Island of Bones caw-3

by Imogen Robertson

  She was glad to be alone. It was a luxury to take in the morning without the pressing awareness of orders to be given, letters written or visitors to be endured. The scents of the woodland reminded her of the copse on the edge of her lawns at Caveley, though it was subtly different here. Other bird cries, a variety in the grasses; the change in the soil and shape of the land from Sussex was expressed in such ways and it gave her pleasure to note them. Such pleasure, in fact, that when she came upon the ruins of Gutherscale Hall it was with surprise. She had been examining the flowering mosses at her feet and wondering if Mrs Briggs might know their names, when she looked up and found herself standing before the ghost of the great building. They must have been a very influential family in their time, to judge by the height of the remaining walls, but now nature was busily undoing their works. It was remarkable how it was so reduced in only, Harriet bit her lip, sixty years. There had to have been a fire. She had seen a great house burn in the summer of 1780 and knew how quick and thorough flames could be. That house, Thornleigh Hall, had since been rebuilt and reborn; here, weather and plant growth had completed what fire had begun, if it had been fire. She began to look for signs of it and saw some dark scarring on the stones. She would ask Crowther.

  It seemed the oldest parts of the building had survived longest. The square pele tower, though broken in places and breeding saplings in its mortar, looked almost intact. To one side of it, a flight of stone stairs made a shallow ascent to where the more modern parts of the mansion house stood. She climbed the flight cautiously. Surely the trees surrounding her were more than thirty years old. Perhaps Sir William had left a ring of old wood around this place, the better to hide from the lake the signs of its former master. She stepped in through the open mouth of the main entrance and looked about her.

  The floors and ceilings were long gone. At intervals halfway up the height of the walls were the hollows of fireplaces. She rebuilt the place in her mind, saw Lady Greta in the fashions of seventy years before sitting by the upper fire with her sewing on her lap and a greyhound at her feet, then smiled at her imaginings.

  There was a sudden beating of wings, and the rough shouts from a murder of crows echoed about the ruined walls. She turned and saw them lifting from the ground where once Lord Greta and his men had drunk and eaten before the main fireplace, and fly into the surrounding trees. Through a break in the wall at the opposite side of the Hall she saw Felix appear, his bow slung over his shoulder and his arrows at his side.

  He lifted his hat and bowed to her. ‘Good morning, Mrs Westerman. You are like myself. I can never lie in bed and wait for my hot chocolate unless I have been at cards till dawn.’

  She was sorry to lose the peace of the place and the pleasures of her fancy, but smiled warmly enough as he walked towards her.

  ‘The crows do not like you, Felix. They did not trouble themselves to fly away as I entered.’

  He shrugged. ‘I am afraid they know me. I brought down a couple in our first week here and since then they have had an eye out for me.’

  ‘Remarkable.’

  ‘The crows’ ability to recognise me, or my ability to bring one down with a bow and arrow?’

  Harriet laughed. ‘Both, I suppose. You must be quite the expert. Were the birds in flight, or was it a surprise attack?’

  He looked a little angry. ‘I would not be so unsporting as to take them on the ground. Though, as you see, they give me no credit for it!’ He looked at where the birds now hunched in the branches above them and Harriet waited for him to speak again. ‘You see I failed to take your advice last night, and now my uncle does not like me,’ he said at last.

  ‘Does that matter to you?’

  He frowned. ‘More than I had thought it might. My own father prefers the brats of his mistress. Perhaps I thought my uncle would like me better. It is a dangerous thing, to feel oneself unloved, Mrs Westerman. One begins to seek affection in unsuitable places.’

  Harriet lifted her eyebrows. ‘Stop being so tragic, Felix. You are too young to carry it off effectively.’

  He gave a tight smile, then said with forced brightness, ‘Have you investigated the pele tower as yet? That was built to last by someone who knew their business. The stairs are a little uneven in places, but it is still possible to climb, if you would like to see it. The platform is intact, though the floors below are gone.’

