Instruments of Darkness

by Imogen Robertson

  The groan became a laugh again, and my lady tore the jeweled bands from her wrists.

  “All of this! All of this lost, for a cheap cameo!”

  Wicksteed managed to reach her and seized her. “Stop! Stop! Jemima, why do you give yourself away? My love! Think of your son! Eustache! Please, my darling—stop.”

  She seemed to grow suddenly calm at his touch. She lifted one hand to his face, and with her thumb wiped away the tear from his cheek.

  “Oh, Claver. I have buried two children, given away another. What should I care for that runt of Thornleigh’s, unless he could do you good?”

  Claver let his head drop to her shoulder. She rocked and shushed him, letting the fingers play at the back of his neck where his dark hair touched his collar.

  “It’s all over, my darling.” Claver dropped his head toward her and kissed her mouth hungrily. She slipped her hand into his waistcoat pocket as they embraced. “But I can do one last thing for you. I shall not let them hang you.” She smiled very softly. “‘ Thumb on the blade, boy, and strike up.’” He pulled away from her a little, confused. Harriet saw her remove her hand from his pocket, saw a twist in her wrist, an evil flash in the air . . .

  “Crowther! She has his knife!”

  Wicksteed turned toward Harriet as if unsure what was happening. Before Michaels or Crowther could hurl themselves at the couple, Lady Thornleigh threw her arm back and forward again.

  “Jemima?” His tone was one of surprise, then he fell forward on his knees at her feet, his forehead resting on the silk of her skirts. She let her free hand rest briefly on his head, as a woman might pet a child or lapdog, then stepped back, shaking her lovely head slightly. She turned and began to run from the room, the knife still in her hand. As she passed her, Harriet reached out from her chair to try and stop her. As her hand closed on the rich fabric of her dress, Harriet fell forward, Lady Thornleigh stumbled, turned and saw Harriet clinging on to her. For a brief moment, Harriet looked into her eyes: they were black and dilated. And then she was up again, pulling herself free as a country girl does from a bramble, and fled the room.

  Hugh came to himself and went to lift Harriet back to her feet. She managed to stand. The squire stood white and shaking, unable to comprehend what had happened in front of him. Michaels lifted Wicksteed under his arms as if he were a toy and placed him almost tenderly on the oak table. Crowther joined him. As Harriet looked to where they stood over Wicksteed, the body on the table groaned and shuddered. Crowther caught her eye and shook his head, though he had taken off his coat and was trying to staunch the flow of blood with it. Servants came at a run from within and were sent for linen and water. As Crowther worked, he could feel the body dying under him. At the last, he chanced to look into Wicksteed’s deep black eyes. The man had turned to fix them on the arms of Thornleigh Hall, and he was smiling at them as his last breath rasped and faded.

  Harriet was not sure if what she was seeing or hearing was real. The cries of “Fire!” were repeated many times before the sense of it reached her.

  Other servants were tumbling into the hall. Michaels strode into the midst of them.

  “What? Where?”

  The footman who had tried to deny them entry came running down the grand stairway.

  “In the state rooms and above. Everything is aflame! Everything! My lady will not come down! She has her son!”

  Michaels began to tear up the stairway, Crowther and Hugh on his heels. Harriet dragged herself after them, pausing by the footman as he reached the base of the stairs, hissing with the pain of her ankle.

  “Get the people out,” she instructed him. “We’ll go after her.”

  Crowther turned to Hugh as they reached the level of the state rooms.

  “Thornleigh, your father!”

  He nodded and raced ahead of them. Michaels and Crowther paused on the main stair. They heard a laugh, and a cry. Smoke billowed along the corridor in front of them—already the flames raced along the draperies and sucked at the ceiling above their heads. A maid stood in front of them like a guardian to the flames.

  “She has locked herself in her room with little Master Eustache! I have not got a key!”

  Michaels turned back and raced down the stairs again. Crowther turned to the girl.

  “Go—get out.”

