by Jane Jakeman
Well, we were committed now. Halfway across Dartmoor there is no turning back. There, to the south of our route, lay the long black shape of Dartmoor Prison. The autumnal sun was already beginning to set and in the distance I saw the twisted and stunted trees of Wistman’s Wood, that old grove of oaks that has taken on gnarled and fantastic shapes with exposure to the terrible winds and storms that sweep across the moor. I feared that night should find us with no other option than to take shelter in that sinister patch of woodland, but we were fortunate — or rather, my good fortune and the horse’s courage carried us on beyond it.
Not far now to get off Dartmoor and at least be able to seek shelter if need be, and yet we must continue if our race against time was to succeed. I slowed Zaraband’s pace deliberately, though: the tussocks and potholes, the old clay workings and rocky outcrops could bring her down and kill us both.
It was dark when Zaraband ran down into Saltash, and I led her aboard the ferry across the Tamar. The ferryman looked strangely at us, as well he might, for we were spattered and weary, but Zaraband still breathed easily, which was my main concern. Arab horses have extraordinarily large and free windpipes. As we crossed the river, I sank against the gunwales of the ferryboat and tipped some brandy down my throat. The rain beat down.
On, on, deeper into the lost land, to Lostwithiel, the ancient capital of Cornwall, and there, high above the river, was Restormel, castle of the Earls of Cornwall, when this county had practically been an independent kingdom, beyond the reach of London. What was this journey, thought I to myself, but a voyage into a brave and vanished past, such a journey as I myself had made when I had returned to my mother’s inheritance, her lands in Crete, that I had hoped in some quixotic way to reconquer for the present?
They moulder on, these old kingdoms, those that tower like ruined castles on the land around us, and those that arise within our minds, and we can neither rebuild them nor utterly abandon them.
Fuzzy black tree-shapes indistinctly crowded the sides of a valley: St. Blazey, I conjectured, with Truro beyond.
Zaraband was flagging now, undoubtedly; even her great powers of endurance could not sustain this run for much longer. I took her beyond Carnon Downs, we splashed across a creek somehow, and I put her up the slope of a side valley; then the air changed, blowing salty, harsh, and there was the great mass of a fortress, outlined against the evening sky. Pendennis Castle at Falmouth, towering over the headland and facing stoutly out across the water. And in the great sweep of Falmouth harbour was a strange outline: a ship with tall black projections against the grey light: the funnel and sails of such a ship as had never been seen there before, a vessel that carried both sails and steam, a ship supposedly unbeatable by any form of transport.
The ostler at the Royal Hotel gawped as I gave the reins into his hands.
“There’s a groom on the way from Malfine in Somerset to collect this horse,” says I, “and he’ll have a purse of guineas for you if you treat her right — but mind, he’ll know! She’s covered nigh on a hundred miles now — so let her breathe up easy!”
With a last caress and whisper for Zaraband, I rushed on down to the harbour, and as I raced over the cobbled streets a sound drifted over the water. The rattle of anchor-chain, and the low throbbing of steam-pistons as brass, steel, and iron began their unyielding work in the depths of the Great London. A fishing-smack lay in harbour. I flung myself down into it, pointing to the great vessel which lay further out to sea. The astonished skipper hauled on his ropes, his sails filled out, and we swept with the wind across the water towards the Great London where she was reprising her long and relentless journey to the East.
SIX - The Narrative of Miss Lilian Westmorland
Lord Ambrose has asked me to set down my recollections of events following my accident at Westmorland Park, though I am afraid that I have but little elegance with my pen! I lack those literary touches that other young women seem to contrive. My spelling is not always correct, and, when I am in a hurry to write, I sometimes do not seem able to find even the proper grammar, at least so Miss Pallerton, my governess, used to tell me! I am afraid I was not the most attentive of pupils to poor Miss P. I teased her sometimes, and splashed my ink about quite often, though that was not done on purpose but because my nib always seemed to splutter!
