by Deryn Lake
‘Melior Mary!’
‘But that is what it is, isn’t it? Year in, year out — patient but aggrieved.’ She turned to look out of the window. ‘Unless there is love, Mother. Unless there is passion to turn day-to-day living into joy.’
Elizabeth regarded her in silence. There seemed no reply that she could make. Instead she said, as she saw Melior Mary give a small salute with her hand to someone who walked within the garden below, ‘Who is that?’
‘Only Mitchell.’
It was a relief to change the subject and Elizabeth answered her too quickly, ‘I cannot state that I altogether care for the man. He seems to me a deal too taciturn.’
Again that laugh that had no joy in it.
‘Oh, he can speak enough when the occasion demands.’
‘I think I would prefer it if he returned to Rome.’
‘He won’t do that, Mother. For he does know the meaning of love and loyalty. He would have died for the Earl of Nithsdale. Now the focus of his attention is me.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘Nothing! Nothing that need give you any alarm. He is my dog, my slave, my right hand — call it what you will.’
Elizabeth sat down.
‘I had thought that role to be played out by Matthew Banister.’
The look that turned on her was as cold as winter frost.
‘Then you thought wrong, Mother.’
With a gesture of pushing something away Melior Mary also sat and — obviously determined to be questioned no further — said, ‘I am parched for tea. May we begin without Sibella?’
‘Sibella will not be joining us. She is indisposed.’
‘Oh?’
There was a meeting of eyes; Elizabeth’s suddenly and strangely defensive, Melior Mary’s sharp and unrelenting.
‘What is wrong? How long has she been ill?’
Elizabeth adjusted the folds of her dress.
‘She has not been herself of late. But this present malady seems only to have occurred today.’
The pause between them was alive with questions that Elizabeth had never considered.
‘I wonder what the trouble can be.’ Melior Mary’s voice would not have disturbed a sleeping child.
‘I don’t know. Melior Mary why do you stare so? What are you thinking?’
The heiress of Sutton Place looked to the tips of her nails, the pleat above her knee.
‘Nothing, Mother. Nothing at all.’
But it was a ‘nothing’ that meant the reverse, and in the enforced silence that followed two of the maid servants bearing aloft the silver tray and all the accompanying sugars and spices that went to the serving of tea, Elizabeth found herself of a sudden counting upon her fingers. Joseph had last been in England at the beginning of April — now it was September. Could it be? But if he had left Sibella in that condition surely some visible sign of it would be showing?
She decided to be direct and, fixing her daughter with a very firm look, she said, ‘Has Sibella confided in you? Come, you may tell me. If there is to be a babe at Sutton Place I should dearly love to know of it.’
‘A babe?’ said Melior Mary, all shock and innocence. ‘Why, Mother, that was not the impression I conveyed, I trust. But now you speak of it — perhaps.’
Elizabeth had never been more honest than when she said, ‘Look, my girl, do not mince with me. That is what you implied — and you know it.’
Melior Mary dropped her gaze.
‘Perhaps I did. You are wiser than I. If my thoughts bubbled over themselves and the truth came out — then you would know.’
Elizabeth’s pause was only momentary as she answered, ‘There is only one way to find out the answer — and that is to ask Sibella direct.’
*
In his room above the stable block Matthew Banister wept. He wept for the anonymity of his life, for the fact that he had known neither the love of mother, strictness of father, nor the companionship of brother or sister. He wept for the division of his heart between Melior Mary and Sibella. He wept for the fact that he had finally been led to betray them both.
If he could only have understood; been able to speak to Sibella; tried to comprehend what took place in that remorseless blaze of moonlight. But that was not allowed him. As if a play had ended and everyone had acted out their roles to the full, Sibella seemed no longer to have any time for him. The Midsummer ritual had turned to ashes in both their mouths.
And, as if she guessed what happened that night, Melior Mary’s unremitting cruelty pursued him like a hound of Hell. Somehow, he felt sure, she knew that he and Sibella had been lovers.
