‘I have to, Angie. Otherwise how am I ever going to know what happened?’
‘Kate, stop this,’ she says in exasperation, coming over to me. ‘You don’t need to know. All that matters is that you survived, surely? Just be grateful for that. Don’t let yourself be sucked into all that stupid ghost nonsense again. Forget the tower. Stay down here and welcome Felix back from school and get on with your life without this constant looking over your shoulder. The past doesn’t matter.’
‘But it does,’ I say, frustrated. ‘Angie, don’t you see? I can’t get on with my life until I remember what happened.’
She isn’t going to be convinced. ‘And how do you think Felix will feel when he comes home to find that you’re not here, you’re up the tower?’
‘I won’t go until he gets back . . . unless . . .’ I hesitate. ‘Unless you’d come with me now?’
‘Oh, no,’ she says, backing away.
‘Please, Angie. Felix won’t be back yet. There’s plenty of time to go up the tower, see what’s up there, hope to remember, and come down again, all before school’s out.’
All at once I am wild to have it over and done with. Wouldn’t it be better to have been up and down the tower before Matt brings Felix back? If I wait, I will have to make sure Felix is with someone I trust before Matt and I can climb the tower, and the day will be eking away. If I go with Angie, I will be able to keep my promise to Matt and still be able to face my fears before he gets here. And Matt has his own fears of the tower. I can spare him that, at least.
‘Matt made me promise that I wouldn’t go up on my own, but I’d be okay with you.’
The more I think about it, the more I want Angie to agree. I’ve hardly spent any time with her since Matt arrived. It isn’t deliberate, it’s just the way things have worked out. I was miffed by how firmly she dismissed the idea of including Peter Kaczka in the display, and I daresay she was miffed by my refusal to take her advice about Matt. I know, too, that she doesn’t like Matt, but she is still Angie, cheery and capable, and she is not a Vavasour. I have brushed aside my suspicions of them by now. Those menacing words – You were supposed to die – must have been part of some hallucination. Still, I don’t want to climb the tower with any of them, just in case I am wrong.
Angie sighs. ‘I thought you were over all this.’
‘I will be over it,’ I say. ‘All I need is to go up the tower, and then if I don’t remember, I’ll never think about it again. I promise. What time are you meeting Fiona?’
‘We didn’t agree a time,’ she says slowly. ‘I was hoping to catch her now.’
‘How long is it going to take us? Quarter of an hour? Twenty minutes? You’ll have plenty of time to return Jasper’s boots and talk menus with Fiona afterwards. Please, Angie,’ I say again.
Angie stands her ground. ‘Kate,’ she says seriously, clutching the boots to her gilet. ‘Kate, I’m begging you not to do this. For Felix’s sake, if nothing else.’
‘I’m doing it for Felix.’ I’m impatient. Why won’t she understand? ‘I can’t be myself again unless I remember what I was doing up there before I jumped. If I jumped. Isn’t it better for Felix if I remember who I am?’
‘It’s better for him if you stay right here on the ground,’ Angie says, and I lift my shoulders in defeat.
‘All right, I’ll wait for Matt.’
‘Matt?’ she says sharply.
‘He said he’d go up with me.’
‘What about Felix? You’re not thinking of taking him up, are you?’
‘Of course not,’ I snap back at her. Her apprehension is catching. ‘I’ll make sure he’s safe, don’t worry.’
Angie’s lips tighten. ‘You’re determined to go through with it, then?’
‘I can’t explain. I just know that I have to.’
She looks up at the tower, and then at me, and she lets out a long, complicated sigh. ‘All right,’ she says almost to herself. ‘Better me than Matt, I suppose. I’ll go with you.’
I am too relieved at the thought of being able to get the whole business over with as soon as possible to wonder what she means by that. ‘Thank you, Angie.’
‘Let me just put these back in the car.’
She stores the boots and the folder away and turns to me, squaring her shoulders as she contemplates the tower. ‘Let’s get it over with,’ she says. ‘Do you need your stick?’
I decide it’ll just get in the way on the stairs. ‘I’ll manage without it,’ I say.
