Serpent in the Heather

by Kay Kenyon

Soon there was a knot of excited people surrounding them as they walked into the encampment, bringing an undisguised pleasure to Lady Ellesmere’s face. It was, Kim thought, the appeal that Powell must have seen his mother exert many times, a room-dazzling charisma that only a few could lay claim to. Perhaps for some, it came from a Talent of attraction. But with Dorothea Coslett, it appeared to be a combination of personality, presence, and even joy. For the old woman did find joy in these people, and no wonder. Hoping for a glance, a word, a crumb of power, they flocked to her.

  As the matriarch toured the encampment, Donald and Royce kept the path open before her. Kim allowed herself to drift behind. She wandered into the main pavilion, where tea urns were set out on tables along with sturdy cups and little collections: flints, broken pottery vessels and tools made out of what might be antlers. She dutifully took notes, but her purpose was to slip away unnoticed.

  Ducking out of the tent, she wandered to the outskirts of the field, and then turned into a draw leading in the direction of the castle.

  She had rushed up the stone stairway and entered the sitting room, without having seen any of the servants. Debating about whether to make her check-in call now or later, she decided to do so now, in case there was anything that Owen needed to convey to her. Moving quickly to the telephone, she tried to raise the operator. The line was dead. Powell had said that service came and went but, replacing the earpiece in the cradle, she felt a moment’s acute discomfort. The castle had been so good up until now.

  With the heavy metal key clutched inside her pocket, she slipped into the gallery hall and turned into the intersecting south corridor leading past the dining hall. At the foot of the south turret, what she thought of as Dorothea’s tower, she hurried up the stairs. Approaching the first landing, she found the dowager’s bedroom door open. Heavy curtains shadowed the room.

  Pausing to listen, and hearing nothing, she ducked inside. The room smelled of iodine and something sweet. A breakfast tray lay on the unmade bed, with a crockery filled with stewed fruit.

  Gaps in the brocade drapes metered a thin light into the room. From the balcony came the sound of pounding swells. In his place of pride over the mantel, Herr Hitler looked resolutely into the space over her shoulder.

  Well, if her spill could not break the case open, a little old-fashioned snooping might do.

  Beginning with the dresser drawers, Kim riffled through folded linens and small clothes. She hoped to find records, photographs, papers—some connection to Ewan Knox, Rupert Bristow, Frances Brooke, Jane Babington, George Merkin. Or to the places of mystery where they had been sacrificed for reasons of power.

  A chest anchored by metal corners and clasps contained a man’s frock coat, unfamiliar instruments, some in handsome leather cases, and a military kit. Mementos of Lady Ellesmere’s husband. A framed wedding picture, with a slim Dorothea standing next to whiskered and doughty gentlemen who looked of an age to be on a second marriage.

  A sound on the stairs.

  This was the essential problem with searching Lady Ellesmere’s suite. There was no escape from being overtaken. She rushed to the bedroom door, thinking to flee up the stairs, but sensed she hadn’t the time.

  Dashing across the room, she opened the balcony door and shut it softly behind her. With any luck at all, it would be Idelle. But it could not be she, since she had gone to the village. So, it would only be someone who would report her: Rian, Awbrey . . . She peeked through the gap in the drapes.

  The nurse, moving about.

  The sea lay open on every side, massive and glittering. After the dusky interior, the sight hit Kim’s eyes like bird shot. The view, Lady Ellesmere, how splendid! No, if discovered, she would be caught dead to rights, spying. Below the stone balustrade, the curtain wall of the castle fell straight to the surf, swelling and dipping. She was afraid, practically holding her breath, and only dimly aware of the crash of the sea below.

  She pulled her sleeve back to check her watch, a nervous tic that nevertheless often steadied her. It was a quarter after one.

  A jangle of noise from inside. She guessed it was the nurse taking up the breakfast tray. Pray God the nurse would not throw open the French doors to let in fresh air. Victorians didn’t believe in fresh air, did they? Everyone in the castle seemed to be carrying the nineteenth century with them like great, dismal bundles on their backs.

  One twenty-two. Time to risk a look through the curtains. The breakfast tray was gone.