But when I said to Lord Ambrose that I would prove an artless record-keeper, he did not seem alarmed. I confess, I did not know how to begin, but he told me just to set it down as naturally as if I were writing my diary! (Only, he added, not so many exclamations!) Truly, that man knows things beyond human power, for how does he know about my diary and the exclamations? I always keep it locked up safely and write it only when I am sure no one is about and have never told a soul about it (well, only my dearest S., since we met, and I have shown my dearest S. one or two entries relating to himself, but I am sure he would be far too embarrassed to confide such things in Lord A. So Lord A. must have guessed, but anyway, what he said was a great help in getting me started with my pen). So I will write down all the story of the Egyptian Coffin just as if I were telling it to the pages of my diary.
The only trouble is that I remember almost nothing of the accident which led to the strange and frightening events I must relate. I recall that morning, as I set off for a canter through the park around our house, on my mare, Selene.
I should here insert something about our home, Westmorland Park, where this accident took place. It is a Gentleman’s Residence, so Jennet says, built in the reign of Queen Anne, of red brick which has gone a nice soft pinkish colour. There is an orchard close to the house, and a greenhouse against the south wall, but best of all are the stables at the back, with a chiming clock set over them.
On that autumn morning, I set out very early for my ride. I had been pent up in the house for days. I should explain here that my dear mother had died six months previously, of a lingering malady, and as my father had drowned even before my birth, I was left orphaned at the age of seventeen.
I had become accustomed to pleasing myself as to when I rode or walked or took exercise. On this particular morning, I felt that a ride out in the Park would best suit my spirits, and I longed to let Selene show her paces. I did not go out on my own, for sure, because that would not have been considered at all proper, and my Uncle Micah, who was staying in the house to attend to some business, would certainly have been very angry with me. He often lectured me on ladylike behaviour, and I have inscribed my reflexions on this in the pages of my diary many times before now, so I will desist from doing so yet again. Suffice it to say that Uncle Micah did not want me “prancing round the grounds like a wild thing,” as he put it.
In any case, I took the groom, Adams, on my ride that morning, but I had soon got ahead of him, on the stout little grey pony he always rode. Selene cantered, Selene galloped, and I let her have her head, which was as I know now a wayward and foolish thing to do.
It was most especially foolish, as I later thought, to let her gallop along the narrow path between the beech trees, although we had ridden along it so many times before that I would have said she knew every inch of the way, and I knew her every hoofbeat as she thundered along it. All seemed exactly as usual: we turned into the path from the direction of the house and everything along the way seemed the same as always. I recall the wind in my hair, the leaves of the beeches flashing past — and then almost nothing, save a great dazzling light. Well, I do remember one thing more, of that I am certain. But the next thing I knew was waking up in a quite different place.
I thought I was in Hell. Black shapes, with red glowing embers around them and little yellow licking flames. And thick black bars — the bars must be to imprison the wretched creatures in their torment, so there would be no escape from this never-ending infernal torture. Truly, I thought this was an inferno ...
“Is she awake?”
Who had said that? A voice from out of the burning depths? I thought Hell itself had spoken to me, or at least the ve
ry Devil. Or was this a soul in bliss, far above in paradise, as the pictures in my mothers Bible showed?
I turned my head, and found I could turn it no more than a little, just a small way to one side. Hell was still near me: the black bars and the red fire that burned my face, burned my body.
“What have I done?” I cried, for I thought I had gone to the infernal place and was being punished for some wickedness. “I never harmed anyone!”
Then I felt some water on my forehead. Water, in the midst of the fiery furnace. Cool drops of water. Surely I once saw a picture of a man surrounded by leaping flames and trying to drink water from a pitcher above his head. The stream from the mouth of the vessel flowed out beyond the reach of his blistered lips.
