Chapter Fifteen

England, 1897

T here is no word from Aaron today. As there has been no word since Hester received his letter from the Royal Oak two weeks ago. Tucking the small calico bag of feverfew which hangs around her neck inside her gown, Hester digs her trowel around a dandelion and drops the plant into a basket along with others. The baker’s wife knocked on the door this morning complaining of a bloated stomach and no particular reason for her discomfort, such as her monthly course. Hester gave her the last of the roasted dandelion roots with instructions for an infusion to be taken twice a day. She hadn’t realised her stock was so low, hence this foraging by the cottage.

A horseman enters the lane from the village. Hester peers into the hot sunlight and returns to the dandelions, hope melting into disappointment when the horseman halts by the mill.

In answer to her daughters’ questions, she tells them Papa is visiting his own mama and papa, it has been an age since he has been with them, and doubtless they have much to talk about. Which takes time. He will be home soon. Ellen, too bright for her seven years, wrinkles her nose, dubious. Rose wanders into the bedroom to play with the many dolls Catherine has given the two girls over the years

Another rider enters the lane and Hester’s heart lifts. Apparently summoned by her unspoken name, here is her good friend Catherine and her beautiful mare, Molly. Hester sets her basket and her trowel on the ground, eases herself upright and waves. Catherine raises her riding crop, and Molly nickers a greeting.

The girls will want a ride , Hester whispers silently to the mare.

Molly lifts her head. Of course. I am not too old to carry two at once, such light little things as they are.

The mare’s eyes gleam with the same shine as her well-brushed coat, undulled by the four miles of dust from Shiphaven. Catherine, too, is undiminished by the heat. Love and motherhood have deepened her selfless beauty. Her blonde hair is darker, her figure fuller, her cheeks rosier, and her blue eyes sparkle with contentment.

Greetings over, and Hester insisting she cannot hug Catherine until she has washed the dirt off her hands – not with her guest in her immaculate riding habit – Molly is loosely tethered to the gate and Catherine follows Hester to the water pump behind the cottage.

‘Ellen,’ Hester calls through the open door. ‘Aunt Catherine and Molly are here. Molly would dearly love a drink, in return for which she might be willing to allow you and Rose a ride.’

Ellen appears in the doorway, barefoot, bucket in hand. In deference to the warmth, she is dressed in a loose, plain blue cotton frock which falls to below her knees, with short sleeves above her elbows. Her bare legs and forearms are tanned from the sun, and her black hair hangs in two thick bunches tied with red ribbons. Her dark eyes – Aaron’s eyes even to their gold flecks – shine with delight at the treat ahead.

‘It’s a good thing Grandmother cannot see you, daughter.’ Hester flicks a grin towards the sniggering Catherine. ‘She would assume you’re a gypsy come to steal her silver.’

Ellen giggles and joins Hester at the pump, waiting to fill the bucket. ‘Is that why you make us wear shoes when we go into Shiphaven, Mama?’

‘It is.’ Hester reaches for the linen strip hanging from the post to dry her hands. ‘Tea?’ she says to Catherine, who nods.

The kitchen is warm from the range, which Hester stokes to boil water before ushering her guest into the cooler parlour. The tabby lifts her head from where she stretches on the flags. Ah, visitors , she says, and returns to snoozing.

‘Any word from Aaron?’ Catherine removes her riding gloves and hat and sets them on the small table by the front door.

Hester, perched on the edge of the sofa, chews a loose fingernail. ‘No, and Catherine –’

‘You’re worried.’ Catherine drops beside Hester and puts an arm around her shoulders.

Hester leans into the embrace. ‘Yes. It would be sensible if he’d chosen to stay with his parents for a while, but …’ She gently eases herself from her friend’s arm and walks to the dresser, its shelves lined with Aaron’s books, jars of herbs, clay pots and a wooden rack holding glass vials.

Ignoring these, Hester jiggles a stuck drawer which jerks open. She reaches in and pulls out a sheet of paper. She waves it, creating a short welcome draught. ‘This is all I’ve had from him since he left, and it makes little sense.’

