“What do you know of Lucy?” It was the doctor. He did not sound angry or suspicious; he spoke calmly. Affection for him rose in me. He was the one, I realized in a flash of understanding, who would enlighten us at last.
Jamie faced him squarely. “Lucy McAllister was my aunt. She was Grandmother’s younger daughter, Mother’s sister. Cat and I went into the cave and found the box. We know that she ran away, more than twenty years ago, to meet a Frenchman.”
I heard Mrs McAllister gasp, and her teacup fell from her hand. Hot tea spilled over her skirt, but she took no notice. “What utter nonsense! Hamish, tell them they are quite wrong!”
But the doctor did not reply to her. “What cave?” he asked Jamie. “What box?”
“The cave that was inaccessible for so long, Father. On the glenside. The slide moved the tree, and we got in. There was a box hidden there, full of papers about Lucy. And photographs. Your wedding photograph. Why have you kept Lucy a secret all these years?”
Mrs McAllister had risen and was standing before the fire, holding the corner of the mantelpiece for support. Her face was red and her chin trembled. She gave her son-in-law a look full of meaning. My conviction that the doctor held the key to the mystery increased. But I, meanwhile, was in possession of some information no one knew I had.
“Doctor, if I may…”
“What do you wish to say, Catriona?” He had remained sitting in the fireside chair; as I stood there beside Jamie, I was looking down on him. I could see the balding spot on the crown of his head, and was reminded of my father, whose hair had thinned in exactly the same place.
“I know that Lucy had a baby, but it died.”
Mrs McAllister uttered a shocked cry, almost a shriek. Her hand went to her throat. “Lucy never had a baby!” she declared breathlessly. “Do you not think her own mother would have known if she did? The suggestion is outrageous, and I insist you take it back, Miss Catriona!”
Doctor Hamish’s head snapped back and he stared stonily up at me. “How the devil can you know this, child?”
“Cat, what is going on?” asked Jamie almost at the same time.
I felt very awkward. “Perhaps you are aware, Doctor, that someone else in the house knows the secret,” I said. “And, in view of recent events, you will not blame that person for betraying it.”
“But I don’t understand!” complained Jamie. “We know Lucy ran away and we know she died. But there was nothing in that box about a baby, and my grandmother denies there ever was one!”
“And I say again, there was not!” cried Mrs McAllister. “You are my only grandchild, Jamie, dead or alive!”
Doctor Hamish lowered his head and sighed. It was a long, shuddering, soul-shaking sigh. The sigh of a man cornered, exhausted, and no longer able to fight. In it I heard twenty-one years of pent-up lies, secrets and pretence, stretched to breaking-point. The hour had indeed come.
“If you please, Jean,” he said to his mother-in-law, “sit down. I wish you to listen to what I have to say. It will distress you, for which I am sorry. But I cannot bear this burden any longer. Now that Anne is gone and these young people have discovered Lucy’s existence, there is no point in this charade any more. I will confess the truth.”
Mrs McAllister was very near to tears. I felt profoundly sorry for her. To have lost her husband and both her daughters was tragic enough, but to have had a grandchild she knew nothing about, and who had also died, was truly affecting. She sat down. Removing her hat, she rested her head against the back of the chair, and waited. Jamie, his body rigid with expectation, remained standing, his hand still locked in mine. My thoughts filled with Lucy: her bedraggled pink dress, the beseeching look in her eyes, her youth and fragility. She could not be present in the room, and yet she was.
“When Lucy disappeared, just before Christmas 1887,” began the doctor, “it was to elope with a Frenchman. I do not recall his name.”
“His name was Matthieu de Villiers,” said Mrs McAllister unsteadily. “I found letters, after Lucy had gone away. It was I who put them in the box.”
“But when she returned,” continued Doctor Hamish, “it was not quite as you think, Jean. She came back a few days before I told you she had. On 25th January 1889, in fact – the day Jamie was born. You were away at the time, visiting your friend Mrs Seddon, in Yorkshire.”
Mrs McAllister nodded distractedly. “I have not thought about Eliza Seddon for years,” she murmured.
