She hurried Dipa upstairs and put him into his bed to lie down.
He was sleepy, but his thoughts were full of his ride that morning and he talked long and ramblingly about horses and pussy cats. Almost sharply Carina told him to go to sleep and then there was silence.
After she had changed her clothes, Carina went into the nursery and stood looking out onto the path below.
It seemed almost incredible that only an hour ago she had been galloping across the grass, feeling the breeze on her face and the joy of a perfectly trained horse beneath her.
Then, with a stab in her heart, she realised that it would never happen again. The horses would go with everything else. And soon they would be moving out, but where – where could they go?
She felt lonely and isolated up in the nursery. It was like standing in the cold outside a theatre and being unable to see or hear any of the performance taking place.
She could imagine the agitation downstairs. And yet she knew that Lord Lynche would not betray his feelings, but would appear a quiet considerate host, not allowing himself to show in any way his hatred of Sir Percy.
‘But underneath it all, I know how he is suffering,’ Carina thought.
And quite suddenly her pity and her compassion swept over her so intensely that she felt she must go to him and stand by his side.
She closed her eyes and she could see him looking down at her, see him staring at her and she remembered the extraordinary feeling, almost of magnetism, that had seemed to pass between them.
With a little shake of her head she forced her thoughts away from what had taken place that morning.
She walked to the door of the bedroom.
Dipa was breathing quietly, his small dark head dug into the softness of the white pillow.
‘I must do something,’ Carina thought wildly. ‘I cannot think what.’
She glanced at the time. The gentlemen would still be in the dining room. They seldom finished before three o’clock.
She decided to find a book to read – any book, as long as it kept her thoughts from wandering into channels that she felt she must forbid them entry.
She would not go to the library. That was too redolent with the memories of Sir Percy, but she had noticed a small room next to the morning room, which she guessed must have been a study at one time. There were books there in a big Chippendale glass-fronted bookcase and she was sure that no one would mind if she borrowed one.
She looked at Dipa and tiptoed across the nursery, shutting the door behind her.
As she went downstairs, she decided to avoid the grand staircase at all costs and find her way to the study by one of the other staircases.
She turned away from the Dowager’s room and then, inevitably, lost her way in the labyrinth of passages and found herself once more in the Tudor Wing.
‘I really am an idiot,’ Carina told herself, exasperated at her inability to find her way.
She stood irresolutely at the top of the oak-panelled staircase. Should she go down it or should she go back and make herself be more sensible?
‘I always seem to be thinking of something else,’ she thought. ‘That is what the real trouble is.’
She looked down the staircase.
The sunshine was streaming through one of the small diamond-paned windows and, although it cast a trellised shadow on the stairs, there was certainly no sign of a ghost.
‘I just don’t believe in ghosts,’ Carina told herself. ‘I really must have been imagining things that first day.’
Even as she decided to wend her way back, something happened that made her catch her breath and stand rigid, as if she had been turned to stone.
A man appeared through the wall – literally through the wall – and started to run hurriedly up the stairs towards her.
‘He is there – he is really there!’ Carina told herself in a kind of panic.
And then the man, who was wearing the same striped waistcoat that she had seen him in before, looked up and saw her.
His expression was contorted with a kind of terror and his eyes stared.
Carina wanted to turn and run away in sheer fright, but her feet were rooted to the ground and she could not move.
Then he spoke and she knew that he was no ghost.
“Here! Here – come quick!” he said. “I think I’ve killed him!”
Chapter 9
Carina stared in absolute amazement at the man.
He was shaking all over, his face very pale save for a livid spot on his cheekbone.
“Come, come quickly!” he cried.
She thought that he hardly realised who he was speaking to, he was just aware that she was another human being to help him in his distress.
Without waiting for her reply he turned and ran down the stairs.
Carina saw that there was a gap in the panelling at a spot halfway down the flight of stairs.
A secret door had swung inwards, into this the valet plunged and she followed after him.
Instinctively she pushed the open panel back behind her, heard it click into place and then she followed the man down a long flight of narrow twisting stairs.
It was practically dark save for a light ahead. There was a banister and she clung to it, realising that each step of the stairs was thickly carpeted so that their footsteps made no sound.
The man disappeared out of sight and a moment later Carina found herself in the strangest room that she had ever seen.
It was small and an unusual shape and at the first quick glance she guessed that it was a Priest’s hole built underneath the stairs and between two other rooms so that there was no possibility of it being discovered.
But Carina had little time to look around her.
The valet was kneeling by the figure of a man stretched out on the floor and, as Carina approached, he turned his white face and muttered in tones of anguish,
“I know he be dead. I didn’t mean to do him in. I tried to push him away and he tumbled over.”
“Let me look,” Carina suggested quietly.
The valet scrambled to his feet to let her pass and she saw that the man who was lying on the floor had blood pouring from his forehead. He had white hair and his face was red and blotched.
