Felicity: An American Girl ROMANCE PT3, Ch4: Bristol Fashion
December 20, 1781
Bristol, England
The Protean had been at sea a month and a half. Despite powerful squalls and sheets of rain, the vessel had made good time. She was carried into the Bristol Channel on hearty breezes. The rivers Avon and Severn, magnificent in their own right, met at the Channel and provided plenty of challenges for a tall ship. Bristol's port was not very kind to big sailing ships, however it was ideal for the shipping out of English goods. The city had no docks at this time, and ships were therefore left high and dry at low tide. Any ship using the port had to be a tough one and well-maintained. 'Twas how the saying "Ship shape and Bristol fashion" came to be.
When Felicity was ushered up from her tiny cabin, where she had just spent the majority of a month and a half either sleeping in misery or sewing on a warm, woolen petticoat of callimanco for herself in misery, she was met with fresh cold breezes, a grey overcast sky, and a determined Reginald Forsythe. She glared at him resentfully.
"Good morning, Felicity," he said, with authority in his voice. He stood near a yawning Ezekiel Gooch, probably to have someone wide to duck behind in case she decided to attack him again. And even still, the short young lord was attempting to assert dominion over her again. "I hope you slept well your last night aboard ship. We are preparing to take the long boat to shore."
"I am not getting off of this ship until it takes me back to Virginia!" she spat, standing her ground with arms folded tightly beneath her woolen cloak. She was already tired, still sleepy, and her head hurt.
Forsythe sighed. "You are not going back to Virginia, as you have consented to be my wife."
"You stole me from my family!"
"Ye gods, not this argument again," the young lord muttered, as the Gooch chuckled and popped a lit pipe into his big mouth. Behind Felicity, Madame Helga shook her head and made her irritating tsk-tsk sound.
"You put me on this ship by force! It will be the only way you will get me off of it!" Felicity challenged. She did not really feel up to a fight just then. Although she had no nausea, her head was hurting like when she'd had the powders, only not as bad. Just enough to cause distraction and discomfort. She wondered if she had been given the powders with all of her meals. It would certainly account for her drowsiness.
"Look, Felicity," Forsythe began, getting irate, "do not make me have to get the Gooch here to haul you off, because he will do it. He will put you over his shoulder and take you down the side ladder to the long boat kicking and screaming if he must. Not only will you have forced me to treat you indignantly, but you will have shamed yourself in front of this crew."
"So?" she retorted brazenly. "You have them convinced that I am a lunatic anyway! They most likely expect me to be kicking and screaming! And why should I care about the opinions of people who care no more for me than I do for them?"
"Because I do!"
"And I still do not!"
Their raised voices would have indeed attracted attention beyond what crew was nearest to them, had it not been for the sounds of port activity, men calling to one another from quay side to ship and from ship to ship, the squawking of the gulls the wind, and the people on the quay going to and fro, selling their wares, food or anything else they had. Despite Felicity's crisis, life was going on obliviously here in the port of Bristol, England.
Forsythe fumed. "So will you or will you not descend the ladder of your own effort?"
She winced sharply at him. "I absolutely will not! Won't, won't, won't!"
"Felicity! You are being a child!" Forsythe cried as he stamped his foot childishly.
So it was Felicity Merriman found herself flung over the shoulder of the Gooch like a boneless doll. Like a sack of flour, staring down at the dark blue water with wide, apprehensive eyes. Apparently, she'd been brought aboard in the same fashion, although unconscious. She almost considered squirming and slipping out of the burly hunter's grip so that she could plunge into the water and sink like a rock to its darkened depths. 'Twas a tempting thought, indeed. But with all of the men about, on the ship and waiting in a second long boat with Forsythe's luggage, her luck would have them dive in and fetch her back up. She had heard Mrs. Trent once say that there was never a man around when you needed one, and plenty around when you do not. Damned if that wasn't so.
Sure, they would dive in after her should she drop, but not a single blasted one of them would listen to her about being taken against her will from the colonies. She was, after all, 'a poor young thing suffering from grief-induced insanity,' thanks to Reginald Forsythe, who sat in the long boat awaiting her descent while barking up at the Gooch to be careful with her, damn you, and do not let her slip!
Once she was in the long boat sitting across from Forsythe and glaring deadly daggers at him, she refused to look around at the port or the ships that were anchored so close to the quay that their masts were higher than the buildings' chimneys and their prows were nearly knocking on doors. She was not interested in watching how the big vessels managed to maneuver around each other without incident. She would not look around at the crammed buildings and the steeple of majestic St. Mary Redcliffe looming not too far off in the distance. She wanted nothing to do with this place or its inhabitants. She was very busy thinking about what she was going to do to help herself.
If there was anything she could do at all.
Her head hurt some and her energy was low. That was why she did not resisit Madame Helga's prodding her in the back to hurry up and let the footmen assist her up on the quay when the long boat rowed up alongside of it. She did see the curtained carriage waiting for them, it's driver dressed in rich maroon and wearing a tidy powdered peruke. A coachman waited by the carriage door, dressed in the same garb and looking just as stiff and tired as Smedley usually did.
