The Privateersman (A Poor Man at the Gate Series Book 1) (26 page)

The post-chaise came at first light and Tom left his
old house with barely a pang, his few farewells said, his baggage sent ahead on
a wagon; it had never really been a home to him, just a place to eat and sleep
in between doing better things. It was a two day journey, the long first haul
taking them to Birmingham then seven hours to Kettering and the hotel, a
conference in the afternoon with Mr Telford, Martin’s correspondent, Thingdon
Hall early next morning.

Telford confirmed that all was in hand, payments
received and made and Rockingham long gone.

“Wells-next-the-sea, sir, in Norfolk, a very small
town and port, sea-fishing and country walks to keep a retired gentleman
occupied, sir. I expect he will buy his own boat to amuse himself in the summer
months, very popular, yachting, sir.”

“Has he connections there, Mr Telford?”

“Why, no, sir, but his lawyer and I felt that he
would be more comfortable there, where there was none to know of his fall.
Besides, sir, I felt the sea air might be good for him.”

He would embarrass none of them at a distance – much
better for him to be well out of the way.

“Thank you, Mr Telford. I am obliged to you, sir.”

Rockingham had been a great man in the area and now
was nothing. He had lost his power and was now as one dead and buried, to be
referred to rarely and in a hushed voice – he was in fact less than nothing. It
was a good lesson to remember, Tom realised – they lived in a pragmatic world,
one that responded to today’s reality not to yesterday’s illusions of glory –
the treatment meted out to their poor, mad king reflected this.

Telford agreed when he commented that ‘the king was
dead; long live the king’.

“Exactly, sir. The Thingdon Estate survives and
awaits its new master and has few memories of the old, other than people he has
left behind him. All debts have been cleared, sir, as far as possible; the Jews
are satisfied – have sent a polite message thanking you for the speed of your
payment, very welcome in these troubled times; the lawyers have been silenced,
their mouths gagged by great gobbets of gold. There will be some debts
outstanding, however – some of them simply overlooked, oddments here and there,
five and ten pounds to this tradesman or that, insignificant to us but
important to them. A few accounts will exist but will not have been presented –
tenant farmers who have sold a load of brewing barley to the kitchens, or a
beef cow or a dozen geese and will tend to be shy of dunning the master, not
unreasonably. They must be sought out.”

“Will not the bailiff have knowledge of all of
these, Mr Telford?”

“He
should
have, certainly, Mr Andrews.”

Tom made a mental note that there was a problem with
the bailiff.

“There will certainly be some accounts presented by
opportunist gentlemen, hoping to make a profit from your ignorance and good
will – in the first few days you might be tempted to pay a dubious bill rather
than possibly cause offence by querying it. Accounts ‘for services rendered’ –
these more likely to be presented by young women; gaming debts; a horse which
Mr Rockingham had pledged himself to buy and which had been kept back for him.
Some will be legitimate, most will not be – head groom, agent, bailiff and
secretary should know between them.”

Rockingham had kept ducal state, it would seem, all
it needed besides was chancellor and chaplain.

“Was Mr Rockingham a public man? Did he perhaps
serve the Lord Lieutenant in some function or was he expecting to become a
member?”

“No, no and highly unlikely, sir.”

Then why such a plethora of staff? Had the poor man
suffered from delusions of grandeur?

Tom left the interview with Telford slightly more
puzzled than he had arrived, but quite determined to get to the roots of
whatever silliness was to be found at the Hall, and extract them; he had a memory
of visiting the dentist a couple of years before – this operation might well be
equally painful - but not to him.

Chapter Nine

South on the Bedford road out of Kettering, onto a
wooded spur of the ironstone ridge and looking out across a shallow river
valley to the low hills typical of Northamptonshire – an undramatic,
understated landscape, wholly undistinguished but not unpleasant – not very
much at all, really, when compared with Lancashire, and the Pennines to the
east and the Welsh mountains looming in the west. The large village of Burton
could be seen as rooftops and chimneys a couple of miles to the south-west;
Finedon was due south but not visible over the hill; Irthlingborough, a larger
iron town on the River Nene, a couple of miles further south again. A few old
brownstone farmhouses and barns dating from the Elizabethan enclosures were set
below the crests of the hills, sheltered from wind and rain and scattered thinly
over the arc of six or seven miles before them; there were patches of woodland
in the bottoms, but mostly the land was down to the plough, dun and empty at
this time of year, a week or two before the seedlings of barley and wheat
started to green the fields. There were a few sheep on the very tops of the
hills, an ironstone quarry directly to their east, but it seemed essentially to
be an empty, impoverished land, particularly to eyes that had become accustomed
to the bustling industrial landscape of Lancashire where every road and lane
had its wagons, every stream a mill, most hillsides a pithead – this was old,
agricultural England. It reminded Tom of the countryside behind Bridport where
he had grown up and intended never to return – it was
not
nostalgia that
he felt.

“Our land, Brown.”

“Tho I understand, thir. It will be rich, one day,
or could be, thir, properly used.”

