forecourt to the great porticoed front door, scarlet and gold liveried footmen in white wigs and white gloves were already running down the steps to open the carriage doors and carry in the baggage. Several hounds of various sizes came lolloping out, wagging and barking, not yet aware of who they were greeting.

‘Alex, Alex! Alexander is here!’ Young voices yelled out joyfully and, as Alexander jumped down, a small boy and girl hurtled out of the house and flung themselves on top of him, followed by a large, black, long-haired dog, determined not to be left out of the welcome. Alexander, half strangled by loving arms, managed to greet them all, kissing and patting child and beast and calling out to Thomas, ‘Hey, Tom, Tom – these little horrors are Edward and Alice, and this great shaggy beast of a dog here is Bessie. Dear old Bessie – she’s as old as I am, you know, and this – is this Zanzibar? I thought he was a puppy, but look at him!’ Alexander gathered up the large wriggling creature and attempted to hug him, but the dog leapt from his arms and went bounding around in excited circles. ‘We’ll train him up to be the best hunting dog – you’ll see. We’ll go hunting in Ashbrook Woods . . . and where’s Isobel?’

An upright lady in a stiff bonnet and stiffly starched grey skirts appeared in the doorway. She was accompanied by two young ladies, whose excitement she seemed intent on controlling. She lost the battle with one, who simply flew down the steps, all hooped petticoats and frills and ringlets tossing beneath her cap, and clasped Alexander, little ones and all, in her arms. ‘Alex, Alex, welcome home! At last you’ve come. We expected you hours ago.’

Alexander plonked the two little ones down, who hugged his knees and nearly toppled him over, while he embraced the girl.

‘Oh, Alex,’ she burbled, ‘look at the size of you! You’ve grown as tall as Papa.’

‘This is my sister, Isobel,’ laughed Alexander introducing her to Thomas, who bowed shyly, his cap clasped in both hands. ‘Isobel, meet Thomas. He is the most splendid fellow that ever walked the earth and the funniest!’

Isobel was smiling broadly, and Thomas immediately thought how nice she looked with her laughing face. ‘I’m very pleased to meet you. Very pleased indeed, Miss Isobel!’ he burst out, bowing over and over again.

The other girl at the top of the steps still hadn’t moved. She was very pretty, with a delicately featured face, rich auburn hair and briefly glimpsed eyes, blue as thrushes’ eggs, before she lowered them. Thomas wondered if the stiff lady next to her was Lady Ashbrook, for she held herself so proudly.

Alexander, still entangled by excited younger siblings, was dragged up the steps by Isobel. ‘Alex, this is Mrs Milcote, our governess. She has been with us some weeks now,’ cried Isobel. ‘She’s Mama’s cousin, you know.’

Alexander took the stiff lady’s hand and kissed it, bowing low. ‘A pleasure, Mrs Milcote.’

‘My pleasure, Master Alexander. My pleasure indeed.’ Mrs Milcote’s clipped accents seemed to have trouble coming out of her tight small mouth, though she took a while to withdraw her hand. ‘You have been much spoken of and so highly praised that I have been awaiting your acquaintance with great impatience. My daughter too; please meet Melissa.’ She nudged the girl almost imperceptibly, but Thomas noticed. Melissa bobbed shyly as she took Alexander’s outstretched hand, but did not lift her eyes.

‘Melissa is my dearest friend – my sister,’ enthused Isobel, throwing an arm round her shoulders. ‘My life has changed since she came. I had been so lonely after you went away.’

‘And Thomas is my dearest friend,’ replied Alexander with quiet warmth. ‘Mrs Milcote, Miss Melissa, meet Thomas.’

Mrs Milcote merely nodded politely. She did not look Thomas in the eye nor extend her hand to take his which he had held out, and by keeping her arm firmly linked with Melissa’s, prevented her daughter from doing more than giving a slight bob.

Thomas withdrew his hand quickly, feeling a rush of blood seep over his face and neck. He bowed low and stood back. Now he remembered why he had felt anxious about coming to Ashbrook.

Chapter Five Dawdley Dan

The first day was an ordeal for Thomas. The meeting on the steps of Ashbrook was just the start of it. How he wished he had never come; how he wished that the ground could have opened and swallowed him up. Why, even the servants were better dressed than he, even when he wore his uncle’s clothes. Never was he more ashamed than when he saw their eyes scan his heavy jacket and breeches, his hob-nailed boots and cotton shirt – and these were his best clothes. How would he get through four weeks? He was spared meeting Sir William Ashbrook, who had had to go to Bristol to see one of his ships, late in from Barbados.

