Touch Not the Cat

by Mary Stewart

  I said nothing. I was thinking about Ellen Ashley. I felt consumed with pity for that girl, bereft and helpless, swearing on the Scriptures to protect her lover’s child, and hugging to herself the comfort that all the time it was the truth. Poor Ellen. I wondered how Robert Granger had been with her, and how much he had known or guessed of the things she kept in her heart.

  ‘Are you trying to pretend,’ demanded James, ‘that Rob never guessed?’

  ‘That he was legitimate? Of course not, why should he? If there had ever been a hint, even that he was an Ashley by-blow, our family would have known, but I told you, it was accepted that the baby was Robert Granger’s. His family may have talked about it among themselves, but nothing more than that. Have you ever even heard a rumour? I haven’t.’

  ‘But you said he’d told you that himself.’

  ‘Yes. He knew because –’ I looked from one to the other ‘– because he has the Ashley gift. You know about that. Well, so have I. That’s why our marriage happened as it did, so suddenly. I’d meant to tell you about that, anyway; I felt I owed you that.’

  It seemed very strange that I should ever have felt I owed James anything. Now, if I owed an explanation to anyone, I owed it to Rob. So I told my cousins quickly, the merest sketch, and they listened, not arguing or even very surprised; they were Ashleys after all. They knew the history of the ‘gift’, and had themselves claimed some kind of intuitive link.

  ‘You’ll tell him all about it now, I suppose?’ asked James, when I had finished.

  ‘Can you think of any reason why not?’

  ‘Well, my God –’ began my cousin, but Emory stopped him.

  ‘Let her talk. Go on, Bryony.’

  ‘Well, why not? Do you think I can stay married to him all my life and not tell him something that might matter to him like this? He ought to know he’s a true Ashley, and that his great-great-grandfather wasn’t just a brat fathered on a light-minded girl. He ought to know that Nick Ashley loved Ellen enough to marry her.’

  ‘Or that he was scared silly of her brothers.’ That was James.

  ‘That’s stupid!’ I spoke hotly, as if I were defending Rob himself. I knew, as well as if they had told me, why Nick and Ellen, just for those fatal few days, had kept their marriage secret. They were trying, like Rob and me, to keep something to themselves for a while before the world broke in. And with even less success.

  I straightened wearily in my chair. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘why don’t we call it a night and talk about it tomorrow? With Rob, if you like. As I see it, what we’ve found out will make no difference, one way or another, to what happens here at Ashley. But if you two don’t get on your way now, and do something about the High Sluice—’

  ‘To hell with the High Sluice.’ It was odd how James seemed to have taken over the scene. ‘Are you seriously trying to tell us that if you tell Granger all this – this old-time Gothic trash, do you seriously tell us that he won’t be tempted to make it public? Claim the Court and everything that goes with it? Stay here with you and play lord of the manor? Someone like that couldn’t resist it.’

  ‘Rob knows even better than you do what it would mean to have this place unloaded on him,’ I said hotly. ‘I know he doesn’t want to stay here, and neither do I. Do I have to keep telling you? This won’t make any difference to us at all.’

  ‘Except that you’d have some money to emigrate with,’ said James. ‘Rather more than the cottage strip will net for you.’

  ‘If we claimed it, and if the claim was upheld.’

  ‘Are you trying to say that he wouldn’t even try to claim it?’

  ‘How many more times do I have to say it?’ I regarded him with weary dislike. ‘Even if we wanted the Court – or wanted the money the sale would bring – can you see a claim like this standing up in a court of law? It wouldn’t even be worth trying.’

  ‘Your father must have thought it would,’ said James obstinately. ‘This is why he refused to break the trust the second time we asked him. He must just have found out about Rob Granger.’

  ‘Yes.’ I spoke with sudden, complete illumination. (I did tell Bryanston that she and Rob should marry. Perhaps the boy knows already that he’s an Ashley. Tell the boy who he is. This Trust; it’s his concern now. You can depend on him to do what’s right. You have – both of you – my blessing.) I sat up straight, speaking earnestly. ‘And he was going to do the right thing, as I am, and tell Rob all the truth, and leave it to him. He has to know. That’s all, James. Further than that it’s up to him, and I’ve told you what I think he’ll do; cut his losses, as I’m doing, and go.’

