Lord of the Far Island

by Victoria Holt

  Why should I have thought of that now? Thoughts were beginning to stir in my mind and I was too tired to consider them now. You have come very close to death, I reminded myself. It has made you fanciful and . . . suspicious.

  Suspicious I was, for I rose from my bed and went to the window, taking the glass with me. I tipped the liquid out of the window and watched it trickle down the castle walls.

  I climbed back into my bed and lay there thinking.

  The Island Necklace

  The next day I felt fully recovered and the strange ideas which had beset me on the previous night receded. The first thing I wanted to do was to go to the dovecotes and thank Slack for coming to my rescue.

  He was there as though expecting me.

  "Thank you, Slack," I said, "for coming to my rescue."

  "I could have brought you in on my own," he said.

  "I'm sure you could, but Mr. Jago happened to be there."

  "I may not be big but I have the Power. I could have saved 'ee, Miss Ellen, like I save the little birds."

  "Thank you, Slack. I know."

  "It bothers me . . . what happened."

  "Boats do spring leaks sometimes, I suppose."

  He shook his head and said: "What did 'ee see, Miss Ellen?"

  "See? Well, I suddenly noticed that the water was coming in. I thought there was something sticky there . . . like sugar . . . and then I didn't have time to think of anything but how I was going to get to the land."

  "Sticky." His brows were wrinkled. "Like sugar, did 'ee say? I wonder what sugar could have been doing at the bottom of the Ellen?"

  "I expect I was wrong. I was frightened, I suppose."

  "Little bits of seaweed, perhaps."

  "Perhaps. But I'm safe and I can tell you, Slack, how pleased I was to hear your voice calling me."

  " 'Twas the Power. I had this feeling. Go along down to the shore. I heard the voice telling me. You be needed there. Tis sometimes so when some little bird or some animal do need me."

  "Well then, I have to thank the Power as well as you, Slack."

  "Aye, Miss Ellen. Don't ever forget the Power. Miss Ellen, you say you did see sugar then?"

  "Well, that's what it looked like to me then ... a few grains of sugar."

  " 'Tis a strange thing. Don't 'ee fret though. I be going to look after you, Miss Ellen. If you do need me, I'll know."

  The pale eyes had changed. There was a look about them which was almost fanatical.

  The servants tapped their heads significantly when they spoke of Slack. I had heard the whispered comment: "Not all there."

  But there was something there, I was sure. Dear Slack. I was glad he was my friend.

  The incident of the boat had brought me closer to Slack. Understandably for a week or so after the accident I had no desire to go to sea, certainly not alone. There had been no need for Jago to warn me against that. So I stayed on the Island and I took to going to the dovecotes when Slack was feeding the pigeons.

  He would give me a bowl filled with maize and we'd stand together with the birds fluttering round us.

  Once he said: "Did 'ee say sugar, Miss Ellen?"

  I wondered what he meant for a moment, then I said: "Oh, you mean when the boat started to sink. I didn't have time to consider very much. I thought I saw what looked like a few grains of it on the bottom of the boat where it hadn't, at that time, been touched by the water. And then as the water swelled up there seemed to be some grains floating in it. I was too upset though to think much about it. It just flashed into my mind. You understand. It was a horrible moment, Slack."

  His brow was furrowed. "Sugar takes a little time to dissolve in cold water. Now salt would dissolve quicker."

  "How could it have been sugar? How could that have got there?"

  "Couldn't have got there if it hadn't been put, Miss Ellen."

  "Slack, what do you mean!"

  "Where be the boat? If we had the boat and her weren't broken up."

  "You wouldn't find the sugar now."

  "No, but we'd see the hole it come through."

  "We know that must have been there."

  "But how did it come to be there? That be what I want to know."

  "Slack, what are you thinking?"