“So I have been told.” Tom was not wholly convinced,
began to wonder if he had been sold a pup. “The house, Mr Telford informs me,
is on the road between Finedon and Thrapston, to be reached by a newly planted
avenue.”

No avenue of any sort was visible from where they
were and the post-boys clicked up the horses and set off down to Burton and
then over the hill to Finedon. The road was unmade, a pair of shallow ditches
and a grass verge on either side of a strip of mud just wide enough for two
farm carts to squeeze past each other, the deepest of ruts and potholes showing
evidence that baskets of broken stones were occasionally thrown in as a crude
attempt at road-mending. They bumped and rattled at walking speed, the boys not
daring to risk the horses’ legs at any faster pace; at the crossroads outside
Finedon they turned left onto an even muddier track, no more than a pair of
ruts – a young gentleman they assumed to be the village idiot assured them,
when they eventually understood what he was saying, that they were on the
Thrapston road and that the big house was ‘down there quite close’.

“There, thir, the avenue, or tho I presume.”

Brown pointed to a double row of beeches set in
pairs at fifty feet apart and at intervals of fifty or sixty paces – they would
be impressive, marching across the skyline and pointing the way, one day, but
at the moment were no more than three feet high.

“My word, Brown, in thirty years time, both of us in
our dotage, we can be carried out here to sit in the shade of these magnificent
monuments to our glory!”

“Quite probably, thir, though unless I am much
mistaken, a number of them theem to be less than wholly healthy, will be at
best stunted in their tribute.”

Tom grinned – Brown had a sardonic, grudging wit
which he was prepared to exercise occasionally, not too often, being much
concerned with maintaining the bounds of propriety, but sufficiently to be
worth listening to.

They crossed onto the gravel drive between the
trees, picked up a little speed, the surface being vastly superior to the road,
travelled nearly half a mile along the shallow slope, turned across the shoulder
of the hill and saw the house.

Thingdon Hall was sheltered on three sides by the
low hills, was surrounded by formal gardens rather than a park, three or four
acres laid out in square and circular beds with gravelled paths in between, a
man and three boys busily weeding and planting, not a leaf out of place. They
looked across to the open side, saw that in fact it merely gave the prospect of
another hillside, slightly further distant. The house was immaculate – freshly
painted, washed, scrubbed and polished as appropriate, deeply, frequently
cleaned, not just given a mere lick and a polish for the occasion.

“Did you notice just how many servants there are,
Brown?”

“I did not think to check, thir, but I doubt there
is a girl unemployed in all the village, thir.”

The post boys brought the chaise round in a slow
half circle onto the broad sweep of paving stones outside the front doors,
enabling Tom to appreciate exactly what he was master of. The house was about
two centuries old, in the Elizabethan style, unusually perfect, unchanged since
first it was built; the central block and pair of wings were made of the local
deep tan ironstone rather than the more normal red brick of the time, but the
tiled roof and tall, twisted chimneys were as expected. It had three floors,
two with tall windows, the third servants’ attics with tiny dormers. The double
front doors were old slabs of oak, almost black against the gleaming white of
the two steps below them. A quick count gave six big sets of windows on either
side of the doors and four to each wing, their glass shining brightly, a faint
smell of vinegar disclosing that they had been polished that morning.

“How many bedrooms did Mr Martin say?”

“Twenty-four, thir, thix with dressing roomth – a
middling thort of house for an estate of thith thize – one might expect larger,
a wing or two added in the last one hundred yearth.”

“The family has not been rich for generations, I
believe. I shall of course, add several wings – when the occasion arises, when
I am made duke, say.”

Brown permitted himself a small chuckle – it was
not, as the master clearly perceived, a very likely event.

The doors were flung wide exactly as the chaise came
to a halt and a very visible, officious, loud, formally dressed individual
supervised the butler and two footmen as they let the steps down and handed the
new master out. Two more men in frockcoats stood at the door with at least
eight servants lining the hall behind each of them.

The butler was correctly dressed in black and white,
pantaloons, waistcoat over shirt and neat tie-cravat, exactly as one might
expect, but the footmen wore powdered wigs and dressed in knee breeches and
silk stockings, formal frills above them, more suited to the Court of St James
than a minor country house; the maids were in black dresses with white aprons,
normal enough but making clear that they were all upstairs staff, that there
must be more in the kitchens as well as the men in the stables. With the
gardeners that made upwards of thirty servants, which was ridiculous for a
house of this size - small wonder that Rockingham had found himself in debt.

“My name is Smythe, sir. I am Agent for the Thingdon
estate.”

Smythe was of middle height, a head shorter than Tom
and seemed to resent that he had to look up at him, his lips pursed in temper;
he was plump, soft, white-handed, clearly rarely stirred from his office desk –
he was too important a man to dirty himself with toil, it seemed.

Tom nodded, unimpressed by the man’s bearing and
attitude – there was a superior sneer very poorly hidden.