‘When, where from?’ Catherine sits forward, hands clasped on her lap.

‘Midsummer, and from an inn, by name of the Royal Oak.’

‘Which town?’ Catherine dismisses the inn name as irrelevant.

Hester sits, carrying the letter. ‘He doesn’t say, not in the letter. And the envelope …’ Hester bites her lip. ‘Rose found it on the kitchen table and took it to the stream. She made a sail boat out of it, like the one her friend Jimmy had. They raced them on the water.’

Catherine covers her mouth with her hand, whether to stifle a laugh or in horror, Hester is uncertain.

‘Who won?’ Catherine asks with a grin, settling Hester’s question.

Hester puffs out a breath. ‘Rose. Of no matter except it means I’ve no idea where Aaron was when he wrote this. And it’s an odd letter. Here.’ She thrusts the paper into Catherine’s hand and walks away, remembering the kettle.

A moment later, Catherine is frowning in the kitchen doorway. ‘Odd indeed. The poor man, being treated badly by his parents. How could a mother behave so?’

Hester raises her eyebrows and pours boiling water into her best floral teapot. ‘You think too highly of the devotion of mothers, my dear friend.’

‘Your dear motherless friend, remember.’ Catherine returns to the letter. ‘What does he mean, he has been idling his time away? What is this about more he must do?’

Hester sets the teapot on a tray, collects cups and saucers from a shelf and places these, together with a tin of biscuits she and the girls made yesterday morning before the heat set in, by the teapot. ‘Let’s sit outside in the shade and try to puzzle my husband’s enigmatic musings.’

Ellen and Rose have brought Molly into the garden, patting her neck in the shade Hester wants for her and Catherine.

Rescued . Molly lifts her head, and Hester hears the teasing in her tone.

‘No,’ Ellen says. ‘Not rescued. A short ride, please Molly?’

Catherine waggles a warning finger. ‘You must be careful, Hester,’ she says, ‘not to allow Ellen to chatter with every dog, cat and horse between Barnley and Shiphaven.’

‘She knows the wisdom of restraint.’ Hester sets down the tray. ‘Don’t you, Ellen?’

‘Yes, Mama.’ Ellen is learning about differences, and restraint, helped by the teasing she received when she started at the village school and was overhead conversing with a stray cat.

‘Why can’t I hear Molly?’ Rose sticks out her bottom lip. It’s an old question.

‘For the same reason I, and the rest of the world, can’t.’ Catherine strokes Rose’s golden hair.

Hester thinks, not for the first time, how the two are better suited as mother and daughter than she and Rose. In more than looks, for Catherine’s endless patience deals more effectively with Rose’s occasional moods. The girl adores her, and not just for her frequent gifts.

‘Let me spoil them, Hester.’ Catherine will mock pout. ‘With a houseful of boys, you do me a favour allowing me to dress up little girls and bring them pretty things. Please?’

‘Hmm.’ Rose goes on stroking Molly’s nose, content to share Catherine’s lack of ability.

‘Why don’t you take Molly to the stream and the three of you can cool yourselves in the water?’ Hester encourages the girls with a biscuit each. ‘And these are for Molly.’ She gives Rose two more.

As the girls and the mare amble along the path, Hester pours tea, hands a cup to Catherine.

‘Have you any idea where he’s gone?’ Catherine says, bringing the conversation back to Aaron.

‘No. As you read, he says he expects to see Reverend and Mrs Ward the next day, with not much hope of a warm reception.’ Hester lets out a gusty sigh. ‘And why do I need to be patient?’

‘You don’t suppose …’ Catherine chews her lip and Hester frowns her desire for her friend to continue. ‘You don’t suppose he’s met with an accident?’

Hester throws out her palms. ‘He would have sent word.’

‘Of course.’ Catherine says it too quickly and Hester catches the underlying concern.

‘He is not dead.’ She reaches across to lay her hand on her friend’s. ‘That news would have reached me by now. Besides …’ She takes back her hand and glances in the direction Ellen, Rose and Molly took. Laughter and the splash of water drift up the hill, mixing with the drone of bees and the chirping of a bird. ‘I would know if he had died.’

