by May Woodward
‘Listen, Sir Richard…’ Future king turned to future subject as they reached the terrace. ‘I’d like to see a man like you in the Lords.’
‘You do me great honour, sir!’
‘Well… thing is, Sir Richard…’ Bertie scratched his pudgy ear in a vague kind of way, ‘my good friend Harty-Tarty mentioned you to me. Said you’d sold him shares in some sort of mine…’
The old lady turned her eyes up to the frontage of the building as she made her way across the gravelled forecourt. A dry wind was blowing the ivy yellow-side up. Dead, fallen leaves skittered across her path.
Not weather for outdoor rambling was this. But after an hour in the carriage, Lysithea wanted the stretch in the fresh air before going in to visit her sister. Leaning on her walking-stick, she descended the three steps to Dwellan House’s garden.
In her maidenhood, Lizzy had taken her morning rides before the Eardingstowe staff had stopped yawning. But these days her knees and fingers seemed to be seizing up; one day she would wake and find they’d locked, and she’d have to resign herself to spending her remaining days indoors.
She passed a patient who was tending a small bed of winter heliotrope. This character was so far gone in his madness he thought working men should have the vote and said ‘how do’ to the Countess of Schwangli instead of tugging his forelock or whatever. Nevertheless, Lysithea admired his growing things. If you didn’t know what this place was, Dwellan House and its park would look a little paradise.
But a woman could be heard sobbing in one of the nearest airing courts. An unsettling sound.
Clemence hadn’t spoken volumes about her time here – partly because great wodges of her memory were missing. But Lizzy had heard enough asides to make her fear Dwellan and worry for her sister Cassandra here too. Imagine that great door swinging shut behind you. And knowing you were likely never coming out again.
Hard by the boundary hedge ran a winterbourne. The water of the little brook was driving along leaves. In the far distance the mist became one with the phantasmal Quantocks. The countess watched an arrow-head of birds heading that way. Wouldn’t be many more before the snow came down.
When you got to her age, you started to look back over your misspent youth. Not so much your sins. Oh dear no, they were too much fun. But your follies… ah, yes.
Like getting separated from her father’s baggage train on the trek through the hills around Salamanca and getting captured by a French patrol. What a riot going with her parent, General Sir Edmund Somerlee, to the Peninsula would be she’d thought – just like her niece during the very next war.
Only – Lysithea’s captors had taken her to Marshal Marmont. Who, on discovering she was the offspring of one of Wellington’s commanders, had dispatched her under guard to the Supreme One himself to make use of as he saw fit.
What had passed between him and Lizzy Somerlee, prettiest débutante of 1811, in the seclusion of his tent remained her secret and Bonaparte’s.
She had been gossiped about ever since. She would in due course become another Eardingstowe legend. Future generations would tell of her alongside Laurey, Jenny Greenteeth and the demon in the chamber.
The cries of the woman-patient Lysithea could hear brought her back to the here and now. They were sounding more desperate. What gruesome punishment had been threatened? Lizzy knew they sometimes fastened patients into straight-jackets, although that practice was regarded as Georgian these days. She also knew about the isolation cells where Clemmie had been confined during the height of her raving.
Lysithea hobbled on her walking-stick away from the noise, crossing the lawn in the direction of the shelter.
Cassandra was one of the regrets in Lizzy’s life. Her fey little sister had been found one morning on the path of the mere, her nightdress soaked and pondweed-bedraggled, claiming she’d visited Jenny’s lair. And sagely warning of an elf-prince who was coming to destroy the Somerlees.
Right, that was it, had said their brother the elder Sir Richard Somerlee. She’s out of here. She’s been upsetting the servants for years. But now this…
We could have looked after her at Eardingstowe, Lizzy had raged at him. Engaged a discreet minder and kept her in an out-of-the-way room.
Oh yes, and have her set fire to the place when we’ve guests one night?
And that was final.
Lysithea had never quite forgiven her brother. Or herself for not standing up to him. He’d been dead now for years. Often, she’d considered bringing Cassie out of Dwellan, and seeing her cared for at one of the remoter Schwangli continental properties.
