She held out her left hand and felt the smooth, dry touch of Lord Culloden’s gloves as he put the ring onto her finger. It slipped easily over her knuckle. The gold was pale in the light of the church. She curled her fingers tight. The ring felt strange.
No horseman had come. No shadow within a shadow to give her hope. She had watched the driveway each day, but Christopher Skavadale had not come. She had thought of him each hour of each day, but he had not come back.
Then, almost with surprise, she heard the Reverend Mounter pronounce them man and wife. Lord and Lady. Lady Campion Culloden. For better, for worse, and the town choir, that had insisted on coming, opened their mouths as the instrumentalists followed Simon Stepper’s beat and played their flutes, cellos and violins. She hardly heard the music. She saw the mouths open and shut, saw the smiles on the faces, the tears on Mrs. Hutchinson’s cheeks, and then Lord Culloden took her elbow, she turned, Uncle Achilles stepped aside, and she looked up at the tall, moustached man who smiled beside her. This stranger, her husband.
The sunlight beckoned at her door.
Servants waited there, petals in their hands, and she walked beside her husband to the future she had feared so much and she made herself smile, made herself look happy, and then they were under the archway, the music fading, the cheers rising, and there, facing her, laughing all over his pug-like, ugly, toothless face, was her cousin Sir Julius.
She stared at him. His face was a shock. There were no teeth where he smiled, just a pit of red flesh that mocked her. Why had he chosen to come now?
She looked away from him. She smiled at the servants who applauded her, laughed as the petals tickled her skin, and then William Carline was standing in front of her and his head was shaking, his face white, and alone among the servants he did not smile. He was trying to speak, his mouth opening and closing and she frowned, not understanding, and he pointed with a trembling finger to the castle roof.
Campion, the petals bright on her white silk, looked into the blue sky and the roses in her hand, the last blooms of summer, dropped to the gravel.
Lazen’s banner, which she had ordered raised for this one day, was lowered to the half.
Julius’s laughter was like a hollow jackal’s cry.
Toby was dead.
Uncle Achilles gripped her shoulders. “Perhaps it isn’t true, my dear.”
“Oh God!” She was shaking. “Oh God!” Petals still clung to her long, white skirts. She brushed at them. “Burned to death?”
“We don’t know. Paris lies! You can’t trust Paris these days.”
They were in the Entrance Hall. Mrs. Hutchinson cried beside her. The Reverend Horne Mounter frowned helplessly.
There was laughter upstairs, the crowing, savage laughter of her cousin. She could hear him shouting. “Mine! Mine!” A woman laughed with him; a raucous, shrieking harpy’s laughter. Campion frowned at Achilles. “Who is that?”
“Some woman with Julius.”
“Woman?”
He shrugged. “A woman.”
“Mine!” came the voice. “Mine!”
“It’s not his. Lazen is not his!”
“No.” He tried to comfort her.
She turned, pulling her shoulders from Achilles’s grasp. “My Lord?”
Culloden, who stood awkwardly in the sunlight by the front doors, frowned. “My dear?”
She pointed up the stairs. “Tell them to stop! Tell them this house is in mourning and I want silence!” This was why she had married him, to control Julius. “Tell them to stop!”
He looked up the stairs. The laughter was maniac’s laughter. There was a cascading crash of china, splintering and loud, a shriek of triumph from the woman, more laughter, and still Culloden did not move.
“My Lord?”
Her anger took away her tears.
Achilles tried to stop her, but she moved too quickly. Mrs. Hutchinson screamed in alarm while the Reverend Mounter, pale-faced, hurried after her.
She lifted her white skirts and took the stairs two at a time. She felt a rage that astonished her, a flat, cold, intense anger at what was happening to her house.
The noise came from the Yellow Drawing Room. She hurled the door open.
Julius seemed to be fighting the girl. They both laughed. He pawed at her, tried to tear her clothes from her, and Campion saw that the Meissen porcelain, Achilles’s gift, had been swept from the table by their lurching, laughing fight. Plates, saucers, cups, dishes and bowls lay in a shattered heap. The girl, Julius tugging at her skirts, trampled more of the precious plate.
