Martha Peake Read online

  Oh, but then William grew stern with her! He reminded her of what the gin did to him, what it turned him into, what he had done under its influence, his inability to control himself in spite of all good intentions, and more in this vein, such that Martha was overwhelmed by the very flood of it, and no longer knew what she thought or believed or wanted; although she was aware, even as reason told her that what he said was true, she was aware, said William, for he knew her well by this time, so he claimed, of a small hard nut in her heart that would not be dislodged, and that nut was her love of her father, and her belief in his goodness; and she also believed that he would never hurt her again. But it was no argument, and she did not say it.

  “Where am I to go then?” she said.

  “America.”

  Martha lifted her head. America! At the sound of the word a flood of incoherent ideas, and half-glimpsed images, and strange alien passions swept rapidly over the girl, strong, wild feelings she could not identify, nor even say whether they were pleasurable or not. The sound of the word, and the seriousness, the awe with which my uncle William spoke it—America. America. She murmured it under his breath. There was power, there was magic in it, the word America. Ah, but there was terror in it also!

  “He could not follow you there. He need never know where you had gone,” said William.

  All at once Martha laid her head on the table and hammered on the wood with her fists.

  “But you would be safe!” cried William.

  He sat down beside her and stroked the back of her head. Martha would not lift her face. He kept talking to her, he kept stroking her head, and after a little while she sat up and said with some petulance: “How should I go to America? I have not enough money.”

  “We will help you.”

  She rubbed her eyes. America. Despite her reluctance she wanted to go to America, the very prospect of it thrilled her beyond words. But to go for this reason, for this reason alone, to escape her father—it was too cruel.

  “When?” she said.

  “Soon.”

  She pondered this.

  “A new life,” said William.

  But this was killing her! How could she tell my uncle that although such words thrilled her to the very quick of her being, she could not freely embrace them, for there was a voice in her that added to each of them the words without him. A new life without him. The New World without him. America—without him. It was too much for her, and she turned to William with arms outstretched, he took her to his breast, his old eyes shining at the memory of it, as a small pellucid droplet of liquid phlegm hung trembling from the tip of his thin red nose. So they comforted one another, and after a while they were quiet, and able to think over these dramatic developments with some composure.

  Harry had often talked to Martha about the colonies, indeed they had friends in Smithfield who spoke of little else. America was for these men and women a country in which English liberties, long neglected at home, and fallen into decay, stood every good chance of flourishing. If the Americans should rise against the king—and in truth, it was muttered, such words being treasonous, what need had they of a king, that prospering people?—Harry and Martha would not be alone in supporting them. Had not Edmund Burke spoken for them all, when he rose in the House of Commons to defend the industry and ingenuity of the people of New England, and deplored King George’s attempts to constrain that people’s trade, and then their freedoms?

  Now Martha was to go and live among them; but without her father, who had taught her to admire them, and who was, it was said, a sort of American himself, and was even called Harry America by some, having created in his ballad of Joseph Tresilian the very type of the defiant patriot. It was too bitter to be thought of—she would go to America without her father, because her father in his madness believed her to be his enemy! So yes, Martha was divided—torn, rather—by my uncle’s proposal, but she decided, wisely, to say nothing yet of her reluctance and her doubts.

  The American plan was a well-kept secret in Drogo Hall. Letters were dispatched to the colonies, where Martha’s aunt, Maddy Foy, lived in New Morrock, a small fishing port some way north of Boston. She must sail soon, while the weather still permitted, and William took it upon himself to arrange her passage; and so, while these preparations went forward, poor Martha swung violently between a wild anticipation of this imminent journey to the New World, and the grim knowledge that somewhere out there her father, who now had the ear of Lord Drogo, and had been told he could come to the house whenever he chose—and who believed, moreover, that his daughter was under this very roof—wandered the Lambeth Marsh.

  Poor confused child! I saw it all, I knew what Drogo wanted, he wanted Harry Peake to return to Drogo Hall, and Martha was the lure. If it meant that he must give her shelter, then he would do so, it was nothing to him, she was but poultry exposed that the fox may be taken. But to prevent Harry carrying her off—which Drogo most emphatically did not wish to happen—then she must be removed elsewhere; which was why my uncle was packing her off to the colonies.

  15

  Ah, but Harry Peake was not to be had so easy—he was no nobleman’s dupe! He came out onto the marsh but he did not visit the house again, for all he wanted was to see his Martha. In his desperate loneliness and misery I believe he forgot for a time his wild conviction of her treachery; but not knowing how to reach her, he wandered the marsh by night, he came around the house, never showing himself, staying clear of the dogs, and of Clyte, who was always active in the hours of darkness. No, he did not want to storm the citadel and carry her off, but he did want her to know he was out there, that he was out there waiting for her.

