The Distant Kingdom

by Daphne Wright

  Bello:

  hidden talent rediscovered

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  Contents

  Daphne Wright

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Author’s Note

  Daphne Wright

  The Distant Kingdom

  Daphne Wright

  Daphne Wright is a historical novelist with a special interest in the way wars have liberated women. Born in London, she worked in publishing for ten years before becoming a writer. After six historical novels, she turned to crime under the pseudonym of Natasha Cooper. She now divides her time between the city and the Somerset Levels.

  Chapter One

  Perdita Whitney was twenty-six when she went out to India to die. As she waited for her ship to sail, she had no doubt of the ultimate outcome of her voyage, but no resentment either. For as long as she could remember, she had felt herself to be a burden on her uncle and aunt, and now that there was no reason for her to live in their house, India seemed to offer her a chance to tidy herself out of their way for ever.

  During the last months of her mother’s illness, Perdita had often sat looking down at that grey, pain-racked face, longing for her mother’s sufferings to end, but terrified of the exile her death would bring. Perdita knew that there would be no place for her at the Rectory when her mother no longer needed nursing; but there was nothing else she could do and, she believed, nowhere else she could go. She had no means, no acquaintances, no friends.

  It was not until two days after the funeral that her aunt told her that she was to be sent out to India to live with her father. At first the idea shocked and frightened her, but during the six weeks it had taken to get her a berth on a suitable ship, she had had time to think it over and realize that it offered a sensible solution.

  Knowing that it was the Indian climate that had killed her three siblings in their infancy and broken her mother’s health, Perdita did not once consider that she might survive it, however many other people managed to spend their lives out there. Her unknown father’s continuing survival she put down in part to the fact that he was a man and in part to the well-known strength of the wicked. Although no one had ever actually described his crime, she had grown up with the knowledge that he had done something shocking to her mother.

  More than once during her childhood, Perdita had wondered whether her own wickedness could have had something to do with him; for the very bleakness of her life had convinced her that she must once have done something dreadfully wrong. But the only time she had ever tried to ask her mother about it, Diana Whitney had silenced her by saying, ‘You hurt me very much by speaking of your father; he was not a good man like your uncle.’ Nothing must be done to hurt her mother, and so Perdita had never asked again, turning elsewhere for enlightenment. She believed that she had found it when one of the kitchenmaids had told her that the convulsions from which she occasionally suffered were a mark of the devil’s possession. Relieved at least to have the answer, Perdita had gone to her uncle for help.

  Shocked out of his habitual self-absorption by his eight-year-old niece’s terrified shame, the Rector had soon disabused her of the idea and had decided that he must do something to protect her against such ignorant superstition. He had taken her education on himself and had taught her the classical languages that had formed the basis of his own schooling; together they had read the military and political history of the ancient world, and as she progressed they had tackled the philosophers and some carefully censored poetry. It had often struck her uncle that she displayed great quickness of mind as well as considerable application, but when she was a child it had never occurred to him to tell her so, and later, when he found it so hard to keep his hands from her slender body, he was concerned only to hide the admiration he felt for her. She, knowing nothing of his real feelings and hating the way he touched her, assumed that he shared his wife’s quite different assessment of her brains and character.

  Standing on the deck of the great East Indiaman, looking down at the busy Southampton dockside, Perdita was aware of a new sadness. She felt no anger at her sentence of exile, just as she had felt none at the treatment she had suffered in Norfolk, but she did wish that her aunt had been able to show some signs of regret at their parting, if only to counteract the effect of the Rector’s frighteningly passionate farewell. But Mrs Wallier had left the ship almost at once, saying only:

  ‘Well, Perdita, behave yourself and take care not to trouble Mrs Flaxman. It is very good of her to have agreed to act as your chaperon; don’t make her regret her kindness.’

  Perdita shivered a little and pulled her black shawl tighter round her shoulders against the April wind. As she and Mrs Flaxman watched the other passengers board the ship she was dreading the moment when she would have to meet the girl who was to share her cabin. It had been a shock even to discover that she would not have it to herself; but when she had been told that her companion was to be the Lady Juliana Blagdon, who was travelling out to India with her mother, the Countess of Beaminster, Perdita had been appalled.

  It was obvious that they would have nothing to say to one another, for Perdita’s only experience had been of household tasks and charitable duties around the parish, while Lady Juliana’s must have been very different. Perdita might know all there was to know about the ancient empires of Greece and Rome, and more than a little about the Romantic poets, but she had no conversation. Once she had grown up and her uncle had begun to frighten her with his strokings and fumbling, the only beings with whom she had ever been able to feel at ease were the birds and animals she had watched in the countryside around Fakenham, and she did not think that Lady Juliana would be at all impressed with accounts of the nesting habits of the house-martin or the appearance of the first cuckoo each spring.