But after all this time Dwellan was where Cassie belonged. She’d be afraid to leave. And those family members like Clemmie and Ivo who came often to visit Cassie would no longer be able to. Overall, Dwellan was the least bad option.
A sudden gust of wind sounding just like the sigh Lizzy felt like letting out rustled the leaves which were still clinging to the chestnut’s branches.
She turned her steps towards the great front door of Dwellan House.
Maybe Aubrey was Cassandra’s elf-prince. He was causing enough trouble.
Lysithea had long given up wondering whether he was who he said he was. Could he have known about this or that if he wasn’t the real Aubrey? Could he have learned such-and-such a private anecdote from someone who’d lived on the estate? Quite frankly – pooh!
The stark truth was – Lizzy didn’t like him. He had shown no familial tenderness towards Dickon, Clemmie, Ivo or anyone; caring only, Lizzy thought, for convincing them all he was genuine by dredging up sometimes painful Apocrypha. The point being that only the real Aubrey could have known about Flitcroft’s duodenal ulcer say, regardless of how Flitcroft felt about this being broadcast in The Times.
Aubrey seemed to think less about being restored to the bosom of loving kinfolk, and rather more about his inheritance. And by Jupiter – was he sure enjoying his celebrity.
That Lizzy didn’t like him didn’t mean he wasn’t the man she’d known since she’d held him in his christening robes. Only that his fiery trial… years of loneliness, loss of self, imprisonment… had warped him.
The superintendent of the asylum entered the visitors’ parlour where the Countess of Schwangli was waiting.
‘My dear, dear Countess! How lovely to see you again.’
‘Dr Warburton,’ Lysithea said.
‘You are here to call on Miss Cassandra, My Lady? A moment, ma’am, while I ring for some tea.’ Dr Warburton headed for the bell-pull. ‘If only all our patients had such a devoted family to keep an eye on them.’
‘Well, I remember my little Cassie as she was growing up,’ Lysithea said. ‘She was such a loving sister. If there’s anything I can do for her…’
‘Of course, My Lady.’
Warburton returned, and took a seat.
‘The best we can do for Miss Cassandra, ma’am, is ease her remaining years with kindness.’
‘I’m sure you and your staff do your utmost, doctor.’
‘I hope so, My Lady. I sincerely hope so. You know we have some dedicated staff.’
And a few who like a tipple Lysithea thought, but kept quiet.
‘We don’t tolerate cruelty at Dwellan, My Lady,’ Warburton went on. ‘Any attendant who mistreats a patient – paying or pauper – faces summary dismissal. Ah,’ Dr Warburton smiled to himself, and sighed. ‘We had one attendant, an Irishwoman named Thady. She left us at the end of last year. What a treasure! The best female attendant we ever had. So good with the patients – and particularly with Cassandra. Miss Cassandra really took to her. Used to fair bloom when Thady was looking after her! How disappointed I was when Thady left. And so was poor Miss Cassie.’
Lord, what kind of mood would Cassandra be in today, Lysithea wondered? She might not know Lizzy any more, poor soul, and fly at her with cat-claws.
&nb
sp; ‘Well, I can bring Cassie the good news that young Edmund continues to thrive,’ Lysithea said. ‘She was so thrilled to learn she’s a great-auntie again, now that my nephew the baronet has a son at last. A big, healthy boy from what I’ve heard.’
‘Ah, that will cheer Miss Cassie!’ Warburton said. ‘She does so love to hear of Eardingstowe – it’s home to her still, after all these years. Thady used to get her prattling about the family, and she wouldn’t stop! Chatter, chatter, chatter… ah, such a shame Thady left.’
‘Really?’ said Lysithea. She glanced at the mantle clock.
‘Thady could calm Miss Cassie just by asking about Eardingstowe,’ the superintendent continued. ‘And Cassie would tell her about, say, the family of stoats in the mere. Ah, here’s tea.’
A maid brought in the tray and poured. Lysithea took a few sips from her cup.
‘Cassie once,’ Warburton said with a light laugh, ‘told Thady about Mr Carswell pouring Mrs Dean’s soup into the mere.’
Lysithea’s cup gave a rattle. She had been about to lift it, only to let it fall back into the saucer. Her eyes snapped up to the man sitting opposite.