Lady Ashbrook had been solemnly kind and enquiring and tried to put him at his ease, but it was the bowing and bobbing and intricate details of the pecking order that existed in the household which left him clumsily bewildered. The arrogance of the butler, the superciliousness of the footmen and the whispered jibes of the servants, scullery maids and housemaids made him feel like a piece of clod from the farmyard which should be swept out of this elegant house.

At that first dinner, he could almost sense the sneering laughter at his elbow as he tried to serve himself from the platters, and he was sure that the way he was always a little after everyone else in picking up a piece of cutlery, glancing round first just to ensure that he lifted the correct knife, fork or spoon, did not go unnoticed. But this time, unlike when he first arrived at the cathedral school, he was comforted by the reassuring kick he got from Alexander sitting next to him and Isobel’s sympathetic glances.

The food was borne in on silver platters by white-gloved manservants; food he had never even seen before: venison pie, partridge breasts, grilled trout, slivers of ham, trifle with cream and jam, cheese and little biscuits. Too nervous to eat, he had taken tiny portions. But Lady Ashbrook had noticed and said in a kindly way, ‘Ah, Thomas dear, don’t hold back. You’re a thin sort of youth and need building up. Take more, take more.’ So he did and, tentatively, began to enjoy it.

That night would be the first of his life that Thomas had ever slept on his own, and in a proper bed rather than a mattress on the floor which had to be cleared away by day. Mrs Morris, the assistant housekeeper, showed him up to his bedroom, leading the way with a candlestick which held three blazing candles. Huge shadows swung round the well of the broad winding staircase as they climbed, and he was aware of being under the gaze of all the family ancestors, whose portraits stared down at him from the walls. They went up and along a broad corridor and then turned right into another, all flickering with candles. He couldn’t believe such extravagance. Oh, Mam, he thought to himself, if you could but see the number of candles they use. Why, just a quarter of them would last us a lifetime!

They reached an elegant door with a brass lock. She opened it with one of the keys which hung in a huge bunch dangling from her waist. He entered a room so big he was sure it could have contained him and his mother and father and all of his thirteen brothers and sisters with ease. A log fire was burning in the grate, throwing a warm pink glow round the high walls. A four-poster bed was partly hidden behind thick velvet curtains and made up with pillows and cushions and blankets. There were two oak cabinets and between them was his small cloth bag of clothes.

‘Lady Ashbrook said I was to tell you that everything in the cabinets is for your use,’ said Mrs Morris. Suddenly, she turned and looked at him in a motherly sort of way. ‘They do go in for a number of changes in this household, depending on the time of day, who they have to a meal, what the weather is like, what they intend to do and who they intend to visit. It could be confusing. Hmm?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ agreed Thomas miserably.

‘You not being a gentleman and all that – if you don’t mind me saying, young man – allow me to be of help in advising you what to wear. Hmm?’ She tipped her head to one side.

‘Yes, ma’am! Indeed. I would be most grateful,’ cried Thomas.

She opened the cabinet in which were hung a number of jackets and cloaks; folded neatly on shelves were woollen undershirts, pure white cotton shirts, velvet and brocade waistcoats and broadcloth breeches. She took out a complete day outfit and laid it on the couch. ‘I suggest you wear these for breakfast. You can try them on in the morning. If it’s to your liking, of course.’

‘Yes, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am,’ murmured Thomas, awe-struck as he gazed at the gentleman’s clothes.

Before she left him, Mrs Morris toured the room, checking to see that everything was in order. ‘Here is a nightshirt for your use.’ She shook it out and draped it on a chair where the heat of the fire could reach it. She put her hand into the bed. ‘Yes, you’ll be cosy and dry. Becky has used the warming pan on your sheets.’ She peeped under the bed and pulled out the chamber pot to make sure he saw it, then pushed it back again. She went over to a side table on which stood a large china jug and bowl. She noted that the towel was clean, then dipped her fingers into the jug and commented, ‘You have warm water. You’ll be able to wash.’ She poked the fire and threw on an extra log. ‘Becky will be here in the morning to build up the fire again, but this will last well into the night, I’ve no doubt. There’s a bell pull there if you need assistance, and one of the servants will attend you. Sleep well, lad.’

