The Weeping Ash

by Joan Aiken

  “Your good lady is twenty-five years younger, sir? Quite a young girl, then. Young ladies are sometimes rather flighty, we all know that. Depend upon it, she’ll turn up all right and tight, if you just keep your patience, sir. Increasing, you say? The females do get taken with queer notions at such times, as you must be aware. One thing, sir—she being in such a condition—there’s no chance of anyone else getting her with child, so you may rest easy there… She’ll not come to much harm, depend upon it, sir…”

  Perhaps he should return to Mr. Throgmorton, whom he had already consulted in regard to the Paget twins? No, Throgmorton had been totally unhelpful there, why would he be of any more use in this predicament?

  Thomas went out and walked angrily about the streets until late at night Then he hurried back to the hotel, expecting that at least by now Fanny would have returned. But she had not. And so he retired to bed, perhaps more uncertain, angry, harassed, perplexed, sore, and suspicious than he had ever been before in his life.

  Next day he was obliged to go early to court, and in the evening when he returned, quite late, Fanny still was not there. The chambermaid, puzzled, asked if Mrs. Paget had not slept there the preceding night, and Thomas was driven to make up a tale of her having been taken ill and obliged to stay with friends.

  The following day saw an end to the court proceedings shortly after noon, and Thomas walked slowly back to High Holborn in a wretched state of uncertainty. How could he make plans to return to Petworth, with Fanny still missing? And yet, if he stayed on in London, it must be at his own expense. He was angry, too, about the court case—in spite of his testimony to the effect that Wilkes, who had been his subordinate officer in Gosport, had been a man of the utmost virtue and integrity, the Court had, without hesitation, found him guilty of accepting a bribe. Thomas felt that this reflected upon him. The whole trip to London had been a complete waste of time quite apart from the disastrous loss of Fanny. Throgmorton had told him roundly that he was absolutely bound by his agreement with Countess van Welcker to entertain her cousins from India; there was no avoiding that imposition. He was the most unfortunate man in the world.

  Wrapped in such a cloud of gloom and uncertainty, he glanced neither to right nor left, he strode through the inn hallway and up the narrow crooked stairs to his chamber, still not sure whether to begin packing, summon the constables, or order a bottle of sherry and try to drown his problems in drink.

  He flung open the bedroom door and came to a sudden halt on the threshold, almost startled out of his wits. For there sat Fanny on the one upright chair, pinched, hollow-eyed, and motionless, like some strangely quiescent and passive little ghost, with her hands in her lap and her shawl around her shoulders. She raised her eyes to her husband as he came into the room and seemed to draw herself together, as if nerving herself for his onslaught. But she did not speak.

  Thomas was so amazed and, momentarily, relieved to see her that he did not immediately commence on the tirade which she evidently expected. He stood staring at her, wholly at a loss for words, while he gradually took in the astounding fact of her safe return; that now it would be possible to arrange for their journey to Petworth, that he need not call in the constables, or write to her father, or ask to see the drowned bodies that had been dragged out of the Thames in the last two days.

  However his tirade, when it finally did come, had lost nothing by the delay. Kicking the door to behind him, he drew a deep breath and began in a low biting voice to rid himself of all the fury, frustrations, fears, and suspicions that had ridden him for the last two days. On and on he went; using language normally reserved for the press gang rendezvous, words and phrases such as Fanny’s ears had never heard before; he stepped up close in front of her and stood over her with his fists clenched and trembling, as if he would like to shake her to pieces, to pound her into pap.

  Where had she been? Where the — — — had she been these last two days? Did she think she could play this kind of trick on him and get off scot free? What kind of a fool did she think he was? And again, for the fifth or sixth time in a voice grown hoarse and thick from raging, where had she been?

  Fanny at first made little response to his outburst, seemed hardly to hear it, indeed; her muscles tightened slightly as he shouted at her, she bowed her head, as if under a bitter blizzard, but she did not attempt to answer his questions. Only when his language—for a man who was usually such a model of propriety—became startlingly obscene did she raise great blind shocked eyes to his, and then, after a moment, bend her head forward and press her hands over cheeks and ears. But he furiously dragged her hands down again.