  Harriet nodded. ‘I should like to. Let us go together. Do you know anything of the history of the building?’

  He ushered her through the low stone arch at the base of the tower; it was immediately cooler in the column of old stone. ‘Your son’s tutor would be a better historian,’ he said, his voice following behind her as she climbed the shallow spiral stairs. ‘He had his nose in the guidebook all evening. But I believe this place was built in the fourteenth century as defence from the Scots’ raiding parties, then when the Greta family grew in importance the building was extended. That would have been in the life of the First Earl, the one whose tomb bred an extra corpse.’

  Harriet’s fingers traced the old stones as she climbed; there was no sign of fire damage here and the steps were smooth, if rather uneven. From time to time an arch appeared. She leaned forward and saw it gave out onto nothing but air shrouded and clouded like a well. The interior walls were spotted in places with ferns of violent green searching for the splashes of sunlight that crawled around the walls as the world turned. She stepped back a little quickly and felt Felix’s hand under her elbow.

  ‘Careful, Mrs Westerman.’

  She nodded and carried on climbing, then, when her heart had steadied a little said, ‘You did not seem pleased to hear that friends of yours have arrived in the area, Felix.’

  ‘I hope I was not rude to Mrs Briggs,’ he said after a long pause. Their voices were low; something in the age of the stone made it natural to speak quietly.

  ‘No, I think only that she was a little disappointed. She wished to please you.’

  Felix sighed. ‘I spotted them in town, and they are not acquaintances likely to win me any credit. A cardsharp and his daughter. I lost money to him in Vienna last year.’

  ‘How strange they should appear here.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Still, I suppose that the beauty of the region is known across Europe.’

  ‘As you say.’

  It was clear that Felix wished to say no more, so Harriet fell silent in her turn and saved her breath for the climb. Where the staircase broke into daylight at the top, the world seemed white with light. As she reached it, she hesitated, wondering how far to trust the stone flags at her feet. She looked back at Felix behind her in the gloom. He smiled up at her encouragingly from the shadows.

  ‘It is safe enough near the door, Mrs Westerman. Only avoid the western corner.’

  She edged out. The world seemed to sway somewhat around her, and she put a hand behind her back to steady herself. From either side of the door through which she had emerged extended a lower crenellated wall. At intervals along each was set the sculpted seal of Lord Greta’s house: a pair of arms raised as if growing from the stone, the elbows crooked outwards, and the hands holding between them a fat-faced sun with a bloom of carved, petal-like rays and a beatific smile. The effect was rather disturbing. It looked as if the stone wardens had lifted their beaming heads free from their shoulders. At the western corner of the tower their regular pattern became broken and unsure, and the gap told the story of one watcher fallen, crashing down through the flags. Felix was observing her.

  ‘It fell all the way to the bottom of the tower. I found it there on my first exploration of this place. The arms are broken, but the sun face is still there.’

  Harriet nodded.

  ‘You are nervous of heights, Mrs Westerman?’ He had come through the doorway and was now leaning casually on one of the merlons.

  ‘It varies, Felix. Sometimes I am bold, at others my balance appears to fail me.’

  He stared down gloomily over the wall. H
arriet gripped the stone behind her.

  ‘You don’t feel the temptation to throw yourself into the void then?’ he said, without looking at her.

  ‘No, I do not,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘Only a little weakness.’ With great effort she turned herself to look at the view. A falling run of trees, a glimmer of lake and the crags beyond. She felt her knees shake and her hands were white on the stonework.

  ‘A little weakness. .’ His voice was soft. ‘What do you conclude from the snuffbox, Mrs Westerman? Do you think my grandfather was involved in the disposal of the body? What do you think you will learn from that poor mangled corpse?’

  She looked round quickly and the world lurched a little. He was gazing directly at her.

