by Belinda Grey
DAUGHTER OF ISIS
Belinda Grey
Her life changed almost overnight!
All of Ellen’s eighteen years had been spent in Cwm Bedd, a tiny village in Wales. She loved the countryside ... but with her newfound womanhood, she yearned for something more.
And then one day it happened.
A strange parcel containing an ivory heart and a cryptic message, a summons to the mansion of the local lord...
... and almost before she knew what hit her, a trip to Egypt, exotic land of mystery, danger—and romance!
CHAPTER
ONE
Aunt Kate was not a woman who encouraged vanity in anyone, least of all the niece whom she had reared since babyhood. Yet there were times when she shook her head gravely at Ellen, saying, ‘You’re going to be pretty, like your poor mother.’
Being pretty, according to Aunt Kate Evans, had not done the younger sister, Ann, the slightest good. ‘Feckless, she was! Always dreaming and mooning about the place, instead of getting on with her work. I always knew no good would come from her marrying Hywel Parry, but there, nobody ever takes any notice of me!’ Nobody had ever wanted to marry her either. All the looks in the family had gone to ‘poor Ann’ who, judging from the one stiffly-posed photograph of her that Ellen had seen, had been enchanting, with dark hair framing a heart-shaped face out of which pansy-brown eyes dreamed above a mouth ready to break into laughter.
Sometimes Ellen wondered if Ann’s brief marriage had brought her happiness. It had lasted scarcely two years before she had given birth to her only child and died of it a few weeks before her twentieth birthday.
‘And your father wouldn’t even look at you. Wouldn’t even look! Just asked me to take care of you and went off to Egypt with some English friend of his to dig up tombs. Nasty, unhealthy business, in my opinion!’
There was no photograph of Hywel Parry, and the only indication they had of his continuing existence were the bank drafts that arrived every year on Ellen’s birthday. Each one was for a hundred guineas, and Aunt Kate Evans had been scrupulous in using only half the money for Ellen’s keep and saving the rest
‘For you never know when a rainy day might come and you’ll be glad of a bit put by,’ the older woman said frequently.
The rainy day had not yet dawned and there were nine hundred pounds in Ellen’s bank account. It would serve as her dowry if she ever married. That was what her aunt hoped, but Ellen had never met anyone whom she fancied as a husband. In the little village of Cwm Bedd there were not many unattached men, and most of them worked for a pittance in the local quarry Something inside Ellen rebelled at the idea of spending the rest of her days in one of the tiny stone cottages that clustered at each side of the main street. The furthest she had ever been in her life was on a two day trip to Llandudno one summer, but she had never forgotten the ladies in their flowered hats and sweeping skirts walking along the sea-front or the boarding house where they had stayed overnight, which was so much grander than the two-bedroomed house where she lived with Aunt Kate Evans.
‘Why can’t we go to Chester on a visit?’ she had sometimes asked. ‘Or to London even? Oh, I’d love to go to London!’
‘There wouldn’t be anything there you couldn’t buy more cheaply here,’ Aunt Kate Evans said. ‘Nasty, wicked place it is from all accounts. Theatres they have there, and shameless women.’
‘The Queen lives there,’ Ellen argued.
‘The Queen is at Windsor and doesn’t know every thing that goes on,’ her aunt said darkly.
‘Perhaps we could go over to Dublin for a little holiday one day?’ Ellen suggested. ‘We could take the ferry from Holyhead.’
‘You’re so restless,’ Aunt Kate Evans said sadly. ‘Your father was the same. Always wanting to see what lay beyond the next mountain. It used to worry poor Ann, for he was always telling her that one day he’d buy a boat and sail all round the world with her. She hoped he’d settle once the baby was born, and perhaps he would have done if poor Ann had lived, but I suppose he felt there was nothing to keep him here after she died.’
‘Nothing except a daughter whom he wouldn’t even look at,’ Ellen thought with a flash of resentment.