  “Listen to me, answer me, you bitch! Where were you? Where have you been?”

  At that, as if his physical touch had worked some spell to bring her back an immense distance from another, far-removed region, she gave a long sigh and, when he shook her again, said in a very small, soft voice:

  “I can’t tell you that, Thomas.”

  “Can’t? How do you mean, you can’t tell me?” he raged. “You — — well will tell me! Or I’ll—”

  Here he came to a stop, temporarily thwarted. For what could he do to her? He could not beat her or physically punish her; the frustration of it made his eyes bulge, and straining cords stood out on his neck.

  “I’ll lock you up!” he blustered. “I’ll have you put away in Bedlam—you shall never see any of your family again. Where were you, God damn it?”

  And again, in that soft voice, barely above a whisper, she answered:

  “I can’t tell you, Thomas.”

  She had never called him Thomas before; it had always been sir, occasionally Captain Paget, if she had to address him directly; your father, if she spoke of him to the girls, the master, to the servants. Half consciously his ear noted the fact as his mind observed that, in spite of her pinched, haggard, wan appearance—frail as a wisp, she looked, likely to go off in a faint at any moment—in spite of all this, there seemed something collected about her, he could not quite put his finger on it.

  “You certainly can tell me, my girl, and you will, too! If you’ve been up to wrong I can have you committed to prison, you know—and I’d not hesitate, not for a moment.”

  Idle threat; she seemed hardly to hear it. There she sat, huddled up, like a waif, like a changeling; time seemed to mean nothing to her, she appeared ready to sit like that all night if he wanted to go on scolding her.

  And in fact he did go on, for a long time, storming and questioning; she listened absently, as if to the wind. Her eyes, in their great bony sockets, were so sad that Thomas, in sudden superstitious fright, came to a stumbling halt; what the deuce was she thinking about, in there? And what was all this going to do to his unborn child?

  “When did you come back?” he said more quietly.

  She gave her long sigh again.

  “I am not certain. An hour—two hours ago.”

  “Did you have anything to eat during the day?” said Thomas, angry again at the thought of such carelessness, flighty, willful neglect of maternal duty.

  She shook her head as if she really had no idea; exasperated, he summoned the chambermaid and ordered wine and soup. These she took obediently and, when he ordered her to do so, went to bed, where she lay silent as some creature inside its cocoon; Thomas, lying beside her, staring into the darkness, could not tell if she slept or no.

  Next morning she seemed more like her old self; ate some toast-and-water gruel for breakfast; prepared, with docility, to accompany Thomas in a hackney carriage to St. Martin’s-le-Grand and then on the stage to Petworth; at no time did she volunteer anything about her experiences during the time she had been missing, but occasionally made some perfectly practical remark about the contingencies of their journey. “Is not that the Petworth coach over there? I think I recognize the driver.” “Thomas, have you given the man something for putting our bags into the trunk?” And on the
coach journey, though she became deathly pale, she retained command of herself and was able to make polite rejoinders to the inquiries of a solicitous female fellow passenger. There were no children aboard this time, and Thomas traveled inside; but he did not exchange two remarks with Fanny during the whole course of the journey. He watched her, though, with baffled, thwarted, gnawing, unceasing, engrossed attention; watched her more than he had probably done in the whole course of their married life hitherto. She, as if unaware of this scrutiny, kept her eyes absently fixed on the rainy gray landscape beyond the window glass, but not as if it occupied her thoughts; where these were it would have been impossible to guess.

  When they were at home again and Fanny was submitting to the bustle of arrival, still with that same blind-eyed stare and absent docility, Thomas irritably thrust his daughters out of the way, ignoring their questions about London and demands to know how the case had gone. He said to Fanny:

  “Get upstairs to bed! And you are not to stir out of your chamber until I give you leave!”