  There were few young ladies boarding the ship, but even if there had been dozens, Perdita would have had no difficulty in picking out Lady Beaminster and her daughter when they eventually came. Not only were they accompanied by obviously superior servants, but by their carriage and dress alone they proclaimed themselves apart from all the other passengers. Perdita tried not to stare, but for one agonizingly embarrassing moment she caught the elder lady’s eye, and read unutterable disdain in it.

  Her ladyship, who had been wondering whether the benefits of taking her daughter away from the unsuitable man who had caught her attention might not be outweighed by the disadvan
tages of introducing her into a place like India, which was apparently filled with the kind of people you might expect to meet in the company of your housekeeper, was surprised to find herself being inspected by a gawky young woman dressed in ill-fitting mourning clothes. Accustomed to sizing up the people she met, Lady Beaminster noticed that the younger woman’s face was of a good oval shape, and that her eyes, which were quite well spaced and large, were of a pleasing deep blue, but her pale brown hair was impossibly badly arranged and her long hands were ungloved and roughened as though they were accustomed to laundry water. Lady Beaminster raised an eyebrow, and the young woman blushed and turned to her companion with some remark. Her voice surprised Lady Beaminster, for it was low and well articulated, almost cultivated.

  Trying to prolong the conversation with Mrs Flaxman so that she would not have to face Lady Beaminster again, Perdita was struck by a sudden, wholly unexpected pang of homesickness for the Rectory. It was one emotion she had never thought to feel and did not know how to deal with. Fortunately a string of shouted orders and the sound of running feet distracted her, and she turned to see barefooted men clambering up the rigging towards the long bundles of furled sails. Other men were hauling at ropes, and Perdita could hear the clanking of a great chain.

  ‘That’s the anchor, Miss Whitney,’ said her chaperon. ‘We shall be off directly. Come along to your cabin.’

  Perdita looked back for a moment, to see a gradually widening strip of scummy water appear between the ship and the harbour’s edge. Whatever was to happen had begun. There was no going back.

  In the early days of the journey the two young women looked askance at each other, and hardly spoke, but quite soon the absurdity of behaving as strangers when sharing a cabin twelve foot by ten for a voyage that might last up to five months occurred to them both. And after Juliana Blagdon had helped to nurse Perdita through a bad bout of seasickness, they became almost easy with each other, in spite of the vast differences between them. Once past the bay, Juliana fell prone to boredom and envied Perdita her rapt enjoyment of the sea.

  Perdita would stand in the stern, feeling a sensation of escape that grew daily stronger and more intoxicating as the East Indiaman plunged southwards into the sunlight. She buried the memories of Fakenham Rectory and the growing unpleasantness with her uncle in the glorious sight of the ship’s great sails bellying outwards with the wind, and the green-blue water churning into creamy foam under her oak planks. Perdita could spend hours watching the rise and fall of the water and listening to the sounds around her. She knew that she was making herself conspicuous by her vigil at the rails while the other ladies worked at their embroidery in the shade of awnings, gossiping and flirting with the men who sketched or lounged around talking, but she could not care. Whenever she tried to talk to any of them she was snubbed, and there was so much to see and enjoy around the ship.

  When the weather was bad she turned to books. Juliana had lent poor Miss Whitney her illicit copy of Jane Eyre, the only novel Perdita had ever read. At first she had devoured it, astonished to recognize so much of her own situation in that of the tormented child, but with the advent of the terrible Mr Rochester her sympathies dwindled and she found herself shocked that any woman could have had anything to do with so monstrous a man. But, remembering the shame and fear that her uncle’s kisses had aroused in her, she found herself thinking that all men must be monstrous in one way or another.

  It was unfortunate that very soon after she had returned the book to its owner she was to find corroborating evidence of that thought. There was a long calm and the great ship hardly moved for eleven days, reminding Perdita of ‘the painted ship upon a painted ocean’. On one of the calm days some of the gentlemen on board had a jolly boat lowered so that they could indulge in their favourite amusement.

  Perdita watched, puzzled, as they emerged from their cabins below deck with guns over their arms. Laughing, calling friendly insults to one another, they handed their weapons down to the boatmen and clambered after them. She saw the jolly boat pulled away from the ship and waited with Juliana to see what they would do.

  To Perdita’s horror, she saw one after another of them stand up, bracing himself against the rocking of the boat, take aim at the birds that had followed the ship so trustingly, and fire. She could find no admiration for the accuracy of their shooting and looked round distressed as she heard approving comments on their marksmanship from some of the other spectators. At intervals, the sportsmen would sit back while the boatmen rowed round to collect the corpses that floated on the dark-green surface of the sea.