Campion strode forward.
Julius turned.
She slapped him hard about the face. “Stop this!”
He roared in anger. He reached for her, his hands clawing at the silk dress, but the Reverend Mounter threw his heavy weight onto the seventh Earl, drove him back against the screaming, laughing girl, and all three fell in a scrambling heap on the broken Meissen.
Campion heard hands clapping behind her, clapping slowly like the beat of a funeral drum.
She turned, her face still stiff with anger, and saw a dark clothed, middle-aged man standing in the doorway. He had eyes as flat and hard as any she had ever seen. His hair was ridged and glossy black. He clapped once more then walked slowly into the room’s center.
Other men followed him, strange men, big men, in the center of them was Achilles, his wig awry, his face flushed with indignation. He came to her.
She frowned. She straightened her back. “Who are you?”
The man ignored her. He looked at Julius. “Get up.” He spoke to the new Earl brutally.
Lord Culloden came into the room now and Campion saw the men’s faces grinning as they appraised her. They had hard, scarred faces. They stood like men confident of their muscular power. She looked at the middle-aged man who seemed to be their leader. Her voice was cold. “Who are you?”
He looked her up and down with disdain on his hard face. “My name is Valentine Larke. Doubtless you have heard of me.”
“No.”
“Your ignorance does you no credit.” He turned to a huge man who stood beside him. “Give the Earl and his whore a bottle, Mr. Girdlestone.”
The girl giggled. She was dark-haired, her skin pocked with scars, her bodice unlaced. She walked with Julius toward the huge man who produced, from his coat pocket, a bottle of gin. The Reverend Horne Mounter, his hands cut by the porcelain fragments, stood on Campion’s right, Achilles on her left.
Valentine Larke turned to Lord Culloden. “Take your bride to your rooms, my Lord. We do not need to detain you.”
“Larke!” Campion’s voice was so sharp, so sudden, that everyone in the room seemed to jump. Even Valentine Larke was taken aback by the cold, pure authority that the voice held. She stepped forward. “You give no orders in this house, Larke.” She turned to Uncle Achilles. “I would be obliged, uncle, if you would ask Simon Burroughs to bring some of his men. There is rubbish that needs to be cleared out.”
Achilles smiled. “I should be delighted.”
His movement to the door was halted by a sliding scrape of steel and the appearance, in Larke’s hand, of a sword. Larke smiled. “Lady Campion. I think it would be better if you ordered your dancing master to stay in this room.”
“Dancing master!” Julius laughed. He capered grotesquely as he pointed with the gin bottle at Achilles. His toothless mouth made his words sibilant and hollow. “Dancing master!”
Larke rounded on him. “Quiet!” He turned to Lord Culloden. “My Lord?”
Culloden smiled. “Larke?”
“Take your bride, my Lord. She is not needed here.”
“You paltry little man!” Again she shocked the room. She took another step forward. “Will you threaten me with your sword, Larke?”
“If you don’t shut your face, Campion Culloden, I’ll lift your skirts and tan your arse. Now be quiet!”
“You will…”
“Quiet!”
Both o
f them were silenced by a crash, a huge, heart-stopping thumping smash that made Campion spin around to see that Uncle Achilles had pushed the statue of Ceres, that he had not liked anyway, from the table to the floor. He had done it to quiet the room, and his ploy worked. He stepped forward, every eye on him. Campion could sense her uncle’s nervousness as he stared at Larke. “Mr. Larke?”
“Yes?” Larke frowned, but Achilles’s tone had been conciliatory.