  The maid paused, then screamed as one of the windows cracked behind her and sparks showered across them. Crowther threw his weight against the door, but it would not yield. Harriet reached his side and they heard the high wailing of a child in the room. Crowther looked at her.

  “You should not be here.”

  Their eyes met, and he did not ask again.

  Michaels came stumbling toward them, a bunch of keys in his hand. Crowther tied his cravat across his mouth and nose, and Harriet pulled out her handkerchief and did the same. Michaels tried two keys—neither fitted. He cursed, then throwing the keys to the floor, he hurled his whole weight at the lock. Harriet staggered back, and again Michaels and Crowther threw themselves forward. There was a splintering of wood. Michaels kicked hard and the door gave. Clouds of smoke belched out, making Harriet’s lungs burn. She turned her face away, coughing violently.

  “Lady Thornleigh. Give us the child!” Crowther called into darkness.

  A window cracked, and Harriet could see a figure lying prone on the floor, with a little boy kneeling above her. She limped in, the pain in her leg forgotten, and grabbed up the little boy. He fought her, shouting for his mama, but Harriet would not let him go, and began to drag and carry him from the room and down the stairs. She looked up, and where the staircase climbed she could see fresh flames licking from the upper stories. The earls of Sussex remained immobile in their portraits all down the stairs, watching as the fire tasted the corners of their canvas. At that moment, the fire bit through the wood of the upper balcony, and the stairs groaned.

  “Crowther! Michaels!”

  They were behind her, Michaels holding Lady Thornleigh in his arms like a doll.

  Crowther looked up the stairs.

  “Go!” he shouted. “I must help Hugh.” Harriet began to protest, but he commanded, “Now!” And turned to run up the stairs into the inferno above.

  Harriet and Michaels staggered through the hallway and down the steps into the drive and the open air. Fire danced at the windows of every room in the east wing. Michaels laid his burden on the gravel, and Harriet set down the little boy. He threw himself on his mother’s body and began to bawl. Lady Thornleigh did not move, and Harriet could see no sign of breath coming from her. There was blood on the woman’s chest: she had found another use for her knife. The little boy tried to pull her arm over him. Whatever had held Harriet upright till now gave way, and she collapsed to her knees amongst the cries and lamentations of the household.

  Crowther found Hugh on the upper corridor, Lord Thornleigh insensible in his arms. A beam had fallen, flaming between them. Crowther kicked it away, and Hugh hobbled toward him, retching.

  “Come on!”

  They made it to the level of the state rooms, where the fire now seemed to rage at its fiercest. Hugh looked to Crowther.

  “We can only go through! Run!”

  They leaped forward. Crowther felt the air burning around him, the heat on his face so fierce he felt it would brand him. He somehow got to the bottom of the stairs and looked back, Hugh was on the half-landing, his father’s body in his arms, looking around at his flaming relatives like a child caught in a cathedral.

  “Hugh! Move!”

  He heard another groan in the timbers above him and looked up. Hugh was halfway toward him now, picking up pace. He heard his own name called and saw Michaels racing back into the house toward him. A crack and he looked up again at the fresco of Lord Thornleigh and his family at Judgment Day. Time seemed to slow. The depiction of Hell on the fresco was now smoldering. The young Lord Thornleigh painted in all his glory looked down on his own dirty and bloodied wreck of a body with his usual look of cool
, sensuous disdain. Another groan and crack, and even as he felt Michaels’s arms grab his shoulders, Crowther watched in horrid fascination as the fresco gave way over father and son and began to fall, leaving a heaven of dark flames. Then everything went black.

  IN CONCLUSION

  FRIDAY, 9 JUNE 1780

  Mrs. Westerman and Crowther stood at the entrance to Caveley Park with Daniel Clode beside them as the carriage drew up. The door opened and two children tumbled out and threw themselves at Daniel. He twirled the girl around in his arms before lifting the little boy into the air in turn. A young lady and gentleman stepped down from the carriage in more sedate manner behind them, followed by a woman somewhat older, thin, her cheeks rather pink. Harriet and Crowther exchanged smiles and went forward in welcome.