Jamie’s grasp on my hand had relaxed. Slowly, feeling for the sofa behind him, he sat down. He did not take his eyes from his father’s face. I lowered myself beside him, ready to do whatever he wished.
“That night,” said the doctor, staring into nothing, seeing his memories, “the weather was wet. It had been raining for days; the ground was sodden. Anne, who was in the late stages of pregnancy, was resting in her drawing room while I worked in the library. I had been concerned for several hours that her pains were beginning, so I preferred her to remain near me rather than go to bed. About seven o’clock, she called to me to say she thought she had heard something, a noise at the window. I tried to calm her, but she insisted I go out to see what it was. It was Burns Night; MacGregor was at the pub in the village, Bridie was in the kitchen. I assumed Anne had heard a bird fly into the windowpane, or some such thing, but I was wrong.
“On the ground beneath the drawing-room window, soaked through, sat Lucy. She was half dead with cold and hunger, wearing only a silk gown and a thin cape.” His eyes flicked to my face, but there was no accusation or hostility in them. “You are correct, Catriona, she was about to have a child. Her time was very near, so I did not wait for an explanation, but carried her indoors, wrapped her in a blanket and laid her in the tower bedroom. You see, Bridie was at that time sleeping in the small room next to the room that is now Jamie’s, in case Anne needed her in the night, and Lucy did not wish her to hear anything. As you know, the tower room is far away from the other bedrooms, and has the thickest walls. Lucy implored me to deliver her child there and have it taken away immediately. She was so ashamed, she did not wish you, Jean, or anyone else, to know of the baby.”
“In that, then, she succeeded,” said Mrs McAllister faintly.
The doctor looked at her bleakly. “But I was less expert in obstetrics than I am now. As I had feared, Anne’s time came upon her that same night, and I could not manage the labours of two women at the same time, especially since Anne’s proved a difficult one. So I had to swear Bridie to secrecy and beg her assistance.”
“And what of MacGregor?” asked Mrs McAllister. “Does he know that my daughter gave birth in the tower room?”
“Aye. It was not until the next day that she died. But he and Bridie promised faithfully never to speak of it.”
They had kept that promise. They had spoken of the events of that night only to each other, until now.
“When you came back from Mrs Seddon’s, Jean,” continued the doctor, “you will recall I met you with the terrible news that Lucy had returned, but had died of a fever. I had by that time signed her death certificate, and had it countersigned by Doctor Skerran, who was a young man then, and very busy with his practice in Dunkeith. He did not come over to examine Lucy’s body. Forgive me” – his voice shook – “but I did not tell you the exact truth. Lucy did die of a fever, but a particular kind of fever, that afflicts women who have just given birth. It came on in the early hours. Anne, who had also just given birth, was sleeping deeply. And so was I.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his face full of regret. “I wish I had not been,” he said softly. “I wish Lucy had not lain in the tower, so far away from our bedroom. But I was exhausted. If she cried out, I did not hear her. Poor Lucy had some hours of delirium, during which I did everything I could, but she fell into unconsciousness and died the next day.”
Mrs McAllister was weeping openly. Without her hat she appeared smaller, and I noticed that her hair was coming loose at the nape of her neck. “Oh, Hamis
h, how could you not tell me she had a child, when even the servants knew?” she wailed. “Even though it did not live, how could you keep it from me?”
There was a pause. I could hear Jamie’s breathing and Mrs McAllister’s soft sobs. Then Hamish spoke in a steady voice. “We must go back to that Burns Night, when both Anne and Lucy gave birth to their babies. Lucy’s was born at eleven o’clock, and Anne’s half an hour afterwards.” He put his head in his hands. His words were indistinct, but audible. “And this is where you are wrong, Catriona. It was not Lucy’s son that never drew breath. It was Anne’s.”
Jamie was still. Absolutely still, like a statue. His grandmother’s features were blanketed by shock.