There were times when she imagined how it would be if her father ever decided to come home to Cwm Bedd. He had been a clever boy, orphaned at an early age but winning scholarships first to the Grammar School and then to the university at Oxford. They had always said of Hywel Parry that he’d go far, perhaps become a teacher or even write books, for he was fluent not only in English but in Latin and Greek. But in the end he’d shaken the slate dust of Cwm Bedd off his feet and gone off to Egypt to dig up tombs.
‘With his English friend,’ Aunt Kate Evans said. ‘Met Henry Bligh at Oxford, he did, and was for ever quoting him at us. Rich, he was, and clever too, or so Hywel was always telling us. Not that we ever met Henry Bligh. Far too grand to visit us he was.’
She had sounded aggrieved, though Ellen guessed it was more for her niece’s sake than her own. If Hywel Parry had chosen a friend from among his own kind, then he might have stayed at home after his wife died and taken proper care of his daughter.
‘Still, I brought you up the best way I know how,’ Aunt Kate Evans said, folding her hands over her apron and giving her niece a long look in which pride and regret were oddly mingled.
The pride was in Ellen’s quick mind and soberly demure behaviour. The regret was for her resemblance to poor Ann who had died young, and for Ellen’s own moods of restless longing to see more of the world than the narrow valley in which they paced out the slow seasons.
Now it was spring again in the year eighteen-eighty, just three days past Ellen’s eighteenth birthday. The great range of the Snowdonia peaks were still tipped with snow, though on the lower slopes the young lambs gambolled in the heather-starred grass, and the sun, slanting into the quarry, struck blue fire from the grey slate.
‘Moses Post Bach is coming up the road. Shall I see if there’s anything for us?’ Ellen asked.
There never were any letters for either of them, but she had been stuck in all afternoon darning stockings, so it was an excuse to snatch up her cloak and hurry down the path towards the bow-legged, grizzled little man who plodded up the hill.
‘Good day to you, Moses.’ She greeted him politely in Welsh. ‘Have you anything for us today?’
‘A parcel for you. What do you think of that, now?’ He was delving into the canvas sack on his shoulder
‘A parcel for me? Are you sure?’ She had never received a parcel in her life, and now she stared in bewilderment at the flat package he held out to her ‘Got your name and address on it,’ he said. ‘Foreign stamps, too, so it must have come from your father.’
‘From Egypt?’ She turned it over in her hands. ‘Probably a birthday present,’ Moses Post Bach said. ‘Aren’t you going to open it then?’
‘Yes, of course, thank you, Moses.’ Ellen gave the wide, life-loving smile that reminded many people of her dead mother and went past Moses Post Bach towards the deep-rutted lane which cut between the houses into the sloping meadow. Here, where the grass grew more thickly, there was a certain measure of privacy.
Her fingers tore at the string and gummed paper. A present from her father after all these years was an excitement beyond anything she had ever known, and she wanted to be by herself to savour it. The layers of paper parted to reveal a flat, hinged box made of some dark wood with a musky perfume. Slowly, her heart thumping with anticipation, she lifted the lid. The box was lined with cotton wool in the midst of which nestled a carved heart on a silver chain. The ornament was of yellowed ivory, its surface marked by a crescent moon.
It felt cool and time-worn between her fingers and, despit
e its simplicity, she guessed that it was very valuable. There was a stiff piece of white card at the bottom of the box.
Ellen drew it out, frowning at the neatly-written verse on it.
‘Silent her song beyond the loom of time,
Lost is the cradle that rocked her to slumber
Dry dust her small playmates,
Forgotten their number.
Broken the staircase that she used to climb
All her small joys the centuries keep
The silver moon stole her And rocked her to sleep.’
It was a strange sort of birthday verse, an odd message for a father to send to a daughter. Ellen turned the card over and saw a rough pencil sketch on the back. On the outstretched petals of a flower a baby sat with its finger to its lips. The sketch was crudely drawn as if the artist had been in a hurry, but its message was clear. She had been advised to keep silent. Her father, if it was he who had sent the gift, wanted it to remain a secret.
