Ashworth Hall

by Anne Perry

  The six of them set out across the lawn. Emily led the way with Kezia. She tried a conversation but it very quickly became apparent that Kezia did not wish to speak, and Emily allowed it to lapse into a polite silence.

  Eudora took Justine and they followed a few yards behind, a marked contrast to each other: Eudora handsome figured, the light bright in her auburn hair, walking with her head high; Justine very slender, almost thin, her hair black as a crow’s wing, her movements peculiarly graceful, and when she turned in profile to speak, the extraordinary nose.

  Charlotte was left to walk with Iona. It was not something she wished to do, but social duty required it, and loyalty to Emily made it a necessity. She wished she knew the woods better so that they might furnish some subject to discuss. All she could think of was Emily’s warnings not to discuss politics, religion, divorce, or potatoes. Almost everything that came to her mind seemed to lead to one or the other of them. It was better to walk in silence than be reduced to making remarks about the weather.

  She could see Eudora talking to Justine, apparently asking her questions. It was as if she were hungry to learn of a courtship she knew nothing about. Charlotte wondered why Piers had said nothing to her before.

  Some remark about Piers and Justine was on her lips, then she bit it off, realizing romance must now be another forbidden subject. What on earth did one say to a married woman one had surprised in bed with another man only that morning? It was a subject no etiquette manual broached. Presumably, well-bred ladies made sure they never did such a thing. If one should be so unfortunate, or so careless, one pretended it had not happened. But that was not possible when someone was screaming at the top of her lungs.

  A magpie flew across their path just as they reached the end of the lawn and started down the rhododendron walk.

  “Oh, isn’t it beautiful!” Charlotte exclaimed.

  “One for sorrow,” Iona answered.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It is unlucky to see a single magpie,” Iona elaborated. “One should see either a pair or none.”

  “Why?”

  Now Iona looked mystified. “It just … is!”

  Charlotte kept her tone polite and interested. “Unlucky for whom? Do farmers say so, or bird-watchers?”

  “No, for us. It is a …”

  “A superstition?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh, I see. I’m sorry. How silly of me. I thought you were serious.”

  Iona frowned, but said nothing, and Charlotte realized with a jolt that she had been serious. Perhaps she was as much mystic Celt as modern Christian. There was a romantic bravado about her, a recklessness, as if she could see some reality beyond the physical or social world. Perhaps that was the quality in her which had most captured the rather literal-minded Fergal. She must represent for him a realm of magical possibilities, dreams and ideas that had never crossed his thoughts. In a sense he had come newly alive. Charlotte wondered what he gave Iona. He seemed a trifle unyielding. Perhaps it was the challenge. Or perhaps she imagined in him something that was not there?

  She cast about for something else to say. The silence was uncomfortable. She noticed the rich quantities of hips on the wild roses as they entered the woods.

  “A hard winter coming,” Iona said, then flashed a sudden smile. “General knowledge, not superstition!”

  Charlotte laughed, and suddenly they were both easier. “Yes, I’ve heard that too. I’ve never remembered what they were like long enough to see it if was true.”

  “Actually,” Iona agreed, “neither have I. Looking at all those berries, I hope it isn’t.”

  They walked under the smooth trunks of the beeches, the wind in the bare branches overhead, their feet crunching on the carpet of rust and bronze fallen leaves.

  “There are bluebells here in the spring,” Charlotte went on. “They come before the leaves do.”

  “I know,” Iona said quickly. “It’s like walking between two skies ….”

  They accomplished the rest of the journey sharing knowledge of nature, Iona telling her stories from Irish legend about stones and trees, heroes and tragedies of the mystic past.

  They returned in different order, except that Eudora still walked with Justine, still asking about Piers. Emily shot Charlotte a look of gratitude and exchanged Kezia for Iona.

  They saw bright pheasants picking over the fallen grain at the edge of the fields bordering the woods, and Charlotte remarked on them. Kezia answered, but with only a word.