We go back inside to the great hall and along to the bottom of the stone stairs that spiral to the top of the tower. I have fallen silent. The thought of climbing up them is shrinking my flesh against my bones, and a cold hand grips my entrails as terror pops its head over my shoulder and leers in my face once more. The tower? it seems to say. Come on up, I’m waiting for you.
I put my foot on the bottom step and stop. My mouth is dry, my heart thundering against my ribs. ‘I . . . I don’t think I can do it after all,’ I whisper.
‘Then let’s go back,’ Angie says promptly.
Coward.
‘No.’ I change my mind and press my hand against the wall. If I go back at this stage, I’ll lose my nerve, and I might not try again. ‘No, let’s do it now.’
The staircase is very narrow, and the stone steps are worn smooth and slippery with age. The walls are roughly plastered and whitewashed, and punctuated by a few narrow windows that let in a meagre light. I keep one hand flat on the wall as I climb with Angie behind me. My heart is thudding against my ribs, and dread lies cold and queasy in my stomach. I’m very glad Angie is with me.
‘So you’re back with Matt?’ she says after a while, from below me.
‘I’m not exactly with him,’ I begin, and then stop. What is the point of pretending? ‘Yes. I don’t know what will happen, but . . . I like him, Angie,’ I say simply.
‘You know George is talking about going to New Zealand?’
‘George?’ I stop and stare down at her. ‘What on earth for?’
‘To get over you.’
‘That’s crazy,’ I say. ‘He’ll forget about me once I’ve gone.’
‘That’s what I think, too,’ Angie says in an odd voice.
We pass the landing where the garderobe used to be. I remember the overpowering stench, the roughness of the wooden door beneath my fists as I beat at it to be let out.
I’m out of breath and my leg is aching when we finally emerge up onto the flat roof of the tower. I’m wishing I had fetched my stick after all, but it feels good to breathe the fresh air after the staleness of the staircase.
The sun is still blocked by the fog, but it is surprising how far you can see now. I turn slowly. Narrowing my eyes to blind myself to the roads, the pylons and the wind farm in the distance, I can imagine it is still as it was when Edmund brought me up here and told me I was free. It is as if I can still feel his hands on my shoulders, and longing for him constricts my throat.
Edmund, Edmund, where are you?
I open my eyes properly. We are standing on panels of smooth lead sheeting jointed with hammered ridges and dotted with capped vents like little mushrooms. They slope from the centre of the tower roof to the edge, where a stone step leads up to the crenellated wall. I can see the gap between the stones where I leant that day, but Edmund isn’t here now. There is nothing here, but even as I think that, danger starts to shriek in my head, and I stand very still.
‘What is it?’ I’m too intent to wonder about the strained note in Angie’s voice. ‘Have you remembered something?’ she demands, and I nod. Because it is as if a veil is being ripped from my mind.
I see myself running up the staircase after Judith, my heart pounding. ‘Come quick!’ she had cried. ‘Eliza has Kit in the tower!’
I did not stop to question her. The thought of my child in those gnarled hands, being ogled by those vacant eyes, made my blood turn to ice. I picked up my skirts and ran after Judith. When we burst onto the roof, and I sa
w Kit lying bemused but unhurt on the coverlet from his cradle, I was so relieved that I bent almost double, the breath whooping from my lungs, and a hand at the stitch in my side.
Judith darted over to pick him up. ‘The Lord be thanked!’ she said.
‘Indeed.’ I straighten with difficulty, still breathing heavily. ‘Where is Eliza?’
‘Perhaps she flew away like you once wished to do,’ Judith suggests. There is something strange in her voice, but I can’t place it. ‘A witch can do whatever she likes, can she not?’
‘I shall have her banished from the village,’ I said furiously. Now that the intensity of relief had passed, anger coursed through me. ‘She has threatened my son. I do not care that she is poor or lacking in wits. I shall have her whipped!’
‘You cannot have her banished for being mad,’ said Judith reasonably, ‘for then you would need to banish yourself.’
I was not really listening. I was looking at Kit and thinking about how glad I was to see him. ‘Banish myself? Why would I do such a thing?’