“Bailiff and Secretary,” Smythe waved a hand to the
pair, who bowed deeply, obviously well coached; he made no attempt to name them
and ignored the butler entirely.

The secretary was a well-fed gentleman of thirty or
so, smiling obsequiously as he caught his eye; the bailiff, somewhat younger,
was lean, harsh-looking, ill-at-ease, uncomfortable in the company he was
keeping.

Smythe was taken aback, almost offended, when Tom
stopped by the butler’s side.

“You, of course, must be my butler?”

“Yes, sir. Morton, sir.”

“A relic of the past, Mr Andrews – Morton used to be
in the service of the Quiller family and Mr Rockingham retained his services
although I strongly recommended that we find a man of greater experience of the
social demands of a big house.”

Smythe looked hopeful, as if he wished Tom to
immediately rectify his predecessor’s error.

“Thank you, Smythe. I am sure Morton will have much
to tell me of this house and of local customs. Brown, here, is my man, Morton –
please to see to his comfort.”

The allocation of rooms in the quarters was an
obvious duty of the butler, especially in the apparent absence of a female
manager; Morton was quite sure that he was being asked to talk openly to Brown
– he would be happy to do so.

“No housekeeper, Smythe? I would have thought that
with such a plethora of staff one would have been appointed.”

“She died a few months ago, sir, soon after Mr
Rockingham encountered his difficulties; some sort of woman’s illness, a
thorough nuisance. It was no time to hire new staff, sir, especially when there
were more difficulties at Quarter Day last.”

Tom noted the absolute lack of concern for the poor
woman’s fate.

“Have all staff been paid their dues, Smythe?”

“Yes, sir – Mr Telford, the banker, advanced the
monies in your name, stating that he believed it to be your wish.”

“It was.”

“Cook has been performing such of the housekeeper’s
duties as she can, sir. She, of course, could not leave her kitchens to greet
you, sir.”

That was nonsense – it was a poor cook who was tied
below stairs because she could not trust her underlings, and if she had had
time to act as housekeeper then she could certainly find a few minutes to come
upstairs.

“Did cook serve the Quiller family, Smythe?”

“Yes, sir.”

Tom walked inside, smiled at the maids, the youngest
nearly fainting as the twisted grin leered at her and making up her mind to go
home to mum at Quarter Day – better no place than working for a scar-faced
ogre!

“There will be cold meats in the small dining-room,
sir, a refreshment after your journey.” Smythe knew he had only come from
Kettering that morning. “The head gamekeeper will wait upon you at two o’clock,
sir.”

Smythe seemed ready to withdraw from the presence,
satisfied that he had made his point to the master, made it quite clear that he
was here to amuse himself, to play at being a gentleman, and should keep out of
the way of the people who did the work; he stopped, eyebrow raised, as Tom
lifted a hand.

“Have you arranged for the bailiff to be made
available to me, Smythe? I would expect to see him today, to start the process
of familiarising myself with my responsibilities.”

“Our procedure, sir, is for the bailiff to take his
instructions from me; I will present you with the quarterly accounts, sir.”

“
My
practise, Smythe, is to become
immediately and fully acquainted with the properties that
I
own and
I
run. My managers obey
my
instructions, sir. What is the function of the
secretary? What may I expect from him?”

“Mr Daniel assists me with the multifarious tasks
that fall to my lot, sir.”

“Does he, now! I will see the bailiff in the estate
offices at half past two, exactly. You and Daniel will be present. I shall
expect a very full explanation of the sights that have come to my eyes this
morning, Smythe. The footmen, for a start – get them out of fancy dress and
into sensible working clothes and give them to Morton to be made use of. Send
cook to me now, in the small dining-room. What is the bailiff’s name, by the
way?”

“Quillerson, sir!” With an air of sniggering triumph
Smythe explained that the young man had grown up on the estate, knew it
thoroughly, had been kept on by Rockingham as an agreement of the purchase. “He
knows everything and everybody, sir, almost as if he were one of the Quiller
family, hee, hee, hee!”

Cook came upstairs, fortyish, scrawny, five feet
tall and weighing six stone, with neatly tied back light brown hair, just
visible under her white cap. Tom estimated; he wondered if she ate her own
cooking.

“Williams, sir. I bin in the kitchen ‘ere nigh on
thirty year, sir. Started as scullery maid, sir – skivvy, that is – learned off
the old cook what was. I bin doin’ the ‘ousekeepin’ this six month, best I can
like, but it ain’t my trade, sir. Being as ‘ow I was never an upstairs, like, I
don’t know what’s what up there, nor I don’t know what should be spent. You did
ought to get a proper ‘ousekeeper, sir, one as can tot up the bills and keep an
eye to the accounts, what I can’t for never ‘avin’ got me readin’, sir.”

A housekeeper who could not oversee expenditure –
very useful to a peculating steward but hopeless in the job. Smythe had been a
little too obvious in this piece of work!

“That is very good of you, cook – a very honest
story. You will not lose any money by it, I promise you.”

“Can’t nohow, master, seein’ as I didn’t get none
extra for doin’ it.”