‘What? What did you just say?’
THIRTY-FOUR
‘My dear Countess! I merely said…’
‘Yes, I heard you!’
Lysithea set her cup and saucer down again. She took up her walking-stick and got to her feet. She paced a few steps towards the window. Her breath was coming fast.
She turned back to face him.
‘What else did my sister tell this woman – Thady?’
‘My dear lady, I’m not sure I can recall…’
‘Think, man. This is important!’
Lysithea gave him a kindlier look. She returned to the sofa and spoke in softer tones.
‘Miss Clemence – Her Grace the Duchess – comes to visit more than most of us. She talks to Cassie about my missing nephew Aubrey a lot. Did Cassie ever, perhaps, tell this wardress of a conversation Aubrey had had with a certain Captain Radlett the night before he vanished?’
‘Yes… yes I believe she did…’
‘And I’m guessing she also mentioned our poor butler’s duodenal ulcer?’
‘Err…’
Lysithea slowly sat back. She stared at Warburton for a long moment.
‘I wonder if you could tell me where I might find this Thady?’ Warburton looked unco-operative. Lysithea smiled. ‘It sounds as if she did a lot of good for my sister. I would like to thank her in person. At least, maybe,’ she persisted as Warburton opened his mouth to object, ‘you might let me know her surname.’
Golden and violet polar brilliance spread across the snowdrifts. The wind was blowing powdery crystals sparkling in the sunshine into whorls and dragon-tails. Aubrey shielded his vision.
The snowfall was so deep that dwellers in remote spots of the Somerset countryside might be cut off and go hungry. God, they’d never know real hunger though. And anyway, spare a thought for the folk of Paris who were creeping like sewer-rats, seeking morsels to eat and splinters to burn. They were hoping Bismarck would shell their city, so they could get out.
Aubrey trudged along the lane through the snow. On either side of him stalks and leaves of wayside knapweed, ox-tongue, wild carrot and rest-harrow stood stiff and crusted with ice like skeletons of little, frozen men. He kept well huddled inside a hooded cloak.
Inside the doorway of the final hovel of the village which he passed, a bevy of fishermen’s wives was sitting around a brazier. The women were twisting mistletoe and rowan branches into kissing boughs, and ribbon-binding the crowns for Christmas. The oldest dame called out ‘Good day to ‘ee, Mast’ Aubrey’ as he went by.
‘Good day, Mistress Roswitha!’ Aubrey grinned, and blew a kiss. ‘You know – it hardly seems yesterday that I was a bairn – sitting outside this same cottage, listening to your tales of the sea. Remember that bouquet of sea-pinks and samphire I brought you that time? So in love with you, I was! And, you know – I think I still am, just a little!’
He continued on his way, flattered cackles following after.
The man passed through a gate at the end of the path. He emerged onto the exposed headland above Kilve beach. A torrent was surging down through a break in the cliff into the sea. Oystercatchers, gulls, dunlins, godwits and guillemots were circling, swooping and shrieking above him.
Aubrey, Aubrey… Christ. He was almost coming to believe Aubrey was his real name. When he’d set out to take his revenge on the hated Somerlees by impersonating their lost kinsman, he’d not thought the deception might run so deep that he’d be in danger of fooling himself too.
He spotted the woman who was also here on the cliff top. Clemence Somerlee – waiting for him as they’d agreed. She was leaning against the trunk of a birch tree, looking out over the water. Strands of hair peeped from beneath her hood and fluttered in the wind. As he drew near, he could see snow-dust sprinkling her pale fringe. The crystals glinted with rainbow colours as a quick shaft of sunlight shone out from behind the cloud.
His eyes narrowed to slits as his hatred seized hold of him.
So! The Somerlees did something atrocious in the hill-fort, did they? To the Celtic tribe who flourished there no doubt. Well, after pent-up, brooding centuries – here he was to pay them back.
She and he were alone save for the watery fellows of the deep. Thoughts of what he could do to her flashed through his mind. He was hardly a large man, but he could get the better of a puny thing like that. Could take her, bloodily, in the cliff top bracken. It would be like blistering her with a branding-iron – just like a shepherd marking ownership of a sheep. Charge roaring into the valley with thundering hooves, bulletproof blade thrust before him – slashing up enemies in volcanoes of spouting gore.
