The Lantern Moon Read online

  THE LANTERN MOON

  About the author

  Maeve Friel was born in Derry and educated in Dublin where she currently lives. She is the creator of the popular Tiger Lily trilogy and the Witch-in-Training series and has been the recipient of many awards including the Hennessy Award, the Bisto Book Award and the Reading Association of Ireland Book Award. Her work has been translated into many languages. She once lived in Ludlow where The Lantern Moon is set.

  www.maevefriel.com

  This edition published 2010

  by Little Island

  An imprint of New Island

  2 Brookside

  Dundrum Road

  Dublin 14

  www.littleisland.ie

  First published in Ireland in 1996 by Poolbeg Press Ltd.

  Copyright © Maeve Friel 1996

  The author has asserted her moral rights.

  ISBN 978-1-84840-943-9

  All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

  British Library Cataloguing Data. A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  Cover design by Fidelma Slattery.

  Inside design by Sinéad McKenna.

  Printed by ColourBooks Ltd Ireland

  Little Island received financial assistance from

  The Arts Council (An Chomhairle Ealaíon), Dublin, Ireland.

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  For Paul, Aoife and Joe Kennedy, with love

  Also by Maeve Friel for children

  Tiger Lily – A Heroine for All Seasons

  Tiger Lily – A Heroine with a Mission.

  Tiger Lily – A Heroine in the Making

  Witch in Training – The Broomstick Collection

  Witch in Training – The Last Task

  Witch in Training – Moonlight Mischief

  Witch in Training – Witch Switch

  Witch in Training - Broomstick Battles

  Witch in Training – Brewing Up

  Witch in Training – Charming or What

  Witch in Training – Spelling Trouble

  Witch in Training – Flying Lessons

  Felix and the Kitten

  Felix on the Move

  Felicity Floss: Tooth Fairy

  Distant Voices

  Charlie’s Story

  The Deerstone

  Acknowledgments

  I am very grateful to Connie Brooks whose pamphlet on the glove-making industry in Ludlow and the children who worked for it inspired this book. And to Jill Howarth of the Silk Top Hat Gallery in Quality Square who kindly allowed me to read her research material on the top hat factory that once occupied her art gallery.

  ‘White in the moon the long road lies,

  The moon stands blank above;

  White in the moon the long road lies,

  That leads me from my love.’

  A Shropshire Lad XXXVI, A. E. Housman

  Chapter 1

  For most of the journey from Plymouth, the road was barely passable. It was narrow, muddy and so full of potholes and ruts that the carriages were frequently stuck fast in the muck. Twice, two of the horses broke their harnesses trying to break free and, once, a wheel came off one of the luggage wagons at the rear, sending the prince’s belongings careering down to the bottom of the hill. They had made three overnight stops at inns along the way, in Exeter, Bath and Gloucester. Everywhere large crowds came out to wave or stare as they passed by. The whole of England was curious to see ‘Bony’s brother’: after all, the country had been at war with Napoleon Bonaparte for years and years.

  William Spears had been sent down by Lord Powis to act as lookout. He had been sitting with his feet dangling over the edge of Ludford Bridge since first light. It was so cold that he felt his backside must have frozen to the stone bridge. His hands had long since lost all feeling no matter how hard he pressed them under his armpits. His nose dripped. His ears under his new black top hat smarted with pain. His empty tummy rumbled. At last, above the hypnotic sound of the floodwater pouring over the weirs, he heard the distant rumble of carriage wheels and the snorting of the horses as they reached their home stretch.

  A moment or two later, the first coach appeared around the corner, and the coachman, bleary-eyed and spattered from head to toe in black mud, raised his horn to his lips and sounded three short blasts to let the travellers know they had arrived at Ludlow. Dinner at last, thought William, racing off through the lanes on rather stiff legs to tell Lord Powis that Lucien Bonaparte, the new tenant of Dinham House, had finally arrived in town, and to claim the two pence he had been promised.