‘Because you, too, are mad, Isabel,’ she said. ‘Quite, quite mad.’
My smile faltered. ‘Judith?’
‘Why else did you come running up here like a madwoman?’
‘You told me Eliza had taken Kit!’
‘Did I? She is but a poor, foolish old woman. Why would she do such a thing?’
‘I do not know.’ I looked at Judith’s face. It was as if a hand had passed over it, wiping away the familiar meekness and leaving behind an expression that glittered with malice. She was Judith, but not Judith, and something terrible uncurled inside me. Was it me or was it her who had changed? Was she mad, or was I?
‘Give me Kit,’ I said.
‘I think not.’
Judith jumped up onto the stone step. She was too close to the battlements with Kit. My heart was banging against my ribs. ‘Judith, what are you doing? What has happened?’
‘Your husband is coming home,’ she said.
Edmund. Thank God. My face lit up at the thought of him. Edmund would make sense of all this. He would tell Judith to stop behaving so oddly. Everything would be well once Edmund was home.
A thought struck me. ‘Why did he write to you and not to me?’
‘Oh, did you not know? Edmund and I have been corresponding.’
‘What about?’
‘Why, about you, dear Isabel, and how worried we both are. I wrote to him to tell him how strangely you have been behaving. I told him not to worry, but of course he does. Still, I did not expect him to return quite so soon.’ She clicked her tongue, exasperated.
My head felt like a dandelion gone to seed: my thoughts would scatter at the slightest puff. All I could think was that she held Kit too close to the edge of the tower, and that the friend I had loved like no other had become a stranger. A stranger holding Kit. I was desperate to snatch him from her, but something about the glitter in her eyes told me to stand very still.
My mouth was dust dry. ‘Judith, I do not understand,’ I said.
‘I know,’ she said. ‘You understand nothing, Isabel. You never have. You are such a simple, trusting fool. You believe everything you are told. No wonder Edmund is worried about your behaviour.’
‘What do you mean? What behaviour?’
‘How you forget the simplest things. The poison you bought from Eliza.’
‘I bought nothing from her!’
‘But who will believe that when she told everyone about the penny you gave her?’ Judith laughs, and the sound makes my skin shrink. ‘I gave her a penny, too, if she played her part, and she did it well, did she not? She earned her tuppence!’
‘Edmund will believe it,’ I said, my voice shaking.
‘Will he? When I tell him how you lost your reason and carried Kit up the tower? How close you came to throwing him to his death?’
She swung Kit towards the battlements, and dread pooled cold and black in my stomach. ‘Judith, stop this now.’
‘Who knows what would have happened if I had not come to find you?’ she said, as if I had not spoken. She put her head on one side, considering. ‘Yes, that is what I will tell Edmund when he returns.’
‘He will believe me,’ I said. I knew that it was true.
‘But you will not be here,’ she said, almost gently.
I shook my head. I didn’t understand what was happening. Nothing of what Judith was saying made any sense. ‘Of course I will,’ I said. ‘Where would I go?’
‘That is indeed the question,’ said Judith, and she chuckled. ‘You, Isabel, are going to fly, just like you always said you wanted to. Don’t you remember? Edmund brought you up here. You told me how it felt with his hands on you, telling you that everything you saw was yours. But for you that didn’t matter, did it? All you cared about was the fact that Edmund was there and you felt free. You felt as if you could fly, you said. Well, now is your chance.’
She jerked her head towards the battlements. ‘Fly, Isabel,’ she said, with a smile that struck a chill right down to my bones. ‘If you can,’ she added. ‘And if you cannot, then you will have to die, won’t you?’
Chapter Thirty-five
Die. My hand went to my throat at the word. I had been afraid that I was losing my reason but now I saw the truth. It was not I. It was Judith who was mad.
‘Judith, what has happened to you?’ I whispered.
‘Nothing has happened,’ she said, almost surprised. ‘I am as I have always been. I know what I want and I have been prepared to wait for it. Oh, how I have waited!’ she said, jiggling Kit reflectively.