  The sun was low in the west, burning flame and gold. The shadows lengthened across the plowed field to the south, its furrows dark and curving gently over the rise and fall of the land. The wind had increased and the starlings were whirled up like driven leaves against the ragged sky, spreading wide and wheeling back in again.

  The sunset grew even brighter, the clear stretches of sky between the clouds almost green.

  The thought of hot tea and crumpets by the fire began to seem very pleasant.

  Gracie was very preoccupied as she helped Charlotte dress for dinner in the oyster silk gown.

  “It looks very beautiful, ma’am,” she said sincerely, and the magnitude of her admiration for it was in her eyes. Then the moment after she added, “I learned a bit more about why them folks is ’ere today. I ’ope they really can make peace and give Ireland its freedom. There’s bin some terrible wrongs done. I in’t proud o’ bein’ English w’en I hear some o’ their stories.” She put a final touch to Charlotte’s hair, setting the pearl-beaded ornament straight. “Not as I believes ’em all, o’ course. But even if any of ’em is true, there’s bin some awful cruel men in Ireland.”

  “On both sides, I expect,” Charlotte said carefully, regarding her reflection in the glass, but her mind at least half upon what Gracie had said. She looked at Gracie’s small face, pinched now with anxiety and compassion. “They’re working as hard as they can,” she assured her. “And I think Mr. Greville is very skilled. He won’t give up.”

  “ ’E better ’adn’t.” Gracie stopped all pretense of attending to the shawl she had in her hands. “There’s terrible things ‘appenin’ ter all kinds o’ people, old women and children, not just men as can fight. Maybe them Fenians an’ the like is wrong, but they wouldn’t a bin there if’n it weren’t fer us bein’ in Ireland when we got no place there in the beginnin’.”

  “There’s no point in going back to the beginning, Gracie,” Charlotte said levelly. “We probably shouldn’t be here either. Who should? The Normans, the Vikings, the Danes, the Romans? The Scots all came from Ireland in the first place.”

  “No ma’am, the Scots is in Scotland,” Gracie corrected.

  Charlotte shook her head. “I know they are now, but before that the Picts were. Then the Scots came across from Ireland and drove the Picts out.”

  “Where’d they go to, then?”

  “I don’t know. I think maybe they were almost all killed.”

  “Well, if the Scots came from Ireland and took over Scotland”—Gracie was thinking hard—“who’s all in Ireland? Why don’t they get on wi’ each other, like we do?”

  “Because some of the Scots went back again, and by this time they were Protestant and the rest were Catholic. They’d grown very different in the meantime.”

  “Then they shouldn’t oughta gone back.”

  “Possibly not, but it’s too late now. We can’t go forward from anywhere except where we are at the moment.”

  Gracie thought about that for a long time before she conceded it as Charlotte was about to go out of the door.

  Charlotte met Pitt at the bottom of the stairs and was caught by surprise at how pleased she was at the start of admiration in his eyes when he saw her. She felt a heat in her cheeks. He offered his arm, and she took it as she sailed into the withdrawing room.

  Dinner was again uncomfortable, but eased in some part by the addition of Piers and Justine, which gave everyone something to talk about other than their own interest
s, or trivia, which were embarrassingly meaningless.

  There were too few of them at the table to separate all those between whom there was friction. It was a hostess’s nightmare. There was order of precedence to consider. People might be insulted if one did not. If there was no title or office to dictate, then there was age. And yet one could not sit Fergal either next to or opposite Lorcan McGinley, nor could one sit him close to Iona, for reasons which were excruciatingly clear to some and quite unknown to others. Similarly, one could not sit Kezia near to her brother. The rage still simmered in her only just below the heat of explosion.

  Carson O’Day was the savior of the situation. He seemed both able and willing to conduct agreeable conversations with everyone, finding subjects to discuss from areas as diverse and innocuous as designs of Georgian silver and the last eruption of Mount Vesuvius.

  Padraig Doyle told amusing anecdotes about an Irish tinker and a parish priest and made everyone laugh, except Kezia, a failure which he ignored.

