So no reason why she should not go on playing the idiot. There might even be a marginal advantage in doing so. It should be easy enough, God knew. “Tarn?” She made the question hopeful, and then, wriggling in the bottom of the boat, which she now recognised as a very expensive private one: “Thank God, is it really you?”
“I wouldn’t start cheering yet.” Tarn had dropped the Australian accent and now spoke with just a trace of a South Carolina drawl. And there was something else in his voice. Triumph. Vicious, unmistakable triumph. “Easy, weren’t you, girl?” On the word, he switched back to the Australian accent. “Word of a ‘Strine, I thought I’d kill myself trying not to laugh. Sir Charles’ prize pupil falling for the oldest trick in the world. Perfect little setup, weren’t you?” She felt his hands at work above her, and the boat moved faster, but still quietly on expensively silenced engines. “Don’t waste your breath screaming, girl. No one will hear. There’s no one to hear.”
“But, Tarn, I don’t understand.” If he went on thinking her the fool she had been, he might say something, do something…It was the forlornest of hopes, and she knew it.
“Not Tarn.” Mocking laughter, rippling through the voice above her, sent a cold prickle of absolute terror down her spine. “Let me introduce myself, Cousin. Antony Rivers.”
“Rivers?” Her mind scrabbled frantically for explanations.
“A tainted Rivers.” He was licking his chops on it. “One of the doomed ones, Cousin Julia. Only we—my father and I—we have always intended to enjoy our doom.”
“Your father?”
“Uncle Paul to you. One does have a father, you know.” He laughed, not pleasantly. “Tough, aren’t you? I thought we’d given you enough to keep you unconscious, but now you’re here, it’s kind of fun to tell you. We can easily put you out again, when the time comes.”
“We?”
“Purely a manner of speaking. The royal Rivers we, if you like. The others have something else to do. Oh, my oath, they have. Do you know,” he went on, enjoying himself, “it’s the first time I’ve ever used the name. I think I like it. I think I’m glad you woke up, Cousin Julia.”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Why not? It’s true enough. And legitimate.” He brought it out with a kind of bravado. “God, I was angry at first. All that time in the orphanage…treated as a bastard…’parentage unknown.’ Christ, when Paul told me, I nearly killed him. But he was right, of course. He’d thought of everything. Even down to drama lessons.” He lapsed for a moment, horribly, into the Australian accent, then modulated back to the Southern drawl. “Of course, I’d not have had to use it if it hadn’t been for you.” Venom in his voice now. “When Paul first told me who I was, he thought he had it all sewed up. The lot of them convinced they must never marry. Well, easy enough with the other three. All Raoul wanted was his bottle and who’d have had Mandy or Fan? Breckon took more convincing, but Paul thought he had it made. I bet he never told you about his fits.”
“Breckon?”
“Thought he hadn’t. Easy enough to induce, with the right drugs. Mother provided them, natch.”
“Your mother?”
“Matron Andrews, of course. I’m not sure it wasn’t all her idea in the first place. There’s a woman for you. Sat quiet all those years, acting the starched spinster, waiting. Then, when the time came, she was going to come forward, marriage lines in one hand, my birth certificate in the other. Never had the nerve to tell Paul about me, because of the taint. See? Stayed near because she loved him. Natch? Loved me too, couldn’t raise me; did her best. Convincing, too. That woman loves nothing and nobody but Madam Andrews.” He spoke it with full and deep admiration, then laughed. “Well, look at the way she put the Indian sign on that poor old fool McCartland. God, she was furious when she found he’d crossed her up and not sterilised you when she told him to. Old fool. ‘Sanctity of human life…Tampering with nature.’ Pity, he was useful, but I’ll deal with him when I get back. That should be kind of fun, too.”
He’s mad, she thought. He’s cold, clean mad. And, horribly: it’s true about the taint. “Where are you taking me?” It was all too easy to sound the cowed victim.
