I clapped my hands when he had finished but Dolly was silent.
I said: “I daresay she didn’t find it so very wonderful. It is all very well to change a soft feather bed for the earth … but the earth can be very hard and uncomfortable with creeping crawling things in the summer and frost in winter. It is just a pleasant song.”
“Oh, but my lady Jessica, there are great comforts in a gypsy’s life which I haven’t sung about.”
“Well, I think she would soon have been regretting it.”
“Not she. She learned more about love and life with her gypsy than she ever would with her high and mighty lord.”
“Perhaps high and mighty lords would think differently.”
“What an argumentative lady you are and how hard to convince. There is only one way of getting you to agree.”
“And what is that?”
He looked at me very boldly and I knew what he was going to say before he said it. He leaned closer to me and said quietly: “To show you.”
“Have some more wine,” said Dolly, still peevish.
She filled his goblet; he sipped it thoughtfully, looking at me with that amused smile; then he picked up his guitar and his deep rich voice echoed round the Grasslands kitchen. Some of the servants came down and stood at the door listening.
When I saw them I remembered it was time I went home.
I stood up hastily and said I must go. “I only came to bring the sloe gin.”
He rose and bowed, giving me that disturbing enigmatical smile. I hurried out and as I walked away I heard the sound of the guitar.
I felt very exhilarated by the encounter.
When I arose that October morning there was no indication that this was going to be an important day not only for my family but for everyone in England. But with one glorious stroke our fears disappeared when the news of the victory at Trafalgar Bay was brought to us.
Even my father was deeply moved. We were assembled at the table and the talk was all about what this would mean to us and our country. Lord Nelson had beaten the French at Trafalgar Bay. He had so crippled their fleet that there could no longer be a question of invasion. He had shown the world that Napoleon was not invincible.
The saddest news was that, in giving England freedom from fear, our great admiral had lost his own life. Therefore our rejoicing was tempered with sorrow.
But even that could not stem the jubilation. We had checked Napoleon. We alone, in threatened Europe, had shown the bombastic Emperor that we were the unconquerable.
My father was eloquent. “Never, never in all its history has our country lain at the foot of a conqueror.”
David mentioned the Norman Conquest and was immediately rounded on by my father. “We English are the Normans. The Vikings … for mark you they were not French …” I smiled at him. My father had an unreasoning hatred of the French because my mother had married a Frenchman before she married him. I could well imagine him in a winged helmet, sailing to these shores in a long ship. He guessed my thoughts and grinned at me. “No,” he went on. “Not French. The Normans were Vikings who had been given Normandy by the King of the Franks to stop them invading the rest of France. The Vikings along with the Angles and the Jutes mingled their blood with the Saxons and created the Anglo Saxon race … us, my son. And we have never allowed a conqueror to set foot on this soil… and by God’s grace never shall. Napoleon! Napoleon would never have been allowed to come here. But this matter of Trafalgar Bay has saved us a lot of trouble.”
Then we drank to the great hero, Lord Nelson, and to our own Jonathan who had died for his country. Claudine was overcome by emotion and I saw the glitter of tears in her eyes.
“There will be bonfires all over the country tonight,” said my mother.
“We must see them,” I cried.
“Well,” went on my mother, “I suppose we could all go out. They won’t light them until after dark.”
“I want to go out and see them, don’t you, Amaryllis?” I cried.
“Oh yes,” she answered.
Our parents exchanged glances and my father said: “We’ll take the carriage. It will be near the coast… right on the cliffs, so that any watchers from the other side of the water may be able to see them. Bonfires all along the coast telling the plaguey French what we think of their Napoleon. David, you can drive us. We’ll all go.”
The elders looked relieved. I followed their thoughts. There would be revelry round the bonfires tonight and they did not want their daughters to be out of sight.
At dusk we set out. The excitement was intense. People were making their way to that spot on the cliff top where the bonfire was to be lighted. Already there was a crowd assembled there. Driftwood and rubbish of all sorts had been piled up, and on the top of the heap was an effigy of Napoleon.
The crowd made way for our carriage.
“Down with the Boney Party!” shouted someone.
There were cheers for our carriage. My father waved his hand and called a greeting to some of them. Nothing could please him more than this display of feeling against the French.
Our carriage pulled up some yards from the bonfire.
People were looking anxiously at the sky. It must not rain. It occurred to me that people who had such a short time before been worried because they feared an invasion, now seemed equally so about the weather.
We were lucky. The rain held off. The great moment had come.
Several men approached carrying flaming torches. They circled the heap and with a shout threw their torches into the mass of accumulated rubbish and paraffin-soaked wood. There was a burst of flame. The bonfire was alight.
The air was filled with shrieks of delight; people joined hands and danced round the bonfire. Fascinated, I watched. They looked different in the firelight. One hardly recognized the sober people one had known. They were servants, most of them. I saw the little tweeny, wide-eyed and wondering. Her hand was seized by one of the stable boys and she was whirled off into the dance.
“They are going to get wilder as the night progresses,” said David.
“Yes,” replied my mother, “there will be some merrymaking tonight.”
“I trust the after effects will not be more than some of them have bargained for,” added my father.
“Crowds scare me a little,” said my mother.
My father looked at her tenderly. “This is rejoicing, Lottie,” he murmured gently.
“I know. But crowds … mobs …”
“Would you like to go?” he asked.
She looked at me and Amaryllis. “No,” she replied. “Let’s wait awhile.”
I felt a great desire to mingle with the crowds, to dance round the bonfire. Two of the men had brought fiddles with them and they were playing songs we all knew—The Vicar of Bray and Barbara Allen and the one which set them all shouting with fervour as we all joined in:
When Britain first, at Heaven’s command
Arose from out the azure main,
This was the charter of the land,
And the guardian angels sang the strain:
“Rule Brittania, rule the waves Britons never will be slaves.”
The words rang out into the night air; below the waves washed against the white cliffs.
“Never, never, never,” chanted the crowd, “Will be slaves.”
All the pent-up emotions of the last months were let loose as the fear of the havoc an invading army could wreak evaporated from their minds. Not that any of them would admit that they thought it could really happen, but the relief was intense, and I could hear it in those words. “Never … never, never …” they went on singing.