  The eight carriages, each drawn by four grey horses, crossed the river Teme at a cracking pace, passed the woollen mill, went through the narrow gate in the walls and climbed the steep hill of Broad Street into the town. At the summit, they turned sharp left, and entered the market square, setting every cock and hen squawking in their cages and every dog barking and running along at their wheels. This only encouraged the coachmen to drive faster: they cracked their whips, scattering the dogs away in all directions with their tails between their legs. The men and women at the market stalls had scarcely had time to look up from their business and turn their astonished faces towards the extraordinary parade than the coaches had skirted the square, followed the road round by the stark grey ruins of the castle, and pulled in to the driveway of Dinham House, where the arrival of so many coaches all at once cast dark shadows into the basement kitchen and set Mrs Stringer, the housekeeper, into a tizzy.

  ‘The Lord preserve us, it’s Lucien Bonaparte here already,’ she cried, coming up the kitchen stairs as fast as her short chubby legs could carry her. She patted her hair into place at the hall mirror and looked out the tall windows. Lord Powis was already standing there, helping the prince and his party down from their carriages. There seemed to be far more people than she had been told to expect. ‘Here in Ludlow,’ she gasped, ‘and the meat scarcely ten minutes in the oven. Annie Spears,’ she shouted, ‘where are you, girl? Have you set the fires yet?’

  Annie Spears, the parlour-maid, came running out into the hall. She was quite red-faced for she had been admiring herself and her new uniform in the parlour mirror. She had never seen a full-length reflection of herself before and was secretly pleased with what she saw.

  ‘No, ma’am, I can’t,’ she replied, breathlessly. ‘Sam – I mean, Samuel Price – is still up the chimney.’

  ‘That boy!’ declared Mrs Stringer. ‘I’ll swing for him.’

  ‘I’ve been telling him, ma’am, to get a move on, but he says he can’t work any faster.’

  ‘We’ll see about that.’ She pushed past Annie and strode into the drawing-room. Kneeling down in front of the hearth, she shouted up the chimney.

  ‘Samuel Price, do you hear me?’

  There was a muffled response.

  ‘If you don’t get down here this instant, I’ll light the fire in the grate and see how you like it up there then.’

  Samuel Price was perched on a dark ledge high up beyond the first floor. His elbows and knees were streaming blood from pushing himself up the long twisting soot-covered flues of the chimney and his eyes and mouth were so full of smuts and soot that he could neither see nor speak. His lungs had given out and he just needed a few more minutes to catch his breath before beginning the long painful descent back into the drawing-room.

  ‘Chimney-boy? Do you hear me? I’m counting to ten. One, two, three …’

  There was a distant thump, and then a scraping
sound that reminded Annie of the rats which she heard scratching in the yard behind the tanners’ cottages where she lived. A light sprinkling of soot fell down into the grate. A moment or two later, the bare feet, the ragged trousers and finally the black face of Samuel Price appeared panting but smiling in the hearth.

  ‘What’s your hurry then, ma’am? That’s the last one done and it’s not even dinner time.’

  ‘I’ll give you dinner,’ snapped Mrs Stringer, sarcastically. ‘Don’t you know the prince Bonaparte has just driven up and will be looking to come in here directly?’

  ‘Bonaparte? You mean Napoleon, our mortal enemy, what Admiral Nelson and the whole of the British navy have been trying to beat all these years? Napoleon? Here in Ludlow?’

  ‘No! Not Napoleon!’ Mrs Stringer was in no mood for explanations. She grabbed Sam by the shoulder and dragged him out. ‘Come out of that grate, you silly boy. Where’s your master got to then? He’s not up the chimney too, is he?’

  ‘Master Bessell up the chimney? Not on your life. He’s round the Angel Inn, more than likely.’

  Mrs Stringer hauled herself to her feet and steadied herself against the mantelpiece. The boy looked in a bad way, wheezing dreadfully.

  ‘Spears, take that boy to the kitchen and give him some bread. Then get yourself back to work. Not that way,’ she shouted as Samuel nipped across the wooden floor leaving a trail of black prints behind him. ‘The back stairs, if you please – and mind you don’t touch anything.’

