Page 46 of The Widower Without a Will
Martin was drunk and weak, and so he had no choice but to accept the order as his friend ran back into Northfield Hall.The entire back corridor was lit in terrible red flames; the chain of men passing water buckets from the well to the hall kept getting longer, yet the fire kept getting bigger.The air filled with smoke.Martin wrapped a handkerchief around his mouth and still, he couldn’t help coughing.
“We should take shelter, sir,” Mrs.Chow said.“We can take people into the cottages for the night.”
She was right, though the night hardly felt cold in the face of such a blaze.“Yes,” Martin agreed, “take everyone away.Let them get rest.We will need courage and strength in the morning.”
“And you, sir,” she said.“Come to my cottage.I will make up a bed for you.”
“No, thank you, ma’am.”Martin could not disobey her husband, who had good sense on his side in keeping a feeble old man away from the disaster.But hewouldnot obey her, no matter that the air was smoky and the winter night dangerous.“I must bear witness.”
“When it is over, then,” she said.“When it is over, Caroline will want to know that you stayed with us.”
“For Caroline,” he agreed.Mrs.Chow led the group of house servants down the dark paths leading to cottages that—God willing—would remain safer than the Hall.
Martin remained where he was, just on the far edge of the gravel driveway, and watched his home burn down.The rooms where he had been born, grown up, and raised his own children.The remnants of the first baron’s home, built in the Elizabethan era.The last vestiges of Lolly.The books and records and manifests of his lifetime of efforts.The paintings he had brought back from his travels; the watercolors his children had painted; the furniture inherited generation by generation.
The flames lasted through the night, their smoke obscuring the stars and the moon.It was not until dawn that the fire finally drowned under the relentless buckets of water.At last, the chain of men broke up, each of them falling exhausted onto the frosted grass.The early morning sunlight illuminated what was left: the skeleton of Northfield Hall, the scars of Northfield Hall, the memory of Northfield Hall.
And Martin saw, at last, his legacy.
Chapter Eighteen
Decemberwasabadtime to travel in any part of England, but Martha made do and arrived in Bath with her baggage and her bones all in one piece.She took a room in a lodging house on Seymour Street recommended by a guidebook, where the other guests were also widows or spinsters with limited means.The landlady served breakfast and supper in a common room which was always too hot from an overfed fire, while the bedrooms were ice cold, but Martha was grateful that at least she had a room to herself.
During her three-day journey to Bath, she had set herself an itinerary.Her first stop was at the High Street Bank to establish an account with Lord Preston’s banknote.If it made her a courtesan, then she was a courtesan; she was too old and life too hard for her to eschew his money on principle.
Then, with five pounds in her purse and the rest secured in the bank, Martha followed her firmest link to Lucas.She had received one letter from him while he and Lady Imogen lived in Bath, and though she had burned it upon receipt, the address was seared into her memory: 18 Corn Street.
She walked from the bank, though it took the better part of an hour and her feet began to ache.This was not the well-to-do part of Bath where the best of London retreated for health remedies; as Martha trudged along the cobblestone street, the buildings grew shabbier, older, and smaller.Number 18 Corn Street was a narrow two-story house, its roof chipped.Its front door stood an inch open because it was too swollen to shut in its frame.Martha tried to imagine Lucas arriving there, his skin robust with youth, his heart happy with Lady Imogen at his side.She couldn’t: everything on Corn Street was dreary, and her son didn’t belong there.
The door opened, and a crone of a man glared at her.“Are you looking for a room or are you looking for trouble?”
Her breath caught in her lungs.This man was older than her; if this was still a lodging house, then could he have been the proprietor a decade ago, too?Holding out a shilling, she said, “I’m hoping you have a memory of my son.”
He took the coin.“A fair number of sons cross my way.”
“This was in 1812.He lived here with his wife, a young lady.She had a baby, and both she and the baby died.”Martha didn’t want to have to say what had happened next.
A hint of sympathy snuck into the man’s expression.“We’ve had many guests like that over the years.”
“He was blond and tall.He had a scar on the back of his right hand from getting caught on a fishing hook as a boy.”
The landlord shook his head.
She should leave.What memory could this man have, if she did manage to remind him of Lucas?But the part of her that wanted to resurrect her son said: “He shot himself.”
At last, recognition lit the man’s eyes.Immediately, he looked away.“Ah, we’ve had a few of those too, but I reckon I remember your son.Gave us a false name, which we only discovered when they looked through his papers to notify a next of kin.”
He and Lady Imogen had borrowed Martha’s maiden name, Aveling, for their charade.“Was he happy?Before his wife died, I mean?”
The man rubbed the coin in his palm.“Yes, he was, ma’am.Your son was happy.”
Happy.
She could tell the man was saying what he thought she wanted to hear.He didn’t remember Lucas except for her son’s terrible end.Before that, Lucas had just been another dissolute young man hiding from reality on Corn Street.
But she wanted Lucas to have been happy.She wanted to imagine him and Lady Imogen lighting up the dilapidated house with their bliss at being husband and wife.She wanted to hear they had been planning a beautiful future together, and that they didn’t mind being cut off from their families or forced to use a false name.
She wanted joy for his last months on this earth.
