by Abigail Agar
This is no more him than I am Fidel, Vera thought suddenly. He changes his clothes and plays a part just like me.
‘Go shake Caruthers up from the pantry, would you? He’ll take over greeting duties. Then bring me the rest of that bottle of wine.’ He tapped the decanter on the tray.
Puffing a cloud of foul smelling smoke around him, Lord Stanley strutted off to play his part; Vera went off to find Caruthers and to play hers.
I know my reasons for hiding who I am, what are his?
***
With Caruthers stationed in the main entrance hallway and the decanter topped up with the bright red claret, Vera headed to the ballroom. She couldn’t help but be excited.
At home on the farm, her parents – a pang of sorrow rushed across her mind – had never hosted dances, and so it was the greatest pleasure of her childhood to travel to the town hall for the festivals and dances of the village, and to Bathcombe for the socialite balls with those of more appropriate birth.
The huge double doors at each end of the ballroom were locked open by heavy bolts dropped into the flagstones of the corridor. The click of Vera’s shoes on the hard floor of the corridor was slowly masked by the noises of the ball as she made her way up to the entrance.
Vera paused outside the southern doors to listen to the hubbub of people mingling. The band was playing something slow, and from the time it kept, she knew there would be no dancing yet.
She took a swig from the bottle of claret, remembering Lord Stanley’s lips on the mouth of it. She replaced the glass stopper, feeling the warmth of the wine biting into her throat and stomach and then slowly spreading calming fingers up towards her troubled mind.
A giant flash of lightning and a near simultaneous explosion of thunder seemed to shake the windows of the Manse and wake Vera from her reverie.
Lord Stanley is waiting, she thought and stepped from the corridor into the blazing light of the hall.
The vast ballroom had been decorated skilfully with candles on long sticks, and the huge chandeliers glittered under their own light. The fireplaces that ran up either side of the hall had been stoked to full flame which roared up the chimneys in defiance of the storm outside. And a series of huge scarlet curtains were drawn halfway out into the room at several points to break it up into several sections, allowing for a few spots of dimly lit privacy.
The walls were hung with wildflowers wound into long and tangled streams of vegetation, mingling with the satin drapes which had been hung like tapestries from the picture hooks.
The effect was precisely that of a pagan ritual celebrating the element of fire and the wildness of the countryside. A truly Bacchanal setting in which the great and good were mingling with the base and low.
The room at the south end was packed with guests milling about and exchanging small talk and sweet nothings in little circles.
Around one man’s neck she spotted the Order of the Garter; around his wife’s a torque of solid gold from which dangled ancient bracteates. Beside them she saw two ladies of the night with knees on show dressed in the style popular with Parisian showgirls.
Several men were wearing shabby suits and animal masks, no doubt friends of Lord Stanley from one of his gambling binges, while with the dance-floor empty for now, an immensely tall and willowy woman who Vera recognised as the daughter of a Bathcombe industrialist was dancing a waltz without a partner.
At a guess, Vera estimated about half the number of one-thousand invitees had deigned to show up. She pushed forward through the crowd and past the first wall of scarlet curtain.
She found Lord Stanley sat in a vast red leather armchair which had been placed beside the largest of the fires. In maroon suit and blood red chair with the glow of the pipe lighting his face from beneath he looked for all the world like the devil one saw in children’s illustrations.
But what a handsome devil! she thought.
‘Ah, Fidel. Have a drink with me,’ Lord Stanley cried.
A charming devil too.
‘There was a tradition in less civilised times of Carnevale,’ Lord Stanley said. ‘One day of each year when society was turned upside down. The servants ruled the household, and life was bread and circuses. Today is Carnevale; there are no sins committed tonight that will be remembered against us in the morning.’
Vera looked at Lord Stanley and wondered how she hadn’t seen it before. Somehow, this performance of good cheer rang false in a way that showed more than any number of outbursts, any number of irritable moments, or strangely obsessive checking of the locks.
Lord Stanley is unutterably sad. Some splinter of loss had worked its way into him. This escape into the persona of a carefree and louche sinner was an opiate for his pain. I wonder why he feels this way?
She longed to know. To help him to mend his pain.
The more she thought about what it would be like to be Vera for him, the more she felt her own pain growing in her chest for her murdered family.
She sat in the chair opposite him and poured the claret into two glasses on the low table between them. Her heart went out to him; she wished she were sitting there as Vera, in one of her old dresses, making charming conversation with him and offering him her hand as help as one might to a drowning man.