Tears came to the doctor’s eyes, but did not fall. “When I told Lucy that my son had died, she begged us to take you, Jamie, and bring you up as our son. She insisted that you should never know she existed. ‘Do not tell him,’ she said, ‘I will go back to Paris. I would rather give him to you than have him brought up by strangers.’” He sighed deeply. “Those were the last words she spoke, except in the distraction of her fever. And so we did as she asked. Anne and I buried our son in Blairguthrie’s woods. The spot is not marked. From that moment on we pretended you were ours, Jamie. And Lucy’s wish was granted. By then, death had taken her. You and she never met.”
It was true, Jamie had never met his mother. But I had. My presence in the room where she had died had summoned her. I had heard her screams and the shrieking of the crows that encircled the tower while she fought with delirium and death. I had seen her, still clad in the dress she had made her way home in, and which she was wearing when she died. In her labour or her illness there had been no time for the niceties of nursing. Her brother-in-law had tended with all his skill, but had failed to save her. Perhaps, years later, by saving the lives of other women and babies, he was still trying to atone for her loss.
The doctor had raised his head and was looking at Jamie anxiously. “I cannot expect your forgiveness, my dearest son, but I hope you understand the depth of our love for you. Anne adored you as you adored her. You were our son in every way but the biological one. And even so, you were Anne’s blood relation, her nephew. And of course, you have always been your grandmother’s true grandson.”
Jamie said nothing. I could not look at him.
“You have your grandmother’s eyes,” said Doctor Hamish. “Lucy was dark like Anne, but your French father was, by Lucy’s account, golden-haired. When she saw you, she expressed the hope that you would be fair like him.”
Jamie, the golden-haired changeling. The faerie child left for another.
The teind to the devil, to repay for the sins of signing an inaccurate death certificate, and burying an unregistered child.
How Anne must have suffered! The summer before Jamie’s birth, my father had visited Drumwithie. Had she fallen in love with him? Had it been another golden-haired child she carried – my father’s? Clearly, her mother suspected as much. Thinking Jamie to be my half-brother, Mrs McAllister had tried to warn me from him, not with the truth – she could never disclose such shameful suspicions – but with snobbishness and contempt.
I could hardly bring myself to imagine Anne’s torment. The nightmare of giving birth to a stillborn son, burying him in secret and losing her sister. Perfectly healthy before, she had been robbed of her peace, and gradually, her sanity. Now, in the final payment, she had died by her own hand. And in doing so, she had revealed the truths that had been hidden for so long. Mrs McAllister now knew her daughters’ secrets and Jamie knew that Doctor Hamish was not his father. But Hamish had always known of his son’s parentage, and still forced him down the path of medicine. The man whose hand I held, whose arm I could feel through his sleeve, whose narrow thigh lay partly covered by my skirt as we sat together among the sofa cushions, was the son of a passionate seventeen-year-old girl and Matthieu de Villiers, a French artist about whom all we knew was his name.
According to the faerie legend, the seven-yearly teind would be broken only when the changeling child found his true love. And I, the outsider, the faerie presence whom Lucy had begged to stay in the room where she had died, and whom Bridie had begged not to leave Jamie, had not fallen in love with my half-brother at all. My half-brother, if he was such, lay in an anonymous grave in the woods beyond the glen.
It was the next day. Jamie and I were lying on our backs in a storm-flattened clearing among the gorse bushes. The sun was out and beat on our faces with welcome, increasingly ferocious heat. We had covered the damp ground with the blanket from Jamie’s sofa.
“Are you happy?” he asked me.
His eyes were closed, his face serene. His hair, now in even greater need of cutting, fell away from his forehead. He looked young and sweet, like a child with no experience of the sadness of the world.
“Happier than I have the right to be,” I told him.
“Everyone has the right to be happy.”
I doubted this, though I did not say so. “But it is hard not to feel guilty about being happy, when so many unhappy things have happened.”
He did not speak or open his eyes, but I could tell by the miniscule movement of his eyebrows that he was interested.
“For instance,” I went on, “when you first said that you cared for me, I was so happy I wanted to dance all over the castle, shouting for joy. During those wonderful days, I simply did not understand how I could feel such happiness when my father had passed away only a month before.”
I was looking at him sideways, noticing the shape of his nose as it pointed at the sky, and the shadow of his lashes on his sun-reddened skin. He still said nothing.