A step on the stairs raised his hopes for a minute but it was not Melior Mary but the scar-faced Scotsman who stood in the doorway.
‘What do you want with me, Mitchell? I am ill. Leave me in peace.’
‘You’re no ill. You’ve been caught out. You had Joseph Gage’s wife in your bed and Melior Mary saw you.’
Hyacinth sat up.
‘Then she does know?’
‘Aye, and she came running down the stairs and wept as if her heart would burst. I could kill you for it.’
For answer Hyacinth said, ‘I don’t suppose you know anything of compulsion, Mitchell.’
The eye that glittered where the livid scar ran down was fierce, as it fixed itself on Matthew.
‘Aye, I know of it,’ he answered savagely. ‘I’ve seen men compelled to kill others, inch by inch; I’ve seen raiders compelled to swing babes aloft and crunch their skulls down on pointed rocks; I’ve seen soldiers compelled to rape women until their legs were broken and their wombs torn out...’
‘For the love of Christ be silent. I spoke of magic’s compulsion — something you would never understand.’
‘I am a Celt, Banister. I know of magic — and of the thin line that divides good and evil. I think that somehow evil is at work here.’
Hyacinth’s long suppressed anger flared.
‘Then if that is so, it is not of my making.’
The scarred face turned towards him expressionlessly.
‘Whatever force holds sway is old and rooted in the earth. But from wherever it comes, my only care is that Missie remains protected. As far as I am concerned the rest of you can go hang.’
Hyacinth stood up to face him.
‘A fine credo! Well do your worst then. Mount guard over your Missie — who might let you kiss her foot in exchange for your life — and be damned to you. It is true that the Manor of Sutton, its lords and heirs are accursed — fight off that!’
‘I come from a country, laddie, full of strange tales — a secret room in the Castle of Glamis in which dwells a monster born to the family; phantom bagpipers, beasts in lochs — oh yes, I believe in many things. But most of all, I believe in the hands of Mitchell and the power of my fists.’
‘They won’t help you in the face of a curse!’
Mitchell made a sound of contempt and was gone without a backward look.
*
It was the end of September, 1719 — a day of seasonal mist swirling so coldly that Sutton Place lay entombed amongst the vapour. Nothing moved anywhere and it did not push fancy too far to imagine that the house was cut off from the rest of the world, the inhabitants forced into a confinement of unbearable closeness. With each passing day the tension in their relationships, one to the other, had grown tauter. They were like maypole dancers whose ribbons had woven incorrectly; their only hope to unthread and start again if collision were to be avoided.
John — the least affected — sat this day in his study before a largely stacked fire, a glass of port at his one hand, his mass of share certificates, at which he was glancing at random, in the other. Encouraged and advised by Joseph — whose fortune had been quadrupled by his investment in Mississippi stock — John had bought liberally into the South Sea Company. Immense profits were anticipated from South American trade and, so far, John’s dividends had been most rewarding. In fact so strong was the South Sea Compa
ny — incorporated in 1711 — that to buy in these days cost £100 a share. But he and Joseph were already situated comfortably, between them accounting for a high percentage of stock ownership.
And, on this same day, Elizabeth and Melior Mary sat on either side of the library fire, each with her nose in a book. Beneath a portentous cover that bore the inscription Mrs Herron’s Manual of Petit Point, Elizabeth sighed over the collected works of Alexander Pope, whilst Melior Mary was at far less pains to hide The Mad Abbess of Rookwood beneath the sleeve of Fauna and Flora Peculiare to Surrey. Occasionally one or other of them would throw a log on the fire thus obviating the need to constantly ring the bell. In this way the greyness of the day left them unaffected, and it was only Elizabeth’s saying, ‘Is Sibella resting?’ that brought them back to the realities of Sutton Place.
‘I believe so,’ answered Melior Mary, scarcely raising her eyes.
‘Well, with the child due in four months she must take full care.’
