“Turn him over!”
He heard the cry from a great distance and at first wondered what a child was doing wandering about Eden Castle.
Then he heard it again, louder.
“I said turn him over — quickly!” and with the second command the blackness spread over all his vision and he thought it was just as well and realized that the cry had not been that of a child, but of a woman.
Then he heard it a third time, that half-angry, half-frightened female voice raised in a strident command. “Are all of you deaf? I said turn him over! He can't breathe. Can't you...?”
The circle altered; two broke rank and moved quickly back.
Then she was upon him, the same “she” that he'd seen up on the roof.
“Easy,” came her voice, and, on his side now, he felt hands on his back working their way through the layers of garments, hurried yet strangely calm, filled with authority.
“We... ain't done nothin' to him,” came a pouting voice from the circle of men looking down.
“Help me,” he heard the woman say, and felt a tugging at the rope which was tightly laced the length of his body. “Remove this bondage, now,” came the female voice again.
“And I say nol” came Bates's equally determined counterreply.
“I say,” came Reverend Christopher's puffing voice, “why is... the gentleman being treated like... I say, Susan, what in the...?”
Then John heard the woman's voice. “Mr. Bates here claims that Mr. Eden is responsible for the woman's death,” and heard nothing else, though there were voices all about, but for himself his head was filled with the echoing possibilities of that single sentence.
Responsible for...
Of course he was responsible for Harriet's death. He was responsible for all their deaths, literal and figurative, large and small, all driven away by him, his will and compulsion: Dhari, Mary, Elizabeth...
Eliz...
The single name halted his thoughts as up on the roof it had halted his final step into oblivion.
Elizabeth. The closest person to him, the nearest to a mother. He stared blankly out at a world gone mad and wondered what had become of her. Dead too?
Before he could provide himself with an answer, one of the voices above him grew belligerent.
“I have witnesses, Reverend Christopher,” it threatened. “Three men who saw the evidence of a body in his arms and one — Tom Babcock there — who helped to carry her down. Now, surely Tom knows the feel of a dead woman.”
For a moment the silence suggested that Tom Babcock did not know the feel of a dead woman. “It was dark,” he muttered.
“You don't need light,” Bates bellowed, “to feel the lifebeat...” Now he began a deadly pursuit of the young man. “Well, come on, Babcock. Tell us the truth, as you'll have to tell it on the stand in Exeter. How did the lady feel to the touch?”
“Cold, sir. She was cold, but then, so was I, and I ain't - ”
“Did she so much as stir once on the passage down to the kitchen court?”
“No, sir, I don't believe she did, least not that I seen, if you know what I mean.”
“Didn't that suggest something to you?” Bates demanded angrily.
Then John heard a voice that echoed his prayer. “Please, all of you. Hold your arguments for the proper forum, and in the name of decency, please release this man and let him walk upright through his own castle, perhaps to the chapel, where he can confront and question his God in private.”
Confront and question his God!
How quaint. In the past he had carried his own god around inside him, like a walling and docile transient. No power for good or evil had ever emanated from this free rider. The true power source was John himself, and it had always been thus and would always be thus.
“Please release him.” There she was again, and Reverend Christopher, still suffering a degree of confusion that apparently knew no bounds, joined. “Yes, please do, Mr. Bates. If you truly believe in your ridiculous accusations, then there will be a time and place - ”
“They are not ridiculous, and I do firmly believe in them,” Bates pronounced imperiously, “and I, for one, am tired of seeing him and his kind get away with everything, while the rest of us pay for their errors...”
Had they paid for his errors? Errors there had been, but he was not aware of anyone paying for them but himself. First off, there were so many of them. Who would know even where to start?
“No, I won't release him,” Bates now exclaimed, as though he'd just reached a hard decision. “He's going to stay just the way he is, because if you don't know how slippery the Devil is, the rest of us do.”
John heard the woman again, close by and still angry. “Look what you are doing! You'll be delivering a corpse if you're not... She drew closer, so close he could see the tip of her shoe beneath her skirts. “Loosen his collar. You're pulling it tight, like a noose.”
Almost immediately he felt the stricture loosened, his shirtwaist ripped above the neck.
Then all around he noticed a strange silence, no one speaking or protesting, as though all were focused on a communal fascination. He was still suspended between the various hands that held ankles and shoulders secure, his head free-floating, though gravity was taking its toll. What in the hell was the delay now? Why had all voices, all life, ground to a halt?
Then he felt a twisting pain which seemed to start in the area of his left rib cage and cut a burning path up the side of his neck and on up in a scorching path directly into the center of his skull.
In the last moments of consciousness, and though he was actively opposed to it, he sensed a surrender. The numbness was spreading, invading his head now, to the very center of that cap of pain. As soon as it reached the threshold behind which thought resided, he would not have to think or perceive or feel ever again.
Then it did, and a savage blackness covered everything, and somewhere he sensed ages of humiliation, a select status, and a simplicity worthy of hell...