I thought about making a leap for him, but she was too far away, and too close to the edge. How could I be sure that this stranger who looked like Judith and sounded like Judith would not drop him?
‘What is it that you want?’ I asked. My mind was blurry still and the impossibility of what I was hearing was beating at me. I wanted to lower my head and shake it like a cow ridding itself of flies, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off Judith.
‘What do I want? Why, that is simple,’ she said. ‘I want to be you, Isabel. I want to be Lady Vavasour, with your fortune and your doting husband and your fine house and your darling child. Years and years I have spent pretending to be pleased for you. Years of being sweet and helpful, of being grateful to you.’ She spat out the word. ‘It was always so easy for you, Isabel. You had wealth and I had nothing.’
‘It was not fair, I know,’ I said, trying to keep my voice steady. I had to stand very still, as I would with a frightened horse. ‘I did not care that you were poor, Judith.’
‘No, you did not care, but I did! Who would look at me, only ever the poor connection?’
Too late I remember Edmund. Do you think Judith is capable of happiness? ‘I did not know you were so unhappy.’
‘Of course you didn’t,’ Judith said contemptuously. ‘You know nothing.’
I was shaking, unable to comprehend the hatred that spilt out of her. This had to be a nightmare, I remember thinking that. I had to be asleep in my bed. What else could it be when my dearest friend had turned into this woman with bitter eyes and a venomously twisted mouth?
‘You could have been happy if you had chosen to be,’ I said. ‘You did not have to want my life. You could have been happy with your own.’
‘What opportunity have I ever had for happiness?’
‘My aunt and uncle gave you a home, I gave you friendship. Stephen Morley would have wed you,’ I said, but that only made her pace faster. ‘You could have had a husband and a home of your own.’
‘Pah, that fat squire! Why would I settle for him when I could have Edmund?’
‘Edmund?’ I stared at her, my heart beating horribly in my throat.
‘I took one look at him when he stood in the great hall at Crabbersett that day, and I wanted him,’ Judith said. ‘But he only ever had eyes for you. He never even saw me.’ Her whole face convulsed with bitterness. ‘Why not? I am beautiful, am I not? I am more
beautiful than you,’ she said, ‘but he saw only you.’
Bafflement threaded her voice. I looked at her, at the golden hair and pale, perfect features, and I realized that her beauty was that of a frosty morning, hard and cold and repellent. I had always thought of her as beautiful, but I had projected onto her the warmth I wanted to see. What other mistakes had I made?
‘He saw only your inheritance,’ Judith said, as I realized she must have said many times to herself to justify the way Edmund’s eyes passed over her.
‘No.’ That I knew to be untrue. ‘Perhaps the fact that I was an heiress brought him to Crabbersett in the first place, but he cares nothing for that. He loves me.’
‘He will learn to love me instead.’
‘No.’ I shook my head, sure of that at least. ‘No, he would never love you.’
‘Well, it will be enough that he marries me,’ she said carelessly. ‘He will need a mother for poor motherless Kit, abandoned by you in your madness.’
In spite of my resolve to stay calm, I was trembling. ‘I would never abandon my son. Edmund knows that.’
Judith only smiled and stepped nearer to the battlements, and my heart froze mid-beat. She held Kit over the edge, and sensing the danger, he started to cry. ‘Judith, stop this,’ I managed, but my mouth was so dry I could hardly get out the words. ‘He is just a babe.’
‘Would you do anything to save him, Isabel?’
‘Anything. I will give you anything you want if you will just bring him back to safety.’
‘Then jump,’ she said.
Perhaps I should have realized that was coming. I had been a fool about so much, and I was a fool about that, too. But I could not believe what I had heard.
‘Jump,’ she said again. ‘I am tired of waiting. It is my turn now. I will be distraught when Edmund comes back, and we will comfort each other.’ She tilted her head to one side, imagining the scene. ‘I will take your place at last, Isabel. I will be Lady Vavasour then, and when I have a son of my own, perhaps poor Kit will inherit his mother’s madness?’
‘Judith,’ I whispered, terrified. ‘I must be mad indeed to think you are saying such things.’
House of Shadows Page 33