Ellen put everything back into the box and rolled it in her shawl. If Moses Post Bach had stopped to speak to Aunt Kate Evans then she would have to show the gift, but her aunt was making bread in the kitchen and it was more than likely that Moses had passed by. Hoping so, she went slowly back up the hill and re-entered the cottage.
From the back her aunt called, ‘No letters?’
‘No letters!’ Ellen raised her own voice to reply as she hurried up to the narrow chamber where she slept.
It led out of the larger bedroom which had been her parents’ during their brief married life. Aunt Kate Evans occupied the big feather bed and hung her clothes in the wardrobe with the heads of the four evangelists carved round the door. Ellen’s own brass bed was narrower, with a cheerful patchwork quilt, and her few garments hung on hooks behind a matching curtain. Apart from the rose-patterned ewer on the marble-topped wash-stand there were no ornaments in the room, no books, no pictures, and the rag rug on the floor did little to take the chill off early morning rising.
Ellen’s workbox stood on the low window sill. There was a separate compartment under the top one that held her needles, scissors and reels of cotton. The box with the card and the pendant fitted into it tidily. Ellen went downstairs again, the brown paper with the betraying foreign stamps scrunched up in her hand, and tucked the lot under the coals at the back of the unlit fire. She had never had a secret from Aunt Kate Evans, but the drawing had carried a clear message. Later when she had some time to herself she would try to puzzle it out, but for the time being she would have to put it out of her mind and help Aunt Kate Evans to set the bread to rise.
The golden-brown loaves were cooling on the wire rack, and Aunt Kate Evans had turned up her skirt to warm her knees at the now crackling fire, when the rattling of wheels on the cobbles outside brought Ellen to the window.
‘It’s Lord Buckleigh’s coach!’ she exclaimed, her eyes widening as she spotted the crest on its door.
‘Don’t be foolish, child. What would Lord Buckleigh’s coach be doing in Cwm Bedd?’ her aunt demanded.
‘I don’t know, but it’s stopping at the gate and the coachman’s getting down.’ Ellen reported.
‘Then come away from the window, do! He’ll think you’ve got no manners at all,’ the older woman scolded.
‘Shall I open the door?’ Ellen asked, dropping the curtain back into place.
‘Not until he knocks. Otherwise he’ll think there’s something unusual in our having visitors.’
Aunt Kate Evans was whisking off her apron and patting a stray wisp of hair back into place as the knocking sounded. ‘Go on now. Open the door and ask the man his business,’ she instructed.
Ellen opened the door and looked up into a lugubrious countenance above a padded greatcoat trimmed with gold braid. ‘Do you speak English, girl?’ the face opened its trap of a mouth to enquire.
‘We both speak it,’ Aunt Kate Evans said, sweeping forward. ‘
‘I’ve a message for Miss Ellen Parry.’
‘My niece is Ellen Parry. I am Miss Kate Ev—’
‘The girl’s to come up to Plas Buckleigh to see His Lordship,’ the man said.
‘For what purpose, pray?’
‘His Lordship’s orders, and she’s to come now.’
‘We’d better get our cloaks,’ Ellen said.
‘Not both of you,’ the coachman said, looking gloomier than ever. ‘Lord Buckleigh said I was to take Miss Ellen Parry over to see him. He didn’t mention any other persons.’
‘I’ll be perfectly safe,’ Ellen said, to soothe the disquiet on her aunt’s face.
‘But you haven’t had your supper,’ Aunt Kate Evans objected, ‘and it’ll be dark before you get back.’
‘I’m to bring her back too,’ the coachman said.
‘Then the sooner I go, the sooner we’ll discover what all this is about,’ Ellen said.
‘I cannot imagine what Lord Buckleigh could want with you,’ her aunt frowned. ‘I can’t understand how he’s come to hear of you. You’ve not been trespassing on his land?’
