Darkness Unchained

by Jane Godman

  “Don’t you see what this means?” he said. “The true line of Athal did not die out with Rory. As Petroc’s son, Rudi is the rightful Earl of Athal.” He paused to give me time to assimilate his words. And my heart plummeted with the realisation of what they meant. “Which is what I said in the letter I wrote to you.”

  I rose jerkily from my seat and went over to the window. With unseeing eyes, I gazed out at the wild, ever-changing scene beyond the cliff edge. I saw Uther seated at his desk gazing blindly at the words on a page. I saw the unhinged fury in his eyes before he locked a letter in his desk drawer. Away from me, I realised now. I saw his golden gaze fixed in brooding thought on Rudi’s face. After a long pause, Tristan rose and came to stand next to me.

  “Why did you ask if I had seen Uther today?” The words came stiffly from my lips. “If the letter was sent a week ago?”

  I detested the note of gentle sympathy in his voice. “I was surprised when you didn’t respond to my letter. Then I saw Uther at my club yesterday evening. He was laughing and joking with a group of friends, which struck me as odd because I knew, of course, that the contents of the letter must have had a devastating impact on him. I went over to him and asked if you had received it. ”

  “What was his response?”

  “He gave me none. In fact, he did not acknowledge my presence. He simply turned on his heel and walked out of the room, leaving me standing there in midsentence.” Tristan watched my face, assessing the impact of what he was saying. “Could my letter have gone astray, Annie?”

  I shook my head. I knew for a fact, of course, that it had not.

  “What will you do now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know.” I turned to look at him. “What you said that day on the cliff, about the past not letting go.…It’s happening still, isn’t it?”

  “I’m afraid so, Annie.” Tristan drew me close against his side, and I allowed myself to rest my head briefly against his shoulder. Becoming brisk once more, he said, “If Rudi can send his birth certificate and your parents’ marriage certificate to me, I will get the legal process underway.”

  “I don’t know if they still exist,” I said. “But I can find out.”

  “I must go, Annie. I don’t want to leave Eleanor alone overnight.” For a moment I thought he wanted to say more. “I’m sorry to leave you to face this, but I know that if anyone is strong enough to deal with it, you are.” Winrow entered the room and Tristan took his hat and cane from the butler. “And Annie?” He paused in the act of shrugging on his coat. “Think about getting Rudi away from Tenebris. Today. It seems to me there may be something here that is harmful to his health.”

  I rested my head against the cool glass of the window and saw a faint reflection of my own face. A ghostly outline of the features that, according to Finty, so closely resembled those of Bouche Jago. My grandmother. The woman who had overcome the dark secrets of her own past and made Tenebris her home. Bouche, who always put her family first. I closed my eyes in an attempt to shut out our shared image. It wasn’t fair. She had Cad, the man she loved to distraction, at her side. It was easy for her to be strong. I had no one.

  Lightly, I ran along the hallway to Uther’s study. The scent of his cologne brought me up short on the doorstep, and a little, despairing sob escaped my lips. Images of us together crowded into my mind. What if we had not waited to consummate our love? If we were already married? Would I still allow these doubts about him to plague me?

  The desk drawer was locked, just as I knew it would be. I rummaged around for the key, but I suspected that it would be sitting safe inside Uther’s breast pocket in London. The desk was made of solid oak, beautiful but serviceable. I tried to prise the drawer open with the ornate silver letter opener that sat on the desktop, but I only succeeded in scratching the polished wood. I needed that metaphorical sledgehammer with which Ouma and Rudi claimed I bludgeoned my way through life. My eyes scanned the room and rested on the fireplace with its set of polished brass tools. I was going to have some serious explaining to do later. Without hesitating, I snatched up the heavy poker and repeatedly drove it into the drawer front until the wood around the lock splintered. As I destroyed the elegant piece of furniture, part of my mind dwelt on the Jagos who must have sat at this desk in the past. Poetic Tynan, pragmatic Lucy, tortured Eddie, charismatic Cad, dazzling Bouche.…I hoped my ancestors would be able to forgive me. The drawer gave way with a sound close to a groan, and I cast my weapon aside with a shaking hand. The letter was there, on top of a pile of other papers.