  “Is Stepmama ill?” demanded Martha, and little Patty cried: “Has she been naughty, that you send her to her chamber?”

  But Fanny silently, like a sleepwalker, mounted the stairs, entered her bedroom, and took off her travel-stained garments. Only once did she pause in her mechanical preparations; while she was doing her hair she halted, brush in hand, to give a long, preoccupied, frowning look at the tethered ash tree outside her window; then, sighing, she put on her nightgown and climbed into bed.

  Four

  For some days after Colonel Cameron’s arrival in Ziatur he was not seen by the Paget twins. Cal reported rather discontentedly that Cameron spent a great deal of time with the Maharajah, who, now that his Yagistani friend had returned to entertain him, seemed to have improved greatly in health and spirits. Moreover the promised arms—or at least some of them—had come from Karachi, and the Maharajah was diverting himself by watching his men being equipped with the new weapons and taught new drills by Kamaran Sahib. Meanwhile the French emissaries found themselves in sudden disfavor, never able to obtain an audience, and were kept kicking their heels in antechambers for days together. This state of affairs pleased Mihal Shahzada not at all, and his resentment and ill temper rebounded upon Cal. The latter, although it amused him to bear the prince company in lighthearted diversions—drinking parties, dice games, or quail fights—was not in the least prepared to listen for hours on end to Mihal’s discontents or become involved in court intrigues; he therefore found it more convenient to stay away from the palace, and so for some days the household at Miss Musson’s bungalow heard little about royal affairs. Cal, usually so easygoing and good-tempered, had been a little ruffled by his sister’s borrowing his precious Kali and going off on a whole adventure by herself; and the fact that this was due to his own dereliction of brotherly duty only added the acid of guilt to his vexed feelings. These were not vented in any positive way; he merely became rather withdrawn, but as, at the time, he was in any case deep in the first canto of a long heroic poem about Alexander the Great’s invasion of India, which was to conclude with the battle between Alexander and King Porus by the Jhelum River, his withdrawal was hardly noticeable, except to his sharp-eyed, quick-witted sister, who shrugged, laughed, and went about her own affairs, knowing that he would soon come around; Cal never harbored a grievance for long.

  The two little princes, Amur and Ranji, had been granted some days of holiday so that they might watch and enjoy the army drilling; Scylla therefore spent a greater part of her time helping Miss Musson at the little hospital.

  This was a shabby, inconvenient building, a derelict Jain temple, converted to its present function by a few bamboo partitions. There was a neglected dusty garden in front, where lines of outpatients hopefully squatted, a colonnade of three stone arches, under which lay piles of dirty linen waiting for the dhobi, and a number of charpoys and straw palliasses inside, laid in rows on the stone floor.

  The treatments were of the simplest kind: wounds were kept clean (camel bite was one of the most frequently treated afflictions), feverish patients were dosed with quinine, and those suffering from stomach afflictions with rhubarb; balsam and plasters were applied to snakebite to draw out the venom; and Miss Musson had various infusions of honey, vinegar, cinnamon, cloves, gum arabic, and ginger which she used for sore eyes, toothache, and muscular pains. Winthrop Musson had been a doctor, and his sister faithfully followed the principles and practice he had laid down; having worked with him for over forty years, she was perfectly acquainted with all his clinical rules; but also in the course of time she had familiarized herself with a great deal of native lore in regard to herbs and minerals; as she said herself, briskly, “Half my cures are because I give people the confidence to recover, but of the other half, three quarters are because I use the herbs of the country; the jackal that lives on the hills of Mazandaran is best caught by the hounds of Mazandaran.” Miss Musson was full of local proverbs, which, like the treatments, she had picked up over the years in her dealings with her patients.