“I loved my father so much, Jamie!” I turned my head back to face the sun and closed my own eyes. “And yet within such a short time, I have found someone new to love. How can that be, that you can love someone with all your heart, yet at the same time give that heart to someone else?”
“It is easy,” he said. “I too have done it, and my mother – that is, the woman who brought me up as her son – is only two days in her coffin.”
I took his hand and we lay there, enclosed in the secret, selfish world of love. Him. Me. Our hands touching. The woollen blanket beneath our heads, the warmth of the sun, our unshakeable conviction of each other’s devotion. I rolled over and laid my head on his chest. My blouse collar began to stick to my neck and my hair grew damp. My cheek was very warm against Jamie’s shirt, but I did not move. If time could stand still, at least for those few minutes, the moment of parting, when he would set off for Edinburgh, and I for Gilchester, could be postponed, and postponed…
“It is too hot out here now. I must go in the shade,” said Jamie at last. With his usual decisiveness he disentangled himself and jumped to his feet. “And I must speak to my father. Get up.”
“What do you wish to speak to him about?” I asked as we folded the blanket.
“Something very important.” He gazed intently into my face, the blanket in his arms, his eyes alight and alert. “Do you honestly think you are going to go back to Bilchester or Dimchester or whatever it’s called, to sit at home and wait? For what? For some ghastly pen-pusher, probably wearing a monocle, to appear and pass your mother’s inspection?”
He set off towards the house. I followed him, trying to keep up, stumbling through the long grass. “But you are going away!”
I could not help it. My voice cracked. Thinking about parting was painful enough, but speaking of it was much worse.
Jamie stopped, turned and stared at me. “I will never leave you, Cat,” he said sternly. “Ever.”
I did not understand. What declaration was he making? That he wished me to stay at Drumwithie? That he intended to stay at Drumwithie himself and not go to study in Edinburgh at all?
“Wait for me,” I begged. “I am too hot and I cannot keep up with you!”
He waited at the bridge. When I was by his side he put his arm around my waist and we entered the house. The vestibule
was cool, and so dark after the brightness outside, I could hardly see where I trod. Jamie tossed the blanket onto a chair and opened the door to the hall. Its high window threw an oblong of sunlight onto the flagstones. At the bottom of the stairs, with her hand on the banister-post, stood Mrs McAllister.
She was hatless; her hair, done in the old-fashioned style with a mass of curls at the front, was still a rich chestnut colour, with only a few streaks of grey. She was dressed in a loose house gown. Last night, Doctor Hamish had refused to allow her to be alone at the Lodge, so she was staying at Drumwithie. She had risen late and had not put on her corset. I suspected that such things as deportment, formal attire and disapproval of modern girls’ behaviour had diminished in importance. But now she had been robbed, albeit temporarily, of her strict demeanour, I was much more inclined to like her.
Her green eyes, dulled by grief and sleeplessness, studied Jamie’s face. She did not hold her hand out for him to kiss. “Where is my box?” she asked.
Jamie went to her side. “How are you this morning, Grandmother? Do you wish to sit down?”
“Where is my box?” she repeated.
“It is still in the cave,” he said, with a glance at me. “But the papers are not inside it. They are upstairs in my sitting room. We have not yet finished looking through them.”
“Retrieve the box,” said Mrs McAllister calmly, “and put the letters back in it. There is no need to look through any more of them. It is finished. Lucy is dead, and buried with her father in the churchyard of St Matthew’s, though her name is not on the headstone. I could not even grant her that dignity, may God forgive me.”
Jamie hesitated. “Grandmother,” he said with a sideways glance at me, “may we ask why you put the photographs and letters in the box, and hid it?”
Mrs McAllister sighed. “I was ashamed that Lucy had run away and lived in sin with that man. I was indignant that she had put him before me, and Anne, and everything she knew. I had always encouraged her in her artistic endeavours – I even took her to London to try to sell her paintings. It was hardly my fault that no one bought them.” She paused, and looked at Jamie sorrowfully. “But I could not bear to destroy these things after she died, as they were all I had left of her. It was a very good hiding place, was it not?”
The Devil's Promise Page 18