  Tristan had written the one-page missive exactly as he spoke, with precision and brevity. There was nothing in the letter that he had not told me earlier that day.

  I will give you some time to digest the contents of this letter, my dear Annie. I realise it will have a profound effect on you and on those close to you. I will leave it to you to decide how you break this news to Uther and Rudi. Or you may wish me to undertake the task. I await your reply and remain,

  Yours,

  Tristan

  There was another folded slip of paper under Tristan’s letter, which I lifted from the drawer. How odd that I should still feel guilty about prying into Uther’s things after the enormity of his betrayal! I covered my mouth with a shaking hand as I read the irrefutable proof that Nicca had been right about his brother’s hand in Rory’s death.

  Dear Captain Jago,

  Or should I say ‘my lord’? The case is now desperate. Excuses won’t wash any more. I need one thousand pounds by Monday next or I will go to your brother and tell him what I saw that day in Flanders. I told you he already suspects and has given me ample opportunity to tell all. Once he knows for sure, your number’s up. Brother or not, the major’s not the man to keep your dirty little secret for you.

  Yours,

  Arthur Wilson

  How had I allowed my hellish desire for Uther to blind me to what he was? But I had known, hadn’t I? It was a little insistent voice that refused to be silenced. Even before Nicca told me that Uther had killed Rory, I knew what he was. Not only did I know that the Jago darkness had claimed him, I had allowed it to enter me, as well. It had hardened my heart to Rudi, the brother I loved. It had made me impatient with Finty, who was a harmless butterfly of a girl. It had caused me to hurt Nicca, whose only motive had been to protect me. And, even now, its sly voice was prompting me to walk away and ignore the truth.

  Mechanically, I refolded the letters and placed them back in the drawer. As I did, my hand touched a small glass bottle. My fingers closed around it and I held it up, taking in, with an almost detached air, the skull and cross bones on the label.

  To be used for the elimination of vermin only. If consumed, arsenic will cause an excess of saliva production, delirium, tightness of the throat, violent bowel pain, headaches and nausea. If imbibed, administer an emetic in the form of egg white and water at once.

  Calmly, I replaced the bottle under the letters and closed the ruined drawer. I left the room knowing I would never enter it again. Then I stepped into Rudi’s bedchamber and found that Finty had returned from her trip to Wadebridge and was seated beside the bed. I noticed, as I had not before, how pale she was. Her eyes were red from weeping. Rudi was asleep, his face almost transparent against the banked-up pillows, his breathing harsh and shallow. Finty wiped saliva from his lips.

  “The medicine I gave him has had no effect, Annie,” she whispered, and I could hear the choked-back tears in her voice. “He is so much worse. It sounds almost as if his throat is closing. I know you said this is normal for him, but…”

  I placed my hand on his forehead, and it felt clammy under my palm. Leaning over, I pressed a kiss onto Rudi’s cheek. “When he wakes, give him egg white and water. Nothing else. Prepare it yourself and only you must give it to him. Don’t let anyone else near him.”

  Before Finty could say anything in reply, I walked out of the room, down the stairs and out of the house.

  Sitting on the cliff top that
was steeped in Jago history, I knew a little of how Eddie Jago had felt when he came here. I hadn’t taken up a knife. I hadn’t stabbed anyone in an insane murderous rage. Instead, I’d turned my face away and allowed my brother, whom I claimed to love, to be poisoned. I’d let the same darkness into my heart that Eddie Jago had welcomed. I had the strangest feeling that, if I took a knife now and drew it across the bluish veins that stood out against the whiteness of my inner wrists, I would draw charcoal instead of blood. Every inhalation burned my throat, every exhalation felt like ashes. Hell was too good for a wretch like me. Heaven was an impossible dream.

  I supposed it was the thought of Eddie Jago and the parasitic demon we shared that had brought me to this cliff edge and the point where he had disappeared all those years ago. I sat on the damp grass with my arms around my knees, my thoughts tortured. The burgeoning night dripped icy fingers of rain onto my bowed head and soaked through the thin cotton of my dress. I wanted to curl up on my bed and cry forever more. I wanted never to wake and have to face a life without Uther.

