by Deryn Lake
She threw her arms around him. ‘Oh my darling Father,’ she said. She had omitted the ‘step’ and she did not care. The Earl had been wonderful — handsome, naughty and excellent company — but this dear soul had won all their hearts with his goodness.
He could not speak for a moment or two, clutching Horatia and Ida Anna to him in silent embrace. Then he said, ‘The situation is very grave. Dr Thorne believes the disease may have spread to the bowels as well. She is no longer able to eat. You must be prepared for a shock.’
But no words could prepare them for the state of emaciation that had transformed Miss Anne King of Hastings into a ghost. It was terrible — her arms and legs like sticks and her teeth seeming too big in a face drawn to the bones.
Ida Anna let out a great sob but Horatia ran forward to take the frail hand in hers. And after a minute or so the Countess opened her eyes.
‘Horry!’ she said, her voice a whisper in the shadows. ‘You’ve come. I’m so glad, darling.’
Ida Anna wiped her eyes.
‘And I am here too, Mama,’ she said, stepping forward.
‘My daughters at home,’ came the reply. ‘I can be happy again.’
The sisters exchanged a glance but said nothing, their only wish to comfort this little mother who was so obviously slipping desperately quickly out of life.
‘There is no pain,’ Algy murmured behind them. ‘The nurse keeps her on doses of laudanum. I have sent for Annette and Archie — and Frances too.’
‘Frances?’ This from Ida Anna.
‘It was your mother’s personal wish. Frances has been a good woman of late. A kind wife to old Mr Harcourt — though very frivolous of course. But with never a breath of scandal.’
‘Not before time.’ Even after all these years Ida Anna had not forgiven the pretty Jewess who had married both of her brothers.
But next day when Frances’s carriage came through the morning mist Ida Anna behaved well enough, kissing the cheek of the young Countess warmly and taking her by the hand herself to the Dowager Countess’s bedchamber.
Horatia, who had sat beside her mother nearly all night, glanced up to see her sister-in-law, already clad in sombre colours, gazing at her from beneath a dark becoming hat.
‘My dear,’ she said, rising to kiss her. ‘How well you look. How are you? How is Mr Harcourt?’
‘Very well,’ whispered the Waldegrave widow. ‘In fact he is excellent. I can certainly recommend marriage to an older man, Horatia.’ She smiled a little. ‘They do look after one so. Have you not thought of it, my dear?’
Horry shook her head. ‘It is going to be very difficult to find anyone — older or younger — after John Joseph.’
But Frances had turned away, cuddling her ex-mother-in-law into her arms before anyone could stop her, and not listening properly to what Horatia was saying — nor really caring, so shocked was she by Anne’s changed appearance.
Throughout most of that day she stayed like that, whispering to the Dowager Countess until their peace was made and old sad thoughts of a flighty young social climber who had married her brother-in-law after only five months of widowhood — flouting convention and breaking the law in so doing — had gone for ever from Anne’s mind.
Only then did the erstwhile Lady Waldegrave rise to her feet and kiss her mother-in-law on the brow.
‘Goodbye,’ she said. ‘I promise that Strawberry Hill shall be restored in your memory.’
And with that she was gone, only a whiff of her musky, rather Eastern, perfume lingering to remind them of her extraordinary presence.
The next morning saw Annette — moonstone eyes full of tears — arrive with Colonel Money, very grey of whisker at fifty-three, but still a military man to his fingertips. And within half an hour of those two came Caroline and Francis Hicks to help Algy.
But still that little game fighter hung on to life and it was only in the early hours of the next day, at the time when the soul is most in danger of taking flight, that she finally left the world behind her. Nurse Woodware called the family into the room and so Anne did not die alone. Yet she did not speak to any of them, only opening her eyes just before she went to look at someone who stood in the doorway.
