The Lantern Moon by Maeve Friel Read Free Book Online Page A

table. By the time she smelt the smoke, it was too late, the wooden floor was ablaze. There was no way out.
    The ball in honour of Ludlow’s distinguished visitors was to be held in the Assembly Rooms, the long hall that occupied the upper storey of the tumbledown Market Hall in the Castle Square. It was not that the hall itself wastumbledown. A great deal of public money had been lavished upon it. New glass chandeliers had recently been installed and its springy dancing floor would not have been out of place in a more important city like Bath or even London. People in Ludlow liked to think that nobody could find fault with their orchestra, a band of men who could rise to any occasion. And if they didn’t always know the tune or the beat to the bar, you had to admit that they were always willing to please.
    Nevertheless, stangers to Ludlow were never very enthusiastic at the sight of the Assembly Rooms. The lower part of the building was occupied during the day by the market traders so it smelt of fish and cabbages and barnyard manure. Most of the ball-goers that night arrived up the stairs with fans fluttering and handkerchiefs clamped to their wrinkled noses.
    Everybody who was anybody was there: the aldermen and councillors with their wives, all the best families of the town and neighbourhood, the Sneades and Charltons, the judges, the lawyers, the merchants. There was even a lord or two and a bishop. The square was chock-a-block with carriages arriving and departing, their owners shouting out last minute instructions about when the drivers should return. The poor were out in force too, milling around the doors of the White Horse Inn and the carriage set-down points, hoping to earn a tip or two by holding the reins of the horses, or simply gawking at the finery of the ladies.
    Kezia Spears could not get through the crowds. Women elbowed her out of the way as she tried to steer a path towards the inn, thinking she was pushing in front of them to get a better view of the French princesses’ ball gowns. There was an ugly mood in the air. A lot of soldiers were in the town, among them war veterans at a loss to know why, in the middle of the war with France, the brother of the tyrant Napoleon was being honoured in Ludlow. Some of these men had served under Admiral Nelson at the great Battle of Trafalgar six years earlier; some had lost limbs, others had lost their hearing from the booming of the cannons and were still stone deaf. They did not know that Lucien and his family were under parole, a form of house arrest – they just heard the hated name Napoleon and wondered if the sacrifices they had made were all in vain.
    When the first of the carriages from Dinham House drew up and Lucien Bonaparte and his wife Alexandrine stepped down, a huge jeer went up from the crowd of men standing at the front door of the White Horse.
    â€˜Long live the Royal Navy!’
    â€˜Remember Trafalgar!’
    â€˜Down with Napoleon Bonaparte!’
    â€˜Hurray to that. And down with France!’
    A party of militiamen rushed forward into the crowd, bayonets drawn, seized the hecklers and hustled them away. Lucien Bonaparte coldly ignored the disturbance. He steered his wife and daughters past a noxious heap of rotting cabbagestalks and led them up the staircase to the Long Hall.
    Kezia squeezed past the crowds into the tap-room of the White Horse. The bar was full of coachmen and ostlers who pressed up against her and made lewd remarks when she asked the innkeeper where she might find Mr Evans. The air was blue and thick with the smell of tobacco smoke and spilt ale. The breath of the customers was stale and sour and the atmosphere was still threatening as if more trouble might break out at any moment. The master glover was nowhere to be seen. Dejectedly, Kezia began to push her way back out on to the street.
    In the few minutes that she had been inside the inn, the crowds of people had moved away from the square. The