But, I reasoned, if I could feel water on my face, perhaps there was some remission allowed. Perhaps I would not be made to dwell in Hell forever, then. Perhaps I was being released, or at any rate, allowed some mercy, I turned towards something cool that was being pressed against my cheek.
“Can you open your eyes, miss? Try now, try for me! Please, miss, if you can, speak a word to me!”
There was a burr in the voice — as comforting as a rough towel wrapped around me.
It was Jennet.
Jennet, my mother’s maid, had nursed me since I was a baby, and would never leave off now that I was seventeen.
But I must confess I was deeply relieved to hear her voice. If Jennet was with me, then this could not be Hell, for Jennet could never have been sent to the Place of Everlasting Punishment. Why, she washes in cold water every single morning!
At any rate, the voice brought me back to the real world and I opened my eyes and almost laughed at Hell.
Hell was the fireplace in my bedroom, my own dear room at the Park, where coals glowed behind the black bars of the grate.
Jennet stood at the side of the bed, a silver basin in one hand, and in the other the cloth with which she had been wiping my hot face.
She put down the basin on the night table beside the bed, and came and supported my head, propping me up on pillows as I struggled to sit up. Yes, there were the Chinese scenes on the wallpaper, my childhood friends the painted Chinese ladies and gentlemen walking beneath hanging willow-branches. There were the white bed-hangings, embroidered with the Indian pattern of birds and flowers in bright colours. How I loved, when I was a child, to pull those curtains around me when I was safely tucked up in bed, and count the red blossoms and emerald-green parrots and the crested cockatoos that adorned my own private silk-stitched garden, till I fell asleep!
“You’ve been very ill, Miss Lilian,” Jennet was saying. “You can’t know how ill — the truth is, I never thought ...”
“I do feel weak, Jennet. What’s wrong with me?”
“That accident you had, miss. On the horse.”
“Oh, yes, on Selene. All my fault — shouldn’t have ridden her so fast, I know that I was such a fool this morning.”
“’Tweren’t this morning, miss.”
“No? Well, I must have been unconscious for a while. How long — how long have I been like this?”
“Two days, now. Oh, miss, I’m that glad to hear your own dear voice again!”
“Two days? Surely that’s not possible! Since I fell from Selene?”
“Yes miss. And a longer time I’ve never known, for I’ve been sick with worry about you. Dr. Sandys, he’s called here three or four times.”
I remember trying to turn in the bed, and feeling an agonising pain in my side. It made me gasp out loud.
“Don’t try to move, miss. You’ve got several cracked ribs, the doctor do say. And a nasty bang you gave your head as well.”
But I managed to put my hand up to my head and felt my scalp with a shock of horror.
Instead of the long curls of which I had been quite proud, there was a rough stubble beneath my fingertips.
The red hair that had cascaded down so thickly, the hair that Jennet had brushed with a hundred strokes every morning, making me count them ten to each finger and ten to each thumb, had gone.
I cried aloud then, and Jennet hugged me.
“Don’t take on so, my dearie. I had to cut it off for you. You were in a fever, such a fever, and it’s much cooler for you like this. And Dr. Sandys, he wanted to see if there was any injuries to your poor head, and he could not see anything for all your lovely thick hair, though praise God he found nothing but a great lump! Oh, I cried, too, when I first saw it, truly I did. But it will mend, miss, the hair will grow again, don’t you fret — why ’tis coming through already! It’ll be prettier than ever, I’ll be bound!”
Of course, I know really she had done right to cut my hair off — it would make no difference after a while. That great copper mane — why it made my brow ache just to think of the weight of it, the weight that my poor head would have had to carry. And the combing and the brushing of it! And how hot and sticky it would have been! Jennet was quite right. Of course she was.
“Yes, I’m just being silly about it, aren’t I? I must just try to be brave and grown up. You are right, Jennet. And it will grow again — and thicker than before. I dare say it will be all the better for it!”
What a foolish thing to make a fuss about!