  Piers and Justine had real attention only for each other.

  Eudora looked a trifle sad, as if she had just realized the loss of something she had thought she possessed, and Ainsley appeared bored. Every now and then Charlotte observed an expression of anxiety in his eyes, a difficulty swallowing, a moment to steady his hand. He would miss something someone had said to him, as if his mind were elsewhere, and have to ask to have it repeated. It must be an appalling responsibility to be in charge of such a conference as this. The burden of succeeding at the impossible had broken both greater and lesser men than he.

  And if he was also afraid, he had good reason. There was still the threat of violence which perhaps only he and Pitt really understood.

  No one had mentioned the Parnell-O’Shea divorce. If there had been anything of it in the newspapers, it was not referred to.

  They were rather more than halfway through the removes—a shoulder of lamb, stuffed beef in pastry, or cold pickled eel with cucumber and onions—when the quarrel began. It was Kezia who started it. All evening she had been barely suppressing her anger. She spoke civilly enough to everyone else, and she ignored Iona as if she had not been there. Her rage was for her brother.

  He made a rather sweeping statement about Protestant ethics.

  “There is much of it that is personal,” he said, leaning forward a little across the table, speaking to Justine. “It has to do with individual responsibility, direct communication between man and God, rather than always through the intermediary of a priest, who, after all, is only mortal, and fallible like all human beings.”

  “Some more fallible than others,” Kezia said bitterly.

  Fergal colored very slightly and ignored her.

  “The Protestant preacher is merely the leader of his flock,” he went on, fixing his gaze on Justine. “Faith is of the utmost importance, simple and utter faith, but not in miracles and magic, in the redeeming power of Christ to save souls.”

  “We believe in hard work, obedience and a chaste and honorable life,” Kezia said, staring at Justine as if no one else had spoken. “At least that’s what they say.” She swung around to Fergal. “Isn’t it, my dear brother? Chastity is next to godliness. No unclean thing can enter into the kingdom of heaven. We are not like people of the Church of Rome, who can sin from Monday to Saturday as long as they tell the priest all about it on Sunday, when he sits in his dark little room behind a grill, and listens to all your grubby little secrets, and tells you to say so many prayers, and it’s all washed away—until next time, when you’ll do the same thing all over again. I’ll wager he could say it for you, he’s heard it so many times—”

  “Kezia …” Fergal interrupted.

  She ignored him, fixing Justine with blazing eyes, high spots of color in her cheeks. Her hands, holding her knife and fork, were shaking.

  “We are not like that at all. We don’t tell anyone our sins, except God … as if He didn’t already know! As if He didn’t know every dirty little secret of our dirty little hearts! As if He couldn’t smell the stink of a hypocrite a thousand miles away!”

  There was a hot silence around the table. Padraig cleared his throat, but at the last moment could think of nothing to say.

  Eudora gave a little moan.

  “Really …” Ainsley began.

  Justine smiled, looking straight back at Kezia. “It seems to me that the only thing that matters is whether you are sorry or not. Whom you tell is beside the point.” Her voice was very soft. “If you see that what you have done is ugly, and you no longer wish to do anything like it, then you have to change, and surely that is what matters?”

  Kezia stared at her.

  It was Fergal who spoiled it. There was a flush of embarrassment on his fair cheeks, but also of self-defense.

  “The idea that you are accountable to someone other than God, that any human being is in a position to judge you, to forgive or condemn—”

  Kezia swung around in her seat. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” She laughed harshly, her voice rising out of control. “Nobody is fit to judge you. For God’s sake, who do you think you are? We judge you! I judge you, and I find you guilty, you hypocrite!”

  “Kezia, go to your room until you have calmed down,” he said between his teeth. “You are hysterical. It is …”

  His words were lost as she flung back her chair, picked up her half-empty glass and threw the dregs in his face. Then she rose to her feet and ran from the room, almost bumping into a maid, coming in with fresh gravy, who moved out of the way only just in time.

  The silence burned with embarrassment.