  Emory stirred. ‘Leslie Oker saw the paper, and you can’t tell me he’d keep quiet about a juicy item like that.’

  ‘He will if I ask him to. In any case,’ I said impatiently, ‘what does it matter who knows about it, if we don’t press anything? Mr Emerson will do as Rob asks him – and, for pity’s sake, can you imagine a claim like that being made today, in the nineteen-seventies? Gothic trash isn’t in it. Can you imagine a courtful of lawyers arguing over an 1835 parish register, and whether or not Bess Ashley really did hand telepathy down the family?’

  ‘All right,’ said Emory, ‘so imagine it. Whether you want it or not, let Oker once start talking, and there’ll be questions asked about our claim to the place and our right to sell it. And there simply is not time to let the lawyers make a meal of it, and spend ten happy years arguing the pros and cons of the Ashley gift, while in the meantime Pereira sues us for twenty thousand pounds in no time at all.’

  ‘We could destroy the paper, and square Leslie Oker.’ This from James. They were at it again, talking across me. I believe I said something more, but they ignored me.

  ‘Even if he can be squared,’ said Emory, ‘he’s probably talked already.’

  ‘Well, but without proof—’

  ‘Any inquiry would mean the kind of delay we can’t afford.’

  ‘That’s true,’ said James.

  ‘Too bad, isn’t it?’ said Emory.

  ‘Well, what are you going to do?’

  ‘It shouldn’t be too difficult,’ said Emory, ‘to fix things.’

  I saw it then, through the weariness and worry, and I knew, against all belief, that Rob had been right. Cousins or no, these men were dangerous, even to me and mine. Quick thinking, violent men, who knew how to profit from accidents . . .

  I don’t think I moved, but James, still on that odd telepathetic wavelength, took a swift step and got between me and the telephone. I had made no move to touch it. I shut my eyes and reached for Rob.

  But across the first groping signal I heard James say, urgently: ‘It’s true, you know, Twin, she can talk to him. Look at her.’ Then, in sudden, unbelieving revulsion: ‘Emory! No!’

  Something hit me hard behind the ear, and I went out like a smashed lamp.

  Ashley, 1835.

  His limbs were stiff, and heavy as if bound with iron. The pain in his chest exploded through his whole body, then died to a slow, unmerciful aching. He moaned, but could hear no sound.

  He was lying on cold, soaking grass. He must, he thought dimly, have fainted. He remembered – surely he remembered? – going out of the maze; the drenched grasses, and the yew trees glimmering, heavy with shining, under the faint morning stars. There had been shadows moving at the mouth of the maze, a rough whisper, a hand grabbing at him, then the skin-prickling sound of a cocked fowling-piece . . .

  The memory faded, and with it, slowing into a drowsy warmth, the pain died. His head felt light and empty, and he had the strangest fancy that he was floating above his own body, drawn upward from its chilling weight as if the air sucked him away, leaf-light. Then it, too, faded.

  20

  And the place death, considering who thou art,

  If any of my kinsmen find thee here.

  Romeo and Juliet, II, ii

  I had a headache, and it was dark. At first I thought the noises were in my head, but, as I slowly swam up i
nto the headache and the chilly air, I realised that the creakings and the splashes, and the keening gusts of wind, were realities, as was the slam of wood on wood that had finally wakened me.

  It took me a little time to come fully to myself, and discover where I was. At first, groping for my bearings through painfully returning consciousness, I thought I must be somewhere out in the open; I was lying on what seemed to be hard ground strewn with twigs and dead leaves and broken shards, with the smells of wet earth and growing things and rotting wood blown round me strongly on the gusty draughts. But then, slowly, walls and a kind of roof built themselves out of the near-darkness round me, and I saw that I was in an enclosed space perhaps the size of the cottage sitting-room, but with a ceiling so low – a metre or so above me – that I could hardly sit up without striking my head. I could only see this much because the walls, though surely solid enough, showed here and there a crack or a knot-hole through which filtered a grey and fitful light.

