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  Bridie let out a sob of pain, and put both hands to her face in consternation. ‘Oh, my lawd!’ she exclaimed. ‘What am I to do?’

  Nell instinctively moved towards the older woman and put her arms around her, just as she would do to her own mother if she was in distress. Bridie had been kind to her right from her first day at Briargate, when she was a frightened twelve-year-old who had no real idea of what leaving her own family and going into service meant. It was Bridie who had suggested Nell was wasted in the kitchen, and that she should be trained as a parlourmaid; she’d fought the protests from Cook and Mrs Cole, the housekeeper, covered up for Nell when she broke an ornament, and smuggled home leftover food when her father was laid up with a bad chest and couldn’t work.

  During her four years at Briargate this woman had been Nell’s comforter, teacher and confidante. Thanks to her, she could help her family; she had good food, decent clothes, and prospects. She didn’t know if there was any way she could help Bridie out of this tight spot, but if there was one, she’d find it.

  ‘Don’t take on, Bridie,’ Nell said comfortingly. ‘We’re both tired now, but if we put our heads together we’ll think of something. I’ll make you some tea, and then you go to bed. I’ll put the linen in to soak and listen out for the mistress.’

  Bridie drew back from Nell’s arms and wiped her eyes on the hem of her apron. Her blue eyes were still swimming but Nell could see she was struggling to regain her composure. ‘You’re a good girl,’ she said, her voice shaking. ‘But it’s you who must go to bed. I’ll sit here with my tea for a bit, and then go back upstairs. I can doze in the chair in the mistress’s room.’

  ‘Shall I take the baby in with me?’ Nell asked.

  Bridie shook her head. ‘She’ll be warmer here. Go to bed now.’

  Nell found she couldn’t sleep for thinking about the baby. It would need feeding soon and if Bridie was up in Lady Harvey’s bedroom she wouldn’t hear it cry. There was so much else which needed to be done too – coal brought in for the stove, linen to be washed and something nourishing cooked for Lady Harvey. She couldn’t just lie here wide awake and leave everything to Bridie.

  She got up, washed herself and put on the old grey dress she had been given to wear when there were dirty jobs to do, then, carrying her boots, she stole quietly down the stairs from her attic room so she wouldn’t disturb the mistress.

  Hardly a day passed without her feeling blessed to be able to live at Briargate Hall. It was a light, bright house built just forty years ago by Sir Roland Harvey, William’s father, and situated half-way between the cities of Bath and Bristol. Nell had never been to either of these cities; all she knew was the village of Compton Dando where she was born and the surrounding villages. The farthest she’d ever been was to Keynsham, some three and a half miles away.

  People did say that Bristol’s port was a marvel and you could see wondrous great sailing ships there that sailed to the far ends of the earth. But Nell had no yearnings to go there; a year ago hundreds of people had died from cholera, and only five months ago, in October, there had been three days of terrible riots. Scores of people were killed, many more seriously injured, and dozens of buildings destroyed and burned. Four people were hanged for their part in it and dozens more put in prison or transported. To Nell it sounded a very dangerous place.

  Mr Baines, who knew just about everything, said that the riots happened because the system of government was corrupt. He said the Tories bribed and intimidated people at elections so that the reform parties couldn’t get in. He took some pride in the fact that the people of Bristol were brave enough to make their voice heard, and he claimed that if he had been a young man he would have joined them.

  Nell had heard that Bath, the other city nearby, was very different to Bristol, for it was where the gentry went to take its special waters and have a high old time. Baines said it was beautiful, with wide streets, splendid houses and shops so full of luxury items that your eyes would pop out looking at them all.

  Cook claimed that it was a hive of wickedness, the streets full of pickpockets, and the special waters tasted so vile it was a wonder they didn’t kill people. So if these were the two nearest cities, Nell didn’t think there was much in either of them for a girl like her.

