“Yes?” she called, her voice wavering.
“I’m sorry to disturb you, my lady, but Mr. Dinsdale and his wife say they have found a child in the woods and they wonder if we have any idea to whom it might belong or what they ought to do with it?” The butler, Mr. March, sounded puzzled, as if the etiquette surrounding lost babies was new to him. Feeling like she was going to be sick, Caroline turned on the man.
“What can that possibly have to do with me?” she demanded coldly.
“Yes, my lady,” Mr. March intoned, every bit as coldly, making the slightest of bows as he withdrew. So the Dinsdales went away again, still carrying William and casting looks back at the house over their shoulders, as if bewildered by their dismissal. Caroline watched them go with increasing unease and a rush of blood to her head that dizzied her, and she traced this feeling to the way Mr. March had referred to them-Mr. Dinsdale and his wife. As if he knew them.
“Dinsdale? Ah, you’ve met our young campers, have you?” Henry exclaimed when Caroline asked him about the tinkers. She put down her knife and fork, her throat too tight to swallow. “Harmless folk. Now, I know it may seem a little out of the ordinary, but I’ve given them permission to stay on that stretch of land-”
“What? Why would you do that?” Caroline gasped.
“Robbie Dinsdale saved my life in Africa, my dear-at Spion Kop, some years ago. Were it not for him, I would not be here today!” Henry announced dramatically, putting a huge forkful of potatoes dauphinoise into his mouth. A drop of hot cream ran down his chin, and Caroline looked away.
“But… they are gypsies. Thieves and… and probably worse! We cannot have them as our neighbors!”
“Now, my dear, I will not have that, I’m afraid. Private Dinsdale stayed with me in our pitiful trench when I was shot, and defended my prone body against a dozen Boer snipers until the Twin Peaks were taken and the buggers pulled back!” Henry waved his knife emphatically. “He was wounded himself, and half dead with thirst, but by my side he stayed, when he could have run. All that was left of the rest of my men was a bloody mess like a scene from hell. The war changed him, though… He was eventually discharged on medical grounds, although they never did settle on what was wrong with the chap. Lost a few of his marbles out there, I would say. One day he just stopped talking, stopped eating, and wouldn’t get up from his bunk no matter who ordered him to. I had to step in with a good word for the fellow. He’s much improved now, but he was never quite able to fit back in to his civilian life. He was apprentice farrier in the village here, but that soon finished. He couldn’t pay the rent and was thrown out of his cottage, so he took to the road. I told him he could stay here as long as he made no trouble, and he never has done. So here they stay.” Henry wiped potato from his moustache with a crisp, white napkin. Caroline studied her plate, fidgeting nervously.
“He took to the road, you say? So they move around the country, they’re not often here?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
“They’re here a lot of the time. It’s close to both their families, and Dinsdale can get work here and there where his name’s known; mending metalwork and the like. So I fear you will have to get used to them, my dear. They need not trouble you-indeed, if you avoid that area of the grounds, you need not encounter them at all,” Henry concluded, and Caroline knew that the matter was closed. She shut her eyes, but she could feel them. She could sense that they were there-or rather that William was there, not two hundred yards from where she now sat at dinner. If he remained always there to remind her, she knew it would prey upon her, and slowly devour her. She prayed that they would give the child up, or move on, taking the object of her guilt and anguish with them.
When her baby was born, Caroline wept. A little girl, so tiny and perfect that she did not seem real, but wrought of magic instead. The soaring, consuming love that Caroline felt for her daughter only served to show her just how great the ill which she had done to Magpie truly was. The mere thought of being separated from this child of hers was painful enough. So Caroline wept, with love and with self-loathing, and nothing that was said could console her. Henry patted her head, at a loss, and did a poor job of hiding his disappointment that he had a daughter, not a son. Estelle and Mrs. Priddy told Caroline, over and over, what a beauty the girl was, and how very well she had done, which brought fresh tears that they ascribed to exhaustion. At night she was beset by dreams of Magpie, her heart in flames, eyes fever-bright, failing, fading, dying of grief; and when she awoke the taint of her crime made her head throb as though it would burst. The baby was dressed in white lace gowns and named Evangeline. For four months Caroline loved her to distraction, and then the tiny girl died, one night in her crib, for no reason that any one of three doctors could ascertain. She flickered out of existence like a snuffed candle, and Caroline was shattered. What little will to go on she had kept since losing Corin now ran out of her like blood from a wound, and there was nothing left that could staunch it.
On a Tuesday, months later, Caroline went down to the kitchen and found Mrs. Priddy and Cass Evans preparing a basket of vegetables from the garden with which to pay Robbie Dinsdale. He was out of sight in the scullery, sharpening the kitchen knives with a stone treadle wheel, sending sparks flying and filling the air with the piercing whine of stressed metal. Caroline would not have sought out the source of the racket if she hadn’t seen guilt in Mrs. Priddy’s eyes; if the woman hadn’t stopped what she was doing so suddenly, with such a start, when her mistress appeared in the room. Cass pressed anxious fingers to her mouth. They all knew how Lady Calcott felt about the Dinsdales, although they did not know why. Caroline strode through to the scullery and interrupted Dinsdale, who looked up at her with soft, amber eyes. Slowly, the wheel ground to a halt. Dinsdale was wearing rough clothing, and his hair was long and greasy, tied at the back of his head with string. His face was quite lovely, as fresh and innocent as a boy’s, but somehow this only made it worse. Caroline’s grief had turned her heart to stone. She knew herself to be punished, forced by fate to suffer the same anguish that she had inflicted upon Magpie, but so great was her pain that she did not accept it-she could not. She fought it, and bright anger coursed through her veins.
“Get out!” she shouted, her voice vibrant with rage. “Get out of this house!” Dinsdale started up from his stool like a jack-in-the-box and fled. Caroline turned on the housekeeper and the chamber maid. “What is the meaning of this? I thought I had made my feelings about that man perfectly clear!”
“Mr. Dinsdale has always done the knives for us, my lady… I didn’t think any harm could come-” Mrs. Priddy tried to explain.
“I don’t care about that! I don’t want him in the house-or anywhere near it! And what’s this?” she demanded, gesturing to the basket of vegetables. “Are you stealing from the gardens as well?”
At this Mrs. Priddy swelled, and she pinched her brows together. “I’ve worked here for more than thirty years, my lady, and never once been accused of any such thing! The excess from the kitchen garden has long been used to pay local men for their labor-”