She wanted to say something that would make him feel better, some grand phrase, but nothing came to her, and so she drank her claret in silence and listened to him speak with such apparent good feeling to all around them.
Go fetch me another bottle of claret from the cellar, Fidel. One of the good ones.’ He tossed the decanter into the fire, and the glass cracked loudly in the heat, a tiny echo of the thunder outside.
Relief struck her; if she couldn’t be Vera for him, she needn’t be Vera for herself. She took on Fidel’s make up again and pushed aside Vera’s pain.
‘You know the one, a couple of bottles from my father’s store behind the barrels.’ Lord Stanley turned to a young woman who approached their conversation. Her dress was clearly expensive but showed a decided lack of taste – at least to Vera’s mind.
Who in their right mind wears peacock feathers and black lace with crimson velvet?
She suspected that this lady was another of those ill-reputed beings that were Lord Stanley’s special guests at events of this kind. If they are from Bathcombe, she speculated, perhaps they are aware of the man with the feathered coach and white sideburns who rents a room in a house of ill-repute but never takes prostitutes to his room. Perhaps they know someone who can give me a name for that man.
But for now she had a task. As she left, the prostitute took her place in the seat she had vacated. Jealousy clouded Vera’s mind for a moment, then she took a breath and lost herself in the crowds of people.
She is just doing her job, thought Vera. The hurt is on my part, and by his action.
Tears pricked her eyes as she passed behind a man who, from his similarity in lineament to the chief constable she took to be the Lord Fitzwilliam. Curious, she deflected her path towards Helen who was doling out portions of arrack punch into bowl like glasses at the long low table that lined this section of the ballroom. As Vera got closer, she could see that Helen was surreptitiously sipping at the odd cup of punch as she went about the act of serving.
This change of course allowed Vera to pass closer to Lord Fitzwilliam and catch a little of his conversation with a short balding man in the dress military uniform of a Russian colonel.
‘Of course,’ said Fitzwilliam in French to the colonel. ‘We have had plenty of trouble with partisans working from within our borders. Not everyone who escapes here from the continent wants to see Napoleon fail. My brother’s fall from grace has taken him into the task of collecting evidence against miscreants on behalf of the constabulary. He has encountered a number of anti-Prussian elements in Bathcombe itself who see Napoleon as liberator of their home. One such man was printing pamphlets demanding the murder of several members of parliament in protest to our little venture with the Prussians in
Iberia. He was found with black powder and homemade fuses in his possession. As someone who plans to run in my own borough, it is most disturbing to see political action such as this in our great democracy.’
Vera paused a little as if assessing the dancing on the floor nearby.
‘It was only by extraordinary good luck, my brother tells me, that the man was killed by his own daughter who it transpires is a dangerous lunatic.’
Vera froze, listening closely. Could it really be that her father had been planning violence against his adopted home? She tried to picture him as a modern Guy Fawkes and couldn’t.
That bastard with the sideburns set Father up as well as murdering him. But why? What did he gain from framing a dead man with an act of terror?
The Russian colonel stood nodding gravely with eyes glazed over, his own responses in French suggested that perhaps his grasp of that language was not as good as Fitzwilliam clearly believed it to be.
‘A cunning little minx, though; she’s still on the run and very much the talk of the town. Still wandering the country, possibly in disguise. The most astonishing thing was that my own son looked in on the victim about a matter of–’
At this moment, Fitzwilliam looked up and caught her eye. She dropped her eyes and kept walking towards Helen, careful not to look back. Anger set her blood pounding in her ears.
How dare he speak of Papa that way! she fumed to herself.
Helen’s face was a bright red and her smile broader than usual.
‘Hullo there, Fidel.’ Though she was not slurring, Vera could detect a lack of control in the volume of Helen’s voice.
Vera put aside her anger with Lord Fitzwilliam and his incompetent brother.
‘You all right, Helen? You appear to be struggling with the punch.’
‘Not at all. It is agreeing with me most heartily. You on the other hand, I have some words to share with you.’
‘Not now, Helen. I have to get some bottles from the cellar for His Lordship.’
‘Of course, Fidel, but it is important news about the East Wing. Meet me there in a little while by the suits of armour. I’ll let you know when I can get away from all this.’ She made a sweeping gesture towards the punchbowl forgetting she was still holding the ladle and knocking a pair of punch-glasses onto the floor where the sound of their smashing attracted only curious looks from those nearest by, including Fitzwilliam.
His eyes met Vera’s again, and she turned back to Helen to hide her face. ‘I need to go, Helen. I’ll speak to you later; come find me when you can.’