  Baines said that old Sir Roland Harvey had been a great traveller, and the design of Briargate was influenced by houses he’d seen in Italy and plantation houses in the West Indies. He had brought the black and white marble for the floor in the hall back from Italy, along with the marble statues in the garden, and instead of building it in the local stone, he’d used brick with a kind of pinkish-cream plaster over it. There was a very grand portico at the front held up by big pillars, and the tiles on the roof were green instead of red.

  Long narrow windows almost reached the floor and let sunshine stream in all day; the graceful shutters had been specially designed for Sir Roland, as were the marble fireplaces. Nell particularly liked the carved grapes and birds on the staircase newel posts; it didn’t seem possible a man could make something so delicate with just a chisel. With the sparkling chandeliers and thick rugs and furniture so highly polished she could see her own face reflected, Nell felt as if she were living in a palace.

  When she first came to work at Briargate she could scarcely clear a fireplace for looking at the paintings on the walls. Everywhere she looked there were objects of wonder. Bridie didn’t share her enthusiasm. She said with only eight bedrooms, it wasn’t anywhere near as large or magnificent as the London house. She did concede that old Sir Roland had his head screwed on right, for he’d designed it to be labour-saving. She usually added somewhat tartly that he must have known that slave trading would be abolished, and that he wouldn’t be able to get servants to work for nothing here.

  To Nell, a butler, housekeeper and cook, four maids, plus gardeners and grooms, along with various other people who came in as they were needed, seemed to be an awful lot of servants to look after just one house and two people. But Bridie said it wasn’t a big staff, and pointed out that they only managed it so easily because of the design.

  The main rooms were spacious, but not so big that they couldn’t be heated adequately. The dining room was close to the kitchen, so food arrived at the table hot. There was even a contraption in the kitchen where large pails of hot water could be sent upstairs for baths and washing just by pulling on a rope. Bridie laughingly called it ‘The Maid’s Saviour’ and pulled up her sleeve to show a burn on her forearm which she’d got as a young girl from hauling a pail of boiling water up the stairs.

  Hearing the baby cry out as she neared the kitchen, Nell didn’t stop to put her boots on, but as she turned the corner of the hallway which led to the kitchen, she was horrified to see Bridie leaning over the baby’s basket with a cushion in her hands.

  There was no doubt as to what she was intending to do for she was crying and muttering something through her tears that sounded to Nell like an apology or even a prayer.

  ‘No, Bridie!’ Nell called out, dropping her boots with a clatter and running towards the older woman. ‘You mustn’t – it’s wicked, and she’s a fairy child.’

  Bridie wheeled round, her old face stricken with guilt. ‘But it’s the only way, Nell. If she lives it’ll be ruin for m’lady, she’ll be cast out of Briargate.’

  Later that day it was to strike Nell that Bridie had watched indifferently as a maid was ordered out of the house because she was with child. If Lady Harvey was cast out she could go back to her own family, but that poor girl had nowhere to go but the workhouse.

  But Nell didn’t think of that then – all she had on her mind was the prevention of murder. ‘You can’t kill a baby,’ she insisted, getting between Bridie and the makeshift cradle. ‘It ain’t right and you know it.’

  For a second or two Nell thought Bridie would strike her and carry on with her plan, for she could see the desperation on her face. But instead she suddenly sagged, sank down on to a chair and covered her fac
e with her hands. ‘Heaven knows I don’t want to hurt the babby, but what else is there to do?’ she asked imploringly.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Nell said, and put her hand on the older woman’s shoulder. ‘But it ain’t never right to kill her. It ain’t her fault she were born, and like I said she’s a fairy child. Just look at her!’

  The baby had her eyes open now, and had stopped crying, almost as if she knew the danger had passed. Her eyes were not the usual blue of a new baby’s, but dark as night, looking up at Nell as if thanking her for the reprieve.

  ‘Maybe we could take her to the church and leave her there then?’ Bridie said in desperation. ‘Reverend Gosling would find a place for her.’