Achilles put a hand on Campion’s arm. She could feel her uncle trembling. He smiled again. “I fear there may be a misapprehension, Mr. Larke. The Earl,” and here he bowed toward Julius, “is not the inheritor of Lazen. I surmise you have come in his party, yes?” His French accent added an odd authority to his words. He did not wait for an answer. “My dear niece, the Lady Campion, is the legal holder of this castle. If she requests you to leave, then I suggest you do so. Do it quietly, do it now, and no more will be said.” He tightened his hand on Campion’s arm as she began to protest. He hurried on. “If the Earl has misled you, then doubtless you can take the matter up with him at your convenience?” He smiled. “I think you owe Lady Campion an apology, Larke?”
There was silence. Campion put a hand on top of Achilles’s hand in silent thanks.
Valentine Larke slid his sword into its scabbard. His bland, dark eyes looked at Campion then back to Achilles. “You say she is the holder of this castle?”
“Indeed.”
“While I am the holder of Sir Julius’s inheritance.”
Achilles smiled. “I hope you did not pay highly for that dubious privilege.”
Larke ignored the comment. He pointed to Lord Culloden. “That is your niece’s husband?”
“Indeed.”
Larke smiled. “Then what is hers is now his? Yes?”
Campion saw the smile, and saw too the small answering smile on Culloden’s face, and she felt as if the floor of the Yellow Drawing Room was opening into a great, dark, vacant space. Larke saw her consternation and laughed. “Lord Culloden and I are partners in this thing.” He spoke to Achilles. “I did not come, dancing master, in the Earl’s party. He came in mine.” He looked at Culloden, and the triumph was an open smirk on his face. “My Lord?”
“Larke?”
“Do you wish me to leave?” He said it with mocking, faked humility.
Culloden’s spurs rang as he walked forward. “I wish you to stay, Larke. You’re a guest of mine, a most honored guest.” His voice seemed utterly strange to Campion. It had a languid, amused, and vicious tone.
Achilles was gripping Campion’s forearm so tightly that it hurt.
She glared at Culloden. “You will…”
“Quiet!” Larke shouted at her. “You speak once more, girl, and I’ll put you over my knee. Lewis!”
“Larke?” Culloden smiled and touched his moustache.
“Take your wife and do what is customary on these occasions. Mr. Girdlestone?”
The huge man stepped forward. “Mr. Larke?”
Larke pointed at Campion. “Make sure she gives no trouble to his Lordship.”
Girdlestone smiled. There was something in that smile that reminded Campion of the man who had leered down at her on the Millett’s End road, who had dribbled his spittle onto her naked breasts, and the memory panicked her, and the panic made her turn, tearing herself from Achilles’s grasp and pushing behind the Reverend Mounter who stood appalled at all he had heard.
“Stop her!” Larke shouted.
They would have done, too, except she was not running for the main doors with their gilded pediments, but for a small door that was covered with the same silken paper as the walls. It was a hidden door for the servants, a door by which they could come quietly and unfussily into the room, and it led to the servant’s corridor that wound about the north side of the castle and allowed the maids and footmen to move about Lazen without intruding on the great rooms of state.
Even then, as she swerved and opened the door, they might have caught her, except that Abel Girdlestone collided with Uncle Achilles and Campion heard her uncle’s despairing, falling cry as he was hurled to the floor. She heard the Reverend Mounter shout as he, too, tried to block her pursuers.
She ran. Suddenly she was no great lady. Suddenly she was a fugitive. She heard the boots and voices erupt into the corridor, she had turned a corner, had run past a dozen doors, and then she threw herself recklessly down the back stairs which led to a footman’s pantry. She shut its door silently and stood, panting, listening to the commotion above her. The pantry opened into the garden and she guessed, as she heard the shouts above her, that she would have to leave that way.
The sound of her pursuers was loud. She heard them throwing doors open, and then the clatter of heavy boots on the stairs. It was time to run. It was time to run for her life, and she felt a sudden, savage impulse that she would make those bastards rue the day they had first heard of the name Lazender. She would fight them into their grave. She touched the golden seals, the jewels of Lazen, then opened the garden door and ran for her life.
17
S he ran toward the stable block. Once there she would be surrounded by Lazen’s servants and could plan what she must do next. First she must find safety, then she would attack.
