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Harriet pulled herself back up to the flagstones above her head and placed her mouth to the gap. ‘Josh!’ Josh! she called urgently. ‘In the scullery! Come into the scullery!
There was a deathly silence, then all of a sudden the sound of stumbling footsteps came towards their corner.
‘Milly?’ came a breathless voice. ‘Have you come for me? Where are you, lass—can you show yourself? I’m ready to come with you!’
Harriet experienced a momentary pang at having to disenchant the old man of his simple belief in his late wife’s visitation but, since he was likely to be their only hope, she resolutely dashed this feeling from her thoughts.
‘It’s me, Mr Potter—Harriet Cordell!’ she cried through the slit. ‘I am imprisoned in the cellar—with Billy Tatler. Can you see the raised flagstone in the corner of the scullery?’
Please God he has a light of some sort, she thought, and found herself sobbing with relief as she saw the stump of candle in his hand as he bent towards the gap. The flickering light was sufficient for him to see the reflection in her green eyes, now brimming with tears as she recognised his wrinkled old visage.
‘It is you, indeed, miss!’ he gasped in amazement. ‘Everyone’s been looking for you—how’d you get down there, miss?’
But Harriet had no heart to indulge in an explanatory conversation from her present uncomfortable position and begged the old man to open up the cellar hatch and, with some difficulty, eventually persuaded him to shuffle off to comply with her request. Presently, however, he came back to inform her that, unfortunately, a large mass of timber was wedged against the trap-door and that, try as he might, he had been unable to remove it.
Harriet beat her fists against the roof timbers in impotent frustration. ‘Can you not find something with which to lever up the slab?’ she called out in anguish but, as with a growing sense of hopelessness she listened to the old man stumbling about amongst the debris above them, she soon realised that this task would be equally beyond him.
‘Josh!’ she called out again, unable to bear the tension any longer. ‘You must go for help—but only to Lord Sandford—do you hear? On no account tell anyone else of our whereabouts and—please—I know it will be difficult for you—but, please—hurry!’
‘I’m on my way, miss,’ came the wheezing reply. ‘I’ll fetch himself—don’t you worry, miss.’
But Harriet was extremely worried and wondered how quickly a tired old rheumatic with chest problems could possibly cover the four miles to Beldale House—even supposing that Sandford was to be found there!
‘Will he get back, d’ye think, miss?’ asked Billy in a plaintive voice. ‘He can’t walk proper—it’ll take him forever!’
‘Well, Billy,’ said Harriet grimly. ‘We seem to have forever—we certainly aren’t going anywhere—so we’d better think of new ways to pass the time.’
She dwelt on this problem for a moment, then brightened. ‘Do you know ‘'Black Jack Ladderback''?’
‘Can’t say as I do, miss. What is it?’
‘It’s a round song we used to sing as we rode or marched along. I’ll teach it to you. It goes like this …’
‘'Black Jack Ladderback Took the acorn that he found Dug a little hole and put The seed into the ground And the sun it shone, and the rain it rained And in time it came to pass There grew beside the wishing-well An oak tree on the grass.”
And in this way she kept him happily entertained for a full hour as he learned how Black Jack saw first a branch, then a twig followed by a leaf until, inevitably, he found another acorn and the whole song was repeated ad infinitum. This revelation caused Billy great amusement and he insisted on frequent encores. Harriet, for whom the song was less of a novelty, steadfastly put away her tedium and encouraged him to sing out with gusto, all the while wondering for how much longer she would be obliged to keep up his spirits.
By way of their little gap in the flagstones the cellar had slowly lightened sufficiently for each of them to just about make out the other’s person in the gloom and this in itself was cheering. They were boisterously chanting out the words of the song for possibly the fifth time when they heard the sound of the trap-door being swung away. Harriet held her breath as she pulled Billy back into the furthest corner.
A sneering voice fell on their horrified ears.
‘Sing-song, sing-song! What a pretty sound! Here’s a little present for you!’ and a load of brushwood and bracken was thrown through the opening, followed by a considerable quantity of dry straw.