  Nell shook her head. She knew infants left in the church went to the workhouse, and few of them survived beyond a few weeks. She snatched up the baby and cradled her protectively in her arms. ‘You know what that means,’ she reminded Bridie, and as the sweet smell of the newborn baby wafted up to her it triggered her own tears.

  For some minutes neither woman spoke. Bridie remained with her head in her hands, sobbing, and Nell paced up and down the kitchen with the baby in her arms.

  Nell felt a surge of anger that Lady Harvey should be sleeping peacefully now, while she and Bridie had somehow to find a solution for a problem which was none of their making. Lady Harvey had been born into wealth, she’d been pampered, dressed in the finest clothes, schooled by governesses, and then married at eighteen to a man who everyone had said was the finest catch in the West Country.

  Nell could remember how as a little girl she’d stood with the other village children in St Mary the Virgin’s churchyard to throw rose petals at the couple. No queen could have looked more beautiful than Lady Harvey did that day, her golden hair tumbling around her shoulders. Her white silk dress with its twelve-foot train must have cost more than Nell’s father had earned in his whole life. And Sir William wasn’t just wealthy, he was handsome too, slender and tall with curly fair hair and bright blue eyes. Everyone said it was a love match, and a few years later when Nell came to work at Briargate, she’d seen the couple laughing and running around the grounds like two lovebirds, and that confirmed it for her.

  So why did Lady Harvey lie with another man? Why shouldn’t she take the responsibility for her own sin, just as Nell and even Bridie would be expected to if they’d gone astray?

  Yet even as these thoughts came to her, she knew she couldn’t bear to see Lady Harvey disgraced any more than Bridie could. She might be spoilt but she was mostly sweet-natured and generous. Nell couldn’t count the times she’d pressed a shilling into her hands to take home to her mother. She’d given her old clothes; let her sew little dresses and shirts for her brothers and sisters while she was supposed to be working. She had never struck her, never even grumbled when she was clumsy; just yesterday morning she’d thanked both Nell and Bridie for their loyalty and promised them that she’d always look after them.

  The truth of the matter was that Lady Harvey was like a child in many ways. She had so much life and fun in her, but she was innocent too. This man, whoever he was, must have sweet-talked her when she was lonely. None of her family had visited since the master went away; she had no real friends of her own here in Somerset, only his friends. Nell could remember her crying when Sir William left for America; she’d wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let her. As Nell’s own mother so often said, ‘You have to walk a mile in someone else’s boots to know how it is for them.’

  Thinking of her mother gave Nell an idea.

  ‘I could take baby home to my mother,’ she blurted out. ‘She’ll have milk to spare enough for this little one.’

  ‘She’s got too many of her own,’ Bridie said, tears rolling down her cheeks. ‘Besides, it’s too close to here. How would she explain where she got another?’

  Nell got a mental picture of the overcrowded cottage and her mother already so tired with too many children, yet she knew the moment this one was in her arms she wouldn’t refuse. ‘People don’t count how many she’s got,’ she said truthfully. ‘They’ve got so used to her always having a new one in her arms they wouldn’t notice.’

  ‘But your father?’

  Nell half-smiled. Her father’s only real fault was that he was over-generous in every way: with his labour, time and affection. When he had money he was generous with that too. Her mother often said that if he worked only the hours he was paid for, didn’t love her so much and saved the little money he had, they wouldn’t be in a tumbledown cottage with so many children. But Nell didn’t think Mother would have him any different.

  ‘Father likes babies,’ she said. ‘He’ll say one more won’t make no difference.’

  Bridie dried her tears on her apron, but her eyes were still full of anxiety.

  ‘You can trust them not to talk,’ Nell said firmly, knowing that was what was on Bridie’s mind. ‘Even the bigger ones won’t know the truth. If I take her to Mother tonight after they’ve gone to bed, they’ll believe it was born while they were asleep.’

  Bridie looked doubtful about that.

  ‘Mother has ’em quick,’ Nell insisted. ‘When our Henry was born last year they knew nothing till they heard him cry. I was with her, I know, and her belly’s so big from so many babbies they half-expects another to pop out any day.’