  “I’m sorry,” Fergal said unhappily. “She is … very … nervously disposed at the moment. I’m sure she will be profoundly sorry tomorrow. I apologize for her, Mrs. Radley … ladies ….”

  Charlotte glanced at Emily, then stood up. “I think I should go and see if she is all right. She seemed in a state of some distress.”

  “Yes, yes, that is a good idea,” Emily agreed, and Charlotte caught in her eye a glimpse of envy for her escape.

  Charlotte left the dining room and, after a glance at the empty hallway, started up the stairs. The only place Kezia could be sure of privacy would be her bedroom. It was where Charlotte herself would have gone had she just made such a scene. She certainly would not want to risk anyone coming after her in some other public place such as the conservatory or the withdrawing room.

  On the landing she saw one of the young tweenies, about the age Gracie had been when she had first come to them.

  “Did Miss Moynihan come past here?” she asked the girl.

  The girl nodded, eyes wide, hair poking out in wisps from under her lace cap.

  “Thank you.” Charlotte already knew which was Kezia’s room, and as before, she went to it and opened the door without waiting for admittance.

  Kezia was lying on the bed, curled over, her shoulders hunched, her skirts billowing around her.

  Charlotte closed the door and went over and sat on the end of the bed.

  Kezia did not move.

  There was nothing Charlotte could say which would alter what Kezia had seen and the only possible meaning anyone could attach to it. All that could be changed was how Kezia would feel about it.

  “You are very unhappy indeed, aren’t you …?” she began quietly, in a calm, unemotional voice.

  For several minutes Kezia did not move, then slowly she turned around and sat up, propping herself against the pillows, and stared at Charlotte with profound contempt.

  “I am not ‘unhappy’ ”—she pronounced the word distinctly—“as you so quaintly put it. I don’t know what your moral beliefs are, Mrs. Pitt. Perhaps fornicating with someone else’s wife is perfectly acceptable in your circle, although I should prefer not to think so.” She hunched her shoulders, as if she were cold, although the room was warm. “To me it is abhorrent. To anyone at all, it is a sin. In someone who knows the values my brother does, who was raised in a God-fearing household by one of
the most honorable, righteous and courageous preachers of his day, it is unforgivable.” Her face was ugly with rage as she said it, her clear eyes, red-rimmed with weeping, blazed her fury.

  Charlotte looked at her steadily, trying to think of something to say which would reach through the tide of emotion.

  “I don’t have a brother,” she said, searching for ideas. “But if my sister were to do such a thing, I should be hurt and grieved more than anything. I would want to argue with her, ask her why she threw away so much in return for so very little. I don’t think I would refuse to speak to her. But then she is younger than I am. I feel defensive for her. Is Fergal older than you?”

  Kezia looked at her as if the question was nonsensical.

  “You don’t understand.” Her patience was wearing thin. “I am trying hard to be reasonably civil to you, but you come into my room uninvited and sit here preaching platitudes to me about what you would do in my place, and you haven’t the remotest idea what you are talking about. You are not in my place, or anything like it. You have no political ambition or flair. You don’t even know what it is for a woman. You are very comfortably married—with children, I expect. You are obviously very fond of your husband, and he of you. Please go away and leave me alone.”

  Both the condescension and the assumptions galled Charlotte, but she controlled her tongue with an effort.

  “I came because I could not go on happily eating my dinner when you are in such distress,” she answered. “I suppose what I would do is irrelevant. I just wanted you to see that by refusing to talk to your brother, you are hurting yourself most of all.” She frowned. “If you think about it, what is the result of your withdrawing from him going to be?”

  “I don’t know what you mean.” Kezia leaned back, her eyes narrowed.

  “Do you think he is going to stop seeing Mrs. McGinley?” Charlotte asked. “Do you think he will realize how wrong it is, that it is morally against all he has believed throughout his life, and certainly politically unwise if he hopes to represent his people? For heaven’s sake, isn’t Mr. Parnell’s situation evidence enough of that?”