  Kim emerged back into the bedroom and crept to the door to listen as the clattering tray made its way down the tower stairs. Cautiously, she followed.

  At the bottom of the stairs, she walked calmly down the hall. Home free. She moved away from the precincts of Dorothea’s tower, passing the long row of windows just off the drawing room. No one had seen her, but she’d found nothing for her trouble.

  She passed the stairs to her own turret bedroom, and went farther down the corridor. Here was the unused great hall visible over the balcony rail. She imagined a king and queen having their feast long ago, whichever king and queen it had been. The Sulcliffe painted shield dominated the wall above the hearth. Its spears cradled a dogwood blossom and sea waves, the symbolism pure Coslett: land and sea, the sacred elements.

  For many minutes now she had seen no one. It was as though the castle had long been inhabited by a chosen few, and as they grew old and died, it left fewer and fewer until none would remain.

  Up the stairs to the third tower. Powell’s.

  31

  THE SULCLIFFE ESTATE, WALES

  1:35 PM. Martin had gone back for a second helping of beans in the food tent and was standing in line when the fat man caught his eye. This was the bloke who’d talked to him in the village, and who was on the same bus to the castle.

  Martin nodded at the fellow. When he reached the front of the line for the beans, he took his plate outside and sat on a rock across the grounds. A bunch of regular-looking stones were set in a circle, with a mound of built-up dirt in the middle. Spooning the beans in as fast as he could, he watched the grounds for Miss Kim. When the old woman had come a while before, he thought Kim might be with her, but there was such a crowd, he couldn’t see if she was. He couldn’t even see the baroness properly, except that she was as old as the librarian in Coomsby, maybe older.

  He watched for the fat man, too. He didn’t want to explain to him why he wasn’t with his parents, like he said he would be, joining up with them at the fair where he’d claimed they’d gone ahead. At the time the fellow looked like he didn’t believe it. And worse, now he was seeing how Martin wasn’t with anyone after all.

  Where was Miss Kim? He had thought it would be easy to find her, but now he might not have much more time, if the fat man grabbed him by the collar.

  He watched the camp, considering whether it was better to stay where he was or try to get into the castle.

  The fat man was still watching him from the opening of the big tent. Martin left his plate lying in the grass and strolled away. Once behind one of the bigger tents, he used it for cover to dash into the trees.

  PENGEYLAN

  1:40 PM. Alice had long ago learned that cemeteries were full of memory. She stood on the far edge of the churchyard, by the vicarage, with a clear view of the entire grounds. In the churchyard, people stood by headstones, sometimes with heads bowed, sometimes chatting with friends, in the way of holidayers.

  But for many, memories came, tender, bitter or brutal. The latter were the sort that would descend on Alice. It had happened often enough in the cemetery at Uxley, when the churchyard had visitors. Today she was in danger of seeing events that would block out the memories of her target. Perhaps when Idelle came into the churchyard, she could get close enough to the old woman to forestall interference from others.

  Idelle would likely require a cue from Alice to turn her thoughts to Flory Soames. And having heard the cue, Idelle might put two and two together and think she was under scrutiny and run off or alert
someone. If old Awbrey had driven her, he would be no match for Alice, though. She thought she could outrun a seventy-five-year-old man, even if he was in the peak of health.

  A swift reconnoiter of the gravestones had not yielded Bowen Coslett’s, but much of the statuary was thickly matted with moss. There were several grave monuments to keep watch on: a soldier in bronze, a commanding Gaelic-looking stone crucifix, a sleeping angel carved from granite.

  Across the churchyard, a car, sleekly black and decades old, pulled up to the pavement in front of the church. A man stepped out from the driver’s side. From the several pictures in the dossier Alice had studied, it was Powell Coslett. He opened the door for a diminutive woman of advanced aged. Right-o, Alice thought with a yank of excitement. Idelle. Lady Ellesmere’s sister-in-law.

  They shared a few words before Powell Coslett got back in the car and drove away. For a moment Alice had been prepared to shift her focus to Lord Ellesmere, to find a way to establish a conversation with him at graveside. But now he had driven off.