‘Yes.’
Just that. A flat one-worded response and a faint rising of the dark brows. But enough to set Elizabeth thinking that the situation was odd indeed. For a woman who was to bear a child in January Sibella still remained very small. She — Elizabeth — would have thought her ward more likely to give birth in the spring judging by her appearance. But, of course, that was not possible because poor Joseph had left England on April 23. And thoughts of that made her say, ‘You know your father has heard from the Ambassador? It seems that your Uncle will be back any day.’
Melior Mary cleared her throat.
‘He must love Sibella very much to stay away until now; until his appearance had improved sufficiently for her to see him. Any other man would have come flying home to his wife regardless if he be a veritable skeleton, in my opinion.’
Elizabeth looked up quickly. She often got the impression that Melior Mary liked nothing better these days than implied cruelties with Sibella as the subject. Her verbal knife would twist and turn like a snake and yet, in actuality, not one thing she said was truly amiss. So much so that Elizabeth wondered if she imagined it and the fault lay in her own mind.
‘Joseph does love Sibella, it’s true,’ she answered slowly. ‘But I believe it is in a very protective way. I can imagine him hiding until he is once more the great man — the great rakehell, if you like — that she has always known.’
Melior Mary’s voice shook very slightly as she answered, ‘It must be a wonderful thing — to have this capacity to arouse such depth of feeling in others.’
And just for a moment she was vulnerable, as weak as she had been when the malevolence had tormented her. Elizabeth, misunderstanding, rose from her chair and went to her daughter’s side so that she must kneel down beside her and put her arms around her waist.
‘My darling, you shall have such love,’ she said. ‘It is a shame, in one way, that Sibella — your sister—’ Did she feel the body harden and pull away or was it only her imagination? — should have married so long before you, but you have still to see your eighteenth birthday. You will break so many hearts, my dearest.’
Again that strangely gruff little voice said, ‘I have no wish to inflict pain upon others. But Mother...’, the great eyes turned on Elizabeth fiercely, ‘swear that you will not make me marry just for the appeasement of neighbours and gossips. Or so that Sutton Place might have a man about it. I would rather stay an old maid than have to compromise.’
‘An old maid indeed!’
‘Don’t laugh at me. Promise that I shall never have to enter a loveless match.’
‘Very well, I promise.’
Only then did Elizabeth sense the girl grow calm and feel able, after stroking the silver hair a while, to return to her place beside the hearth. But above her head, in what was left of the Long Gallery, another soul was in torment. Shivering with cold, for no fires were lit now that the great room was so little in use, Sibella trudged back and forth in the silence and the strange dim light.
Beneath her clasped hands the baby that — had she spoken the truth — should have been leaping with life by now, lay still as the tomb. The most terrible — and yet the most predictable — of all things had happened to Sibella. In that wonderful, ecstatic conjoining of bodies; in the wicked, joyful thrust with which Matthew Banister had claimed her as his own; in the shared culmination which they had enjoyed without shame, a child had been conceived. Hyacinth’s seed had sprung within her and she had welcomed it. Only now, with the magic of that night nothing but a memory, did the shame eat at her spirit. She had betrayed Joseph Gage — one of the truest hearts ever born.
She had reached the end of the gallery and was about to turn back when she hesitated. What made her climb through the small hole in the partition she never knew. But climb through it she did and was not altogether surprised to see that she was not alone in the room that had been made by the division. Outlined against the windows where Rose Weston had watched for the messenger bearing the tidings of Francis’s execution, where Catherine Weston had dreamed of her love for Sir John Rogers, where Lady Weston had sat with her maids watching for that very same Catherine to appear, was a gaunt figure. It turned as Sibella came and raised one thin hand to its face. There was no mistaking its haggard splendid beauty. It was Amelia — her mother.
Despite the fact that Sibella had loved her, despite the fact that she was at one with things supernatural, she could not move a step. She knew that she must be in the direst danger if her mother had taken the immense leap from the darkness to come to her. Yet even as she watched, the spectre was fading, melding into the mullioned windows as if it had, after all, been only a trick of the light.