  ‘It is impossible to say. I think that is a matter best discussed with Crowther, Felix. When he is ready to tell you something, he shall. Or he will inform your mother and you shall hear of it through her.’ He crossed easily towards her and stood rather close; she felt him examining her and the effect the height was having on her. ‘The view is charming,’ she said, ‘but this weakness has me today. Will you give me your arm, and help me down, Felix?’

  His eyes were resting on her white fingers. ‘Do you think you have found new mysteries, Mrs Westerman? Are you and my uncle going to bring some new scandal to light, to taint our family name still further? It seems hardly fair that you should know so much of our business before my mother and I. One day I shall be Lord Keswick, you know.’ He was very close to her now, and his gaze moved slowly over her face and form. ‘Unless my uncle marries a woman who could bear him a son. Then I should be lost. It would be dreadful to be lost.’

  Harriet gritted her teeth, released her grip on the stonework and forced herself to take a step forward, making him move out of her way.

  ‘If you shall not give me your arm, I shall walk unaided.’ She stepped towards the doorway, hoping the trembling that seemed to run up and down her limbs was invisible to him. As her hand touched the stone doorframe she heard him laugh. He took hold of her elbow again and spoke in his usual easy tone.

  ‘No, I shall certainly be your staff and rod, Mrs Westerman. I am sure my uncle will tell us all in due course.’

  She hesitated, but looking into the gloom of the staircase allowed him to take her arm, and with one hand on the central column began to walk down at his side. Going down was far more uncomfortable than climbing, but Felix began to chatter happily about his hunting in a boastful, boyish manner. The memory of his closeness on the roof began to seem less threatening as they descended, but she kept the memory of his words, and turned them over like coloured stones in her mind as he rattled on.

  Breakfast at Silverside was an informal meal. The household helped themselves from the warming platters to local bacon and good coffee from the tall silver pot. Mrs Briggs did no more than greet her guests before disappearing into the house to review the arrangements for her garden party. The Vizegrafin took her breakfast in her rooms, and Crowther retreated into his newspaper. Stephen and Mr Quince competed in their enthusiasm to be off and exploring. Harriet ate with an appetite that surprised her, and by the time the household had gone their separate ways, the crows and her feeling of weakness on the rooftop seemed more part of her dreams than her reality.

  Hetty Briggs was writing at the desk in her bedroom when she heard the door below her open and close, and looked out to see Mrs Westerman and Crowther step into the morning air. She liked Mrs Westerman for herself, but also had a sense of fellow-feeling with her. It had taken many years for Mrs Briggs to lose the notion of being an impostor in her own home. She looked at the comfortable and elegant establishment of which she was mistress, and would think of the bare and cold cottage in which she had been raised. People saw her as a curiosity too. She knew the polish she had acquired over the years sometimes came as a shock to those who knew her background and were meeting her for the first time. It made them uneasy, as if their own maid had just married a duke. They expected her to sound like her cook and have the manners of a street-hawker. They would watch her suspiciously, waiting for some sign of her birth to make itself apparent — just as, she supposed, they were always examining Harriet’s cuffs for old bloodstains.

  Knowing Mrs Westerman and Crowther were about to begin their examination of the body, she sighed and wished luck to their retreating backs. When the body was found in the tomb on St Herbert’s Island it seemed only right to Mrs Briggs that it should be brought to Silverside Hall, and that when Mr Sturgess and the Vizegrafin had been returned to the shore, she should remain to accompany the bones back across the lake herself. Her boatman returned with linens to lift the fragile remains clear of the tomb, and as she watched her workmen shift the body onto the cloth from its cold dry home, she had felt herself start like an anxious mother. She tried to remember if she had heard the snuffbox fall. It must have been worked loose in the tomb itself as the sheet was passed under the body. She thought of it, the flesh of a man returning to earth under the steady gaze of Falcon Crag, becoming less and less a man, more and more at one with the rotting leaves that lapped about the stone flags, the broken reeds.