With a sinking heart Harriet realised immediately what their captor’s intention was. He meant to fire the cellar and leave them to their fate! Frantically scrambling down from the makeshift platform, she dealt firmly with her initial terror at the thought of being burnt to death and, with Billy’s help, set about dragging as much of the scattered brushwood and straw as far away from immediate incineration as was possible.
Fear and the deep-rooted instinct for survival had instantly renewed her strength and with a determined obstinacy she then started pushing all the damp and sodden sacks directly below the cellar hatch, reasoning that should their assailant be about to hurl a firebrand into their underground prison, there was an evens chance that it would land on the not-so-readily-combustible pile of vegetables. Although only a few extra minutes might be gained from such a diversion, it could be enough to make all the difference to the outcome.
She held her breath as the trap-door re-opened and, with mounting horror, she saw that the shadowy outline above them had, indeed, set fire to a tarry faggot, for its flickering light enabled her to register the man’s grinning countenance just before he tossed the kindling into the cellar and, with a snigger, slammed down the door once more.
She was certain that she had seen him somewhere before—but where? He was not the man who had directed her to ride up here—but she had no time to dwell upon this puzzle as another, far greater problem was facing her.
Sparks from the firebrand had ignited some of the scattered straw that still lay on the cellar floor and she had to engage her whole concentration in stamping out the various pockets of flame as they took hold. Billy, too, was thrashing his wet sacking at the defiant flickers that were creeping towards the dry brushwood at the far side of their prison.
Above them they could hear the sound of debris being piled once more against the trap-door and, at the sight of flames licking around the cracks in the framework, Harriet’s heart sank, for she knew that as soon as the flimsy wooden structure burned away the whole mass of burning timber would fall through and, if that happened, nothing could save them.
Thick, acrid smoke was pouring from the faggot that had fallen beside the turnip sacks. The combination of wet earth and damp vegetables had caused the flames to expire, but the glowing, tarry embers that remained were eating their way along the edges of the sacks, causing choking palls to rise up and, mingled with the smoke and stench from all the other sources, the cellar was soon filled with an atmosphere in which no one could hope to survive for long.
Harriet grabbed at another of the empty, wet sacks and wrapped the choking Billy into its folds, pushing him into the corner furthest away from the burning hatchway and ordered him to keep himself rolled up. She dragged off her smouldering boots and, lifting up her riding-skirt, she threw it over her head, sinking down on the cellar floor beside the howling urchin and prayed as she’d never prayed before.
Chapter Fifteen
Sandford stood at the window of the drawing room, watching intently for the first faint streaks of dawn to break across the dark sky. Never in his whole experience could he recall having lived through a longer night. With his brain in a whirl from Lady Butler’s revelations, he had been unable to rest without recalling the disasters that had occurred during his earlier torpidity and, like a demented wraith, he had paced the crowded and bedimmed rooms, inwardly cursing his stupidity, weakness and every other fault or failing he could attach to his own ineptitude. Tiptree, dozing in a corner, had continually roused himself to point out in his usual blunt manner that Sandford would be as much use as a tinker’s reject by the morning and that he would do better to harness his thoughts for an hour or two, but the viscount found it impossible to attend to this excellent advice.
His eyes were ragged from staring out into the darkness for any perceptible lightening of the black landscape before him until, all of a sudden, his senses quickened as he realised that he could, indeed, separate sky from land. As the pale dawn began at last to spread its pearly pink glow across the low horizon, he turned in relief to give instructions for the first searchers to be wakened.
Very soon a crowd had gathered both inside and outside the yellow drawing-room and Davy Rothman stepped forward in some urgency.
‘It’s light enough, sir,’ he said to Sandford. ‘Can we go out now?’
The viscount nodded and Tiptree began issuing new directions and commands to the waiting groups, but his orders were suddenly interrupted by the sounds of a violent altercation issuing from the hallway.
Sandford frowned impatiently. ‘Now, what the devil …?’
The crowd in the doorway parted to reveal the sight of Joshua Potter struggling with his son-in-law Seb Watts, who was attempting to prevent the old man from entering the room.
‘I will speak to him—I will!’ croaked Potter, who was in a state of near hysterics. ‘Get your hands off me, young Seb. I gotta speak to himself—she said only himself!’