Felicity briefly wondered if Forsythe gave all his servants the powders, too.
"Ah, 'tis good to be back in the city!" Forsythe breathed fully, his chest puffing out as if he deemed himself the mayor of it as the men put his trunks on the back of the carriage. Never mind the looks from the people passing them by who wore clothing that seen better days. People who's livelihoods depended on whatever profit they made selling their goods that day or were employed in business that required the use of their entire bodies, if not their entire families, young children included. In essence, the very people Reginald Forsythe liked to look down upon.
"My lord," Smedley whispered stiffly as he waited alongside his master, "I suggest that we do not tarry much longer."
"Indeed, old man," Forsythe agreed. He looked at Felicity. "The lower classes do not care much for higher society, you see. They believe that if everyone cannot be poor and desperate as they are, then they must be punished. Do get into the carriage now, my dear. Someone may take it upon themselves to start throwing rocks."
"And if I felt up to it," said Felicity bitingly, "I would take it upon myself to join them!"
"Heh heh!" laughed the Gooch, nudging Forsythe in the back with an elbow. "Too bad the trip didn't knock the sass out of 'er, eh yer lordship?"
Forsythe rolled his eyes. "Get in the carriage, Felicity."
A footman was holding the door open, waiting to assist her. She saw she had no choice but to do just that. With Smedley and the Gooch standing uncomfortably near, and an able-bodied coachman just to her left, her chances of taking off on foot and getting away were tremendously slim. She could get past them and hurl herself into the water, of course, but there were still plenty of sailors around to rescue her. There was a notion that some of those 'lower class good-for-nothings' might help her escape a much despised 'upper-class holier-than-thou,' but she was not going to get to find out, for she was hastily ushered into the carriage.
'Twas the same arrangement as the ride to Yorktown; Felicity beside Madame Helga, Forsythe and Smedley across from them, the Gooch sitting up top with his pistol in case the carriage was accosted by highwaymen or the like. But in this ride, the paisley curtains were not drawn-and why should they be? No one knew her here. She could scream like mad and no one would care because they did not know she'd been brought here against her will, and despite being loathed, the local gentry could afford to have meddlers 'disposed of.' Money governed here. A local authority could be paid off happily, and no one could do anything about it.
At least that is what Felicity had learned from Elizabeth and Mr. Cole. Just one of the many reasons why the Coles felt it had been time to move from England to one of His Majesty's Colonies. Mr. Cole did not like the way Parliament dealt with-or in this case, didn't deal with the running of the government itself. Sure Mr. Cole was loyal to his king and country, but not to Parliament.
Felicity closed her eyes and breathed deep, attempting to get control of the growing knot of dread and anger in her chest. It still had not sunk in that she was really in England, the homeland of two of her best friends...the country who's king the colonies had been at war with. She was still in a daze of fury and headache. She was constantly guarding against succumbing to heartache and sadness over being taken from her family, resisting the urge to bawl over losing Ben. Yielding to despair now certainly would be the path to insanity! And she was quite certain that Forsythe would love for her to be truly insane. Well, he will not have THAT satisfaction, either! she thought vengefully. I must stay clear-headed so that I can think of what I am going to do. My head hurts...but I can still think! He will not have me, he won't! I will find a way!
She was forced out of her thoughts by the jolts and rattling of the carriage. Apparently, they were on a cobbled street, somewhat going uphill. She did manage to glimpse through the window on her right the rising of the Dundry Hills to the south. Of course she knew not what they were called, only that under different circumstances she would have thought them to be beautiful. Bristol was indeed a very hilly place.
Eventually cobbled streets became somewhat smoother dirt roads, and between flinching awake and nodding off, Felicity was aware of the carriage either going uphill or downhill. Carriage rides always made her drowzy to begin with, but she was not convinced that she wasn't under the effects of any powders. She was aware that they had left the city, for buildings and city sounds had become less and less, diminishing and fading, and rolling hillsides could be seen through all windows.
She didn't need to ask where she was being taken: Forsythe Manor, no doubt. It made her cringe inside, yet resolve that no location she was brought to would affect her decision about her quite possible, self-inflicted fate.
"I am looking into having a home built in Clifton," Forsythe told her, speaking to her for the first time since the carriage ride began. Up until now, he had been chatting with Smedley about local bridges, tolls, and some prattle about the Society Of the Merchant Ventures, which Forsythe's father used to belong to. He was smiling proudly, a gleam of superiority in his small hazel eyes. "Clifton is fine living, you know. You can look down upon the Avon Gorge from high upon the hilltop."
If this was also meant to impress her, it clearly didn't. She merely sneered. "And you do certainly enjoy looking down upon people, don't you. I seem to recall a saying about pride going before a fall. Perhaps I shall have the opportunity to shove you off that hilltop and into that gorge before long!"
His haughty smile vanished. "Felicity, must I remind you that this rebellious attitude will not be tolerated in my home?"
"You may remind me all you like, but if you do not want it tolerated in your home, then do not put me inside of it!" She blinked at him indifferently. "I do not want to be in it to begin with!"