All the same, I instinctively looked around the room and saw that the big cheval mirror that used to stand near the windows had been taken away. And the triple looking-glass that used to stand on my dressing table — the mirror that had been a gift from my mother on my seventeenth birthday — that had gone, too.
All I remember then is that Jennet held a little cup to my lips, and I was sipping a sweet, thick concoction, that somehow had a bitterness hidden under the sugar. One sip ... two sips ... my eyes were closing.
It was only as I dropped off to sleep that I realised that I had not asked Jennet about Selene. But I was sure the mare would be safe in her stable. She had surely not been hurt. I had a clear picture in her mind of the mares graceful legs whirling round and round, rolling over at the edge of the lake until the great body rose up again and stood, shaking itself, on the bank. No, Selene was safe; I was sure that the horse had got up again, had even trotted a few steps towards me after the fall. Into my mind came a vision of Selene’s long head with its white blaze, coming enquiringly down above me, as I lay there helpless on the ground. I was positive sure of it. It was the last thing I could remember before waking up in my bed. Selene had got up and moved after the accident — she might be a little bruised, but her limbs were sound; she would be safe.
*
When I woke again, the curtains at the windows were drawn and the oil-lamps were lit. The thick velvet of the curtains shut out any chink of light that might remain in the outside world, so I had no idea of the time: whether it were the middle of the night, or early in the morning. Outside the yellow circles of light cast by the lamps, the room was in utter darkness, and I somehow found this soothing.
There was a little silver bell on the table beside my bed, and I was just making the experiment of reaching for it to ask for a dish of tea or another hot drink, when the door opened and a small man with a stoop entered, followed by Jennet. As the man drew nearer to the bed, I recognised him; his face has the ruddy complexion that riding about in all weathers brings.
“Why, Dr. Sandys!”
“I’m delighted that you recognise me, young lady. You must be feeling very considerably improved, is that not so?”
Dr. Sandys attended my mother in the last days of her illness, when she had retreated from London and all those fashionable surgeons who could do nothing to save her, and only added to her pain.
“There is no sovereign cure for consumption, Mrs. Westmorland, ma’am,” he had said bluntly, when first called to the house. “No, I can make no promises — and any doctor that does so is a certain charlatan. I hope you will entrust yourself to my old-fashioned nostrums while you are in residence here at the manor. But, as I say, I will hold out no hope of a cure. That must be faced. But I hope
to ease your pain — aye — that I can do. Not with blistering and cupping, though. Such treatments are not my way.”
Such treatments were not only too unreliable, they were too cruel, or so he had afterwards confided to Jennet.
So Dr. Sandys had pursued his own course and built up her strength as much as he could, so that she was out in her beloved garden almost until the very day she died, and thanks to him, there was little pain at the end.
That had been only six months previously, and the loss of my mother was still a great grief to me, as I believe it will always be, but I was comforted to have Dr. Sandys there, for he was so gentle with her and never troubled her unnecessarily. But I believe he has treated your wounds, Lord Ambrose, or at least, the wounds that they say you bore when you returned from Crete, for I have never seen, aught but the thin white scar that runs from your forehead to near your mouth. That, I said to Jennet but lately, makes you look a more handsome gentleman than any smooth-cheeked young squire — save one, of course.
But I don’t want to go off into past sorrows, and now must return to the record that I promised Lord A. I would make.
“You have had a high fever, young lady,” said Dr. Sandys, when he next visited me after my accident. “And some cracked ribs — but we have strapped you up, and your young bones will be healing already. But its not the ribs that worry me.”
He had his stethoscope out, and listened to my breathing for a few moments.
I wondered why he was so concerned, and then, as I was sitting up in bed, I began a coughing fit, which lasted longer than I thought possible, till my breath was coming in painful spasms between gasping fits of coughing.
“Aye, that’s what worries me, Miss Lilian. The fever has weakened your lungs. We shall have to take great care of that.”