But there was no one there to see and Horatia wondered if it was, in fact, the Earl come to fetch his wife. If he stood lounging against the doorpost, one elegant foot crossed upon the other, a smile hovering about his handsome mouth, invisible to all except the Army chaplain’s daughter who had borne his bastard son and six more of his children, and whom he had led such a merry dance in this earthly life.
But none of the others noticed and she said nothing, merely putting her hand on Algy’s shoulder, where he sobbed in Francis Hicks’s arms.
‘He must have brandy,’ whispered Francis. ‘Can you rouse the butler?’
Horatia was glad to leave the room. Glad to walk down the long corridor that led to the top of the West Staircase, passing the bedrooms — nearly all unoccupied now — and thinking not only about her mother but also about the mansion house as it must have been: bustling with life when King Henry and his court had arrived and when the great rich carpet was laid beneath the King’s mighty feet.
At the bottom of the stairs she turned into the small hall — wondering if this was where, as legend had it, Charles Edward Stuart had once laughed in the shadows at Melior Mary Weston — and then went left into a corridor. She was in the staff quarters now and a door on her right led into the pantry of Lucas the butler.
It was not necessary to knock but Horatia did so, sure that the poor man was snatching an hour of sleep. Then she went straight in, as her position allowed, and found him in his shirtsleeves dozing before a small and fading fire. He woke up and struggled into his coat.
‘The Dowager Countess has died, Lucas,’ said Horatia, ‘and I know you will be very sorry. But meanwhile Mr Hicks is in a state of shock and I wonder if you could take the brandy tray into the drawing room and see that the fire is well stoked up.’
‘Of course, my Lady. Please accept condolences on behalf of myself and the staff. You look worn out, my Lady. Would you like to sit down for a moment?’
She was suddenly so tired she could faint. In fact the corners of the room swirled towards her and retreated again in a spiral of darkness. Horatia sank into Lucas’s armchair and put her head in her hands. How strange to think of the world without her mother in it. How awful that she could not ask her advice — regardless of the fact she rarely took it — ever again.
Horatia suddenly felt very lonely; so few of the people she had loved were left. John Joseph, J.J., and George taken away in their sky-blue youth; the Earl on his fiftieth birthday; and now Anne. Horatia envisaged a desolate life stretching out before her. She and her sister caring for their grieving stepfather and living in Sutton Place till he, in his turn, died. But then Jay had said ...
She could not think about it any more. It was all too much for her. Very quietly she began to cry, her arms falling by her sides as limp as those of a rag doll. And then her fingers touched something — something which had lain hidden down the side of the chair, in between the arm and the seat. She pulled it out, into the palm of her hand, and there was a marble; a funny, green, schoolboy’s marble. For no reason that she could ever fathom it gave her a feeling of comfort and she slipped it into the pocket of her dress, wondering why the feel of it was so warm to her touch.
*
At that moment, the moment when Horatia found the magic sphere where it had slipped from Jackdaw’s hand on the night he had travelled in time, he woke from sleep and called her name.
It was first light over the great mountain range and he stared from the shepherd’s hut, in which he had spent the night, into an exquisite and crystal dawn. Despite the blood which seeped through the rags which bound his torn and damaged feet, he felt no pain at all. He was in ecstasy. He had crossed the mountain pass and with it the border; he was in Manchuria and safe, at last, from the jurisdiction of the Czar.
>
It seemed to matter very little, on reflection, that he had not been guilty of spying for the enemies of the Father of all the Russias — the crime for which he had been sent to Siberia. In fact nothing mattered at all except that his great journey home had begun.
Jackdaw stood up, his jewel eyes bright, his face tanned and healthy from the months spent outdoors. He was ready to start walking. Stopping only to answer nature’s call and splash cold water on his face and hands, he set off. If he hobbled he neither knew nor cared. And with the power of his thought he asked only one thing; that Horatia would wait for him until his vast journey was done and he had crossed the mysterious continent of China to the great seaports that would lead him westwards — and to England.
*
‘We shall have to give up the house in Leamington, Ida Anna,’ said Horatia. ‘We simply can’t leave Algy on his own.’
