The Shivering Sands

by Victoria Holt

  Pietro’s first concert decided his future; he was acclaimed; and those were wonderful days of achievement, when he went from success to success, but he did not become easier to live with because of this. He demanded service; he was the artist, and I was musician enough to be told of his plans, to listen to his renderings. He had success beyond even his grandiose dreams. I can see now that he was too young to cope with the attention which came his way. It was inevitable that there should be those who smothered him with adulation ... women, beautiful and rich. But he always wanted me there in the background, the one to whom he could always return, the one who was a near artist herself, who understood the constant demands of the artistic ego. No one could be as close to him as I was. Besides, in his way he loved me.

  Had I been of a different temperament we might have managed. But meekness was a quality I had never possessed. I was not slave material, I pointed out to him, and I was soon bitterly regretting my folly in jettisoning my own career. I was practicing again. Pietro laughed at me. Did I think one could dismiss the Muse and then summon her back when one felt like seeing her again? How right he was. I had had my chance, thrown it away and now would never be anything but a competent pianist.

  We quarreled constantly. I told him I would not stay with him. I contemplated leaving him, all the time knowing I never would; and maddeningly so did he. I was anxious for his health because he was squandering it recklessly and I had discovered that he was not strong. I had noticed a certain breathlessness which alarmed me, but when I mentioned this he shrugged it aside.

  Pietro was giving concerts in Vienna and Rome as well as in London and Paris and was beginning to be spoken of as one of the greatest pianists of the day. He took all the praise as natural and inevitable; he grew more arrogant; he gloated over everything that was written of him. He liked to see me pasting the cuttings into a book. This was my rightful place in his life—his devoted minion who had thrown aside her own career to further his. But like everything else the book was a mixed blessing, for the mildest criticism could throw him into a fury which would make the veins stand out at his temples and take his breath away.

  He was working hard and celebrating the success of his concerts far into the night, and then he would be up early for his hours of practice. He was surrounded by sycophants. It was as though he needed them to keep alive his belief in himself. I was critical, not realizing then how young he was and that it is often more of a tragedy than a blessing when success of this magnitude comes too early. It was an unnatural life ... an uneasy life; and during it I learned that I could never be happy with Pietro, yet could not face a life without him.

  We came to London for a series of concerts and I had an opportunity of seeing Roma. She had taken rooms near the British Museum where she now worked in between digs.

  She was her old self, sturdy, full of common sense, jangling her weird prehistoric bracelets, a chain of uneven rather cloudy-looking cornelians about her neck. She referred to our parents in a sad though rather brisk way, and asked after my own affairs, but of course I did not tell her very much. I could see that she thought it was rather strange of me to have given up a career after having spent so much time and energy on it—and all for the sake of marriage. But Roma had never been one to criticize. She was one of the most sane and tolerant people I had ever known.

  “I’m glad I was here when you came. A week later I should have been away. Going to a place called Lovat Mill.”

  “A mill?”

  “That’s merely the name of the place. On the Kent coast ... not all that far from Caesar’s Camp, so it’s not surprising really. We discovered the amphitheater and I’m certain that there’s more to be found because as you know these amphitheaters were invariably found outside the cities.”

  I didn’t know but I refrained from remarking on this. Roma went on. “It means excavating on the local nabob’s land. It was quite a bit of trouble getting his permission.”

  “Really?”

  “This Sir William Stacy owns most of the land round about ... a difficult gentleman, I do assure you. He made a fuss about his pheasants and his trees. I saw him personally. “You cannot think your pheasants and trees are more important than history?’ I demanded. And in the end I wore him down. He’s given his consent for us to excavate on his land. It’s a really ancient house ... more like a castle. He has plenty of land to spare. So he can allow us this little bit.”

  I wasn’t paying much attention because I was hearing the second movement of the Beethoven No. 4 Piano Concerto, which was what Pietro would be playing that night, and I was asking myself whether or not I should go to the concert. I suffered agonies when he was on a platform, playing each note with him in my mind, terrified that he would stumble. As if he ever would. His only fear would be that he would give something less than his best performance.

  “Interesting old place,” Roma was saying. “I think Sir William is secretly hoping we may find something of importance on his estate.”

  She went on talking about the site and what she hoped to do there, now and then throwing in an observation about the people in the big house nearby; and I didn’t listen. How was I to know that this was to be Roma’s last dig, and that it was imperative to learn all I could about the place.

  Death! How it hovers over us when we least suspect it I have noticed how it will strike in the same direction in quick succession. My parents had died unexpectedly and before that I never gave a thought to death.

  Pietro and I left London for Paris. Nothing unusual happened that day; there was no premonition to warn me. Pietro was to play some Hungarian dances and the Rhapsody No. 2. He was strung up—but he always was before a performance. I sat in the front row of the stalls and he was very much aware of me there. I sometimes had the impression that he played for me, as though to say, “You see, you could never have reached this standard. You were only the performer of gymnastics on the piano.” And that was how it was that night.

