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It was a good thing, Jem told himself. At least Davy was on his way home now, even if he’d had to frighten him into going. Battling guilt, he watched him run across the stretch of open ground, tripping every now and then on tussocks hidden beneath the gathering snow, leaving a trail of messy footprints on the thickening white.
‘Well, that’s that, then.’
Mrs Gatley’s chest was puffed up with self-importance, her tone almost pleased as she took her apron off after dinner and sent Joseph to fetch her coat. ‘I told you it was a fool’s mission to make those plans for Christmas. There’ll be no visitors making their way out here for a good while, that’s for sure. At least we’ve plenty of supplies in for the household. As long as someone can get down to the farm for butter and milk, we shouldn’t want for anything.’
‘I’ll send the lads over with the old sledge,’ Gatley muttered gruffly. He had come in from the walled garden to escort his wife home and stood in the doorway of the servants’ hall, clutching his cap between his callused hands, looking out of place in this domestic setting.
But then, there was a sense of reality being suspended and the normal order of things disrupted. The windows were dark, but there was a strange glow to the sky and Gatley had brought with him the metallic scent of frost. The servants’ hall seemed very full, with the Twigg boys standing by the fire to get warm (it was perishing in the grooms’ loft, they said) and Johnny Farrow planted firmly in Kate’s chair at the far end of the table, while outside the snow kept falling, cutting the great house adrift from the rest of the world.
‘Bert Oakley’s lad came to pick him up on the pony trap. Didn’t fancy his chances of making it back to the village in this,’ Gatley said. ‘Brought the news that Mary Wells has been taken bad. Nellie Crawford from the White Hart found her collapsed in the yard, frozen to the bone. Her heart, they reckon.’
A current of consternation went around the room. Mrs Gatley put a hand to her own ample chest in alarm.
‘Is she all right?’
Gatley shrugged. ‘Nellie’s taken her in for the time being, Oakley said.’
Kate imagined a room above the pub; the noise coming up from the saloon bar below, the smell of ale and tobacco smoke. But Mrs Wells was lucky to have that. She wouldn’t be able to afford Dr Seymour or the subscription for the cottage hospital in Hatherford, and she wouldn’t want to leave Davy to go to the infirmary at Sheffield Union Workhouse.
‘I hope they’ve taken Davy in too,’ she said. ‘Or someone has. He won’t manage on his own.’
Gatley turned his cap between his hands, frowning. ‘That’s the thing. Lad’s disappeared, Oakley said. Asked if I’d seen him up here. He checked the gate lodge on his way down—no sign of him there, and we’ve given the woods a quick going over.’
‘I saw him.’
Jem spoke from the shadows. He had been leaning against the dresser at the far end of the room, but he straightened up, suddenly tense. ‘He was out in the woods earlier, when I took the hamper out. I spoke to him. Told him to go home before the snow came properly. He was—’
He stopped abruptly.
‘He was what?’ George Twigg prompted.
‘I don’t know. Upset. Agitated.’
‘I’m sure someone will have notified the constable in the village,’ Kate said, with a conviction she didn’t feel. ‘He’ll have organised a search, I’m sure.’
‘Not in this weather,’ Johnny Farrow said.
Thrusting a hand through his hair, Jem squeezed past Johnny Farrow’s chair. The Twigg boys moved aside to let him through.
‘Where are you off to?’ Stanley asked.
‘Going to look for him,’ Jem said grimly.
Kate felt a ripple of fear at the thought of the bitter cold, the silent woods; the snow that muffled sound and covered things up. She was standing by the door, and without thinking put her hand out to stop him. She wanted to tell him not to go but didn’t know how to without giving herself away.
‘Don’t be daft, lad.’
Gatley, not troubled by appearances nor hampered by a forbidden, ill-advised love, beat her to it. ‘You wouldn’t last five minutes out there in this weather—it closes in fast up here, mark my words. Davy Wells knows this estate like the back of his own hand. Folk might write him off as simple, but he can look out for himself in the woods, no doubt about that. Chances are he’s safely back in the village long since, but if he isn’t—if he is up here—he’ll have found himself somewhere safe, like he has many a time before. Got an animal’s instinct, has Davy.’
Mrs Gatley gave a grunt of assent. ‘That’s true. We always used to say he was part boy, part fox, that one. Mary could never keep him indoors; even as a little ’un he’d let himself out at night and wander. He knows this park better than anyone, so wherever he is, I reckon he’ll be all right. Which is more than could be said for you, Jem Arden, if you go out there looking for him.’
Kate realised that her hand was still on Jem’s arm. She withdrew it, but not before she’d noticed Eliza looking at her from the other side of the table, her jaw set hard and her eyes flinty in the glow of the lamp. Beside her, Susan shrugged her shoulders in an exaggerated shiver.
‘You’ll be like poor Samuel, wandering the Coldwell woods for all eternity. Or the souls of the lost travellers on the road to Hatherford, with the coachman whipping his ghostly horses…’
Eliza gave a snort of disdain and rolled her eyes. Kate was suddenly struck by how much she’d changed these past few months. She’d always had a cynical streak, but it had been tempered with a quickness of wit and sweetened with a sense of fun. Now, above the shawl she was permanently huddled into, her face looked puffy and sallow. Sour. Kate wondered what had taken the bloom off her. Or who.
‘You can sneer all you like, Eliza Simmons, but it’s true,’ Susan retorted, craning forward to look down the table. ‘Johnny Farrow’s seen them—haven’t you, Johnny? Tell the story.’