  “Annie! I thought I could see a figure out here from the gatehouse window. What in God’s name are you doing out on a filthy evening like this?” The wind whipped the words from Nicca’s lips and flung them high into the rain-lashed sky. I looked up at him and tried to speak, but no sound would come. Something in my face must have told him of my torment, however, because he swept me up into his arms as if I was a frightened child. Kicking open the gatehouse door, he marched up the stairs with me cradled against his chest and deposited me on a sofa close to the blazing fire.

  “Get out of those wet clothes,” he ordered, stoking up the flames. When I didn’t move, he added, “Do it, Annie, or I’ll come over there and strip them off myself. There is a blanket there that you can use to cover yourself with.” A smile lit the depths of his eyes. “This may come as a shock to you, but my motives are solely concerned with your health and have nothing whatsoever to do with any overwhelming desire I may have to see you naked.”

  I gave a shaky laugh, which broke in the middle and turned into a storm of weeping so violent I couldn’t stop it. Nicca drew me into his arms and held me close until his strength and warmth quieted me. When I had sat there on that cliff in the rain, I suppose I wished for this. A shoulder so strong, I could cry on it all day if I wanted to. That was what he gave me. Gradually, the story came tumbling out of me in a series of great whooshing gasps. All of it. Every sordid, sorry, damning word.

  “Even now, part of me wants to say ‘Fok, I will marry him anyway.’ How can I feel that way, Nicca? Rudi is my brother…” I felt the tears sting again, and I closed my eyes. “I don’t want to make excuses for my behaviour, to try to convince you that I have been under some sort of a spell.”

  Nicca didn’t reply. He just handed me a towel to dry my hair and I used it gratefully. “Now the clothes,” he said again, unfolding the blanket and holding it out to me. “I’ll leave you alone while I make a hot drink.”

  When he came back, I sat huddled in the depths of the blanket as my clothes steamed before the fire. Nicca held out a cup of mulled wine and I took it automatically, staring into the ruby depths. “Drink it,” he ordered.

  Obediently, I took a mouthful and then choked slightly as the fumes caught in the back of my throat. Gradually, I stopped shivering. “You were right about Uther. He did kill Rory,” I said, not looking at him.

  “It doesn’t make me happy to be proved right about that,” he replied gently, coming to sit next to me on the sofa.

  I took another sip of the wine, shuddering as its warmth coursed through my chilled blood. I kept my eyes lowered. “This darkness…” I didn’t know how to continue under that steady blue gaze. It seemed so foolish to try to talk of the supernatural to Nicca. And how could I possibly begin to explain the erotic ties that bound me to Uther?

  “Tristan spoke to me of it. He called it the Jago Legacy,” he said, and I risked looking up. His eyes were on my face. “He seemed to feel you might need my help at some point in the near future. Explain it to me, Annie.”

  “I’ll try, but some of it is quite bizarre. Ever since Rudi and I can remember, we have known about Tenebris. We didn’t know where it was, or what it was called, but we both saw—I mean had a mental picture of—a house on a cliff, and we knew that it was somehow linked to a very old castle. We also sometimes saw the castle on fire.” I paused to gauge his reaction. That direct blue gaze didn’t waver. “Even clearer than those images, however, was the image we had of a man. A man called Uther.” I drained the last of the wine and shuddered as the bitter tannins scorched my tongue. “Rudi can draw, so we knew we were seeing the same things when he put his thoughts down on paper. When we came to Cornwall, we came in search of information about our father. We had no idea that we would find Tenebris, or Uther.”

  “So that’s what you were doing in the garden when we first…met.” A smile touched the depths of his eyes. “Don’t worry, the bruises have nearly all gone now.”

  I bit my lip at the reminder of my knee connecting hard with his groin. “I didn’t tell you why I was there because it made me sound so odd.” I hadn’t known then, of course, how much stranger it would all become. “Then I met Uther.”

  “And you fell in love with him. At first sight.”