  Then he went to his dressing room and collapsed with a heart attack. He did not die immediately, but there were only two days left to us. I was with him every minute and I believe he was conscious of me there for now and then his dark soulful eyes would look into mine, half mocking, half loving as though to say he had scored over me yet again. Then he died and I was free from bondage to mourn forever and long for those beloved chains.

  Roma, like the good sister she was, left her dig and came to Paris for the funeral, which was a grand affair. Musicians from all over the world sent tributes; and many came to pay personal homage. Pietro had never been so famous alive as he was dead. And how he would have reveled in it!

  But the shouting and the tumult was over and I was left in an abyss so dark and so desolate that I was in greater despair than I thought possible.

  Dear Roma! What a solace she was at that time! She showed so clearly that she would have done anything for me, and I was deeply touched. I had sometimes felt shut out when I had heard her and my parents discussing their work together; I no longer felt that. It was a wonderful comfort to belong, to feel these family ties; and I was grateful to Roma.

  She offered me the greatest consolation that she could imagine. “Come to England,” she said. “Come down to the dig. Our finds were beyond expectations—one of the best Roman villas outside Verulamium.”

  I smiled at her and wanted to tell her how I appreciated her. “I shouldn’t be of any use,” I protested. “Only a hindrance.”

  “What nonsense!” She, was the elder sister again and going to take care of me whether I liked it or not “In any case, you’re coming.”

  So I went to Lovat Stacy and found comfort in the company of my sister. I was proud of her when she introduced me to friends on the dig, for it was clear what respect they had for her. She would talk to me with that enthusiasm of hers, and because I was so glad of her company and that affection which she had always tried not to show but which was so obviously there, I became mildly interested in the work. These people were so fe
rvent that it was impossible to be unaffected. There was a small cottage, not far from the Roman villa, which Sir William Stacy allowed Roma to use and I shared this with her. It was primitive and had a couple of beds and a table and a few chairs and little else. The lower room was cluttered with archaeological tools—shovels and forks and picks, trowels and bellows. Roma was delighted with the place because as she said, it was so close to the dig and the others were scattered about the place lodging in cottages and at the local inn.

  She took me over the finds and showed me the mosaic pavement, which was the delight of her life; she pointed out the geometrical patterns of white chalk and red sandstone; she insisted on my examining the three baths they had discovered which showed, she informed me, that the house had belonged to a nobleman of some wealth. There was the tepidarium, the calidarium and the frigidarium. The Roman terms rolled off her tongue in a kind of ecstasy and I felt alive again as I listened to her enthusiasm.

  We went for walks together and I grew closer to my sister than I had ever been before. She took me to Folkestone to show me Caesar’s Camp; and I walked with her to Sugar Loaf Hill and St. Thomas’s Well at which the pilgrims on their way to the shrine of St. Thomas a Becket had paused to drink. Together we climbed the four hundred feet or so to the summit of Caesar’s Camp and I shall never forget her standing there with the wind ruffling her fine hair, her eyes brilliant with delight as she indicated the earthworks and entrenchments. It was a clear day and as I looked across that twenty miles or so of calm translucent sea I could clearly make out the land which was Caesar’s Gaul and it was not difficult to imagine the legions on the march.

  On another occasion we went to Richborough Castle—one of the most remarkable relics of Roman Britain, Roma told me. “Rutupiae,” she called it.

  “Claudius made it the principal landing place for his legions crossing from Boulogne. These walls give you a good idea of what a formidable fortress it must have been.”

  She took great delight in showing me the wine cellars, the granaries and the remains of the temples, and it was impossible not to share in her excitement as she pointed out these wonders to me—the remains of massive walls of Portland stone, the bastion and its postern gate, the subterranean passage.

  “You should take up archaeology as a hobby,” she told me half wistfully, half hopefully. She really believed that if I would I could not fail to find the compensation in life which I so badly needed. I wanted to tell her that she herself was a compensation; I wanted her to know that her care of me and her affection had helped me so much because she had made me feel that I was not alone.

  One could not, however, talk of such things to Roma; she would have cried: “Nonsense!” if I had tried to thank her. But I promised myself that in the future I would see more of her; I would interest myself in her work; I would let her know how glad I was that I had a sister.

  And trying to lure me to forgetfulness she set me to help in restoring a mosaic plaque which had been found on the spot. It was specialized work and my task was merely confined to fetching the brushes and solutions which were needed. It was a yellowish disc on which was some sort of picture and the object was to restore that picture to something like it had originally been. It was too delicate a job for the pieces to be moved, Roma told me, but when it was completed it would have a place in the British Museum. I was fascinated by the care and minute attention which went into the restoration and again I was catching some of the excitement as the pieces were fitted together.

  And then I discovered Lovat Stacy itself—the big house which dominated the neighborhood and by the grace of whose owner Roma and her friends had been allowed to excavate.