  "What if the hole were put there by someone as filled it with sugar? There's the Demerara kind . . . brown and coarse grained, the kind that takes time to dissolve . . . specially in cold salt water. I've heard it said hereabouts more than once that it would hold a leak for a while if you happened to be not too far out to sea and supposing you had a packet of such with you . . . which is hardly likely." His eyes shone with the intensity of his feelings. "You wouldn't see it when you started out and when it did dissolve you have a hole, don't 'ee, what the sugar was bunging up. And the water could get in, couldn't it, where it couldn't when you started out."

  "You're suggesting that someone . . ."

  "I don't rightly know what I mean, but terrible things can happen. I do know that. It don't do to forget it. I reckon we don't want to laugh at it and say . . ." He floundered and tapped his head, implying that I might be thinking as others did that he was "not all there."

  What he was suggesting seemed absurd. Did he really think that someone had tampered with the boat—my boat, which no one took out but me—knowing that sooner or later I should be at sea in it . . . and almost certainly alone!

  It was too farfetched. Who would possibly do such a thing!

  Gwennol was jealous because Michael Hydrock had been friendly towards me. Jenifry was angry on her daughter's account. I had always felt uneasy about Jenifry since that first night. I had often laughed at myself about that. Just because her reflection in an old mirror had looked momentarily malevolent I had started to endow her with all sorts of sinister motives. And now of course there was this aspect of my friendship with Michael Hydrock. But no. It was too flimsy. It was not as though Michael had asked me to marry him and I had accepted. I could understand that there would have been acute jealousy then. But it was not so. I liked him and it was quite obvious that he liked me. He was just a very courteous and kindly gentleman who had been helpful and hospitable. Gwennol had no reason to be jealous on my account.

  And yet our relationship had changed since she had discovered that I had met him before I came to the Island. She had been prepared to be very friendly before that discovery; now she was cautious as though she were trying to trap me into admissions. I imagined that every time I went out she wondered whether I was going to meet Michael Hydrock. As for Jenifry, she had no doubt set her heart on Michael as a son-in-law and indeed he was undoubtedly the most desirable party in the neighborhood—a man any mother might have been expected to want for her daughter.

  So this matter of the sugar was the wildest conjecture and I wished I hadn't mentioned it to Slack.

  "You must be careful, Miss Ellen," he said very seriously.

  "I shall. I shall examine any boat thoroughly before I attempt to go out in it."

  "Mightn't be a boat next time."

  "Next time?"

  "I don't know what put that in me mouth, Miss Ellen. I want to look after 'ee, you see ... like I looked after Miss Silva."

  "How did you look after her?"

  He smiled slowly. "She always come to me. She used to get fits, Miss Ellen. Oh, not so she'd lie down and do damage to herself . . . not they sort of fits. Fits of sadness and fits of wildness when she wanted to do things that would hurt herself. Then she'd come and talk to me and the Powers would show me how to soothe her."

  "You must have known as much about her as anybody did."

  "Reckon so."

  "And that night when she went away. ... It was a stormy night and yet she took a boat and tried to cross to the mainland."

  I saw the shutter come down.

  " Tis something all marveled at," he agreed.

  "Did you know she was going?"

  He hesitated, then he said: "Yes, I knew she were going."

  "Wh
y didn't you try to stop her? You must have known the chances were against her reaching land safely."

  " 'Tweren't no good trying to stop Miss Silva when she were set on doing something. Her were like a wild pony. There were no reasoning with her."

  "Something must have happened to make her want to leave so hurriedly."

  "Twere so."

  "What, Slack? You must know."

  He was silent for a moment.

  "She was my sister," I went on. "Just think of that. We had the same father, though different mothers. We should have been brought up together."

  "Her weren't like you, Miss Ellen. There couldn't have been two ladies who was so different."

  "I certainly wouldn't have gone out to sea on a stormy night."

  "Her came to me afore her left. She fed the pigeons with me just as you be doing now. Fluttering round us they were, making their lovely cooing noises, and she said to me: 'Slack, I be going away. I be going to some place where I'll be happy as I never could be here.'"

  "Oh Slack, do you think that she was so unhappy that she deliberately went out like that?"