  How could Martha have known this? I have no idea, and neither did my uncle. But she knew it, because one night she stayed awake, waiting until the house was asleep, and then she slipped out of bed, and throwing on her greatcoat over her nightshirt—the coat she had had from her father, and which, though it stank of tobacco still, and the sleeves were so long she had to fold the cuffs back several times to get her fingers out, was yet a good warm coat for a chill September night—and with her boots and stockings on, and a shawl over her head, and her hair all brushed out and spilling down her back—she was tolerably warm for the vigil that lay ahead.

  She rubbed her hands before the fire, which was dying, then clambered into her window alcove and there arranged herself as comfortably as she could. It was a clear night, and there was a moon, and she knew, somehow, that this night she would discover for certain whether he was out there or not.

  Moonlight seemed to bleach the marsh, to render it palely gleaming, this tract of waterland that stretched for miles in all directions, its ghostly haunted vastness broken only by the occasional stark outline of a leafless elm, and now and then the flicker and flare of the will-o’-the-wisp. This night it was silent. Nothing was moving. Only the mist, delicate as gossamer, stuff of dreams, coiled and drifted in the low-lying bogs where standing water gave back the moon’s reflection in strips and bars of tainted radiance. In the distance the town was no more than a dark massy presence with tiny scattered spots of light; and nothing in any other direction. Martha sat in her high window with her arms wrapped round her knees and watched over it all. She had a candle with her in the window: she was a beacon, shining in the night; if he was out there, he would see her.

  Oh, but she found it hard, after an hour or two, to stay awake. Her head would start to slide off her knees and she would wake with a start, not knowing how long she had been asleep, a minute or an hour, until she saw how the candle burned; and then once more she looked out over the marsh, so still in the clear cold moonlight.

  But soon she was fast asleep, curled up in her big bed with the birds and the lizards scuttling about in the foliage on the headboard.

  Three nights later she saw him. There was heavy cloud that night, and some fog, for they had had rain that evening, and a wind, too, and the marsh was much different from what it had been a few nights earlier, altogether
darker and wilder, alive with movement, though there was no saying what that movement was, wind on water, shifting fog, animals, spirits, or man. He was among the elm trees. Martha’s candle was burning, her beacon was lit. He did not move, merely stood there among the trees gazing straight up at the house.

  She was ready. She was wearing her greatcoat. With her boots clutched in one hand, the candlestick in the other, she stepped silently to the door and, turning the key, for now she locked herself in at night, she slipped out into the corridor, where she set down the candle and pulled her boots on. Then away she went down the staircase and through the dark passages of the west wing, then down to a door that opened into the courtyard below her window, where she put out the candle and hid it behind a barrel. Clyte was now the danger, him and the dogs; but as she crept along the wall she heard nothing but the soughing of the wind out on the marsh.

  She pressed her back against the bricks for a few minutes, then darted across the yard to a gate that opened into a walled garden behind the stables where she knew she should be safe. Again she paused; again she heard nothing to alarm her. Then she was running, clinging to the deeper shadows by the wall, until she reached the far end, where a sturdy trellis fastened to the brickwork gave her an easy climb up over the wall, and a simple drop to the ground on the far side.

  Only a fence or two now separated her from the marsh itself, and the stand of elms where she had earlier seen a tall bent figure among the trees. Then she was running, or squelching, rather, across a cow pasture, mud splashing her nightshirt, the greatcoat streaming out behind her. She was slipping and sliding but determined to reach the fence on the far side without once stopping.

  She reached it. She hung there, panting. She glanced over her shoulder: nothing pursued her. She glanced about her: nothing moved. In the darkness—heavy clouds had rolled across the moon—the stand of elms was a dense black mass half-a-mile away. She could see no figure there now. The ground between was boggy and uneven, a dangerous place to cross on a dark night after rain. What was that to Martha Peake? She would pick her way with care. Off she went with beating heart, slow and cautious, feeling her way among tufted clumps of earth with dark mucky pools between, and she had to step from one to the next but not before testing with her boot that it was firm enough to take her weight. Perilous work; and more than once she slipped and felt her leg sink in up to the knee, and she hauled it clear but not without difficulty, for the ooze clung and sucked at her, eager to take her down.

  Now there was some noise on the marsh, her own: her cries of surprise and frustration, her grunts of exertion, the ghastly sucking sounds of her leg being hauled up out of the bog. She couldn’t help it. She didn’t care. She was determined to reach the stand of elms where the ground was higher and she had seen, so she thought, her father waiting for her.

  The grassy hillocks grew fewer and farther apart and she was scrambling now from one to the next, clawing in the darkness with her hands to secure if not firm footing, at least a grip on something solid. She was wet to her groin. Her greatcoat now dragged about her like a damp sack, a burden she would happily have abandoned but for the wind, which was beginning to spit cold rain in her face. The half-mile from the fence to the trees now seemed a very Atlantic in its vastness. She may have wept but she did not stop. She could not stop. She had no confidence in her ability to turn herself around and find the way back. She had at least the trees in front of her now, she could see where she was going. But she could not see her father.