“Shall I tell you?” The engine note fell as he slowed down. “I don’t see why not.” He enjoyed the idea. “You’ll have fun explaining to darling Breckon when he comes to. If he does.”
“What have you done to him?”
“He hit his head when he fell into the barge, poor Cousin Breckon. It made it all very easy. Not a squeak out of him. Our Miss Brown packs quite a punch. Regular spitfire the police are going to think you. Off your rocker, of course. Caught it from Breckon? Mad about the child? I don’t care what they think so long as no one thinks of me. And why should they? I don’t exist.” The engine slowed down a little more. “Pity I can’t mark you, but can’t be sure how the accident is going to work. I’ve owed you something for yesterday.”
“Yesterday? Accident?”
“Getting that lift back from Torcello.” He sounded furious at the memory. “Balling up my plans. God, we improvised neatly, though. And fast! Breckon was to have been taken while you were on your way to meet me tonight,” he explained. “And you on your way back from the opera…No time for the police to get on to you. But this way’s better. They’ve talked to you, haven’t they? Didn’t believe you, did they? Not when you couldn’t produce my letters. God, what a lovely little fool you were. Walked right into the hotel we booked you and never thought about the staff. I’ve enjoyed playing with you, Cousin Julia.”
“What are you going to do now?” This was the moment, she knew, even through her own rage with herself, to ask the question.
“Not much. Put you out again. Dump you on my island. You can nurse Breckon for me. He needs to be alive when you kill him.”
“I?”
“Well, natch. What do you think I’ve gone to all this trouble for? You’re going to kill them both. Cousin Breckon and darling little cripple Dominic. Oh, a terrible accident, it’s going to be. Maybe I won’t tell you just how it’s going to work, but you’ve got enough of a brain to see the logic of it. You kidnapped Dominic. Right? Breckon got on to it. Right? He followed you, caught up, there was a row. Disaster. Bang go the bunch of you. Work it out for yourself. A boat, maybe? A fight? No prizes for the right answer.”
Through the fear, the rage, the fury with herself, she was aware of something else. A light ahead. Perhaps a string of lights? The posts that marked the channel to Torcello? Very quietly, very carefully, she gathered herself together. Not a hope of getting overboard, but if she should just stand up, show herself, scream?
“You’re not all that stupid.” His voice, from above her, was almost regretful. “I’ve enjoyed our little talk. But, now, good-bye, girl.” His pounce was so swift the needle was in her arm before she could even try to evade it.
“Are you all right? Can you hear me?” Something cold on her forehead. The child’s voice, anxious, above her. With an immense effort, she opened her eyes. He was hanging over her, Dominic, her son. “Oh, good. You’re better.” While she searched for words, he put the cold, wet cloth gently back on her forehead. “Do you think you can move? It’s cold for you on the grass. I couldn’t move you. I tried. I’ve only got one good hand, you see, and I’m not very big.”
“Dominic!” For courage like his, one could do anything. She rolled sideways and sat up, her hands still, awkwardly, tied behind her.
“You know my name?” The next question followed with appalling logic. “Who are you?”
“Your mother, Dominic. I’m not dead. I—lost you.” No time for this, and no need. They had recognised each other. “Where’s your father?”
“In the shed.” Like her, he seemed to feel there was no time for anything but facts. “The man put him there. He said he wanted him alive. Mother—” It was, extraordinarily, both acknowledgment and appeal. “What’s happening?”
“Nothing good, I’m afraid. Except seeing you
.” She leaned up towards him, the effort making her head swim, and, understanding, he bent his small height down to meet her kiss. “Dominic.” She said it again, with love. “Help me up, my darling, and let’s see how your father is.”
“Your hands first,” he said. “I’ve got my penknife. It’s a good one. Father always gives good things. They didn’t search me.” He needed to talk about it. “One of them said, ‘Shall I go over him?’ and the other, the boss, kind of laughed, and said, ‘No need, a cripple like him.’ “
“Oh, Dominic.” Tears filled her eyes.