And with those words the trap of Sutton Place was sprung yet again — the Lady of the Manor was to come back to the mansion. Through the goodness of her heart she was about to be immured within, as had been so many before her.
‘What a horrible thought! Must we?’ Just for a moment the spoilt brat peeped out of Ida Anna’s eyes.
‘We have no choice.’
‘Couldn’t he live with Francis and Caroline?’
‘No he couldn’t. It wouldn’t be fair on them. Besides, he has made Sutton Place his home. Until he has recovered from the shock we will have to stand by him.’
‘Well, can’t the three of us move away?’
‘Only if I can let the house to someone else. I need the income from the rent to survive.’
‘I shall try and persuade him.’
‘I think it might be best if you said nothing for the time being.’
Ida Anna gave a mutinous look but answered, ‘Very well — but I intend to try even harder for a husband. As I would advise you to do also.’
She turned on her heel and flounced out of the morning room, her face very cross. She had been unsettled since Anne’s funeral and now Algy’s grief and dependence on his stepdaughters had put her out enormously. If they could have all three packed their bags instantly and returned to Leamington she would not have minded in the slightest. But there was no hope of that. Mr Hicks — who had always loved the manor house so much — clung to it now for support. For was it not here that the happiest years of his marriage had been spent with that dear little widow who had altered his entire life by agreeing to marry him?
As Horatia crossed the small hall with Lulie and Porter, Polly and Anthus, she heard her stepfather sob somewhere within the house. But she did not dare turn. He was at that dreadful stage where sympathy made him far worse. He was best left to grieve alone and then be forced — as convention decreed he must — to change for dinner and join his stepdaughters at a meal during which he could not force down a mouthful.
As Horatia stepped outside and away from the gloom she noticed that strange difference in the sunshine which told her summer was beginning to end. Though it was only the first week of September there was some subtle change in the atmosphere which heralded the death of the year. Soon it would be autumn and then winter; the time when Sutton Place became impossible to heat though fires blazed in every room. Even the thought of Christmas made Horatia shiver and she took an immediate vow to ask the entire Hicks clan to stay. Or else to hint at an invitation from them. Anything rather than sit pathetically, a tiny lost trio, in that great gaunt house.
As she thought these things she thrust her hands into her pockets, her head tilting forward as she did so. On an impulse she pulled the pins from her hair and saw it fall — glowing as a blacksmith’s anvil — about her shoulders. She did not know it but the grief in her life had made her incomparable. She had grown fine with suffering. Her figure filled out once more but her features delicate and sensitive to the nuances of fate.
Rather to her surprise she felt, within the depths of her skirt, the green marble that she had put there on the night Anne died. Once again she retrieved the sphere and gazed at it, wondering to whom it belonged. But the yapping of the dogs distracted her. All four of them had spotted a rabbit and were off, at great speed, to pursue the creature into its burrow.
Looking about her Horatia realized that she had walked a long way, for she stood within the ruins that had once, according to tradition, been the hunting lodge of King Edward — Saint and Confessor. And it was then, standing there amongst that stone old as the Saxon Kings, that Horatia finally raised the silly toy to her eye and gazed into its depths.
Instantly she entered the lair of the dragon who slept at the earth’s heart; green convolutes curled about her and stalactites and stalagmites were there to be touched. But then they blurred as the sound of boys’ voices singing filled the air about her. There was the heavy, heady smell of incense and then, as she lowered the marble once more, she saw that she stood where candlelight threw the shadow of the cross, together with that of a crown, upon stone flagging. She was within the Chapel of King Edward as it must once have been and there — gaunt-faced, bearded and crowned with the mediaeval circlet — the King himself knelt before the priest, totally at worship.
And yet there was something frightening about him. He more than prayed — he was obsessed with power. White-faced, white-lipped, he demanded that God should love him for his purity, for his astringent life, for his total forbearance from earthly pleasures. Though she could not have been sure Horatia would have sworn that he wore the penitent’s hair shirt next to his skin.