  Graves made his bows.

  “Mrs. Westerman, Mr. Crowther, may I introduce Miss Chase and her companion, Mrs. Service.”

  The ladies curtsied, and Clode advanced to shake Mrs. Service warmly by the hand. Harriet smiled.

  “I am so glad to welcome you here,” she said. “The Hall will not be ready to receive its new masters for some time, I fear. The east wing is destroyed. Only the core of the ancient building remains. The Great Hall was almost untouched.”

  Graves nodded. “Thank you for letting us come to you. We thought it best Lord Thornleigh and his sister attend the services for their grandfather.”

  “I quite agree,” Crowther said.

  Miss Chase looked up at Harriet with her cornflower eyes. “How is their uncle?”

  Harriet smiled sadly. “You might think me fanciful, but I believe he lives only to see Alexander’s children.”

  Hugh lay in what had been until two days before the ladies’ morning room. The window was dominated by the foliage of the great oak. Rachel tended him, and said the sight of the great tree seemed to give him peace. Since he had been pulled from the fire, his father’s corpse still in his arms like a loved child, he had been rarely conscious for long and his fever was deepening, but at every moment that he woke he asked for the children.

  Harriet spoke to them both briefly before they entered the room. She was glad to see they showed no signs of fear. She knocked lightly at the door and pushed it fully open for them. Hugh turned his head toward them.

  “Alexander!” he called.

  The little boy went forward.

  “My name is Jonathan. And you are my uncle, sir,” he said, then added after a pause, “I am an earl.” He went up next to the bed and bent forward to kiss Hugh’s burned face.

  “I am, you are,” Hugh whispered. Susan came forward and bent to kiss him as her brother had done.

  Hugh smiled at her. A cough shook him and he closed his eyes and caught his breath.

  “Your father showed me a picture of your mother once. You look just like her.”

  Susan shook her head. “I am not so pretty.”

  “I think you are prettier.” He coughed again. “You know I have a little brother?”

  “Yes,” said Susan, “Eustache.”

  “He is another uncle—but younger than us,” Jonathan stated with a certain amount of pride.

  Hugh smiled, but his eyes were beginning to glaze.

  “You must be kind to him,” he said. Susan nodded, and fitted her hand into his. He returned the gentle pressure of her fingers.

  “Of course,” she said. “We lost our father and mother too. We shall take care of him, and Mr. Graves will take care of us.”

  “He sounds a good man. Do you like him?”

  “Oh very much!”

  “I am glad. He has our trust and authority.” Hugh sighed deeply, and his eyelids fluttered. “My brother said he would find a way to come to me—perhaps he did.” He closed his eyes. “Forgive me, sweethearts. I am tired now.”

  It was only a few hours later, while the adults sat in the midsummer sunshine and watched the children in their own deep conversations and games in the middle of the lawn, that Rachel came to find them with Mrs. Service at her side. She leaned down and put her arms around her sister’s neck. They all looked at her. She straightened and wiped her eyes.

  “Just a few moments ago. He is gone.”

  She looked at the children gossiping on the lawn. Stephen was already Susan’s slave and the last of the old earl’s sons was looking at Jonathan as if at a god.

  “Shall we tell the children?”

  Graves looked in the same direction.

  “Let us give them a moment yet. There is time enough.”

  Crowther stood and turned away from the family group. It was only when Harriet found him under the oak some moments later that he realized where his steps had taken him. He looked up as she approached, her arms folded across her middle, her green eyes gazing at the ground in front of her.

  “Theirs was a strange and dark sort of love, was it not, Crowther?” He did not reply and she leaned against the great trunk of the tree beside him. “I had a letter from the squire this morning,” she went on. “An invitation for Rachel and myself to dine with him, along with profusions of sympathy and goodwill. I must go, though I fear his food will choke me.”

  Crowther turned to her with a glint in his eyes.