"But it is your home now. You will act accordingly!"
"I will not."
Forsythe gripped his walking cane's greyhound head with tense hands. "When you see that you have no other choice, you will."
"Or what?" She cocked an eyebrow daringly. "You will give me your powders to make me insensible? Go ahead, then. I prefer them to you!"
"I do not enjoy having you sedate," Forsythe said explainingly. "But you will come around. Eventually you will miss your family and long to see them. Then you will do as is expected of you."
"And I will wager that I won't." Felicity explained back at him evenly.
"So we shall see."
She glared at him a moment longer, then turned her gaze out the window, lest she launch herself at him tooth and nail if she looked at him any longer than that. And oh how she wanted to! She actually twitched in her seat. But she was immensely tired, feeling drained and sea-weary. She would get her energy back-she was determined to! Then she would figure out a way to help herself.
The entrance to Forsythe Manor and its estate was a bit more foreboding than Felicity had expected it to be, yet it did not surprise her at all. Black wrought-iron gates taller than the ones around the Governor's palace in Williamsburg and quite Gothik-looking were swung open by a disgruntled-looking old gentleman who emerged from his little stone gate-keeper's house with a bent back. The long dirt carriage road was shadowed even further by tall spindly trees that lined either side of the track. Their long, gnarled twisty branches extended across and overhead.
That did not surprise her, either.
Once the carriage emerged from the cheerless tunnel of trees, the Manor itself was revealed in all of its half-Palladian, half-Gothik structured ominosity. The carriage path went in a wide circle before the great house and displayed within the grassy middle of the circle a Roman statue of some woman in robes, her expression forlorn. Felicity could not help but wonder if the marbled woman used to be a living being.
When the carriage came to a halt before the steps up to the portico, everyone made good time getting out except for Felicity, who remained seated inside, arms crossed. At Forsythe's urging, one of the coachmen leaned in to fetch her out, but received a loud, stinging slap! for his efforts.
"Now see here, Felicity," Forsythe sighed (as the stunned coachman quickly withdrew, holding his tender cheek with a gloved hand), "you will cease this nonsense at once!"
"No!"
"Felicity, come out of there this instant!"
"No!"
The Gooch was chuckling. Forsythe spared him an angry glare, then said firmly, "If you do not vacate that carriage immediately, I shall have the Gooch get you out!"
"You may both go to hell!"
Forsythe pointed to the carriage and said to the burly hunter, "Get her out."
Still laughing to himself, the Gooch leaned inside. There was a second's pause before those on the outside heared a loud, fleshy pop!, a gruff "Ow!" and then the Gooch quickly withdrew as well, both hands clapped over his bulbous nose. "She flicked me!" exclaimed he nasally. "Damn wench flicked my nose!"
Madame Helga pushed the Gooch aside with a thick arm. "Move avay, idiot! I vill get ze girl!" She inserted her bulk between him and the carriage entry, leaned in and clamped Felicity's closest wrist in one of her plump, labor-hardened hands and despite the girl's ferocious resistance, pulled Felicity right out of the carriage as if she were naught but a rag doll.
"Let me go!" Felicity demanded ragefully, trying with all of her might to twist, yank and pull herself free of the big woman's steely grasp. "I am not going in there! I don't want to be here!"
But no one paid her any mind. Gooch went to assist the coachmen in unloading the trunks while Smedley and Forsythe started up to the looming, dark-stoned house. Madame Helga followed them with a hold on Felicity's wrist so tight that Felicity was sure the blood flow to her hand had been cut off. She dug her heels into the gravel and yelled, "No! Let me go! I will absolutely kill you for this, Reginald Forsythe!"
Still, her physical and verbal protests went ignored. She was firmly yanked up the steps to the double black doors, both of which had gleaming brass gargoyle heads for knobs-to perfectly match the gargoyle heads with door knockers in their mouths in the center of each door. Their bulging eyes gave Felicity the thundering shudders. The big, dark stone manor also had a gargoyle perched on each corner of the building, which had to be three stories, not counting the attic.
Ivy vines crawled up the manor's facade, which faced south, snaking past dark windows that were perfectly symmetrical above each other on either side of the building's front. A huge stone urn on either side of the front double doors gave a depressing balance to the entry beneath the portico. Viciously Felicity thought about how Forsythewas the right size to be crammed down into one of the urns. And 'twas almost as if the urns symbolized death to anyone who entered.
Perhaps that was true.
Forsythe himself opened the black doors wide; the Lord of themanor was home once again! He was actually displaying that slanting, smug smirk of his. Felicity glared hatefully at the back of his long-wigged head as she was pulled inside. Smedley closed the doors with a dull clunk sound that reverberated off of the walls of the spacious foyer. Felicity stiffened defensively, feeling as if the lid to her own coffin had just been slammed shut and locked.
No! I must not give in to despair! I must stay strong so that I will able to do what I know I must do! Ben hates me-he will not come for me. Father is badly injured-he could not handle a sea voyage even if he knew where i was! "Tis up to me to save myself, be it through death even! I will fight the bastard fop to the end!