Sandford ripped through the crowd that divided him from the contentious pair and frantically grabbed at Potter’s arm.
‘Who?’ he jerked out roughly. ‘Speak up, man—for
God’s sake!’
‘She’s in the cellar, sir, gasped the old man, collapsing to his knees. ‘Along of Billy Tatler. I come as fast as I could—she said only you, sir!’
‘He wouldn’t tell me what it was, your lordship,’ said Watts, screwing up his face. ‘Meggy sent me up the lane with the cart, to see if he’d gone up to the cottage again, and I found him half-dead on the verge. He made me bring him—but I wasn’t sure …’ His voice tailed off as he saw Sandford making for the door, at the same time exhorting every man with a mount to get saddled and ride at once to Bottom Meadow.
Please, God, let me be in time, he prayed, as he gave Pagan his head along the bridleway that was the short cut to both Westpark and to the lane that led to Bottom Meadow. Tiptree and some of the men followed the viscount whilst the rest of the riders had been instructed to take the longer route along the lane.
It was almost full dawn by the time Sandford wheeled his stallion across the meadow that separated the two estates. He did not turn towards Westpark, however, but took his mount at a gallop over the stone wall into North Lane and on towards the fork at the top where, to his utter shock and horror, he could clearly see the thin column of smoke that was spiralling viciously from the vicinity of Potter’s cottage.
From the sound of the shouts behind him, it was obvious that the others had also registered the sight. He spurred his horse on furiously, raising his arm in order to thrash down his crop against Pagan’s sweating rump when, somewhere inside his head, he could hear Harriet’s voice: ‘Horses shouldn’t be whipped—shouldn’t be whipped!’
‘Come on, boy,’ he urged, as his arm dropped. ‘Give me everything you’ve got!’
Ears flattened and tail streaming, Pagan positively flew the final half-mile and at last the derelicts came in sight and every one of the horsemen could see that the end cottage was aflame! Timber and debris had been piled up against the cellar trap-door and it was a raging bonfire! In one swift movement Sandford had leapt from his mount and, with Tiptree at his side, he had rounded the cottage and was tearing at the flaming brands with his gloved hands.
‘Harriet! Harriet!’ he called out, ignoring the searing pain in his fingers. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘Lord Sandford, sir,’ came an urgent voice from inside the ruined building. ‘We can get in from here—lift the flagstones, lads.’
Coughing and spluttering as the acrid smoke rose from the cellar, willing hands hoisted the flagstones from the scullery corner as Sandford dropped the smouldering branch he was holding and dashed into the cottage. On to his knees he fell, clutching at the sides of the floor timbers, peering desperately into the gloom of the smoke-filled interior.
‘Harriet!’ His voice was hoarse. ‘Are you there?’
A faint moan from below was the only reply. Without hesitation, Sandford swung himself down into the suffocating smog and, as he landed, he narrowly missed falling on a soft, curled-up bundle. It was Billy Tatler, wrapped in damp sacking! He was conscious and groaning, his breath coming in ragged gasps. In one swift movement Sandford had lifted the bundle and thrust the boy through the opening to the outstretched hands above him before crouching and feeling his way around the immediate vicinity. His eyes were streaming and he could scarcely breathe and the heat from the hatchway was growing intense. Through the smoke he could just make out the eager flames licking through the cracks in the old timber and realised that the trap-door would soon disintegrate and drop its burning embers into the cellar. Suddenly his fingers made contact with a wet, stockinged foot and, with his heart almost at bursting point, he threw himself down to examine the motionless form beneath him. She was still breathing! Quickly he raised her in his arms and called for assistance and many eager hands reached down to help lift Harriet’s limp body out of his grasp. Gasping for air, he took hold of the joist to pull himself out of the choking atmosphere when, with a roaring explosion, the burning trap-door fell into the cellar and immediately set the straw alight. The force of the blast threw the viscount to the ground where, for several interminable moments, he lay completely stunned. It was only when the sound of Tiptree’s voice screaming at him from above finally penetrated his fading senses that he managed to right himself sufficiently to enable the horrified groom to haul him from the inferno. Then, for the first time in his life, he swooned dead away.
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