  I dragged myself shakily to hands and knees, and crawled to one of these to peer through.

  I saw a thick, ragged hedge, blocking a square of windy sky; grasses whipping in the wind; nearer at hand the dim tangles of some thick creeper swinging and beating like waves against the balustrade of a rustic stairway which cut diagonally across my vision. Everywhere was the sound of trees and water, and the reeling grey light of a moon behind wind-driven cloud.

  I had it then. This was the pavilion, at the centre of the maze. The slamming noise was the broken shutter which had worked loose and was swinging to and fro in the wind, and the stairs beside me were those leading up to the verandah and the pavilion’s door.

  They led upwards, past me. I was under the pavilion, in the space below the floor, with the access door beneath the verandah slammed shut and – as I groped dazedly to discover – securely jammed from outside.

  A gust of wind, carrying a scatter of small debris, struck the pavilion, and a draught whipped through the crack where I crouched, blowing my hair stinging into my eyes. I came fully awake then, with all that had happened vividly back in mind, slotted neatly into place like items on a computerised account; and with it, all that was due to happen, which I suppose I had seen in that one brief flash of illumination, so brutally cut off by Emory’s blow.

  Some dim memory I still retained, of quick incisive instructions from Emory to James, and of protests overruled. I must have surfaced into consciousness from time to time, enough to catch snatches of the argument that ensued. I knew now why James had looked so strained and sick; he had after all cared enough – or been frightened enough – not to want to see me harmed.

  ‘I tell you, Twin, she’ll be perfectly safe.’ That was Emory, impatience held hard on the curb. ‘I’ll put her in the pavilion and lock her in. She’ll be above water-level there, and she’ll be out of action long enough . . . No one to hear if she shouts, and by that time we can be on the other side of the county.’

  ‘But she’s seen us here, and for God’s sake, Emory, if anything happens to Rob Granger, you can’t expect her to sit mute. Our alibis are blown before we start.’

  ‘Very well, then.’ Quick and smooth. ‘She goes. You agree?’

  ‘No! Are you crazy? Look, we’ve got to think of something else—’

  ‘Such as? You can’t have it both ways.’

  A pause, then from James, slowly: ‘I think we can. I’m willing to bet she’d say nothing, whatever she might think she knows about an accident to Rob . . . Yes, all right, so she’s married him; all that crap she gave us about it, if you can believe it . . . never last out the honeymoon, even, a lout like that . . . Look, Twin, I mean it. She’s never said a word about her father’s death, has she? About its being one of us . . . And she knows. She cottoned on to that pen of mine that you dropped, I’m certain she did; but she’s never said a word, and it’s my bet she never will, just as she held her tongue about that stuff Cathy stole.’

  ‘Well, but Cousin Jon’s death was an accident. She’ll know this won’t be.’

  ‘All the same . . .’

  So much came back to me, more or less clearly. The outcome, however arrived at, was clearer still. Whether James had, in the end, agreed with Emory’s plan to dispose of me, or whether he had simply turned a blind eye to whatever his twin might do, I did not know. But I would have taken any bet that it was Emory who had carried me into the maze, and Emory whose hand had shut the trap on me.

  Even so, I was far from acquitting James. So far he was clean of anything other than minor villainy, but the very fact that I was here proved that, as always, he would go along with whatever Emory suggested. It was easy to guess what that was. They would use the almost aborted plan for flooding the cottage strip, and improvise with it an ‘accident’ that would take care of Rob. As for me, I could not escape, nor, however hard I shouted, could I be heard, even without the torrent of noise outside in the stormy night. The twins would leave the High Sluice open, letting the swollen river pour into the moat, and soon, when the moat brimmed its banks and finally burst them, and the Pool flooded clear down through orchard and maze, I would certainly drown. No doubt the access door of my trap was cleverly wedged to look as if some floating spars or boughs had been jammed there by the flood’s force after my body had been washed under the pavilion. And Rob? They would lie in wait for him and kill him, and in the morning his body, battered by the flood, would be found where apparently he had run to rescue me. The two of us, star-crossed lovers, drowned on our wedding night as the flood swept through the cottage; and all the while the twins, securely alibied, miles away . . .