Eden Castle June 21, 1874
Alex Aldwell sat uncomfortably in the back of the rocking, jolting carriage and tried to brace himself against the potholes and ruts, and worse, against the realization that he'd broken his vow to himself and was now in fact returning to Eden Point and John Murrey Eden.
“Gawd!” The self-disgust combined with a particularly deep rut in the road, and as the high thin carriage wheels struggled for mastery over the rough terrain, Alex did the same and braced himself with one stiffened arm against the opposite side, while with his right hand he felt inside his pocket for the last message, three in as many weeks, from — what in the hell was her name? — Susan something, and cosigned by the old Methodist preacher Reverend Christopher from Mortemouth. They had been calm, neatly penned messages, though each had grown more urgent, informing “Mr. Aldwell” as a close personal friend and business associate of Mr. Eden's “indisposition.”
Indisposition? What in the hell did that mean? As far as Alex was concerned, John had been “indisposed” for the last four years, locked in the grand library with only the painted images of The Women of Eden to keep him company, shunning all visitors, including Alex himself that first year and, on occasion, Aslam, until at last both had grown weary of making the long trek from London to North Devon and Aslam had said it best: “We'll guard his empire and leave him to God”
On occasion Alex had severely doubted if even God wanted anything to do with him.
Lost in grim thought, Alex braced himself on either side of the narrow carriage and stared blankly out at the passing moors. Not far now, though the road had deteriorated along with everything else. Alex could remember the time, four, five years ago, when under the surveillance of John's constant maintenance a lady could traverse the road from Exeter to Eden and never so much as ruffle a feather in her bonnet. Now? Alex's insides felt as though they had been beaten on a washboard, and his head as well.
As the sense of devastation and waste swept over him with new and po
werful impetus, like a late-breaking wave, he braced his boots against the carriage floor and closed his eyes and tried to resurrect an image of John Murrey Eden as he'd first known him.
Surprisingly, the image sat very close to the surface of his consciousness and stirred him deeply, that fair, brash, and arrogant young god who had pumped him dry for information concerning the fortunes to be made or stolen in India. They had been ward mates at the army hospital in Scutari, Alex an erstwhile soldier of fortune just returned from a vagabond's life in India and suffering an embarrassing case of dysentery. They had parted, Alex for England, never dreaming that the brash young man was indeed on his way to India. It was a wonder and a testament to his cunning that he survived in that treacherous land.
Then Fate, clever Fate, had brought them together again in the form of an advert in a London paper for a foreman for the building corporation of John Murrey. And Alex had been a foreman — and a damned good one — and had then been in need of employment, and how was he to know that the John Murrey Company was the same as the young John Eden he'd befriended at Scutari?
Suddenly the carriage took a rude jolt to the left and Alex opened his eyes to see the bleak brown-and-green landscape whining past in a blur. What in the hell was the driver's hurry? He grabbed for the window and jerked it down. “Pull on the reins, up there! No hurry back here, though it would be nice to arrive in one piece...”
All he could see from his angle was the square shoulder of a gray cape and a firmly anchored flat-brimmed hat. At first he wondered if the man had even heard him. But a few moments later he felt the carriage breaking speed.
Daring to relax under this more sensible speed, Alex leaned heavily back into the cushions and wished to hell he could remember the female name that had been affixed to all three notes. Susan something, but he wouldn't swear to it. He might take a look, for the third and last message was tucked inside his pocket, but even that simple gesture required too much effort, and he was bone-weary. In the old days he and John had been capable of making the trip and stopping at every pub between Eden and London, and still arrived fresh as a spring morn and almost always on time.
Gawd! How time had managed to change everything. Both here and back in London. A struggle it had been there as well as here, the boy Aslam thrown headlong at the green age of twenty-one into the treacherous waters of London's financial world, taking the reins of the John Murrey firm, regardless of whether they had been formally proffered. And that first year it had been touch and go, mostly “go,” as many employees, ranging from solicitors to engineers, had decided that they couldn't work for a “dark-skinned nigger,” no matter who he was. And, of course, who he was was damned impressive: John's adopted son and the true great-grandson of old Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last descendent of the mogul emperors, the last mogul king himself.
Still there had been a damaging exodus, and for about fifteen months Alex had looked about the once gigantic and profitable firm and had seen only shipwreck and impending disaster.
But it had been Aslam who, with cold objectivity, went quickly about the task of shoring up the most dangerous ruptures, convincing the most valuable employees that it would be mutually profitable if they remained. And it had been. Of course, what few knew was that they were working for one and the same, for Aslam had become what John was, more English than Indian, Cambridge-educated, probably a bit quicker than John and — -most important- — more in control of himself.
Even when Alex and John had been working at peak capacity, there had been something childlike about John: Come on, Alex, let's run away for a few days and tell no one.
Hard-earned moments of self-indulgence, true, but self-indulgence all the same. In the four years that Aslam had held the reins of the firm, Alex had never seen similar behavior. In fact, the young man seemed ill-at-ease with leisure, seemed most comfortable and at home seated behind John's enormous desk in the mansion in Gros-venor Square, all rooms closed off and shrouded save John's top-floor apartments, all the staff dismantled except for one, an ancient crone named Maudie Canfield, who trudged the four flights of stairs without a grumble whenever she heard Aslam's bell.