  I came upon it suddenly and caught my breath with wonder. The great Gate Tower stood dominating the landscape. This consisted of a central tower flanked on either side by two higher and projecting octagonal towers. As I looked up at these battlements I was impressed by the aggressive aspect of power and strength. Tall narrow windows looked out from the tower. I could see through the gate the high stone walls beyond. Leading to the gateway was a road flanked on both sides by stone walls on which grew moss and lichen. I was enchanted and for the first time since Pietro’s death I ceased to think of him for some few minutes and experienced an almost irresistible urge to walk up that road and pass under the gateway to see what was on the other side. I even began to but as I started up the road I saw the carved gargoyles over the gateway—venomous, cruel-looking creatures—and I hesitated. It was almost as though they were warning me to keep out, and I stopped myself in time. One simply did not go walking into people’s houses merely because they excited one.

  I went back to the cottage full of what I had seen.

  “Oh that’s Lovat Stacy,” explained Roma. “Thank goodness they didn’t build the house over the villa.”

  “What about these Stacys,” I asked. “Is there a family?”

  “Oh yes.”

  “I’d like to know about people who live in a house like that.”

  “My concern was with Sir William—the old man. He’s the lord and master, so he was the one who could give the permission we wanted.”

  Dear Roma. I would get nothing from her. She saw life only in the terms of archaeology.

  But I found Essie Elgin.

  When I was starting on my musical career I had been sent to a music school and Miss Elgin had been one of my teachers. Taking a walk in the little town of Lovat Mill a mile or so from the dig I met Essie in the High Street. We looked at each other in bewilderment for some seconds and then she said in that Scots accent of hers, “Well, I do believe it’s wee Caroline.”

  “No longer so wee,” I told her. “And of course ... Miss Elgin.”

  “And what would ye be doing here?” she wanted to know.

  I told her. She nodded gravely when I mentioned Pietro. “A terrible tragedy,” she said. “I heard him in London when he was last there. I went up specially for the concert What a master!”

  She looked at me sadly. I knew that she was thinking of me in that regretful way in which teachers think of pupils who have not fulfilled their promises.

  “Come into my little house,” she said. She pronounced it hoose. “I’ll put the kettle on and we’ll have a chitter-chatter together.”

  So I went and she told me how she had come to Lovat Mill because she wanted to be near the sea and was not yet ready to give up her independence. She had a younger sister three or four miles out of Edinburgh who wanted her to go up there and live and she reckoned she would come to it in time; but here she was enjoying what she called her last years of freedom.

  “Teaching?” I asked.

  She grimaced. “What some of us come to, my dear. I have my little house here and pleasant it is. I give a few lessons to the young ladies of Lovat Mill. It’s not much of a living, but it’s improved since I have the young ladies of the big house.”

  “The big house? Do you mean Lovat Stacy?”

  “What else? It’s our big house and by the grace of God there are the three young ladies to be taught their music.”

  Essie Elgin was a born gossip and she did not need to be prompted very much. She realized that my own career was a painful subject so she happily chatted away about her pupils from the big house.

  “What a place! Always some drama going on up there, I can tell you. And now we’ll soon be having the wedding. It’s what Sir William wants. He wants to see those two man and wife. Then he’ll be happy.”

  “Which two?” I asked.

  “Mr. Napier and young Edith ... though she’s not old enough I’d say. Seventeen, I believe. Of course some people at seventeen ... but not Edith ... oh no, not Edith.”

  “Edith is the daughter of the house?”

  “Well, you could call it that in a manner of speaking. She’s not Sir William’s daughter. Oh, it’s a complicated household with none of the young ladies being related. Edith is Sir William’s ward. She’s been with the family for the last five years ... since she lost h
er father. Her mother died when she was quite a baby and she was brought up by housekeepers and servants. Her father was a great friend of Sir William’s. He had a big estate over Maidstone way ... but it was all sold when he died and everything went to Edith. She’s an heiress in a big way and that’s why ... Well, her father made Sir William her guardian and she came to Lovat Stacy when he died and lived there as though she were Sir William’s daughter. Now of course he’s brought Napier home to marry her.”

  “Napier would be...?”

  “Sir William’s son. Banished! Ah, there’s a story for you. Then there’s Allegra. Some connection of Sir William’s, I’ve heard. She speaks of him as her grandfather. Proper little tartar and gives herself airs. Mrs. Lincroft, the housekeeper, runs the place and she is Alice’s mother. There are my three young ladies: Edith, Allegra, and Alice. For although Alice is only the housekeeper’s daughter, she is allowed to join in their lessons—and so she comes to me, too. She’s being educated as a proper little lady.”

  “And this ... Napier?” I said. “What a strange name!”

  “Oh, some family name. They’re rare ones for family names ... families who have been joined with theirs in marriage, so I heard. His is an odd story. I’ve never quite learned the wrongs and rights of it, but his brother Beaumont died ... and Beaumont’s another family name. He was killed, and Napier was blamed. He went away and now he has come back to marry Edith. It’s a condition so I gather.”

  “How was he to blame?”

  “People don’t talk much round here about the Stacys,” she said regretfully. “They’re frightened of Sir William. He’s a bit of a tartar too and most of them are his tenants. Hard as nails, they say. Must have been, to have sent Napier away. I’d like to know the ins and outs of that story but I can’t speak to the young ladies about it.”