  Instead of entering the cemetery, the old woman came up the footpath to the church and entered. Alice followed, entering the cool shadows of the nave and finding Idelle seated in the front row gazing at the altar. It was impossible to exploit the moment, for conversation would be out of the question. Slipping back out, Alice waited until Idelle emerged from the church and crossed the graveyard toward the monument with the reclining angel. It flitted through Alice’s mind that one did not often see angels asleep on the job.

  Idelle stood before the grave. As Alice made her way closer, she saw that the angel was not depicted as sleeping, but rather prostrate over a headstone pediment, as though collapsed in sorrow. One arm of the stricken angel was thrown forward of her head, in abandonment to grief. The wings draped protectively alongside her and the pediment beneath.

  Alice pretended to pay respects at a nearby grave, rehearsing in her mind her approach to Idelle. She must choose her moment with care.

  1:45 PM. Lloyd Nichols nursed a pint in the corner of the White Bell next to the Penrhyn Inn. He’d been lucky to get a table, with the weekend crowd packed in. The bar man squeezed around the smoke-filled pub, handing out plates of sausages and chopped turnips, and keeping the regulars well oiled.

  A man came in, obviously the minted sort, wearing a good jacket and his chin in the air. It must be the baron. Lloyd hailed him with a wave, wishing he’d waited to order his beer so the toff could pay for it.

  “You’re Lloyd Nichols?” Coslett took a seat, putting his hat on his knee, not wantin’ to soil it on the table.

  “That’s right. Come from London, and at my own expense. I figured you’d want to know about the Tavistock woman. Happy to set the record straight.”

  The baron looked around him. “Keep your voice down, man.”

  “Right.” Lloyd leaned into the table, to be heard above the din. “So, like I said when I rung you up, that Tavistock woman that wrote your spiritualist piece, she’s got a sideline, she does.” He took a long pull at his glass.

  “Sideline?” As the bar man approached, the baron waved him off.

  “You might stand for my drink. I come a long way to save you a particular aggravation.”

  A coin appeared, snapped down on the table, and Lloyd nodded. He’d better pay for his train ticket, too.

  “So, like I said, a sideline. Turns out Tavistock is workin’ for an unnamed government office, and this unnamed government office relates to certain clandestine jobs for Whitehall.”

  “That’s absurd,” the baron said, but without conviction. “The article came out a week and a half ago. If you’re wasting my time, I assure you I shall have a word with the Register.”

  “Don’t mind if you do. Me and my editor—a total arse—parted ways, we did. Had a blazing row over her takin’ my story.” Lloyd got the barman’s attention for another pint. “But I did a little investigatin’ and found that Maxwell Slater—my waster of a boss—is an acquaintance of Richard Galbraith, and this same Richard Galbraith is well known to my sources in Scotland Yard as bein’ right up there in the Foreign Office. In fact”—he leaned in further—“quite possibly in the intelligence line.”

  “Intelligence? Do you mean to say spying?”

  “Too bloody right.” By the look on the baron’s face, gone stiff and pasty, he had him now. There was nothin’ the gentry hated quite so much as bein’ taken for fools. “What utter nonsense!” Coslett said. But he wasn’t convincing.

  “Maybe so, maybe not. But seems my former boss got a call some weeks ago from a highly placed official—the selfsame Richard Galbraith—and after this conversation, Slater takes me off the story and puts her on. And before you know it, she’s got an appointment with you, like I had. So, the Register runs the story, all regular-like, because Tavistock is a reporter, though bear in mind, one that’s been sacked from certain establishments. But now, what with her sideline, she’s investigatin’ you, or Ancient Light, and nosin’ around for a cockup or whatever it is you’re tryin’ to hide.”

  The baron didn’t care for the allegation, because he sat back, narrowing his eyes. “You’d be well advised not to say these things in public. It won’t go well for you.” Coslett looked out the window, as though the Tavistock woman might be lurking around the pub.

  “I haven’t said anything. Just to you. I took offense at her making a balls-up of a noble profession, and I thought you might want to know.”

  A fresh pint appeared before him, and the baron brought out a new coin, which disappeared into the barman’s apron pocket.