As she looked at him, Carina was aware of the pungent smell of spirits that pervaded not only the room but the staircase and which she had subconsciously noticed while she was making the descent.
Now she knew it for what it was. Brandy.
“Get me some towels and some warm water as quickly as you can,” Carina said over her shoulder.
“He be dead. I know he be dead,” the valet muttered in a tone of hysteria which made Carina say sharply,
“Do as you are told!”
And he went off automatically.
Then she put out her hand and touched the wounded man’s hands, his forehead where it was free of blood, and lastly, his heart.
He was alive, there was no doubt of that. The heartbeat was steady, but he had been knocked unconscious by falling heavily and no doubt drunkenly against the edge of the table.
With difficulty because he was a heavy man, Carina turned him on his back.
A moment later the valet, whimpering with fright and contrition, put a china bowl and a clean linen towel beside her.
Preoccupied as she was with staunching the blood from the deep cut on the man’s forehead, Carina could not help noticing that the linen towel bore the entwined ‘L’ surmounted by a coronet that decorated the towels she had used in her bedroom since she had arrived at The Castle.
She was thankful to see that the cut was not as deep as she had at first feared. It was a nasty jagged wound, but it would heal.
She raised her face to look at the frightened valet and said soothingly,
“Your Master will live. He is only unconscious. Will you fetch me some clean linen handkerchiefs and I will bind up his head?”
“God be thanked!”
There was no mistaking the fervent reli
ef in the man’s voice or the sincerity of his tone.
He darted away to find the handkerchiefs and, having made a pad, Carina managed to bind it in place without too much difficulty.
“What happened?” she asked, as she tied a knot above the man’s left ear.
“He hit me,” the valet said. “He didn’t mean it. He often does it when he be in his cups. The pain made me a bit mad for the moment. I gave him a shove and he tumbled over. When I saw him a-bleedin’, I thought he was a goner.”
Carina glanced up at the mark on the man’s cheekbone, which she could see quite clearly would be a livid bruise the following day.
She knew that he was speaking the truth and she looked down to the stout body of the man lying on the floor and wondered how he could be such a bully as to hit someone so much smaller than himself.
“Shall we get him onto his bed?” the valet asked timidly.
Carina glanced to the far end of the room where there were two openings, both of which she could see led into small confined bedrooms.
Where they were, she thought, must have been often used for celebrating the Mass when the Priests were in hiding and the other rooms would have been sleeping chambers. Perhaps in Cromwellian times there would have been more than one Priest finding sanctuary in a large Castle like this.
She considered that it would be impossible for the valet and herself to carry such a very big man across the room and into the bedchamber.
“I think we had better leave him as he is,” Carina said. “Put a pillow under his head and – cover him with a blanket. He may feel weak later from loss of blood.”
The valet brought a pillow and very gently they raised the man’s bandaged head. As if the softness of the pillow and the warmth of the blanket they put over him roused him a little, he grunted, gave a deep snore and seemed to settle himself more comfortably.
“He be alive! He be really alive!” the valet ejaculated as if earlier he had not believed Carina.
“He will be quite all right,” Carina said. “But in future don’t let him drink so much.”
As she spoke, she looked at a half-empty bottle of brandy on the table.
The valet shrugged his shoulders.
“What else be there for him to do?” he asked. “He can’t live long.”
“How do you know?” Carina asked.
As if for the first time he realised that she was a stranger and someone who was asking questions, the valet stared at her and with hostility in his voice asked,
“Who are you? I ought not to have asked you in here.”
He looked towards the stairs and suddenly he was cringing before her.
“Don’t tell anybody,” he pleaded. “If her Ladyship found out, I’d lose me job. You’ve been a help to me, I’m not sayin’ you haven’t, but don’t tell anyone where you’ve been or what you’ve seen. Promise?”
“I think a doctor should see that man’s wound as I am not certain it does not need a stitch in it,” Carina replied.
“Now see here,” the valet said nervously, “I’ll attend to him as I’ve always done. I lost me head, but he’ll be all right now. He’s fond of me, he is really and we get along fine.”
“If you get on so well,” Carina said, “why was he hitting you?”
“He can’t help it, I’m tellin’ you,” the valet replied almost truculently. “He loses his temper at times, it just comes over him and then he just doesn’t know what he’s a-doin’.”
He looked down at the man on the floor.
“He doesn’t always know his own strength either,” he added ruefully.
“That is going to be a nasty bruise on your face,” Carina said quietly.
“Now, don’t you worry about me,” the valet replied. “I’m all right, I tell you and so is his Nibs, so long as I’m here to look after him. But mum’s the word. You’re a lady, you wouldn’t break your word of honour, would you?”
“No,” Carina answered. “Not if I gave it to you.”
“Give it to me then. Come on, be a sport,” the valet pleaded again. “It ain’t none of your business and you knows it.”
“If he gets worse, will you promise to ask somebody to send for a doctor?” Carina enquired.
