Season of Light by Katharine McMahon Page A

kicking the door with their clogged feet and yelling insults. It seemed to Asa as she seized her best hat (with some vague idea of impressing as lady of the manor) that there was rebellion in the air, wafted across the Channel or whipped up by the prospect of war, and that it was her duty to stop this persecution, if only to prove that revolutionaries need not resort to violence but should instead use reason.
    The wind that had blown all week still tormented the shrubs in the garden and worried the faulty latch on the gate. It was only a few paces to the tailor’s cottage, where the din was an assault to the ears. The boys were brawny and overbearing with loud voices and calloused hands. One of them repeatedly slammed an old cauldron against the stone step of the cottage, another kicked at the door.
    ‘Stop that,’ Asa shouted, but her voice was a reed compared to the clang of metal on stone, so she dashed forward and stood among the boys. They were such an odd mix of familiar and foreign: boys wearing the very same breeches, passed down from father to son, that had been part of Asa’s daily window-scape since birth; boys whom she had envied as they played outside in the dirt when Philippa used to take her visiting; boys who had sat scrubbed and resentful, Christmas and Easter, in the back pews of the church.
    ‘That’s enough now,’ Asa said, hands on hips, addressing Davie Woodcock, the blacksmith’s son, who was shorter than the rest but more vocal. ‘What are you thinking of?’
    Davie picked up the cauldron, held it inches from Asa’s head and beat it with a chunk of metal lifted from his father’s forge. She saw both insolence and fear in his eyes. Standing between him and the door, she put her hands over her ears and shook her head. When the boys laughed reluctantly and stopped their noise she thought she had won, but in the silence she heard an ominous crackle behind her; the pyre had been lit and in a moment flames were licking obscenely round the splayed legs of the effigies. ‘Put that out at once,’ she cried. ‘Good God, we’re not pagans.’ By now help had arrived, in the form of the vicar’s gardener, a labourer or two and the blacksmith. In moments the flames had been doused, Davie clouted by his father, and the crowd dispersed, leaving Asa standing outside Key Cottage with her servants clustered a short distance away.
    She hammered on the door. ‘Mr Dacre. Are you there? This is Thomasina Ardleigh. It’s quite safe to come out now.’
    Not a word.
    ‘No need to be alarmed. Mrs Dacre, can you hear me? The boys have all gone away. Very well, you stay inside and we shall send you a dish of supper from the manor.’ She glanced round for approval but Mrs Dean was expressionless. ‘Father or I will call again in the morning.’
    As she turned towards home she noticed, beyond the thinning of the smoke above the pyre, a stranger. The woman’s head was thrown back and she was staring at Asa with shocking concentration. Short and slight, she wore a dark cloak almost covering a skirt of greyish blue, and a neat straw hat fastened on abundant hair. Two travelling bags had been set down at her feet. Her cheeks were sunken, her complexion olive-tinged. It dawned on Asa that this must be her new companion, due to arrive that afternoon by stagecoach.
    Asa composed herself by adjusting her hat and smoothing her skirts, then crossed the green, giving the smoking pyre a wide berth. At nearly a head taller than the stranger she felt gawky, as if her limbs had been poorly fitted to her body. ‘You are just arrived in Ardleigh?’ she said, too loud.
    ‘I am Madame de Rusigneux.’ The stranger’s voice was unusually low for a woman. She put out her hand, delicate as a bird’s claw.
    ‘My name is Thomasina Ardleigh.’ Through the softness of the woman’s glove Asa felt the shock of French blood pulsing against her fingertips; this was the first foreigner she had touched in more than four years. After