She heard a shout behind her, a voice bellowing from a window in the castle. She ignored it. She clutched the bouncing, heavy seals in one hand and gathered her long, white, wedding skirts in the other. She heard feet on the gravel of the driveway, from beneath the bridge which joined the Great House to the Old House, and two strange men were running from its shadow, coming fast toward her, cutting her off from the stables. They were shouted on by other voices behind.
She ran in desperation, unable to find a single friendly face. She swerved away from her pursuers, going to the left of the mound that once was the castle’s keep, going toward the beehives that were busy on this warm, autumn day. Beyond the hives stretched the empty lawns. She turned.
She put her hands on one of the beehives, waited, and the two men came grinning about the shoulder of the small hill and Campion pushed the hive over, hearing the first buzzing protests of the bees, and then she was running again.
She went away from the castle. She ran north to the tangled blackthorn of Sconce Hill.
The shouts of success turned into bellows of pain. The men had run into the panicking, angry bees that swarmed on them, stung, were tangled in their hair, their clothes, and the two men stumbled like blind men, arms clutched over their heads, while Campion ran from their screams toward the dark bushes of Sconce Hill.
She was going away from the castle, away from help, but she had no choice. The men who had pursued her from the Yellow Drawing Room were already on the north lawn and running toward the stables. Sconce Hill was her closest refuge.
She heard their shouts as she changed direction. Her breath came in great gasps as she climbed the lower slope, then the first branches of thorn tore at her sleeves, she ducked, and was in the shadows.
She dared not stop. She forced her way up an overgrown path, the thorns clutching and tearing at her wedding silk. She tried to work her way to the right, toward the slope nearest the stable block, but the thorns blocked her, forcing her to the very top of the hill.
She stopped there, where the ground was hummocked by the old fortress built by Parliament’s troops in the civil war.
She listened.
She crouched in the remains of an old ditch that had once protected the besieger’s guns. She clutched the seals that hung about her neck.
She heard voices shouting. One loud, crisp voice seemed to be giving orders, but she could not hear what those orders were.
The thorns had half torn the wedding bonnet from her head. She pulled the pins out and threw the hat away from her.
She heard the thrashing of thorns being beaten down with heavy sticks. The sound came from the south east slope of the hill. Her pursuers had cut her off from Lazen and now, like beaters, they would drive her off
the hill into the waiting ambush.
She ran again.
She ran westward, knowing that once she was across Lazen’s northern drive she would be in a larger tract of woodland. Her shoes were tight and awkward, slowing her on the uneven ground, but she forced herself on, ducking beneath branches, running through nettles, startling pigeons up from their roosts, scrambling desperately down the thorn-choked slope to the road. The spines snatched at her great sleeves and tore her skirts.
She stopped at the edge of the thorns. Wild garlic grew thick here, its smell pungent. The air was loud with insects. She crouched. Her face was sticky with sweat. Her hair was coming free. She looked up and down the road, but could see no one. Her pursuers were driving her away from the castle, but they had not yet surrounded her. It would only be moments, she knew, before the first men appeared to her left, running up the road to block her retreat from Sconce Hill.
Her dress was caught in a last spike of thorn and she wrenched it free, hearing the silk tear, and then she could run again, across the ruts of the road, through the sudden, bright, treacherous sunlight, and into the shadows of the trees beyond.
This was a beech wood, the trunks of the trees far apart and the undergrowth sparse. She ran for the bushes at the slope’s crest, knowing her white dress was an easy sign for her pursuers. At the crest the beeches gave way to a mixture of oak, hazel and elm where, in the safety of their shadows, she hid herself in tall ferns.
She crouched.
She could feel sweat trickling between her breasts. It was sticky on her flanks, her hands, her neck, her spine.
She wiped her hands on the sleek smoothness of her wedding silk. Her left thigh was bared from hip to knee by great rents in the dress and petticoat. She tried to pluck the silk into place, but the tear was too big.
The Fallen Angels Page 28