  Coslett’s mouth curved into a sneer. “No doubt you expect me to pay you for this information.”

  “I don’t want your money. I just want to set the record straight. And you can do with it what you will.”

  The baron stood up. “I have nothing to hide. But if what you say is true, it was good of you to let me know.” He paused. “Please allow me to cover the expense of your trip.” He reached into his jacket.

  “I didn’t come for your money.”

  “But you’ll take it?”

  He set down ten quid on the table. Then he turned and practically fled through the crowd to the door.

  2:10 PM. At last, just as Idelle turned away from the grave, Alice approached.

  “I couldn’t help but notice the lovely statue. Exquisite. I hope you don’t mind my saying so.” Idelle would not speak, so she must act as though she didn’t notice this.

  “How tenderly the sculptor caught the emotions of loss. I’m sure it’s a consolation to many who come to St. Albans.” Alice nodded to the grave where she had been lurking. “I’ve lost a dear friend. It’s very difficult to bear.”

  Idelle looked at her with what might be a flicker of compassion.

  “Her name was Flory. That’s not a name you hear every day, is it?”

  Alice hoped Idelle would not check out the name on the grave, but she needn’t have worried, because Idelle had gone so still she looked like statuary.

  “I hope I didn’t upset you,” Alice continued. “You don’t know a Flory, do you?”

  The old woman’s eyes widened, shining hard and dark. As the two of them locked gazes, Idelle’s face trembled, as though she were trying to hold something inside her, the memory that she could not release, could never tell.

  Idelle backed up, shaking her head, as though to say, No, no, I mustn’t say.

  But she had already said all that was needed. Because she was leaving something behind: a full-color, exquisitely detailed trauma view.

  Alice saw: A young girl, perhaps eleven or twelve years old, standing in a cavernous hall built of stone. Beside her, an enormous darkened fireplace, and above, a coat of arms in yellow and green. From an upper gallery, some thirty feet away, someone was watching. The girl had said her name was Flory Soames, run away from the orphanage, and they had taken her in for the night, half-starving and covered in filth and brambles.

  Bending over the girl was a solidly bu
ilt woman dressed in widow’s black. She had pinned the girl onto the floor with her knee. In her hand was a broad knife. Panicking, the observer—Idelle Coslett—ran down the corridor, and then down the stone stairs. She rushed into the hall, colliding with the woman in black, who still held the knife, now bloody. “Dorothea, no!” The shout filled the great hall, but it was too late. The girl lay dead. Idelle pulled the great hunting knife from the girl’s breast.

  Idelle knelt beside the child, rocking on the bloodied floor, saying “No, no, no . . .”

  Dorothea Coslett watched as the blood pooled. Then she retrieved a wheelbarrow from the recesses of the hall. Together, they lifted the body and placed it inside.

  Out of the great hall they went, Dorothea pushing the wheelbarrow, and Idelle opening the oak doors, her thoughts slamming into each other. The girl dead, the knife in her chest, the blood . . . They maneuvered the wheelbarrow down the stairs, almost dumping the body when they lost control for a moment. Once in the yard, the barrow’s wheel lost traction in the mud, and they both had to push. After an eternity, they rolled it to the edge of the cliff. It was very dark, but Idelle heard the body slide out of the pan. The girl fell like a stone angel. Down, down, into the pounding sea.

  Dorothea turned to her and said, as calm as could be: “You can never tell. You understand that, don’t you?”

  Idelle looked into the hated face, but she didn’t answer. She would never speak again.

  As someone approached, Alice shook off her vision. A man walked toward them from the footpath beside the church. Powell Coslett. Entranced by the trauma view, Alice hadn’t noticed the car pull up and park on the street.

  Idelle saw and went to join him.

  Alice drifted to the headstone she had pretended belonged to someone named Flory. She hadn’t known that Flory Soames was dead. She had just used the grave as a pretext to bring up the name. But now she knew: Flory Soames was indeed dead. Slain without mercy by Dorothea Coslett.

  From a few feet away, Powell Coslett regarded Alice for a few seconds, then took Idelle by the elbow and led her to the car. He seemed in a great hurry as he handed the old woman into the car and sped away.