  Scylla had been helping Miss Musson with a long and difficult childbirth: a tiny girl, the gardener’s daughter, who was in labor with twins. At first the husband had not wished to allow his wife to come near the hospital, but, as Miss Musson cannily pointed out, “Who is better able to help you than the Mem Periseela, and she a twin herself? She will bring you excellent luck”; and though Scylla was not, in fact, very experienced in midwifery, this argument had finally carried the day. Miss Musson, with the help of a shrewd old lady called Jameela, and Scylla as an auxiliary to hold the towels and the implements, had, after a serious struggle, brought the twins safely into the world, and the parents and grandparents were rejoicing while Scylla washed and wrapped the babies, when Colonel Cameron strode unannounced into the hospital.

  “So this is where I find you!” he greeted Scylla, and then, perceiving Miss Musson, impressive in her black burqa, made her a low bow.

  “Still in the healing line, I see, Miss Amanda, my dear! How many legs have you cut off, I wonder, since I saw you last?”

  “Oh, I daresay it may be nine or ten,” replied Miss Musson, rapidly washing her hands in a basin of water that Jameela was holding for her, before holding out one of them to the colonel. “How do you do, Rob, my dear boy? I must confess, I am surprised to see you back in Ziatur! I was under the impression that you never returned to a place where you had been before.”

  He laughed. “Well, one is occasionally obliged to alter one’s habits, after all! And I had been so injudicious as to give a promise to Bhupindra Bahadur that I would come back and bring him some new toys to play with.”

  “Well, I think the better of you for it.—Oh, not for bringing him all those cannons, or whatever they are, but for keeping your word to a sick man. He is very happy at your arrival, I understand.”

  “And you have a new helper since I was here last,” said Colonel Cameron, staring with undisguised admiration at Scylla, who, having wrapped both babies in swaddling bands, was now kneeling to hand them to their anxious mother. She looked delightful, her blue dress protected by a voluminous white apron, with its bands wound twice around her tiny waist and her curls tied up in a piece of white muslin, so that her long slender neck and charming blunt profile were displayed to the best advantage. She was laughing at the young mother’s astonishment, as she displayed the identical likeness of the babies, her short upper lip crinkled in amusement, revealing brilliantly white teeth.

  “Why did I never see her before?” demanded Cameron.

  “Oh, she and her brother were two dusty, skinny children when you were here last, in the schoolroom learning their lessons with Winthrop; you would not have come across them.”

  Scylla’s laughter was infectious; the colonel laughed too as he looked at her.

  “Pray, what is amusing you, Robert?” tartly inquired Miss Musson.

  “The complete
unsuitability of your young colleague, my dear Miss Amanda.”

  “What can you mean?” she demanded. “Priscilla is a perfectly good girl in every way—sensible, hardworking, and kindhearted, not to mention quite devoted to that brother of hers. I allow, she is a little too independent—” Miss Musson had been slightly shocked by the tiger episode, though, as was her wont, she had forborne to scold Scylla.

  “Also a rogue and an adventurer and a femme fatale,” Cameron said. “Take her to court in Paris or London, dress her up in style, and she’d have gallants by the score, slicing each other to ribbons, shooting each other full of holes, for the sake of that turned-up nose and that absurd upper lip.”

  “Fiddle-dee-dee!” said Miss Musson.

  “There is no fiddle-dee-dee about it, I assure you! And you must allow, Miss Amanda, that I know what I am talking about.”

  Miss Musson gave him a glance full of disapproval. She did indeed know Colonel Cameron’s character very well, having, on his previous visit, cured him of a flux—an ailment which notoriously eliminates restraints in those afflicted by it; there was little she had not heard about his rakish, wandering existence, and nothing to earn her commendation.

  “In that case,” she remarked, “it is just as well that the dear child remains here with me in Ziatur, where she can come to no harm. The local people find nothing at all to admire in her looks, I can tell you; in fact the ladies of the palace call her Monkey Face.”

  “Poor dear!” said Colonel Cameron, laughing again. “But I am not certain that you are right, Miss Amanda, in believing that she can come to no harm here. To tell the truth, I am concerned for her safety, and yours too. That is why I dropped in to see you. I am uneasy about the state of affairs up at the palace.”