Sibella found the movement in her limbs returned and involuntarily took several paces forward. But there was nothing. Her outstretched hand touched the glass and the moulding of the window sill. And then as if the history of all those who had stood before her was a compulsion, Sibella found herself gazing out over what, on a clear day, would have been a fine view of forest and parkland.
Strange mist floated past her face. She thought that she was lost in the sky and that she looked down upon a grey sea out of which a great red dragon was convoluting its way towards Sutton Place. And then she was suddenly alert, all attention. Very dimly, almost invisible in the fog, she saw that a cavalcade was indeed on its way towards the manor house. And the scarlet and gilt coach could mean only one thing — Joseph was coming home.
She forgot everything as she clambered back through the partition and, so it seemed to her, traversed the vast space without touching the floor at all. Then down the Grand Staircase, through the Great Hall, to wrench and tug at the bolts of the Middle Enter. Startled, the major domo appeared and then Elizabeth and Melior Mary. But she cared nothing for any of them.
The door was open and she was running out into the mist, her arms outstretched. And then, just for a second, she stopped in her tracks; conjured from nowhere, apparently, Matthew Banister stood before her. He had sought her out at last.
‘Sibella,’ he said in an urgent undertone, ‘for God’s sake speak to me. I can’t go on. I have been cast out by both you and Melior Mary.’
‘Hyacinth,’ she answered, ‘what we did was wrong. It is best forgotten by us both.’
A wave of sickness from the child that he had implanted within went over her — but she stood her ground.
‘It must be,’ she said, ‘for the sake of us all.’
His beautiful face was within an inch of hers so that she saw every detail of eye placing, of colouring, of the spring of hair on brow and temple.
‘Damn you, Sibella,’ he said through gritted teeth. ‘You have used me ill. How can such a thing ever be forgot? Go to Joseph then! You’ll hear no more from me.’
The wild blue eyes had blurred with anger and she wanted then to take him to his rightful place in her arms, and hold him like that until all her life — and his — had wound down to total peace. But from out of the fog came the sound of carriages and
then halting wheels and banging doors; and then foolish, silly, beloved, crazy high heels came clip-clopping over the cobbles.
‘Joseph!’ she called.
‘Damme, Sibella. Think I’ll go back to Italy. Damn foggy this country.’
And there he was, thinner than she remembered, more lined about the eyes, but still Joseph — in a brand new brocade suit of the latest style, with a curling wig beneath his tricorne and a great satin bow on his cane.
‘Zoonters, I...’ he started, taking a mincing step forward. But he could not go on. ‘Oh Sibella,’ he said. ‘I never thought to see you again. And I love you so much. God help me — but I do.’
And with that he took her against his heart and wept like a child as Brother Hyacinth turned on his heel and walked off alone through the greyness of that dismal day.
14
In the early February afternoon the cry of a new-born infant seemed to wail thinly in the corridors of Sutton Place. No ‘Here I am world, come see me stretch my toes’, as there had been in the introductory howls of Giles Rogers — the first baby to arrive in the mansion house; nor the lusty cheerful shouts of Henry Weston — son of Sir Francis and Rose and the first heir to be born within the walls. Nor, indeed, the persistence of Melior Mary’s cries as she had greeted the house that was her inheritance. No, these poor little gasps sounded tired and dismal, as if their perpetrator had no energy or will to fight for his survival.
In the darkened room that had, centuries ago, belonged to Sir Richard and Lady Weston the fragile figure of Sibella lay on the great four-poster bed like a wax effigy; while in the crib at her feet her minute son seemed merely to be a toy. That either of them would survive another thirty minutes was unlikely and as he listened to the mother’s feeble heartbeat the unfortunately named, but brilliant, Dr William Smellie — brought especially from London at the cost of several hundred guineas by Joseph Gage — shook his head.