The Victory (2 page)

And he sups and dines, rely on't,

Every day on naughty people.

Anon (Nurse's-song)

 
Old Sam'l, the village hornblower, walking up from his out
lying cottage at his accustomed time one morning in April 1803, was mildly surprised to hear a horseman coming up
behind him. From the lightness of the tread he could tell it
was a gentleman's riding-horse, and it was an early hour for a
gentleman to be abroad. He stepped off the path to let the
rider by, and then smiled to himself in sudden understanding
as he recognised the distinctive long ears and square muzzle
of Nez Carré, the bay gelding belonging to Master James
Morland of Morland Place. ‘Morning, master!' Old Sam'l cried, baring his naked gums and tugging the disreputable brim of his ancient hat.

‘
Morning, Sam'l!' James replied. ‘I have the start of you
this morning, you see!’

Sam'l gave him a sly look. ‘Ah, but then I'd lay a shillin'
you've not been to bed yet.'

‘
Quite right,' James confessed. He was on his way home
from the Maccabbees Club in York, where he had spent the
whole night playing whist and drinking brandy, as he did
from time to time when the inner voice of his discontent grew
too clamorous. Drink and lack of sleep blunted his percep
tions, and the unreliable light of an April morning only
emphasised the strange, detached feeling of unreality. ‘How's
your daughter?' he asked with an effort. He knew Old Sam'l
lived with an unmarried daughter, but he couldn't recall her
name. His mother would have remembered, he thought: she remembered everything about every one of her people, which was one of the reasons she had been so beloved.

‘Main well, thankee, master,' Sam'l replied, pleased with the attention, 'though troubled with the rheumatics, this damp weather.'

‘
It doesn't seem to bother you, at any rate,' James said.
‘You look as fit as ever.'

‘I keep myself busy, master, and the Lord keeps me well,’

Sam'l nodded, touching his hat again as James rode on. With
a
further effort, James
recalled that Sam'l's only son had been
killed at Malta
in the late
conflict with the French. His father
and grandfather had each been hornblower before him, and
James spared a thought to wonder who would call the vil
lagers to their labours when old Sam'l was dead.

Well, that would be brother Ned's problem, not his.
Edward was the local squire, magistrate, Justice of the Peace, and guardian of Morland Place into the bargain, for all that it
was James's daughter Fanny who would inherit the estate.
James had not been considered, in her grandparents' opinion,
responsible enough to be his daughter's trustee; and perhaps,
he reflected, yawning, they had not been far wrong. Here he
was, after all, coming home like an alley-cat in the early
hours after a night of debauchery. He would be going to bed
just as dear old reliable Ned was getting up, and he would not
rise again until half his brother's day's work was done.

Nez Carré put in a little dancing step here and there, flick
ing his long ears back and forth with interest at every movement and sound in the waking world around him. He was as
fresh as his master was frowsy, having spent the night
in what
was becoming his accustomed stall in the Bunch of Grapes.

‘
Deep doings I had, too, my boy, while you were asleep,'
James said aloud, reaching forward to turn Nez Carré's one
wayward lock of mane back to the proper side. 'But I came out of it rather well — a hundred guineas up on the week's
play.' Nez Carré knuckered in response to the voice, and took it as permission to break into a trot, and James checked him
gently with a smile at the old horse's sudden skittishness.
‘Must be spring,' he remarked.

He turned into the village street, where already the houses were astir. Doors and windows were thrown open on the fine
morning; the smell of cooking issued from some of the houses,
while at others the menfolk had brought out wooden stools to
sit in the early sunshine and break their fast with bread and
beer. Hens and geese, just let out, were everywhere, ruffling
their feathers and stretching their necks in raucous conten
tion as they re-established social order. A family of ducks crossed the road in single file, heading flat-footed for the
stream; a grey cat on a sunny window-ledge blinked and paused in the first serious wash of the day as Nez
Carré's
shadow crossed her; a dog ran out and barked at him, and
then grinned foolishly and wagged its tail in self-congratu
lation.