“I’ll swear on me dead mother’s head, if you give me your promise not to breathe a word of this to no one,” the valet bargained.
Carina smiled, she could not help it.
“Very well,” she said. “I promise. But if he runs a fever or does not wake up in an hour or so, you must get in touch with someone who is responsible for him.”
The valet put out his hand.
“I knew you were a sport,” he smiled. “I trust you, mind. Some women you can’t trust further than you can see ’em, but you’re a lady, I knew it as soon as I clapped me peepers on you.”
“I am only a Governess, as it happens,” Carina said with a little smile.
“A Governess, you don’t say!” the valet exclaimed. “Well, I dare say you’ve had to keep secrets for them you looks after. That’s what I’ve got to do and I’ve got to see that nobody else blabs on them either.”
Carina was longing to ask what the secret was, but she knew that she could not stoop to questioning another person’s servant about his Master’s private affairs.
She gave the man on the floor a searching glance.
His face was puffy with drink and there were great pouches under his eyes. His hair – and there was not very much of it – was completely white and stuck out from his head as if it had been cut by an inexperienced hand. His clothes, which were expensive, were shabby and stained with food and drink.
“And now you had best be gettin’ upstairs,” the valet said. “We don’t want some nosy parker to start a-missin’ you and wonderin’ where you’ve got to.”
“No one will do that,” Carina replied reassuringly. “And if they do, I have already promised you that I will not say where I have been.”
She turned towards the stairs and climbed up the narrow twisting staircase that must have been built four hundred years earlier.
She wondered what stories it could tell and what fears and hopes people must have had who had crept here to perhaps save themselves from death or worse as they lay concealed behind the secret panel.
She reached the top of the staircase and stood aside as the valet pushed past her to open the door in the panelling.
She knew he was watching her face and deliberately she turned away from his scrutiny and said lightly,
“I think your patient will be quite all right now.”
“I’m real grateful to you, that I am,” the valet said warmly.
He stood for a moment not moving in the darkness and Carina knew that he was listening. Very cautiously he opened the door a few inches, peeped through it and then threw it open wider.
“Bye, bye,” he whispered, “and remember, you’ve never been here.”
“I have given you my promise,” Carina answered. “Good luck!”
“I’ll need it,” he replied, still in a very low whisper.
Carina stepped on to the stairs and the panel was back in its place.
It was impossible to see where it had been. The elaborate fold and flowers of the carved panelling defied any scrutiny, however experienced, to detect a hinge or the outline of a door.
She stood for a moment looking at it and as she did so something attracted her attention below.
She looked downstairs and thought that she had a glimpse of a man. He was little more than a movement, a shadow that seemed to scuttle out of sight. Yet although she could not be sure, Carina was almost certain that she had seen him before.
And then, because she was afraid of the secret that she had stumbled upon, she ran upstairs and found her way back to the nurseries again.
She had forgotten now what she had been about to do. She had forgotten everything except the strange secret that she had just encountered.
‘Who could the man be?’ she wondered.
Hi
s white hair proclaimed him as being elderly. It was difficult to see from his bloated features whether he resembled Lord Lynche or the Dowager in any way.
She had given her word not to speak of it to anyone, but that did not prevent her speculating on the extraordinary circumstances of a man hidden away in a Priest hole.
The room had been furnished in luxury. The rugs were expensive, the chairs were covered in red brocade and there had been a bookcase in one corner containing leather-backed volumes such as one might have found in the library of The Castle. The linen had been soft and crested and the bowl in which the valet had brought the water had been of expensive china.
It was someone of importance hidden there, Carina knew and she wondered a little wistfully if she would ever learn who the prisoner was.
Then a question sprang to her mind.
What would happen to the man and his faithful valet if The Castle passed into the hands of Sir Percy? Would they dare to stay on, hiding from the new owner of The Castle?
Carina guessed that that would be impossible. The valet must get his food from somewhere and she remembered that he had been carrying a tray when she had first seen him and thought him to be a ghost.
He had come then from upstairs and she guessed that Mrs. Barnstaple was in on the secret.
Carina sat down on a chair and tried to puzzle it out. The whole situation fascinated her and made her forget for a moment the other drama taking place in The Castle.
But all too soon her thoughts returned to Lord Lynche.
Would he have told his mother yet what had happened at cards? And what would the Dowager say?
Carina could not help feeling sorry for her. She would have felt the same for any woman, who had loved her home and all that it meant and who found it stolen from under her nose by someone as low and despicable as Sir Percy Rockley.
She wondered if there was anything she could do to help. She knew what it was to experience the first moments of shock, that ghastly sinking feeling when one learns the worst and realises that there is nothing that can be done about it.
She remembered so well what she had felt when they had to leave Claverly. She recalled going round in the morning to say goodbye to all the people on the estate whom she had known since she was a child. Each one was a true and valued friend of the family. They had wept bitterly and she had wept too, forgetting that she was nearly seventeen.
The Fire of Love Page 15