“Don’t cry,” said the extraordinarily adult child’s voice. “I don’t think we have time.” He put his good left hand into an inner pocket of his scarlet windbreaker and produced a magpie collection of small objects. Matches, hairpins, a paperclip, a long piece of string, and, at last, a serviceable pocket knife. “Hold still. It may take me a little while.”
“You can’t untie them?” She was furious with herself as she said it.
“I’m afraid not.” It was courteous, regretful, matter-of-fact. “My hand doesn’t look too bad now, but it’s not much use.” He opened the knife with his teeth and held it carefully between the good and bad hand. “I’ll try not to cut you.”
They were both silent while he sawed patiently away at the tough cord, and it gave her time to realise how long she must have been unconscious. It was morning light that showed her ragged grass and desolate buildings, and, curtailing everything, a strongly built wall. The knife slipped and cut her.
“Oh, Mother!”
“It’s nothing. Keep going, Dominic. My fault, I must have moved.”
“You didn’t.” His voice told of a million compromises refused. This child of hers of Breckon’s—was the most amazing person she had ever met. More than she deserved? What had she to do with it?
“There,” he said triumphantly as the last strand parted. “Let me rub them for you. He’d tied them horribly tight. It’s not much of a cut, is it?”
“Nothing,” she reassured him. The watch on her wrist had stopped. “What time is it, Dominic?”
“Early. Ten past seven. He must have brought you when it was still dark. He doesn’t come in the daytime. I think we must be quite near the vaporetto channel. I wish I’d found you sooner. Are you very cold?”
“I’ve been warmer.” She also had a throbbing headache, the aftermath, presumably, of whatever drug Tarn had given her, but no need to tell Dominic that. “So he won’t come again till dark?”
“That’s it. He brought me the night before last. I tried to keep track of where we were going, but it was hard, down in the bottom of the boat. Only, I do know we crossed the main vaporetto channel quite soon before we landed here. They’d given me something that put me to sleep, only I waked up in the boat. I didn’t let on, though.”
“Sensible. There.” She had been rubbing her ice-cold feet with stiff hands. “I think I can move now. Take me to your father, Dominic. When did they bring him?”
“Much later the same night. I hoped at first they’d come take me away, but they just dumped him on the cot and went. There’s no light,” he explained. “But they had flashlights. I tried to wake Father after they went, but he just groaned. And—I didn’t want to use all my matches. He’s breathing, though.” He anticipated her terror. “This way.” He took her right hand with his left one to lead her through tangled grass and weeds towards a building that leaned up against one of the island’s claustrophobic surrounding walls. “I’m afraid you’ll get your skirt wet.”
“It’s wet already.” But she hitched it up with her other hand. What an extraordinary child he was, with his adult speech, his grave courtesy, and his apparently total acceptance of the fact of her. This told her something heartwarming, too, about Breckon. Dominic had clearly heard nothing against her. She had, simply, been dead.
The shed had once been a house of some kind. It had a door, and windows of sorts, and morning sunshine, just beginning to take some of the damp chill from the air, showed rudimentary furnishings. Breckon was lying on an army cot, not, as she had feared, on the cold ground. “They said they wanted him alive.” Dominic had an uncanny trick of reading one’s thoughts. “There’s food, too, and water. For another day.”
“I see.” She knew that he did, too. Something was going to happen to them tonight. She bent over Breckon, wishing she had paid more attention to the first-aid course Sir Charles had made her take. He had hit his head, Tarn had told her. So—concussion. What in the world did one do for that? But Dominic had been right in his reassurance. Breckon was breathing easily enough, and his forehead was almost too cool to her touch. The bump on the side of his head was large, but not, she thought, alarmingly so. “He’s cold,” she said.
“There’s only one blanket. I doubled it, but it’s not much.”