  I had been looking into the fire, but I turned my head at that, my brow wrinkling in concentration. “But it was much more than that,” I said.

  I had replayed the day I met Uther so many times in my mind that recalling those emotions allowed me to experience them all over again. I felt the same frisson of surprise thrill through me as I recognised him, followed by an instant, insistent tug of attraction. But Nicca was wrong. It wasn’t love at first sight. The catalyst was Tenebris. When we rode up to the house and glimpsed it together, that was when it happened. And our first kiss, of course, had caused a fundamental, soul-deep change to take place inside us both. That was when something had—entered my body? Taken possession of my emotions?—made me into a different person. Someone I couldn’t like. Although my thoughts screamed inside my head, the room was silent except for the crackling of the fire.

  “It’s so hard to explain because it’s so hard to believe,” I said with a helpless gesture. “It is as if Uther and I are inside each other’s heads. We each own the other’s body. But there is something else as well, something very dark and…” I searched for a suitable word, but there was only one. “Sinister. And I‘m afraid that it won’t let me go.”

  “But you said that the synergy for these feelings comes from Tenebris, so perhaps, if you leave here, you can also leave the feelings behind,” Nicca observed. “One thing is certain, you have to get Rudi away from here. Tonight.” It was an echo of what Tristan had said. Had that really only been hours earlier?

  I tried to shake off the trancelike state that still held me in its grip. “Uther will follow us.”

  “I know he has already killed once for the title, and that he has made this attempt on Rudi’s life. Do you really think he would come after your brother and make another attempt?”

  “Yes. But he will also because of what I have just said about the darkness that has entered us both. Because of me. Uther will not be able to live without me.” I wasn’t being dramatic. I was stating a fact. Would I be able to live without him? That was a question to be answered another day.

  “Then we must go somewhere where I can keep you both safe.”

  I wanted to hug him for using the word we. For making himself part of my problems after the way I had treated him.

  “There is only one place where we can guarantee that,” I said, standing up and reaching out a hand for my clothes. “And it’s a long journey.”

  “We’d better get started then, hadn’t we? And Annie?” I turned to look at him. “What I said about seeing you naked? I was trying to be chivalrous, but I am only human. Perhaps it might be best if you covered up a little?”

  Glancing down, I realised that the blank
et had slipped and come to rest just above my nipples. Blushing, I muttered an apology and hauled the offending item up, gripping it tightly around my shoulders.

  Chapter Nine

  I stood on the deck of the lavender-hulled, red-funnelled ship, looking down on the bustling Southampton quayside. Behind me, a pastel-hued poster depicted elegant passengers laughing as they drank cocktails on deck. In flowing script, it bore the legend “South Africa in just seventeen days.”

  “The best thing about being a twin is not having to make apologies,” Rudi had told me in a voice made gruff with emotion. He patted my head awkwardly as I sobbed an unintelligible explanation into his shoulder. Because of our shared experiences as children and our closeness, he was able to accept what I was saying without demur. Or perhaps it was exhaustion that meant he did not question my halting account. Finty had followed my instructions with admirable precision, but Rudi, though conscious, was pale and drawn.

  “You’ve been lucky,” Nicca told him.

  “Yes, it feels like it,” Rudi replied with a weak grin.

  “I mean that Uther has not had much time to administer the poison, and he has been quite cautious with the dose so as not raise any major alarms. The last thing he would want is for you to die after the first application and for Tristan to turn up waving his letter. I’m convinced his plan was to perpetuate the myth of you as a sickly youth who fell ill in a foreign land.”

  I bit my lip. “And I helped him by confirming it.”

  “Then, of course, his plans were interrupted when he had to dash off to London following the arrival of Wilson’s letter, so he hasn’t been able to continue to give you a daily dose of arsenic. I think that is why the emetic that Annie suggested to Finty has worked so well and so quickly. I’m not a doctor, but I predict a full recovery.” Nicca studied Rudi’s pallid countenance. “Are you well enough to travel? It’s imperative to get away from here immediately”—his eyes flickered to me—“for many reasons. But it’s a long journey to South Africa.”