  He was thoughtful. "Her gave me something, Miss Ellen. Her said: 'Keep these, Slack. Someone might want them someday. Perhaps I will myself if it don't all go according to plan.'"

  "What did she give you?"

  "I'll show 'ee."

  He took me into the outhouse and in the cupboard there was a box. He took a key from his pocket and opened it. Inside were two notebooks—exercise books like the one I had found in the desk.

  A great excitement seized me. Could it be that these exercise books held the clue to Silva's disappearance? I held out my hand but Slack was regarding me in a puzzled fashion.

  "I were to hold 'em," he said.

  "And not show them to anyone?"

  "Her didn't quite say that."

  "Have you read them?"

  He shook his head. "They be too much for me, Miss Ellen. I can read only little words. Her was frightened . . . frightened of someone in the castle. I reckon it's in here."

  "Slack," I begged, "let me read them."

  "I been pondering," he said. "I have said: 'Show 'em to Miss Ellen.' And I'll tell 'ee this, I've been on the point of doing that time and time again. Then when you said about the sugar it was as though Miss Silva spoke to me. 'Let her read 'em, Slack. Might be they'll be of help to her.'"

  He put the books into my hands.

  "I shall go to my room and read them immediately," I said. "Thank you, Slack."

  "I hope I be doing right," he said uneasily.

  "I shall never forget what might have happened to me but for you," I told him earnestly.

  "Master Jago were there, were he not? He just happened to be there. I be mighty glad I were there too."

  I did not think about what he meant by that until later. I was so excited about the exercise books, and lost no time in going to my room and shutting myself in there.

  It was still the same scrawly untidy handwriting though a little more mature than that in the first exercise book.

  "I found that notebook I wrote in years ago and it made me laugh and cry a bit. It brought it all back so clearly and I thought it would have been interesting if I had written more of it and had a whole stack of such notes, recording my life, my miserable uneventful life. Those were good days in a way when my stepmother was here with Baby, and when they went I was terribly lonely. At first I thought my father might have liked me a little more if there was no competition. How wrong I was! Of course I was a difficult child. Governesses came and went. They always said the same. They despaired of me. What I do remember from those days was my father's sending for me.

  "It was soon after my stepmother had gone. I must have been about fourteen. I remember how excited I had been when the summons came. I had let myself imagine that he was going to tell me he loved me after all and we were going to be friends from now on. It's amazing what pictures the imagination will conjure up without having any sound reason for doing so. I saw myself in his study, toasting muffins on winter evenings or sitting on a footstool at his feet while we talked. I could hear the servants whisper: 'There's nobody who can soothe him like Miss Silva. The moment he comes in you know he's going to shout: "Where's Miss Silva?"'

  "What a silly little thing I was. As if my stepmother's going would have softened a nature like his. The reality was that I stood before him, my hopes blighted by his withering gaze. My best dress—crushed-strawberry color with a matching sash which I had thought so becoming—seemed to hang on me awkwardly. I was seeing myself through his eyes. All he wanted to tell me was that my latest governess had given notice and he didn't feel inclined to engage another, and if I wanted to be ignorant, which I obviously did and was, I could continue so. I was lazy, stupid, useless and he was going to wash his hands of me. He wondered why he had bothered to do as much as he had. But as he could not allow people to know that he had a little savage in his household he had decided, after long consideration, to engage a new governess, and if he had any complaints from her, she would be the last.

  "I returned in abject misery, but I reminded myself: At least he had actually sent for me and talked to me. I didn't remember when he had done that before. Then it occurred to me that if I worked hard and tried to be the sort of daughter he could be proud of he might, in time, grow to love me. It was a comfort and my imagination was my friend because it started to supply those cozy scenes for me to brood on. He and I together on the mainland doing business. 'My daughter? She is my right hand.' 'My daughter Silva, yes, she is growing into a most attractive girl.' 'Marriage. Oh, I hope not yet. I don't want to lose her. I shall insist that if she does marry, her husband lives in the castle.'

