Page 77 of The Housekeeper's Secret
The old coachman nodded slowly and sucked on his pipe. Around the room an expectant silence stretched. Huddled on his hard chair by the door, Joseph’s eyes were as round as saucers. Mrs Gatley, who had sunk into Mr Goddard’s chair, made no attempt to get up, her coat spread across her lap, her hands folded comfortably on top of it.
‘Winter of ninety-seven, it was…’ Johnny Farrow began ponderously, around the stem of his pipe. ‘Bitter cold, hard frost for days. Sir Henry was coming home from a stay at Whittam Park, but the train was delayed… black as pitch by the time we set off from Sheffield. Well… the snow started as we reached Hope End Farm. By the time we got up to the top by Gallowstree Heath it was fair coming down. That was when I saw it…’
All eyes were on the coachman at the far end of the table, just beyond the circle of lamplight. All except Jem’s. His head was turned towards the window, and he watched the white flakes tumbling through the glowing dark.
Johnny Farrow told his well-worn tale of the ghostly coach with its phantom horses galloping hell-for-leather through the blizzard, but it was Jem—a few feet away from Kate and a thousand miles beyond her reach—who looked haunted.
Outside, the snow had changed everything. The landscape of the park was unrecognisable, and even the sky looked different, lit by a yellow glow, like a lamp burning low behind a shaded window. Only the dark silhouette of the tower remained as a fixed point of familiarity. It cast a long blue shadow on the snow, like an accusing finger pointing towards the house.
Sir Randolph’s spaniel dashed around in circles, burying his nose in the snow and snorting, not knowing what to investigate first. Joseph hunched his shoulders and watched, dully aware that last winter he would probably have run about with the same excitement.
But he’d grown up a lot since last winter.
‘Boy!’
His voice cracked and the shout came out deeper than he’d expected, as if a stranger had spoken. The dog took no notice, rushing up the slope towards the woods. There was no way Joseph was going after him if he went in there. Not after all that talk of ghosts in the servants’ hall.
‘Must be six inches deep already,’ Jem said absently. He had offered to come with Joseph when he took the dog for its last run of the day, and stood now, his body taut as he scanned the line of the trees. Joseph had been grateful for the offer; he thought Jem must have noticed that he was afraid. With a thud of disappointment, he realised now that Jem hadn’t come for his sake at all, but to look for Davy Wells.
‘It’s so white,’ Joseph muttered. ‘I’ve not seen owt like it before. In town it always melts and turns dirty as soon as it touches the ground. Everything looks so… clean.’
It was as if the world had been made pure and new. The spaniel let out a couple of high, excited barks and bounded joyfully forward, sending up sprays of powder as white as the sugar cones in the stillroom. It was deceptive, the purity. Beneath the pristine snow was mud and stones, secrets and lies.
This whole beautiful place was rotten with them.
‘Jem?’ he said tentatively, but the footman had begun to move away, following the furrows the dog had left in the snow. Joseph dug his hands deep into the pockets of his fustian jacket and set off after him. His footsteps faltered as his cold fingers closed around a sixpence.
At first, he had been happy about the coins Mr Henderson gave him. It was something… to be noticed and singled out for praise. Joseph was as invisible as Samuel’s ghost to Mr Goddard, and treated much the same as Boy the spaniel by Thomas and the girls. It had given him a glow of pride when Mr Henderson called him a bright lad, and said he was shaping up to be a useful servant.
He didn’t have to like Sir Randolph’s valet to recognise that as a good thing. You had to toady up to all sorts of rum characters if you wanted to get on, and he didn’t want to be a workhouse nobody, scraping mud off boots and carrying coal for the rest of his days. Mr Henderson had promised him his own uniform—a proper tiger’s livery—and a special job waiting on at the house parties Sir Randolph was going to have for his gentlemen friends. The sixpences were just the start, Henderson said—rewards for the scraps of servants’ hall gossip Joseph gave him. He’d get proper money from the toffs, for being loyal and discreet and a good sport (whatever that meant).
Too late he’d realised the trap Henderson had set for him.
He’d seen the growing collection of coins as a means of washing off the stain of his early life; of distancing himself from the snivelling kid who had cowered from his father’s fists, and becoming the man he wanted to be—a man like Jem. But in earning those coins, he had proved himself the opposite. In trying to make himself worthy of Jem’s friendship, he’d been required to betray it. Just as Henderson must have planned.
He trudged up the hill in Jem’s wake. It had started to snow again, and flakes brushed his cheeks and caught in his lashes. He had decided that the only thing to do was to talk to Jem… carefully. Sound him out for advice without quite letting on what he’d done.
‘Jem…’ he tried again, quickening his pace to catch up. ‘Wait! There was summat I wanted to ask you… About—’
He paused. Jem turned and walked backwards for a couple of paces.
‘About what?’
A volley of barks echoed like gunshots through the frozen night, making them both jump. Boy was standing at the edge of the wood, staring into its darkness, the fur standing up in a ridge along his back.
Fear turned Joseph’s mind blank and made his voice quaver. ‘What’s he seen?’ Animals were supposed to be able to sense spirits, weren’t they? Johnny Farrow said the carriage horses had squealed and skidded and refused to go forward when the phantom coach appeared. But it was clear Jem’s mind wasn’t on ghosts. He started to run, feet sliding on the snow as he scrambled up the slope towards the trees.
‘Davy! Davy Wells—is that you?’
With his heart rattling against his ribs, Joseph followed. He would rather have turned and run back to the light and warmth of the servants’ hall, but he didn’t dare go back without the dog. As the shadow of the trees fell over him, he saw Jem stop, his hands going to his head, his shoulders slumping.
‘Deer,’ he said flatly, as Joseph caught up. ‘They must have come down from the hills to shelter from the cold.’
Joseph looked past him and saw a pale shape move between the trees. He laughed uneasily, relief loosening his insides. ‘I thought it was the ghost lad. Susan said it were a winter’s night like this when he tried to run away. Should’ve waited until it were warmer, the daft sod…’
He said it to make a joke of his own embarrassing fear, but Jem didn’t laugh. He carried on staring into the trees, his whole body tense, like he was listening intently. But not to Joseph. He gave no sign of having heard him at all.
‘I don’t know why you’re shouting ’im, any road.’ Joseph muttered, kicking up a plume of snow. ‘Not going to answer, is he? Never speaks. Come on, let’s go in. I’m half froze to death.’