  By the time the men had exhausted their desire for sport and even the poorest shots had bagged enough birds, they had the boat returned to the Jupiter, and unloaded on to the deck a slimy heap of wet, flaccid bodies: thirty pintados, two gannets, no less than seven immense albatross, and a Cape hen. But the real horror was to follow. As Perdita stood in a corner with Juliana, trying to avoid the sight, the officers and gentlemen followed their bag up on to the deck, bringing with them a wounded Cape hen as a curiosity. It was a large black bird, one of whose wings had been broken by a stray bullet. To Perdita’s eye it was clearly in great pain and fear, furiously pecking at the strong, cruel hands that held it pinioned, and wrenching forward as though to slash the legs of the spectators who circled round, screaming at them. One of the Lancer officers on deck had a small noisy terrier, which was frenziedly yapping at the bird. Lieutenant Smytham raised his voice over the cacophony to call to the dog’s owner:

  ‘Let’s fight them.’

  Cries of ‘Good idea!’, ‘Start them off’, and ‘Lay you a pony’ followed from all sides. Smytham watched avidly as the bird was released to turn on its tormentors. The dog leaped towards it and bit deep into the wounded wing. The bird brought its sharp beak furiously down into the small dog’s fleshy side, and Perdita was revolted to see bright blood welling up out of each creature on the white scrubbed planks. She whispered:

  ‘How can they be so cruel?’ half to herself, half to Juliana, who answered:

  ‘It is horrible. Let’s go away.’ But somehow they could not. On every face around them they saw fascination, and one young lady near them breathed, ‘Isn’t it exciting?’ as her little, pale pink tongue flickered out to moisten lips grown suddenly dry.

  The dog won in the end, tearing out the throat of the wounded bird, but not before it had ripped into the victor’s flesh with its sharp beak and claws. Perdita turned, sickened, to go down to the cabin, and Juliana followed almost equally upset. She burst out as the door swung to behind her:

  ‘That was vile. How could they do such a thing?’

  Perdita answered slowly:

  ‘I can’t imagine. And if they do that to animals who have done them no harm, what will they do to their enemies? It is barbaric. But perhaps all men are like that. It may be that they cannot help behaving cruelly.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Whitney, not all men. I … I …’ She looked hesitantly at Perdita’s gentle face and finally poured out her story, telling her first sympathetic listener of Andrew Sarum, the young scientist whose love for her had led to her exile from home. He was a man whose preoccupations were as far removed from those of the men of the Jupiter as possible. ‘And my elder brother, Augustus, too, is more interested in botany than hunting and killing. That is one reason, I think, why Mama does not like him very much. I suppose,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘that Marcus must be very different. Mama loves him best, you see, although he has been in India for years now; and Lieutenant Smytham told me only last week that he had met my brother before his furlough and that Marcus is a “fine fellow” and very brave. I expect that means he likes killing, don’t you?’

  Perdita could only agree and feel thankful that she was unlikely ever to meet him. As the days passed she and Juliana became more at home with one another, swapping stories of their lives. Perdita tried to imagine a childhood of dancing masters, governesses, servants and wealth in a palace-like house in the round green hi
lls of Dorset, and could hardly believe Juliana’s careless references to the Prime Minister and other statesmen who had been part of it.

  In her turn, Juliana listened amazed to Perdita’s halting descriptions of life in Fakenham. Once she said doubtfully:

  ‘You mean that you never saw anyone except your mother and her relatives? Oh, well, servants – I don’t count them. How did you bear it?’

  She seemed to find Perdita’s story fascinating and asked innumerable questions about the Rectory, wondering privately what it could be like to be part of a world where you lived like a servant and had no prospect of ever changing your situation. She could not really conceive of anything so far out of her own experience, but at least the effort made her own troubles shrink in contrast to those her companion had endured for so long.

  One afternoon as the two young women lay sweltering on their beds and the great ship approached the line, Juliana said:

  ‘It is like a book. You have had this terrible life, cold, uncomfortable, bullied by your aunt, and now you are off to India where I expect everything will come right and you will meet a wonderful man who will marry you and make you happy ever after.’

  Perdita shuddered a little at the thought of the few men she knew anything about: either they were cruel and bloodthirsty like Lieutenant Smytham or Mr Rochester, or they were like her uncle. The memory of the things he had done to her, and the misery and disgust she had felt, nauseated her. But Juliana was watching her and she had to say something before the girl guessed what was the matter. Making herself smile a little, Perdita said:

  ‘I am twenty-six, Juliana. The time for any such thing is long passed and even if Jane Eyre fell in love and married, it won’t happen to me.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. You are very pretty, even if you are twenty-six, and as soon as you come out of those dreadful black clothes, all these horrid men will see it. Even now Lieutenant Smytham looks at you sometimes like that. Haven’t you noticed?’