  “I had a similar letter, but I am too jealous of my reputation for eccentricity to accept it. I shall drink with Michaels or dine here when I am in need of company.”

  “And when, sir, are you ever in need of company?”

  He bowed. “I fear the habits of sociability have crept in upon me. Perhaps I will retreat into my lair again when we have finished discussing the events of the last few days. I will never be interested, or pretend to be interested, in how you intend to improve the upper meadows, or where some particularly cunning fabric may be purchased for a fraction of its usual cost. When those topics become your choice of conversation, madam, you shall see me no more.”

  She laughed, making her red curls shake, and he felt his body lighten at the sound.

  “I have no doubt you are keen to return to your knives.”

  “My ‘instruments of darkness’ is how your sister referred to them once. That morning as I was looking at her sketches of a cat, as I recall.”

  “ ‘ . . . that tell us truths.’ Apt. How strange she should be quoting Mac-beth before we had any suspicion . . .” She looked up into the dense foliage above her. The light danced against her throat. “Lady Thornleigh had more power, more determined energy in her beautiful little finger than I think I have in my whole being, for all my fuss and bother. I wonder what she might have become, born into another life.”

  “You sound as if you admire her,” Crowther said, smiling gently at her.

  Harriet considered, still watching the shifting leaves.

  “No. Perhaps. I simply realize I never feared her enough. It never occurred to me she would ever be capable of doing what she did. Wicksteed blackmailed, but I wonder if he would ever have murdered without her beside him.”

  “I have found it is a mistake to underestimate a beautiful woman.” Crowther paused. “They can be quite alarming.”

  Harriet laughed again at that and stood away from the oak.

  “What a flatterer you are become, Crowther.” Then, having taken his arm to lead him back to the party on the lawn, she suddenly stopped. “We almost failed. It seems walls and a great oak are not such a protection as they might seem, yet I think I would do the same again for all that. Would you, Crowther?”

  He looked down at her with his eyebrows raised.

  “Most certainly not. If I had had any idea what might come about, I would have kept to my bed and dismissed my maid for not being more firm with you.”

  Harriet snorted with laughter. “Indeed? My next strategy, if the note failed, was to sing sea shanties as loudly as possible, till I drove you up and out.”

  Crowther looked horrified, and she smiled.

  EPILOGUE

  8 JUNE 1778

  Some eighteen months after his return from America Hugh realized, riding home l
ate from dining at Caveley Park, that he was something like happy. The confusions since he had returned to Thornleigh were beginning to dissipate. At first he had done little other than exist and drink his way through his father’s cellar, but since meeting Commodore Westerman, his wife and most particularly Miss Trench at Caveley soon after, something within him was beginning to grow. He had begun to take a firmer control of the estate, he could see where wrongs were being done, and found that when he began to take action his whole being seemed to lift. The anxiety, the dreams, still came, but with every meeting with Miss Trench, with every night he went to bed not quite drunk, with every morning he took action their horrors lessened and the light crept toward him.

  This evening something had happened. He did not know what, but some look, some word from Rachel—he whispered her Christian name like a prayer—had caused the vague, weak hope in his heart to blossom forth. He smiled to himself. All was not lost. His own sins and those of his father could be expurgated by hard work and a true heart. He would build an estate worthy of respect, he would make his stepmother and half brother comfortable. His seeing eye was bright in the gloom, but his thoughts were so far away, it was not until he was abreast of his gates that he saw the man lounging there in the shadows.

  The figure stood and looked up at him. The face was tanned and dirty from the road, and Hugh could see the pack at his feet.

  “Captain Thornleigh.”

  The world trembled and swam. The smell of gunsmoke rose in Hugh’s nostrils. He felt suddenly sick.

  “Wicksteed.”

  “Glad to see you haven’t forgotten me yet, sir.”

  Hugh’s hand trembled on the reins, causing his horse to step unhappily from side to side. He managed to clear his throat enough to speak again.

  “So this is how it begins?”

  Claver spat on the dust in front of him and straightened up with a smile.