  There had been a peace to their return across the water. Her boatman at the oars, herself in the prow, the body decently wrapped and laid on a plank in the middle of the boat. She watched Catbells rear up to greet them in the dusk, the haze above it touched blood-red and purple, the lake gathering and shifting the colours into slate and gold as the boat glided away from the Island of Bones. The boatman had asked her what was to be done further, and she thought at once of the old brewery. Her house had no chapel of its own, but this outhouse had the calm and high windows she felt somehow the corpse must have become accustomed to on St Herbert’s Island. She had closed the door and locked it with her own hands, and promised the body a place in Crosthwaite Church in due course, and wondered what words she would ask to be carved, to mark where it lay. They came to her out of the silence as if spoken by the hills themselves.

  ‘“For the Son of Man is come to save that which was lost”,’ she said aloud, and the curlew cried out in reply on the fell above her.

  She had returned to her house, and as she entered the hall, she smiled at the familiar furnishings, the bright grin of her maid as she took her shawl. She shook the sadness off her shoulders like rainwater, and went to her library to begin her express to Mr Crowther. Let him and his friend see if they could bring this lost man home.

  Now she continued her letter to her husband who would be fussing over his vines in the heat of the Portuguese summer. To her description of her new guests, and their thoughts on the snuffbox, she added a description of Harriet’s fan.

  My love, the image made me think of nothing so much as dear Casper Grace, though he is no musician, of course. And if Casper wanted he could sleep in a warm bed every night and feast all day. He has the Black Pig, and I know he is well paid for the services he gives to the people, yet he wanders the hills in plain cloth and takes Mr Askew’s pennies for his carvings. I mention it because I have heard rumours that our good Mr Sturgess has had some piece of bad business and that his housekeeper hardly dares ask for further credit from the butcher. Mr Postlethwaite told me even this morning that he has sent both housekeeper and maid away to save on their wages. Do you think we might be able to offer him some assistance without causing him embarrassment? He has been a good neighbour to us since he arrived. How strange to think a smart gentleman like him rides about on his own horses without the money to buy good meat, while a man who might buy his own house and furnish it sleeps in the old charcoalburners’ lean-tos like a beggar. Do tell me what you think, my dear, in your next. For the moment I shall continue to invite him to our table as often as I can. Now there is Mr Gribben coming up the path to ask me any number of questions on the arrangement of the tables, and Miriam I know has a dozen questions from Cook.

  II.2

  They had left the breakfast room together, and as they stepped out of the house, Harriet tho
ught she felt Crowther flinch at her side. She could see nothing to alarm them, only the broad sweep of the landscape rearing up on the far side of the lake, and the lawn being prepared for the party. A number of trestle tables were being set out, and the large man Harriet recognised as the coachman of Silverside was setting up an archery target by the lake. ‘What is it, Crowther?’

  ‘Nothing,’ he said with a frown, but then lifted his cane to point towards a place on the flank of the far hills. ‘Only, when I was a boy there were woods there. Great oaks. There were more at the head of the lake in Crow Park. When I was very young the village boys could cross from one side to the other without touching the ground. My father sold the timber shortly after he purchased it. It was strange, but for a moment I expected the woods to be there again.’

  ‘Did you play there with your brother?’

  He lowered the cane to the gravel path in front of them with a snort. ‘No, madam. I do not remember ever playing with Addie. Though once or twice he forced me to act in some nonsense play. I refused once, and he tore up some drawings of mine of which I had been very proud. Luckily I was no actor, so he did not ask again. We did not ever have a close bond, even at that time.’

  ‘You were a solitary child.’

  ‘I cannot believe that surprises you, Mrs Westerman. The events of 1750 did not change me. They simply confirmed in me what I was.’ He looked down at her with a slight smile. ‘I hope you have not been imagining all this time I was the sort of creature my nephew appears to be, until my father’s murder and my brother’s execution drove me into my current reclusive character. You are not so foolishly romantic.’

  Harriet almost blushed. ‘No. But having heard you say that. . Crowther, was there a sense of freedom when you sold the estate and sent off your sister to Ireland? Were you relieved? Did you ever have any love of this place at all?’