Page 4 of Rivals at Ashmore Castle

It was a man dressed like a groom, darkening the doorway, hatless, blood on his face that seemed to be trickling from a scalp wound. His jacket was torn across the breast and dust was thick in his hair. ‘Leave it alone!’ he cried hoarsely. ‘Get away from there! Get away! I’ll have the law on you!’

The boy had returned. ‘Leave it off, mister! She’s saving it.’

Alice spoke over her shoulder. ‘One of them bolted – I couldn’t stop it. Two are tied up out there. I think this one may be hurt. Are they yours?’

‘I’m Lord Shacklock’s groom. They’re his hunters. You get away from that mare or you’ll be sorry!’ He made a threatening gesture with his fist.

The boy was indignant. ‘’Ere, she’s a lidy, mister! Don’t you talk to her like that!’

The groom used the kinetic energy already generated in his arm to fetch the boy a side swipe that knocked him on his behind, but he was up again like a bouncing ball, more interested in the horses than himself.

Alice, meanwhile, had cut through the rope and freed the horse’s head, but it didn’t move, lying rigid and terrified, its foreleg held awkwardly.

She got to her feet. ‘Can you manage now?’ she asked the groom, who was staring almost as wildly as the horse.

The groom swallowed hard and seemed to come to himself. ‘Course I can manage. I don’t need you bloody kids poking around. Clear out, both of you!’ He waved his fist again.

Alice went past him at a careful distance, and said to the boy, ‘Can you help him? I don’t think he’s quite the thing. But I must see who else needs help.’

The boy seemed to hold no resentment. ‘Yes, miss, you go on. I’ll stop here with him. You all right, mister?’ And to Alice, confidingly, ‘I reckon he’s had a blow on the noggin, miss. He ain’t thinking straight.’

Alice gave him back his knife, patted him on the shoulder, and went up the slope towards the wounded snake of the train to look for Axe.

Richard had fought in South Africa, and was not to be overset by the sight of injuries or dead bodies. There were more willing helpers arriving all the time. His most important role, he realised, would be to direct them, to create order, to devise a system.

The first period – he had no idea how long it was, whether minutes or half an hour – was the worst, when he had seemed alone: the chaos seemed to defy reason and the whole responsibility rested on his shoulders. There were passengers trapped in the ruined first carriage, dead and badly injured people in that and in the second carriage, which had reared up trying to jump over the first. In the third and fourth were what he thought of as walking wounded.

There was little provision for accidents in the station: a first-aid box and a single stretcher in the station-master’s office, and an axe that was used to chop wood for the waiting-room fire. But at a moment when he might have felt despair, a man appeared at his shoulder (he thought vaguely that he recognised him but couldn’t place him): a labouring sort of man, strong in body, ready of mind, who said, ‘I’ve got my horse and cart outside. Cottage hospital’s just down the hill. I can take some of the bad-off there, sir.’

And Miss Rowsham seemed to be performing first aid on the walking wounded on the platform in a manner so calm you would think she was a trained nurse.

So a system almost set itself up. The dead to be placed with as much kindness as time allowed in the waiting-room. The slightly injured to be bandaged by Miss Rowsham and a group of motherly women she had gathered around her. The seriously wounded to be conveyed by the first man and, soon, more volunteers with wagons to the cottage hospital. There, he was informed after a while, Dr Arbogast had set up stall.

The police in the form of PC Holyoak arrived and added official sinew to the activities. Dr Welkes, who had been out delivering a baby on one of the farms, arrived at last and took the responsibility of medical decisions from Richard’s shoulders. There were enough strong men now under the joint direction of Richard and Tom Holyoak to get into the harder-to-reach places in the broken carriages. And the fire-engine arrived, though there was little they could do about the mangled and burning engines. No-one in them could have survived. But they were able to douse a promising fire that had started up in the first carriage of the up train, and some burning bushes.

Of course, there was the up train to deal with as well, and rescuing people from its carriages was a degree more complicated. At one point Richard saw Giles carrying one end of a hurdle on which an injured woman was lying, coming from the direction of the up train, and felt vaguely comforted that he was there helping. But mostly there wasn’t time to think: it was just see something that had to be done, and do it. It was rather like war, he thought vaguely.

It took Alice a long time to find Axe. You couldn’t just walk past someone who needed help, and there were so many of them. The injured. The shocked and bewildered, who needed to be soothed and sent towards the station, where operations were being directed. The frantic who had lost someone. Those sitting on the ground staring at nothing who might or might not be hurt. The helpers who needed help themselves: ‘Hold this! Try to keep it steady while I get her leg free. Is there a doctor anywhere? Have you seen a doctor?’

There were a lot of cuts from broken glass. She early took off her petticoat to tear up for bandages – she could have done with her young helper’s knife, because good cotton needed to be started before it would tear. Other women followed her example, and one produced a pair of scissors, which was a godsend. Alice was soon so much smeared with other people’s blood she looked like a victim herself. Axe, she knew, would be helping somewhere, wherever he was needed most, but useful as she was being, she wished she could be helping at his side. Someone said they were taking the badly wounded to the cottage hospital on carts, and she wondered if he might have gone down the hill to fetch Della and his wagon for ambulance duties.

Suddenly Giles was by her side. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he barked, wide-eyed. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Not my blood,’ she said economically. ‘I was walking the dogs when I heard the crash.’

‘You shouldn’t be here,’ he said, scowling.

‘Don’t be silly, everyone must help,’ she said.

The scowl cleared. ‘You’re right. You’re sure you’re not hurt?’

‘Sure.’

‘Good girl.’ He gave her arm a quick squeeze and disappeared back into the mêlée.

With his departure, Alice suddenly felt her tiredness, and the pain from her early injury made itself known for the first time, a sullen ache in her upper arm and shoulder, with a bite lurking in it somewhere. I must find Axe, she thought, a little tearfully. But here was a woman with blood all over her face and torn clothing saying, ‘My husband! I can’t find my husband!’ She grabbed Alice’s arm in a fierce grip – her injured arm, unfortunately. ‘Help me! I must find him! He was sitting right beside me!’ She looked around, bewildered, as if she had only just noticed the terrible scene. ‘What’s happened? Where are we? Where’s Sidney?’

Alice did what she could to calm the woman, find out which carriage she had been in, and take her to it in the hope that her husband was there, looking for her. And on the way, she heard a man say something about a real hero, who was doing something astonishing, saving lives, and ‘He must be as strong as an ox to be holding that thing up. But they say he used to be the blacksmith.’