  Annie led Samuel down to the basement. The kitchens were a flurry of activity with more people than Annie had ever seen working there. A man was uncorking bottles of wine and laying them out on a tray with glasses, the cook was slicing up a huge yellow cake studded with red cherries, and the maids were bobbing up and down in front of her as they carried off tray after tray of food and refreshments for the new arrivals.

  ‘Who brought that dirty boy in to my good clean kitchen?’ scowled the cook as soon as she spotted Annie and Samuel standing by the door.

  ‘I did,’ said Annie, her voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘Mrs Stringer says he’s to have some bread, if you please, ma’am.’

  ‘Not before he’s washed hisself. I won’t have hands like that touching the food in my kitchen. What’s your name, chimney boy?’

  ‘Samuel Price, ma’am, Sam to those that know me.’

  ‘Well, Samuel Price, you wash your face and hands out there at the back and then Spears here will give you something to eat.’

  There was a well in one of the sculleries off the main kitchen. Annie pumped up a bucket of cold water which Sam dabbed uselessly at his sooty, blood-streaked knees.

  ‘Are they sore?’ asked Annie.

  ‘Not half,’ said Sam.

  ‘You need hot water with plenty salt in it to scrub that dirt off,’ said a voice. It was Arthur, one of the footmen, on his way past with a huge wooden carriage-box balanced on his shoulders. ‘And to toughen up the skin. Wait there.’

  In a few moments he was back with a basin of almost boiling hot salt water and began to clean Sam’s bleeding knees and feet. Tears sprang to Sam’s eyes as the salt stung the open flesh. ‘You must bear it, Sam, or else those kneecaps will never harden up. What you really ought to do is stand in front of the fire and let the salt dry. You want skin like an elephant’s hide to do your job. Doesn’t your master tell you that? Who do you work for anyway?’

  ‘Master Bessell from the High Street, sir.’

  ‘That drunkard,’ Arthur swore under his breath. ‘I worked for him myself when I was your age.’

  ‘You were a chimney sweep?’ Annie and Sam stared at Arthur in all his finery, his embroidered waist-coat, his tails, his neat yellow hair, his tiny pointed leather shoes. ‘For three long years. I ran away once and hid in the shepherd’s hut above Whitcliffe till they found me. But luckily enough, I was getting too big to climb by then, and Bessell let me go before the soot killed me off. Do you have to do it, Sam? Why don’t you go to school? This sweeping is going to do you in.’

  ‘I went to school for a week once with Mr D’arcy – that’s how I know to write my name,’ said Sam proudly. ‘And I wasn’t always a sweep – I used to be a bird-scarer when I lived in the country. I liked that, sitting on the fence shouting at the crows and the jackdaws to stop them eating the seeds.’ He sniffed at the smell of roasting meat wafting in from the kitchen. ‘But working in houses is better. That way I get more food. Usually.’

  ‘Right,’ said Arthur, smiling. He wrung out the dish-rag and wiped away the last of the dirt from Sam’s face. ‘The chimney sweep wants his grub. If you stay here nice and quiet, Sam, this girl here will bring you in as great a feast as ever you’ve seen. What’s your name, girl?’

  ‘Annie Spears, if you please,’ whispered Annie. Please let him not know my father, she thought to herself.

  ‘Are you new here, Annie?’

  ‘Yes, I just started yesterday.’ Annie smiled and smoothed down the front of her new black dress. ‘They needed more help because of the French prince.’

  ‘Are you anything to William Spears that works in the silk top hat factory?’

  ‘He’s my brother,’ said Annie, blushing. He knows who we are.

  Arthur smiled. ‘What age are you, then?’

  ‘Eleven.’

  ‘So this is your first job?’

  Annie shook her head. ‘I used to sew gloves.’

