“It must have been a very difficult time for you,” said Hero, although it was such a woeful understatement that it struck her as almost cruel.
Mary Beth nodded and rubbed the heel of her hand against one eye. “Everything was so different after that. We used to cut our firewood and peat from the wasteland, and gather berries there in the summer and nuts in the winter. It’s where we’d get the rushes for our lights and the thatch for our roof, and even set our pigs t’foraging. But then we didn’t have none of that no more. How was we supposed to live?”
“Were there any protests? Disturbances?”
A long silence followed the question. Then Mary Beth said, “He didn’t tell you? Mr. McBroom, I mean.”
Hero knew an uncomfortable prickling of premonition. “Tell me what?”
“About the troop of yeomen come up one night when a bunch of the lads had got together. Arrested more’n twenty, they did, my Nate and Lucas amongst them.”
“Lucas?”
“Lucas was my boy. Sentenced him to serve in the army, they did, even though he was only twelve. Shipped him off to India.” The chambermaid dropped her gaze to her lap, where her fingers worked plucking at the cloth of her apron. “Died of a fever when he weren’t there more’n a month. Or so I heard.”
“I’m sorry,” said Hero, her voice now little more than a whisper.
“At least they didn’t hang him, like they did my Nate. Nate, and my brother, John, both.” Mary Beth drew a shaky breath. “That’s when I came here, to work at the Blue Boar. Been here ever since. I was lucky, I was; most folks ended up in the workhouse. Or dead.”
In the silence that followed her words, they could hear Martin McBroom in the distance, shouting at one of the stableboys.
“Don’t seem right, somehow,” said Mary Beth. “To take the land that once belonged to everybody and give it to those who already have so much. Just so’s they can put a wall around it and arrest anybody dares set foot on it.”
“It’s not right,” said Hero.
Mary Beth nodded, her lips pressed tightly together, the cords in her throat working as she swallowed hard. “There’s a little ditty my Nate used t’ sing to my Julie, before she died. You ever heard it?” And then she began to sing, her voice pure and sweet, but wavering now with the strain of her emotions:
“They hang the man and flog the woman,
That steals the goose from off the Common;
But let the greater villain loose,
Who steals the Commons from the goose.
The law demands that we atone
When we take things we do not own,
But leaves the Lords and Ladies fine
Who take things that are yours and mine.
And geese will still a Common lack,
Till they go and steal it back.”
The aging chambermaid’s voice faded away, leaving her staring at the cold hearth.
“I have heard it, yes,” said Hero, quietly closing her notebook and setting it aside. Although the truth was, she’d heard the first four lines, but not the rest.
Mary Beth raised her gaze to Hero’s face. “I can tell you this, milady: There weren’t nobody around here was sorry, the night Maplethorpe Hall burned and took George Irving with it. Weren’t nobody sorry at all.”
Chapter 20
An hour or so later, just as the church bell was striking eleven, the Reverend Benedict Underwood’s punctiliously correct wife, Agnes, paid a courtesy call on Viscountess Devlin. It was the done thing, for a vicar’s wife to make a formal call on any ladies of stature visiting her husband’s parish. Typically, the vicar’s wife would leave a card and go away, never expecting to be honored with an actual visit. So Agnes Underwood was visibly stunned to be invited up to her ladyship’s private parlor.
The Reverend’s wife was a solidly built woman on the tall side, with a long, rectangular face and unmemorable features. She’d brought her husband a dowry of two hundred pounds a year, an additional income most welcome to a clergyman whose living could only be described as meager. And because she was inordinately proud of this fact, she made certain to impart the information to Hero within minutes of meeting her.
“I understand you had Emma Chance to tea,” said Hero, handing the vicar’s wife a cup of tea sweetened with three sugars.
“I did, yes. The Reverend invited her to the vicarage the first day she was here. Thought her a taking little thing and felt sorry for her.” Something about the way she said it suggested that Agnes Underwood did not share her reverend husband’s opinion—a suspicion that was confirmed when the woman leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “Although if you ask me, there was something undeniably fast about her. As I told the Reverend, I’m not surprised things ended the way they did.”
Hero poured herself a cup of tea. “Oh? Why is that?”
“Well,” said the vicar’s wife, her voice throbbing with meaning. “A young woman, gallivanting about the countryside with only an abigail? It’s simply not the done thing, now, is it, Lady Devlin?”
“She was a widow.”
“Yes. But . . . still.”