‘Well,’ Catherine says brightly, ‘we must find him. Shall I talk to Cornelius, ask him to organise a search?’

Hester sips her tea. Cornelius Shill, Catherine’s husband, would be thorough, would spend what was needed to be spent. However, his searchers would have to start with Aaron’s parents, and Hester worries about the consequences to them of a stranger appearing on their doorstep telling them their son is missing.

‘Thank you, but no, not yet.’ Hester sets down the cup. ‘I’ve used my sleepless nights to think this over and it’s best for me to go to Mr and Mrs Appleby, talk to them, find out where the Wards live and travel on to there.’

‘Why not write to them?’

Hester grimaces. ‘I’m unsure if Aaron told them that I, or the girls, exist,’ she says. ‘He makes no mention in his letter.’

And if he had told them, wouldn’t he have passed on to her how the news was greeted? Hester assumes his parents remain ignorant of their son’s family. His reasons for saying nothing have taxed Hester’s wakeful midnight hours. Is he ashamed to confess he married a dressmaker’s daughter? Was one revelation – the death of Marianne – enough for them to bear in one visit?

‘A letter from a woman purporting to be family,’ Hester says, ‘would be as upsetting as having one of Cornelius’ detectives arrive. No.’ She runs a hand through her hair. ‘I need to go in person.’

‘Mama, Mama.’ Rose’s excited voice carries ahead of the girl herself as she runs up the slope, scattering hens pecking at tufts of grass. ‘Molly has cooled off and we may ride her as far as the end of the road.’

Behind Rose, Ellen walks more slowly, Molly nudging her shoulder.

‘And,’ Hester says, knowing it is the right thing, ‘I will take the girls with me.’ She grins at Catherine. ‘Such pretty granddaughters will surely win them over.’

***

When true night has fallen and the moon risen, Hester leaves her sleeping children in the care of the tabby and walks the path by the stream towards the river. A water vole rustles among stems of creamy meadowsweet and white hemlock to the safety of the water. The soft churr of crickets and the guttural trill of a nightjar sound loud on this windless night. At the disapproving sharp bark of a fox in a nearby field, Hester mentally checks the sturdiness of her hen house. She hopes she has been sufficiently fervent in her reminder to the kindly neighbour who will see to the hens during her absence that she must lock them up early each evening.

She walks on, stepping intuitively over tree roots, listening to the serene flow until she comes to the short, steep cleft in the bank where, six years ago, she and Ellen reached for baby Rose, taking her from the giving hands of the river nymphs. Ellen, a baby herself, had led Hester here, wordless although not noiseless in her insistence they go to the river, delighted at their find. Ellen has been Rose’s protector ever since, in her quiet, steady manner.

In the years since, Hester has waited for Ellen to express the same tug Hester did as a child, when she would wander for hours on the clifftops listening to Sabrina’s whispers. Where she first met Aaron, and where, years later, he snatched her from the river nymphs’ alluring embrace.

The river has ever been Hester’s solace. Ellen is content in the garden and the fields, learning the names and uses of flowers, herbs, fungi, and grasses under Aaron’s tutelage. Rose takes an interest because her adored Papa is the teacher. Her attention, however, is easily diverted and she does not carry the same love of the healing craft as Ellen.

Water swirls in the cleft in the ebbing tide. The moon is reflected in silver fractals, a broken path which dances across the wide water to Hester’s feet. She gazes upstream, waiting.

They come to her, their rope-like hanks of hair winding around their supple bodies with the spiraling tide. Swimming close to the bank, they lift their arms and sing to her, the old song, never changing: Learn with us, join with us , they sing, and Hester stills her feet, resisting their pull. Interwoven with the song of the nymphs comes Sabrina’s call, the river goddess telling Hester how she is strong, she is wise, and she must do what she needs to do.

I am strong, I am wise . Hester opens her arms to the nymphs, to the goddess, closes her eyes and breathes in the wild wetness. And I will do what I need to do.