  "How stupid can one be! I knew in my heart it was never going to be like that.

  "But those days when I lived between ridiculous dreams of personal glory and the depth of depression, when I hated everyone, and most of all myself, are past and I'm wasting time writing about them, because I can only write in retrospect and I'm probably not giving the real picture, which can only be seen clearly at the time it happens."

  There was a blank page and I guessed she had abandoned the idea of writing for a while and continued later. The girl she had been in those days was the one who, finding herself confined in her room, would have scratched 'I am a prisoner here' on the wall of the cupboard. She had been a prisoner because she had been shut in by her own nature, I guessed; but perhaps those about her had helped to make her what she was.

  The writing began again.

  "There is nowhere one can go without being aware of him. Since my father's stroke he has taken over completely. Of course he was always there and people were more aware of him than they ever were of my father. He just has to command people and they obey him. They have to. My father was not like that. He would get angry with them and be vindictive too. He never forgave anyone who did him an injury. Jago isn't like that. I don't think anyone would dare do him an injury, so one couldn't really know how long he would bear resentment.

  "Yesterday I was in the rose garden picking roses when Jago came to me. I turned suddenly and he was beside me. He always seems now as though he is assessing me and that makes me nervous.

  "He said: 'My sister Jenifry is coming to the castle with her little daughter. They'll be company for you.'

  " 'Are they going to live here?' I asked.

  " 'It'll be their home. You'll like that.'

  "Jago has a way of telling you what you are going to like and almost daring you not to.

  " 'What does my father say?' I asked, because I always wanted to know what my father was saying and doing. The only time I saw him was when he was at his window and I was in the gardens. I'd look up hopefully but he was always turning away then. I would see Fenwick pushing him about in his bath chair. I always had to keep out of the way then, and if he did catch sight of me he would behave as though I were invisible to him. I can feel the hot tears coming to my eyes now when I remember such times
. I always wanted to shout out to him: 'What have I done? Tell me that'

  "Fenwick was always very discreet. Jago said that my father couldn't do without Fenwick, nor Fenwick without my father.

  "Now I am eagerly awaiting the coming of Jago's sister and his niece."

  Another blank page which indicated that some time had passed.

  Then: "Gwennol is about eight. She is bright and pretty. Baby would be about her age. I took a dislike to Jenifry. I think she resents my being the daughter of the house. The idea of anyone's being jealous of me is comic! But she is always trying to push Gwennol forward. Not that she need worry. Gwennol is so much more attractive than I could ever be. I'm glad they're here though. Gwennol shares my governess. She is much brighter than I ever was.

  "Why did I start this writing? There's nothing to write about really. Every day is like another. I shan't do it any more."

  There was no more writing in that book although there were many blank pages. I picked up the second.

  "I was clearly not meant to be a diarist My life is so dull and I'm getting old now. Most girls have parties and eligible men around them. My father, I have been told, has said that he will not waste money on bringing me out. Jenifry sees that Gwennol has a certain social life. She has become quite friendly with Michael Hydrock, who is the most eligible bachelor in the neighborhood. Gwennol is excited by the fact that he has been particularly nice to her.

  "She came to my room last night. She had just been rowed back from the mainland. Her eyes were bright and there was a lovely flush in her cheeks which goes beautifully with her dark hair.

  " 'It was a sort of garden party at the Manor,' she said. 'Oh, what a beautiful house; peacocks on the lawn and that lovely lovely house. I hate this old castle. Don't you, Silva?'

  " 'Yes,' I said. 'It's too full of the past. When I go near the dungeons I fancy I hear the screams of souls in torment.'

  "'You would,' said Gwennol. 'People must have laughed here and been gay sometimes. There must have been feasting and revelry in the hall. Why do ghosts always have to be horrible? Why can't they be nice . . . like the ghost of Hydrock Manor? A benign old gentleman who says people have to be happy in the house. Michael told me the story today. It applies particularly to brides.'