When can their glory fade? O the wild charge they made! All the world wonder’d.
In her morning-room, Lysithea opened the package with a feeling of dread. Her aching, arthritic fingers trembled at what she might find inside.
The correspondence which she unfolded was from the private investigator she’d hired to trace the woman, Thady, from the asylum. Lysithea speedily read it through.
The woman’s full name turned out to be Thady McFarland, born Thady Horan. What was of most interest to the detective, however, was that she was the niece of a character named William Kidney.
A Dubliner, this man was a career malefactor with untold convictions for fraud and deception. He had spent seven years in the Australian penal colony after a fight which left the other man without use of an eye. Kidney had almost lost his too and had a permanent scar to show for it. He was so successful at his dishonest craft, wrote the private detective, because he was ‘able to affect the manners and speech of a gentleman.’
Will Kidney’s multiple recorded aliases were then listed. One leaped from the page.
Roger Cormorant.
Lysithea drew in a sharp breath. The Earl of Bedingfield had not long ago tried to interest her in buying shares in a gold mine called Smoky Mountain. ‘The director’s an elusive fellow called Sir Roger Cormorant who no-one ever seems quite able to track down. Nevertheless, it’s a marvellous investment opportunity, Countess…’
But she hadn’t been interested. It had sounded a bit fishy. In any case, Bedingfield had wanted a share of her profits in exchange for the introduction. Goodness, how right had she been.
Lysithea set the detective’s report aside, feeling very shaken.
Also enclosed was a copy of Thady’s marriage certificate. Her wedding had taken place in June 1857, in St Brigid’s Catholic Church, Ancoats, Manchester. The bride’s father had been deceased. She had been given away by her uncle, William Kidney.
Lysithea looked up. Ancoats. Why was that name familiar? Oh, yes… she grimaced. Carswell’s Mill.
Her brother, the late baronet, had married t
he mill-master’s daughter. Somerlee fortunes had been on the wane at the time, and the elder Richard had needed Joshua Carswell’s wallet. Sir Richard Somerlee Bart. of Eardingstowe, and Miss Leonora Carswell of Ancoats, Manchester. Not the daintiest engagement announcement ever in the society columns. Caused some sniggering at the family’s expense. Still, Leonora had been a pretty blonde; and her daughters Isabella and Clemence both favoured her in looks.
Lysithea turned back to the marriage document in her hands. One Father Cassidy had conducted the service. Thady Horan had been united in matrimony with a cotton-spinner from Carswell’s Mill by the name of Michael McFarland, formerly of Kilara in the County of Limerick.
Lysithea frowned. She thought she’d heard both those names, McFarland and Kilara, sometime, too.
The bridegroom, Michael McFarland, had been twenty-two years of age at the date of his wedding… born therefore, Lysithea quickly calculated, around 1835. The same year as Aubrey…
…a young footman he was then, and a kind heart, he was, to be sure…
‘Begod and saints prasarve us!’ muttered the countess.
‘The times we ran along those cliff tops together as children!’ Clemence said. ‘Escaping from Dickon, pushing Bella into the rock-pools…’
‘Remember the bathing-machine?’ Michael stood beside her, one arm leaning against the bole of the tree. ‘We were supposed to be the first family in Somerset to acquire one. Green with pink stripes, remember? We couldn’t get the pater in it, though, any more than in a railway carriage.’
‘Remember how we used to take the sled to fetch in the sticks for the ashen faggot?’
‘Ah, yes,’ Michael said, ‘brought in on Christmas Eve, and burning until Twelfth Night. Bustard and partridge to fill the pie, and, ah! the hot cider, spices and roasted apples of the Lamb’s Wool… I remember returning from Holford Wood with the faggot one year… Ivo suddenly goes “Goodness! I do believe I spy some fossils which might date from the Cretaceous period!” So, he leaps off the sled and goes poking about in the rocks. You and I were sitting there, getting cold, and bored, and eventually we set off back home without him. Ivo comes bounding after us. Then his glasses blew off, and we spent another hour searching in the snow.’