  ‘Well then, you know what hard work is,’ said Arthur. ‘Just do what you’re told here at Dinham. Keep out from under Mrs Stringer’s feet and you’ll be all right. Her bark is worse than her bite in any case. Come to me if you need anything.’ He winked, swung the trunk he had been carrying back up on to his shoulder and swayed off down the corridor. ‘Follow me, Annie Spears, and we’ll get Sam some food.’

  Sam settled down to wait beside the dripping pump. Above his head, through the narrow basement windows, he could see the legs of the horses and the wheels of the carriages. Pink and gold stockinged footmen passed back and forth lugging trunks, hatboxes, carriage boxes, bird cages, even oddly-shaped cases that might have held musical instruments, up the stairs to the front door. Foreign voices called out to one another. Sam leant his back against the stone surround of the well and closed his eyes. He had been working up the chimneys for the best part of seven hours without a break.

  As soon as Annie reappeared in the kitchen, Mrs Stringer grabbed her by the back of her skirt, thrust a huge tray groaning with tea things into her arms and propelled her towards the stairs.

  ‘You, girl, where have you been? Take this tray up to the French maids. They’re in the music room with the children.’

  ‘But …’ began Annie.

  ‘And stop dawdling,’ she shouted, as Annie picked her way uncertainly up the uneven stone steps, staggering under the weight of the tray. ‘There’s no work in this house for idlers.’

  ‘What about Sam and his dinner?’ Annie thought, but knew better than to say anything.

  In the hall, her way was barred by two gentlemen standing talking at the foot of the staircase. She recognised the taller one, Lord Powis, the owner of Dinham House, for she had sometimes seen him walking with his dogs on Whitcliffe Common. The other man was small and dark-eyed with curly side-whiskers and a great shock of black hair above one of the highest foreheads Annie had ever seen. He was very handsome and knew it for he kept stealing glances at himself in the long hall mirror. His clothes were dazzling compared to Lord Powis’ black suit. He wore a silk coat with tails, a blue velvet waistcoat sprinkled with tiny oak leaves, dark green knickerbockers, white stockings, and huge lace ruffles at his neck and wrists. Annie had never seen such a dandy. She curtseyed, a quick bob, for her knees were already almost buckling under her heavy burden, but the men did not even notice she was there and kept on talking.

  ‘Of course we shall have a larger house ready for you as soon as possible,’ Lord Powis was explaining, ‘but in the meantime, I hope you and your good wife
, Lady Alexandrine, will be comfortable here. If there is anything I can do to make your stay a pleasant one … to be honest, we were not informed your party was so great in number.’

  ‘Under the circumstances, my Lord, we shall try to make ourselves comfortable,’ replied Lucien Bonaparte, in his strange, attractive accent. ‘There are not so many of us, you know, just thirty-two: my dear wife, the children and their tutor, my physician, the chaplain, a few servants. Not so many.’ He shrugged and spread his hands open. ‘You know, of course, Lord Powis, that your government has forbidden us to travel outside the town.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, but you must not think of yourselves as prisoners. I think you will find society in Ludlow very agreeable. It is a small town but handsome to look at, with many pretty walks around the river and the castle, and there are Assemblies each week, and concerts, and theatre, and of course the summer races, too, to look forward to.’

  ‘No doubt,’ said Lucien Bonaparte, thoughtfully, ‘but how will the local society react to the presence of a Bonaparte while England is at war with France?’

  Lord Powis pursed his lips. ‘They know or they soon will know that you are no friend of your brother, Napoleon. I am sure you will have no cause for complaint. On the contrary, the town will welcome you and your family with open arms.’

  Annie could bear the weight of the tray no longer. Her fingers gripping the handles were turning to jelly and she was afraid she would drop the whole thing if she could not set it down at once. ‘Don’t speak unless you’re spoken to, mind,’ Mrs Stringer had drummed into her over and over the day before when she had come to take up her new job. Annie coughed. The cups rattled.

  The French prince turned at last and saw her.

  ‘Ah, such a tiny person and such an immense assortment of cups. Allow me, little one,’ and he pushed open the double doors for Annie to enter the room. Annie stumbled forward, her cheeks burning with embarrassment.