  There was no flood yet. Straining my ears I could hear the ripple and rush of the Overflow as it skirted the maze; full, but not yet too full. I might still be in time. Emory must have meant to hit me harder, and keep me out for as long as was needed. Perhaps James had interfered as his brother struck me; or perhaps Emory had not reckoned on the streams of chill, reviving air that poured through the trap where he had lodged me. By the time he had carried me here and wedged the door, then struggled back again through the dark maze, the gap in my consciousness might not have been too long.

  Rob. Rob.

  I put the call out with all the strength I could muster. It was more difficult than it had ever been. I could sense how faint the patterns were, reaching out through the blowing dark. Without quite realising I had done it, I switched the signal, using the old pattern that I had been used to – and which now, ironically enough, was real.

  Ashley, Ashley, Ashley . . .

  Yes? It was faint, the faintest of responses, but the wave of relief that melted me back against the wall like wet paper collapsing, showed me the strength of the fear I had had for Rob. He was still alive, and, from the serenity of his response, unsuspecting and unmolested.

  Bryony? Serene no longer. He had got the fear pattern. What is it? What’s happened?

  I lay back against the wooden wall, staring inwards, away from the garden, at the descending weight of darkness that was the pavilion’s floor, so close above my head.

  Danger for you. It was all I could do to send the warning patterns, without giving him some inkling of my own imminent peril. Some of my fear must have got through in spite of me, because his response was violent, a blast of static that rocked and splintered the thought-waves, and sent me back to simple messages of reassurance that took every ounce of control I had: No. No. I’m all right. I’m safe. Wait . . .

  I found I was shaking and sweating, in spite of the cold. I made my mind blank, and rested for as many seconds as I dared. At least he was warned. I shut my mind momentarily, straining to shut out the image of the dark cage that trapped me, and to conjure up instead a picture of the pavilion above, with the moonlight wheeling and backing through the swinging shutter, sending light and shadow shimmering across the mirror overhead. Whatever happened he must have no whisper of the danger in which I lay, or he might do just as my cousins wished, and come running back towards me, past wherever they lay in wait for
him. Forewarned might be forearmed, but there were two of them, and they had surprise and darkness on their side.

  I opened to him again, and began painfully to send those patterns out. My cousins opening the High Sluice; the river racing through to fill the moat; the Overflow still taking it, but not quite, and somewhere the banks of the moat crumbling to let the great weight of water down into the brimming Pool. The slow flood lipping the cottage garden, reaching through the apple orchard for the low-lying floor of the maze . . .

  The image of the Lower Sluice slid across the pictures, like a quick shiver of alarm. He knew, even better than I, what would happen if too great a weight of water piled against those rotten gates; or worse, what would happen if anyone tried to move them. He came back at me then, light-edged with relief: The pavilion: that’s where you are?

  I had got it to him, then: he thought I had taken refuge there, and was safe, perched above the encroaching water. Yes. I sent it urgently. Yes, I’m safe. But you, Ashley, danger for you. Take care, love, take care.

  I knew he must have got from me the image of the two dark figures lurking in wait somewhere, watching for him. There was a brief flash of a reply, which came slightly distorted, zig-zag, as if with interference, or as words would come if one was breathless: I’ve got it. I’m on my way. Stay where you are . . .

  It was fading. If he had got my fear at all he must have thought it was only for him. As I believe it was. If he was to save himself, and perhaps me, too, he must not be weighed down by fear for me.

  My little Bryony be careful. It sprang out of the night and faded, blown down the wind. A pattern coming strangely, not with the smooth familiarity of Rob’s patterns, but as if straight out of the night, and as if spoken.

  Then a sound, sharp and distinct, like a shot. From somewhere near the Overflow, at the entrance to the maze.

  I hurled myself back at the wall of my prison, my hands straining flat against the wood as if nailed there, my face to that windy crack. Rob? Rob?