She looked about the dreary little room, wondering where he had slept, and saw her answer in a pile of straw in one corner. She thought about rats, wondered if he had, and could not control a long, slow shudder. Well, they would be lucky if they were here tonight. “You’re sure there’s no way we can get off the island?”
“I don’t think there is.” Dominic’s eyes were huge with anxiety. “I went all round the wall yesterday. Only, of course, I had to keep coming back to see if Father—”
“Yes. Well, today we can take it in turns.” But they both knew they would not have been on this island if escape from it had been possible.
“There’s a water gate.” Once again, Dominic answered her question before she had asked it. “They bring the boat right in. I heard them when they brought Father. I was in bed.” His eyes slid from the cot where Breckon lay to a half-open cupboard door. “I got out and hid. They didn’t bother to look for me. Just said ‘We’ll find him quick enough when we need him,’ dumped Father on the cot and left. I’d seen it was Father, so at least I wasn’t afraid anymore. Except about him.”
She swallowed tears. The admission of fear was almost braver than she could bear. “What is there for breakfast, Dominic?” she asked. “I’m famished.”
“Good.” His smile, the first one, turned her heart upside down. “You’ll need to be. Rolls, and more rolls, cheese and fruit. And water.”
“Delicious. Let’s take it outside, shall we? I think it’s warmer out than in already. I wish we could get your father out.”
“When he comes to, we will. He looks much better this morning.”
“Does he?” Extraordinary to be drawing her strength from him. More extraordinary still to realise, as they began to carry out their frugal picnic into the sun, how little, already, she noticed the fact of his bad hand. By an adept use of the good one to pass things to the other, he seemed to be carrying almost more than his fair share of the load.
Settled in the sunshine, on a bit of decayed terrace, he looked up at her with a sudden challenge in his smile. “Shall I peel you an apple?” asked her son.
Chapter Ten
THE EXQUISITELY peeled apple set the tone for that whole extraordinary day. After finishing their picnic breakfast, they made the tour of the island together, having agreed, solemnly, that Breckon was sleeping quietly enough to be left alone. The walls were continuous, solid, and impossibly high. The water gate, when they reached it on the far side of the island, was equally solid, and inaccessible from the land, since it guarded a deep, walled channel that ran up to a disused landing place. “I’ve looked at it as well as I could,” Dominic said. “And you can see it’s got a huge bolt on the other side. No use to swim out to it. I swim very well,” he told her.
“Do you, Dominic? It’s more than I do.” What did he not do well, this child she had given away?
“I wish I could play the piano.” He might have been reading her thoughts. And then, “Funny, I never told Father that.”
For the second time, she fought back tears. Then, “There are piano arrangements for one hand, I think. Duets, mostly. I play a little. We could . . .” She bit off the end of the sente
nce.
“We need to get out of here,” said Dominic. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mother. There’s a tree on that little hill in the middle of the island. It doesn’t show much because it’s in among the bushes. I tried to climb it yesterday, hut it’s difficult with one hand. If you could give me a leg up? I think, from the top, I might be able to see over the wall.”
“Let’s go.”
“You’ll tear your pretty skirt.”
She looked down at the bright patchwork that had dried already in the morning sun. “That’s just what I’m going to do. Lend me your penknife, Dominic?”
They made a rough enough job of it, but it was a blessed relief to find herself free-moving in a jagged-edged, knee-length skirt. “And I expect the pieces will come in handy for something,” said Dominic.
He had found a comparatively easy way through the thick growth of bushes, and Julia kept close behind him, grateful for her flat-heeled evening sandals. The hill, masked by the bushes, was higher than she had realised, and when they stopped under a scrubby-looking oak tree she saw that Dominic was very likely right. From its top—if one could only get there—it might well be possible to see over the wall.
They stood and looked at it for a moment. Growing up from among the undergrowth, it had put out no sideways branches until it reached daylight, a little above Julia’s head. “I’m very light,” said Dominic.
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