She was too shocked to be afraid; in fact she thought consciously that she was dreaming, that she had fallen asleep in the ruins and that this was where her sleeping mind had taken her. And yet there was a terrible reality about it all. She could smell the spluttering candles, the unwashed bodies, the extraordinary scent that the King put on his hands. But above all she could smell the rain; a combination of wet earth, wet leather, wet horses — and all of it blowing from beneath the Chapel’s draughty door.
The whole effect was overpowering. She thought that she must faint where she stood; just behind Edward and able to touch him if she leant forward and put out her arm. But yet she stood stock still, feeling totally swept up with the sounds and the odours and that wild white King taking Christ’s blood and body within his lips.
And then at last it was done. The priest blessed the monarch, the gaunt figure rose from its postulant’s posture, and the doors of the Chapel were flung open to reveal the rest of the hunting lodge, cold and frightening and filled with the noise of baying dogs.
The King swept past Horatia towards the hunt and she, frightened, ran behind him — terrified to be left alone in that grim Chapel where priest and shadow and altar were all darkly at one. But despite the sound of her feet and her panting breath she realized that none of them — not the King nor the hunting party nor the little boys who had just raised their voices to celebrate the high mass — could hear her. In this dreadful dream she was destined to be the onlooker and never to play a part.
Yet still she ran behind the King to where, outside, the horses were tethered, saddled and ready to hasten them all — monarch and men alike — away into the forest. And then her eye was attracted to something else. Almost opposite the lodge but slightly to the right, standing beneath a clump of trees which grew beside a bubbling spring, was a group of horsemen, amongst which was the cloaked and somehow desperate figure of a woman.
Horatia’s heart beat in her breast like a caged bird as she saw the woman, despair in her every movement, break free from the rest and cross the short space that lay between her and the King. He had mounted in that time and Horatia could see that the eyes of the couple were on a level. And what a terrible glance they exchanged — full of hate and love and emotions that delved so deeply into the human soul that they were unspeakable on normal lips.
‘Edward,’ said the woman, ‘you must forgive us. It is still in your power to revoke sentence on the Godwins. Edward, in the name of Christ,
for once show your Christian charity. Remember I have committed no sin against you — all I asked was your love.’
Horatia watched aghast as the King did nothing but flicker his eyes over the wretched creature unsmilingly. The atmosphere was so fraught, so charged with high tension, that she found words rising to her lips.
‘Why don’t you listen to her? What is the matter with you? What have they done, these people, that you cannot even look her in the face?’
But the Confessor was turning away, bound for the open forest where he could slay creatures to his heart’s content. He gave one more contemptuous glance towards the woman and then his back was turned — irrevocably.
As the girl tumbled from her horse — and Horatia realized that she was little more, as the hood fell back to reveal damp strawberry hair and child-like features — nobody moved at all. And then one of her escort hurried forward and knelt by her side.
Horatia knew that the poor creature was having a fit by the saliva flecking her mouth. But what was so terrible — so ghastly to listen to in that dreadful place — was the growling of a human being in despair. It rose from the woman’s throat like all the venom of which mankind is capable, horrifying all Christian souls.
‘Will! Tom!’ said the man. ‘The Queen is ill. Look to the Lady.’
But she was beyond help. From the depraved part of her — a part which even the most innocent is forced to bear within them — a curse was rising up; a curse so terrible, calling as it did to old strange gods who had stalked the earth when nature was young and the cost of spring was a blood sacrifice, that Horatia could not bear to listen.
She heard the name Odin mentioned, she heard the Erl — or Elf — King called upon, she saw a mighty ring thrown into the gushing well and steam rise up. Then she saw the Lady grow pale, and appear to die with that dreadful oath.
‘Death, madness and despair. Ill upon ill for the Lord of the Manor of Sutton for all time to come.’
Everything was drained of life; all the world had gone still to listen.