‘Goodnight, ma’am, and thank you kindly,’ replied Thomas gratefully as she closed the door behind her.

Thomas stood for a long time in the middle of the room, just where Mrs Morris had left him, pondering his situation. Then he undressed and put on the nightshirt. ‘What would me mam say if she could see me now?’ he murmured.

He heard a light but insistent tapping on his door. ‘Who is it?’ he whispered, pressing his mouth to the wood.

‘Me. Alexander. Open up!’

Thomas opened it with a big grin.

There stood Alexander also in his nightshirt. ‘Come, come, come. No one will go to sleep until you’ve done some of your funny imitations and sung us some songs.’ He grabbed Thomas’s arm and raced him along the corridor. They stopped before a small door which looked like a cupboard, but when he opened it they stared into the pitch darkness of a narrow stairwell. It was the servants’ stairway which took them up through the stomach of the house. Alexander didn’t hesitate; he dragged Thomas in. Then he opened another door and, suddenly, they were in a fully candlelit corridor, just like the one lower down.

‘Here he is!’ announced Alexander, throwing open a double door at the end of the corridor. Thomas stood, blinking, on the threshold of a large nursery. There were puzzles and toys and a wooden doll’s house, small chairs and tables and a sofa. Before a blazing fire knelt Isobel and Melissa and Edward and Alice all in their night robes, their hair brushed out and gleaming in the firelight. Their eyes shone merrily at the sight of him.

‘Oh come in, do! We’re so glad you’re here!’ cried Isobel, jumping to her feet. ‘Alexander has told us so much about you and how funny you are.’

‘Show us, show us, Thomas!’ yelled the little ones, rolling around like puppies.

In an instant, all the shyness and doubt he had had about having come to Ashbrook vanished in front of their eager friendly faces.

‘Welllummum . . . now then, Ashbrook ummummumm . . . will you umm kindly lead us in the ummum introit . . . ’

‘Why certainly, sir,’ said Alexander solemnly.

Thomas grabbed a drumstick from the toy drum nearby and held it up as a baton. He squinted and blinked, and began waving the stick in the air. ‘Da dee dum da di da . . . ’ he imitated an organ.

‘That’s Dr Smith! He’s exactly like that,’ chortled Alexander, and he began to sing.

‘No no no no . . . my boy . . . ’ Thomas rapped the baton like Dr Smith did. ‘That’s no way to sing to Almighty God. No no nonnno. With love, with feeling, with . . . ’ he waved his arms around dramatically, ‘with . . . rev . . . er . . . ence . . . Remember! You are speaking to God. Almighty God.’ He moaned it out in a mournful way.

‘That’s just how he speaks!’ Alexander shook his head in amazement.

‘I want to be a choir boy,’ shouted Edward, as everyone laughed.

‘Me too,’ echoed Alice, and they lined up next to Alexander.

Melissa and Isobel looked at each other and both leapt to their feet to stand in line before Thomas.

‘Well . . . ummum. Whatumm can you sing, my little onesummm? How about um . . . A frog he wouldum a wooing go ummmummum.’

‘Yes, yes, yes! We know that!’ they shouted.

‘Oneummmum . . . two . . . mmum . . . er . . . what comes after two, eh ummummum?’

‘Three!’ shrieked Alice.

‘Ummummumer . . . three, four . . . ’ and Thomas waved the baton and brought them in on the fourth beat.

‘A frog he would a wooing go, Hey ho said Rowley!’

They sang it rowdily. ‘I’m deeeeeply impressed,’ commented Thomas in his Dr Smith voice when it ended.

‘I want a story, Thomas. Story now,’ demanded Edward once the laughter had died down. ‘Alex says you know lots of funny stories.’

‘Well,’ said Thomas, as they gathered round. ‘I could tell you the story of old Dawdley Dan, the peg-leg man.’

‘Yes, yes, yes!’ The children flopped eagerly to the floor beside the fire, while Thomas stood on one leg and began hopping about.

‘I need a crutch,’ he said, looking around.

‘Will this do?’ cried Melissa, leaping up to get the hobby horse which was propped in a corner.