  It grew worse. She was wading through bog now, but slowly, painfully slowly, it was all she could do to keep moving, to get a boot up and out of the bog and take another step. She was wet and cold and miserable. Her strength was flagging. A wave of despair swept over her—

  Then she saw him! She saw him. He was tramping toward her through the muck as though it were no more than a puddle. It splattered about him as he came shouldering through. A moment later he had her round the waist and was lifting her clear of the mud, and turning and ploughing back the way he had come, and a little later still they heaved up onto firmer ground and he set her down among the elms. She sat there panting. He squatted at the foot of a tree. He looked old and thin and ill. He had lost several teeth. His cheeks were sunken, his long black hair was matted with dirt and straw, his clothes were in rags. His eyes shone with a peculiar brightness: gin, she thought. His hands trembled. He looked wild. He looked mad. Her father. But the monster was not in him, no, it was his own soul she glimpsed burning dimly within.

  “I knew you were out here,” she said. She was filled with a quiet happiness. “I knew you were watching the house.”

  For a long time he said nothing. Then, at last: “Are you reading your books?” His voice was changed; cracked and husky now, but still it sounded like old leather.

  She did not find the question odd. “I read his books,” she said. “He has a library.”

  “I know it.”

  “Aren’t you cold?”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  He had fewer clothes on than she had, but he pulled the cold damp girl to him and wrapped his arms around her. He was very smelly. She wanted to tell him about America but she could not.

  “Do you mean to murder me?” she whispered, clutching his collar.

  This provoked a hoarse hack of laughter. He shook his head.

  “I have gone mad, Martha. At times I cannot account for what I do. But I have no wish to kill you.”

  “What will you do?”

  No answer to this.

  “Are you still living at the Angel?”

  “No.”

  “Will you visit Lord Drogo again?”

  “Drogo!”

  His grip on her tightened. He struggled with his anger, she felt it rising in him. She was shivering now, her teeth were chattering.

  “I will take you back,” he said, growing suddenly quiet again. “When I am not mad I think of you.”

  “I think of you too.”

  “Better forget me.”

  “No!”

  She shifted herself about in his arms until she could look him in the face, and as she did so the clouds fled from the moon and she saw him for a few seconds with some clarity. The face she saw before her in the moonlight was more scored and hatched with pain than ever, and about the eyes there was a sort of hollowing, a deepening of the sockets and a strange clearness of the brow that somehow unmistakably spelled lunacy. Even Martha, child though she was, could read that; oh, and a hundred other signs of a weakening fiber, the twitching, the muttering that went on constantly under his breath; the hand that trembled in the darkness above her head, and then returned, like a bird disturbed from the nest, to encircle her waist and hold her close. Tears shone damply in his eyes.

  “Does your back still hurt?” she said.

  “I have no more care of pain.”

  She rubbed her cheek against his face. There was a thick beard on him and it scratched her. She pulled back sharply with a cry.

  A little later he led her back to the house, bringing her round the boggy part, firm ground all the way. They held hands, and a strange sight they would surely have made, had there been any eye to see them, the big shuffling humpback in rags, and his daughter, in greatcoat and boots, and with mud to her waist, out beneath an angry sky, at the dead of night, walking hand in hand in a marsh. Close to the house he left her, and she stood by the wall watching him as he lumbered toward the London road. She found her way back to her room without mishap, where she cleaned herself as best she could before climbing into bed. It seemed all a dream, and perhaps it would have been, but for the mud she had brought back with her and the burn on her cheek where she had rubbed against his beard.

  In the morning the bed was filthy and my uncle was in a state of no little irritation when he discovered that she had gone out on the marsh in the night. She did not tell him about meeting her father. She told him she liked to go out at night, and this made him angry. There were dogs, he sa
id, wild dogs, did she not hear them howling? Martha reassured him, although it irked her sorely that he should attempt to lord it over her like this. But she avoided promising to stay inside the house at night.

  And this is how it started, the strange late phase in Martha’s relationship with her father. It was unfortunate that her expedition out-of-doors should have been discovered so quickly, for at one blow she had lost her guardian’s trust. William knew well enough that she was a wilful, headstrong girl, but he had presumed she understood the precariousness of her situation in Drogo Hall, and that she would not jeopardize her tenuous security by rash acts.

  Now, he said, he was not so sure. That night, when she was settled in her room, he locked the door himself, and pocketed the key. In the days that followed he continued this practice, and by these means gave her little chance to get out of the house and look for Harry in the marsh. She could only keep a vigil in her window alcove, watch for him and pray he would be patient, that he would wait for her. She did not expect this surveillance of William’s to be sustained for many days, and sure enough, once he began bringing her books about America from Lord Drogo’s library, he became himself so engrossed in them, sitting with her of an evening, that he soon forgot to lock her in and she was gradually able to return to her old independent ways.

  Still, it was daunting to go out onto the marsh at night, although it was not difficult during the day to slip across the courtyard and into the walled garden, which was almost always deserted at this time of the year, with little growing there but witch-hazel and catkin; and from there she would make exploratory sweeps of the surrounding country. In this way she first came upon the graveyard.