  ‘But it’s a secret that’s got to be kept for ever,’ Bridie reminded her.

  Nell nodded; she understood that well enough.

  ‘The mistress did say a while ago that if it lived she wanted it to be farmed out,’ Bridie said softly. ‘She asked me to make enquiries, and I did go to see a woman in Brislington village about it. I didn’t like the woman, she were hard-faced and the children she had there were sickly-looking and dirty. At least we know your mother would take proper care.’

  Bridie lapsed into silence, clearly weighing up all she knew of Meg and Silas Renton, and whether they were trustworthy. Nell said nothing more because she knew her family was held in high esteem around here. She wouldn’t have got her position at Briargate if it wasn’t for that.

  ‘What shall we call her?’ the older woman said eventually, taking the baby from Nell’s arms and this time looking at her almost fondly. ‘It wouldn’t be right not to give her a name.’

  Joan Stott’s fairy child was called Faith, and it came to Nell immediately that another fairy child born so close should have a similar name.

  ‘Hope,’ she said without any hesitation.

  Bridie pursed her lips as if she didn’t like it, but then as she looked down at the sleeping infant in her arms she began to smile. ‘Aye, Nell, that’s a good name. I hope your mother will come to love the poor little mite, I hope too that I can forget the wicked thing I was going to do earlier. She don’t look at all like our mistress, so maybe you’re right and she is a fairy child.’

  That evening Nell paused at the edge of Lord’s Wood which marked the boundary between Briargate House and the Hunstrete land. She had the baby beneath her cloak, secured by a shawl to her chest. Putting down her basket, she turned to look back at the house, for there was a full moon and she could see as plain as if it were day.

  Briargate was best viewed from its long tree-lined drive which came up from the road at Chelwood. It stood proudly on slightly higher ground and you could see the magnificent front porch, the elegant long windows and the large marble statues which stood in the circular rosebed before the house. In summer it was a picture with roses and wisteria scrambling right up to the bedroom windows.

  But Nell was on the east side of the house, down at the bottom end of the paddock, for the quickest way to reach the village of Compton Dando was through the woods. Seen from this angle, in moonlight, the fir trees which had been planted around the boundaries of the grounds looked for all the world as if they were guarding Briargate. The moonlight glinted too on the marble statues at the front, and a tear trickled down Nell’s cheek as she realized that the sleeping baby in her arms was in fact losing it
s birthright along with its mother.

  ‘I’ll say goodbye to it for you,’ she whispered. ‘I’m sorry you can’t grow up in the fine nursery, that you won’t get silk gowns and servants to wait on you. But I reckons you’ll get more love in our cottage.’

  The feeling she’d aged ten years when she’d looked in the mirror this morning had stayed with her. She was exhausted, but she felt even sleep wouldn’t bring her back to the carefree girl she’d been a couple of days ago. She had heard Lady Harvey crying pitifully this afternoon, and suddenly to Nell she wasn’t a beautiful, wealthy woman who had the world at her feet, but just another poor soul grieving over the child she had lost.

  Hope had begun to cry around the same time, and all Nell could do was spoon sugar water into her tiny mouth to keep her going until later. Bridie had spent most of the afternoon going through the chest in Sir William’s old nursery to find baby nightgowns, bonnets and jackets. She had said how bleak it made her feel to have to put back the finer, beautifully embroidered ones and only take the plain ones, for it would raise eyebrows in the village if little Hope was dressed in finery.

  Yet the napkins, blanket and other things packed in the basket were still far beyond anything Nell and her brothers and sisters had known. Hope would suck from the same breast all of them knew, know days of hunger just like them, and find out that working began for village folk at an early age. But wouldn’t she retain something of both her real parents too? Not just her looks, shape and size, but an inbred knowledge that she wasn’t truly one of the servant class?

  Nell sighed and picked up her basket. She knew it was no good thinking on these things, and she had to pick her way carefully through the wood, taking care not to stumble in the dark.