‘Just the job!’ said Thomas, propping the head of the horse under his armpit. ‘Now then see you here, old Dawdley Dan,’ began Thomas in his broadest Gloucestershire, “im was called Dawdley ’cos ’e did dawdle, see? Not surprising what with ‘is wooden leg an’ all that . . . An’ ’im did like ‘is rum, yer see . . . and I tell you, a man with a wooden leg wot can’t hold ‘is liquor is quite somethin’ to behold.’ Thomas went reeling round the room, while Edward and Alice shrieked with laughter, and Thomas glimpsed Melissa out of the corner of his eye losing all her shyness. She threw back her auburn hair and chuckled like a baby, while Isobel gazed encouragingly at him with the same dark eyes as her brother.

‘An’ then one day old Dawdley Dan, after ‘e’d ‘ad quite a lot to drink, ’e says, “When I was a lad an’ ‘ad two legs, I dived from the bridge an’ swam all the way across to Over.”

‘“You never did,” challenged one of ’is equally drunk mates.

‘“I could do it now,” retorts Dawdley Dan. “I’ll show yer-”

‘“Not now, you couldn’t, Dawdley,” says ‘is mate, “not with that peg leg of yours an’ all that.”

‘“No? I’ll show yer!” roared Dawdley. “Goddamn your eyes, I’ll show yer. Come on, let’s go to the bridge . . . and then . . . ”’

Thomas by this time had hauled himself up on to the table, pretending it was the bridge, and was reeling around, almost falling off.

‘ ’E slung first his good leg over the side, then ‘is peg leg – an’ there ’e was, sittin’ on the bridge, starin’ down into the dark swirlin’ waters . . . and-’

‘What in heaven’s name is going on here?’ Mrs Milcote stood in the doorway. Her body was rigid with indignation.

The laughing stopped instantly. Five startled faces turned.

Melissa, who had been laughing the loudest, stopped dead at the sight of her mother and thrust her hand to her mouth to stifle the sound. She pulled her gown round her tightly and stared speechlessly.

Isobel recovered enough to say, ‘Oh, Mrs Milcote! Do watch Thomas telling his story about-’

‘Miss Ashbrook,’ Miss Milcote spoke, her words freezing like icicles as they left her pursed lips, ‘I hardly think it is fit for young ladies to be seen in their night-time attire before gentlemen – least of all a . . . ’ For a moment, Thomas wondered whether she would say it: ‘a common working fellow’. But she paused and completed her sentence: ‘least of all a vis-it-or.’ She stretched out the last word meaningfully. ‘I think, sir,’ she looked hard at Alexander, ‘you’d better accompany your young friend back to his chamber now. It is rather late.’

Alexander raised an eyebrow as if he was going to refuse to be told what to do by a governess, even if she was a distant relative, but Melissa had gone to her mother’s side and was looking so humiliated that, for her sake, he swallowed his anger. Instead, he hugged the little ones, Edward and Alice. ‘We’ll hear the rest of the story in the morning,’ he reassured them. ‘Now, goodnight.’

‘Goodnight, Alex,’ they chorused bleakly. Isobel ran forward and embraced her brother fiercely. ‘It’s so good to have you home, Alex! So very good.’ Then she turned and bobbed to Thomas. ‘Goodnight, Thomas. I do hope your chamber is to your liking. We want you to enjoy your stay at Ashbrook.’

Thomas gave a short bow, ‘Thank you, Miss Isobel,’ and he followed Alexander out of the room.

Mrs Lynch patrolled the corridors of Ashbrook. Her last duties were to ensure that there were sufficient candles burning outside the bedchambers to get through the night. As she passed the quarters of Mrs Milcote and her daughter, she heard raised voices and paused to listen.

‘How could you speak to us like that in front of Alexander and Thomas!’ protested Melissa. ‘I felt so humiliated.’

‘Dear girl . . . ’ Mrs Milcote’s voice was so low that Mrs Lynch had to press her ear to the door to hear her. It was clear that Mrs Milcote had ambitions for her daughter. Marriage, perhaps? Mrs Lynch had noticed how Mrs Milcote had been grooming Melissa, paying extra attention to her education and, in particular, her music. Was this to make her eligible – for Alexander? Mrs Lynch smiled to herself as she heard Mrs Milcote chastising her daughter for her lack of decorum. She was as sure as she could be that Sir William would not consider a penniless, minor relative to be a suitable match for Alexander, his elder son and heir, no matter how pretty and talented she was.

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