Once, years ago, Alex had been foolish enough to believe that John's love for Aslam would draw him out of his grief and back into the bustle of financial London. But thus far it hadn't, and now, realistically, Alex knew it never would.
Without warning he felt a hot stinging behind his eyes. How close they had been once: Alex Aldwell, the country bumpkin turned soldier of fortune, an ox of a man with only enough of a brain inside his head to keep the world from taking advantage of him; and John Murrey Eden, a man young enough to be Alex's son, yet smarter, quicker, cleverer — with a face and a form which confirmed the biblical promise that we had been made “in His image.” Well, not all of us, but a few — John Murrey Eden, for one.
Under the weight of unexpected feeling, Alex bowed his head. What the hell? There was no one about to see him but the seagulls gliding in the bracing sea wind.
Alex breathed deeply. It had always been thus, that magic essence of ocean and heather. In the past he'd seen John shed the worries and cares of ten men with the first whiff of that elixir.
Eden...
Whispered or shouted, it had made no difference. John Murrey Eden could ponder the word as though his mind were collecting all the good memories to him — memories of Lila, the once lovely and now dead wife, the two perfect sons, Stephen and Frederick, in Ireland now with their maternal grandfather...
“Oh, John!” Alex mourned aloud, his memories painfully converging. Outside the window he saw a blurred vision of the coastline, the carriage veering to the right, the gates of Eden less than ten minutes away. It was here at this exact turn that the guards on horseback would always intercept the entourage, confirming identities, one's right to pass, and John would be hanging halfway out of the window, more boy than man, inquiring of the guards a report of recent weather, the growing season, an ill child, or how the herring were running.
And sometimes John's two sons would be waiting for him — Stephen, about three before all the tragedies descended, and Frederick, two — small, compact, cherubic miniatures of their father, particularly Stephen.
Gawd! Where were they now, those two lads? And would John ever see them again, and would he recognize them if he were to see them? Not a fit way for a father and his sons to live, whisked off by their grandfather Lord Harrington and the madman Charles Parnell, and all this happening four years ago while most of the family still inhabited the castle. How old would they be now? Stephen at least seven, going on eight, and Frederick always condemned to tag a year behind.
The scene outside the window blurred under the duress of memory, and for a moment he saw the twin cherubs. “My most precious possessions,” John had once called them. And nothing had given Alex greater pleasure than to see John down on his hands and knees with both boys giggling atop his back, the most gifted and powerful man in England a helpless slave to the whims of two young dictators whose combined weights did not exceed fifty pounds.
“Eden Gate ahead I”
The cry jarred him back to the present and painfully reminded him that perhaps he'd made a mistake in returning, despite the urgent messages. Aslam had warned him. There was nothing he or anyone could do, short of planning John's funeral, and since none of the urgent messages had mentioned the kindness of death, then he assumed that no death had occurred.
Then what? What calamity after four years had taken place in Eden Castle, forcing some stranger's hand to summon help?
Suddenly the carriage stopped abruptly. The premature halt threw Alex forward. As he reached out quickly to brace himself on the opposite cushions, he bent down and looked out of the window on his left.
“What in the hell...?”
They weren't even through the gatehouse yet. He lowered the window and gaped ahead. There it was, a good seventy-five yards straight...
He blinked and tried to clear the distortion of fatigue an
d emotion from his eyes. He thought he had seen...
“What do we do now, sir?” the driver asked with admirable calm, considering that at that moment he was looking straight into the barrels of at least a dozen breech-loading shotguns, not very new-appearing — but then, neither were the men who shouldered them, a mismatched troop if Alex had ever seen one, men he suspected would be more at home in a herring boat swilling the nets.
In the lead was a strange duck, arrow-thin, garbed in tight-fitting black frock coat which, like everything else in this grim tableau, had seen better days.
Now this comic band was standing not so comically in an almost straight line, as though guarding the gatehouse from trespassers, though for the first time Alex's attention was drawn away from the makeshift home guard to the gatehouse itself, a narrow sheltered passage which was wholly blocked by one of the grilles which had apparently slipped its track and come crashing down, leaving a confused tangle of heavy chains dangling uselessly from the overhead pulleys.
All right, Alex advised himself, opening the carriage door. Go out and reason with them. Try as gently as possible to point out that there really was no need to guard a gatehouse that was completely impassable to start with.
“Hold your position,” he warned the driver beneath his breath, “and keep the horses still.”
“They're hungry.”
“Who isn't?” He started forward at a casual pace, hands shoved lightly into his pockets.
Suddenly he stopped, listening. He was in a bad way. He was hearing things now, what sounded for all the world like a... pianoforte?
He came to a halt about twenty yards from the home guard. Had the wind of Eden grown so rare that now it was capable of forming melody patterns? For that's what he heard, a sad though lilting tune expertly played on an old pianoforte, the upper registers tinkling across the quiet morning like small harbingers of beauty and order.
Eden Rising (The Eden Saga Book 5) Page 8