Stone, the tailor, was already at his work, sitting on a stool
in the doorway of his cottage, one foot up on the door-frame
to support the cloth he was stitching. His two little girls,
identical twins, sat on a mounting stone outside eating cold
porrage with their fingers out of wooden bowls, the rhythm of
their hands never faltering while their round eyes followed
James's progress. At another house, weaver Batty's young
wife, suckling her baby, came to the door to shake out a cloth
with her free hand. She smiled and blushed as James passed,
turning her shoulder not with embarrassment, but with the
grace of a simple modesty.

Most of the village folk worked for the Morland family in
one way or another, some on the land, others in the various
processes of the manufacture of Morland Fancy. Half the
houses he passed had a loom in the attic or in a back room,
and most of the women spun wool in between their other
tasks, either on a wheel, or, increasingly, on a hand-jenny.

There was no sign here of the poverty that one heard about
farther south. The enclosures carried out in his father's time
had created not less but more — and more regular — work in
the fields; the demand for woollen cloth had grown slowly but
steadily; and nearby York, a wealthy and sociable city,
provided plenty of work for domestic servants, and a steady
market for meat and milk, bread and vegetables, shoes,
clothes, furniture, and artifacts of all kinds.

It was a prosperous area, and the Morlands were well-
respected landlords. Edward was esteemed as a fair master
and a knowing one with stock, and James's indiscretions were
forgiven him partly for the sake of his good looks and
personal charm, but mostly because he was considered the
best horseman in the Ridings. James's wife Mary Ann, who
was nominally mistress of Morland Place, had not the knack
of making herself liked, but their daughter Fanny would inherit all when she was twenty-one, and those folk who
mourned the old mistress, James's mother Jemima, told them
selves that Fanny would be just like her.

James wondered if they deceived themselves. He could not
help knowing that Fanny was horribly spoiled — Edward
pointed it out to him daily, and his own judgement could not deny that she did behave very badly sometimes. But she was
not yet eight years old, after all, and he trusted that she
would grow out of it. James adored her, and found it impossi
ble to deny her anything. In his better moments he realised
that it might well be his indulgence which made her so un
governable.

James had a son, too, though he often forgot the fact, for
Henry, two years old and unbreeched, was still the property
of nursery maids. Besides, as the boy owed his existence to
purely financial considerations — the necessity for a male
heir to inherit Mary Ann's father's cotton mills — James
found it difficult to think about him as part of his family. He
seemed as exclusively a Hobsbawn as Fanny was a Morland.

Thinking about his wife depressed James. He had married
her for family reasons, and would have found it difficult to love her even had her existence not separated him from the
woman of his heart, his cousin Héloïse. Once, when his
mother was still alive, James had run away from wife, home
and family to live with Héloïse for a few painfully ecstatic
months, until conscience and social pressure had driven him
to return, leaving Hélobe pregnant — that was Sophie, the
child he had never seen. The wrong he had done his wife, the
suffering he had caused her, only made it harder for him to
like her. We must all, he thought wryly, hate those we hurt,
because the shame of their suffering wounds our self-esteem.

At the end of the village street was Abley's, the baker's
shop, and the delicious smell of hot bread drifted out to him
and made him realise how hungry he was. Abley himself came
red-faced to the door for a breath of air, and nodded to James
civilly.

‘Now then, Maister Morland.'

‘
Fine day, Abley.' James reined Nez Carré, who stretched
his nose with interest towards the source of the agreeable
smell.

‘
Too bright,' Abley dissented succinctly, peering up at the
sky. 'Too bright in April likes to turn off, you mark my
words. We s'l have a storm before day's out. Now then, 'oss,
keep thy nose to thyself! Any news from London, maister?
Shall we have war soon, dosta think?'

‘
I've heard nothing certain,' James replied, 'though my sister in London says it's only a matter of time. If Boney
won't give us satisfaction, we shall have to fight him.'

‘
The sooner the better, to my mind,' Abley said severely.
'By, if I were ten years younger, I'd tek the shillin' maself, for
the sake of givin' yon Boney Party a right good drubbin'.' His
expression softened. 'But how is Miss Lucy — her ladyship, I
should say?'

‘
Just exactly as she always was. She never changes,' James
said.