As Vera walked towards the exit of the ballroom, Helen called out as if just remembering: ‘Oh. Caruthers was wondering where you were. He’ll be back in a moment.’
‘Tell him I’m going down to the wine cellar for His Lordship if it is urgent. Tell him I’ll be back momentarily. And Helen …’
‘Yes?’ There was a hopeful gleam in the girl’s eyes that seemed out of place, a longing under the good cheer that seemed familiar, but there was no time to worry about such things.
‘You might find the evening goes a little smoother if you space your punch consumption out over the evening.’
Vera turned and moved on, pushing through the crowd and pondering on Fitzwilliam’s comments. She wondered exactly what was the nature of the rift between the two Fitzwilliams. Certainly, they were not so far apart if William was sharing intimate details of his investigations with his brother.
***
In the cool dark of the cellar with an oil lamp in one hand, burning with a thick black smoke, Vera hunted for the claret. The bottles Lord Stanley wanted were beyond the stacked hulks of huge malmsey barrels and cheap canary or ales that lined the damp south wall.
On the dustiest rack were many bottles, unevenly blown and linked together by strands of cobwebs. Among these she singled out a row of fine clarets and carefully dusted one off.
On the way back from the cellar, in the narrow wood panelled corridor that linked the kitchen to the more public corridors of Avonside Manse, she collided with Caruthers going in the opposite direction. Like Helen, his face was red, and a silly smile split his face in two. For once his wild hair was carefully plastered down with what smelled like rosewater, and he looked quite distinguished in the conservative black suit he wore for his duties that evening.
‘There you are, Fidel. Helen said I might find you here.’ His voice was slurred a little by the ale, but he seemed in a good mood. Perhaps she was not in as much trouble with old Caruthers as Helen’s tone had suggested.
‘There is something I should say to you, boy. Something you need to know. This is of course a house of secrets. I keep only one, and I know only one of yours. But that secret is most fortunate for both I and you, I believe. It–’ He seemed to lose his thread a little and paused to think hard on what it was that he meant to say next.
Then instead of speaking, Caruthers leaned forward and placed Vera’s hand in his. His touch was gentle, but it sent vibes through Vera that she didn’t like. The message was plain, and she withdrew her hand with discomfort apparent in her features.
Caruthers knows my secret; he knows I’m a woman! Quite apart from the fact that Vera did not find Caruthers in the least attractive, warnings began to ring in her mind.
How long then was it before he asked the question of why she was going incognito? This sudden intensity on Caruthers’ part was the first step on the path that led to the gallows for her.
Caruthers’ face dropped. ‘I can sense my feelings for you are not returned. I am sorry if I caused you upset, Fidel. It was not my intention.’ Caruthers sighed. ‘I cannot help the way that I am. Were it that I found the female persuasion attractive, then we would not be in this position now.’
Suddenly the truth hit home. Vera narrowly averted a gasp. ‘Mr Caruthers, are you saying …’
Caruthers nodded wearily. ‘I do not need to elaborate, I feel. I have seen the way you behave in His Lordship’s presence, I felt there was a chance you might feel the same way towards me, Fidel. But I can see by your countenance that you are appalled …’
Vera shook her head. ‘No, I am not appalled. Nonetheless, I cannot return your feelings, Mr Caruthers.’
‘I understand,’ he said, and then bringing his eyes up to meet hers, ‘let us leave it at that.
‘Do tell Helen to leave off the punch,’ Caruthers added as Vera took her chance to escape to the safety of the ballroom. So, Caruthers had thought she was a young man, and with that, her secret was safe, at least for the time being.
***
In the safety of the ballroom surrounded by people, she felt calmer. Caruthers seemed to have accepted her rebuttal, and for that she was grateful.
Did Helen already know? Was this the dark secret of Caruthers that she had hinted about that day at the piano?
She would deliver the claret to Lord Stanley then find Helen and deliver Caruthers’ warning about the punch. Helen was no longer at the punch table, but Vera stopped by to swipe a cup of the fruit punch. The arrack was strong and sat well on top of the claret.
Her head was beginning to feel a little lighter, and some of her worries were sleeping quietly under the blanket of the alcoholic beverages. Before the fire, she found Lord Stanley with the lady of ill-repute now sat on his knee. He was throwing small twists of candied orange into the air, and she was catching them in her mouth like a dog.
His mouth was smeared with the greasy vermilion the woman was wearing on her lips, and he had a foolish drunken grin on his face that made him quite ugly to Vera. She placed the claret on the table before him and turned and walked away.