‘I’ve never even been inside the gates,’ Ellen assured her.
‘His Lordship said the girl was to come now,’ the coachman repeated.
‘I’ll be back soon. Keep supper hot for me.’ Ellen reached for her cloak, blew a hasty kiss to the other and followed the greatcoated figure down the path.
She had never ridden in a coach before. Indeed, only Lord Buckleigh used one in the district, preferring the uncomfortable splendour of the old-fashioned vehicle to more modern forms of transport. An elderly man with a large family of daughters, he upheld tradition with an almost religious fervour, regarding his employees as extensions of his not inconsiderable property and seldom leaving the confines of Plas Buckleigh.
The drive took nearly half an hour, and Ellen was torn between the desire to prolong the ride and her growing curiosity as to why she had been summoned. She had only glimpsed His Lordship briefly once or twice and, as her aunt was neither a tenant nor an employee of his, there seemed no reason for His Lordship to be aware of her existence.
Through the window of the coach she saw high iron gates and a drive curving between oak trees with close-clipped lawns beyond. She had seen the turrets of the mansion against the skyline for as long as she could remember, but this was the first time she had ever seen the building at close quarters and its walls dwarfed her
They drove into a courtyard at the side and the coachman opened the door for her, his expression as funereal as ever as he said, ‘If you go down that corridor and turn left you can wait in the antechamber. I daresay His Lordship won’t be long.’
The corridor was slate-floored, its walls of grey stone, with a long line of bells above eye level. She turned the corner into a panelled room with a high backed wooden settle against one wall.
‘Ellen Parry?’
A tall, thin old gentleman in a tasseled cap and velvet smoking jacket had come in, and was staring down at her. She recognised him, though he looked older without his top hat and frock coat, and dropped a curtsy, aware that he was regarding her from under beetling white brows.
‘Come into the study,’ he said abruptly. ‘You do understand English?’
‘Yes, sir—my lord.’
‘Sir will do,’ he said, compressing his mouth slightly.
The study was one of the largest rooms Ellen had ever been in. Twin fireplaces held glowing logs and every wall was packed closely with row after row of leather bound books. As she followed Lord Buckleigh to a flat-topped desk set between velvet draped curtains, she glanced at the volumes longingly.
‘You like books, I see.’ He seated himself in a high-backed chair behind the desk and motioned her to a smaller chair opposite.
‘Yes, sir. I was always fond of reading at school.’
‘The Grammar School?’
‘I passed the scholarship,’ she said proudly
‘And have now left school?’
‘Four years ago, but I still like to read when
ever I get the chance.’
‘In that you take after your father,’ Lord Buckleigh said. ‘He always had his nose buried in a book.’
‘You know my father, sir?’ She looked up in surprise.
‘I was by way of being his patron when he was a boy,’ Lord Buckleigh told her. ‘Even with the aid of scholarships a young man needs a little money to be able to live decently at Oxford. Hywel Parry paid back everything, though I would not have asked for it. I assume that he always provided for your upkeep?’
‘Yes, sir.’ Glancing at him again she ventured, ‘Has something happened to my father?’
‘You have a quick intelligence,’ he approved. ‘I am sorry to have to convey ill tidings at our first meeting.’
‘He is dead then?’ She spoke without grief, though there was a muted regret in her tone, for now the father she had never seen would never come back to Cwm Bedd.
‘I have received a letter from Mr. Henry Bligh, your father’s partner and friend. Perhaps you would like to see it for yourself?’
‘That’s very kind of you.’ Ellen took the thin sheets of spiky handwriting. The style of the missive was formal and polite, but told her nothing about the man who had written it.
‘My Lord,
‘It is with deep regret that I write to inform you of the recent death of Mr. Hywel Parry, my business partner and friend. He passed away three days since, having been struck down by a fever which failed to respond to even the most efficient medical remedies. Shortly before his decease he earnestly requested me to communicate the tidings to you, together with a reiteration of his gratitude for the assistance which you rendered him in the past.