The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  ‘—come from men of higher station than yourself and I,’ the constable reminded him. ‘From men who better stand to know the truth.’

  Beside me, Daniel turned his head. ‘And has the truth become the property of those who can afford it?’

  The dark eyes of the constable held Daniel’s with a challenge. ‘Do you think yourself an equal to the House of Lords?’

  ‘The House together? No, of course not. Man by man? That would depend,’ said Daniel evenly, ‘upon the lord.’

  The constable smiled, but it wasn’t a smile of amusement. ‘Perhaps you’ll have the chance to test yourself against them sooner than you think.’

  The merchant took that as a joke and laughed. ‘I see that we shall have a lively dinner conversation, sirs. ’Tis sure I do look forward to it.’

  Still wearing that reptilian smile, the constable said, ‘Let us hope O’Cleary’s skills will stretch to feeding all of us.’

  I caught the edge of Daniel’s own smile as he looked away again. ‘I shouldn’t worry,’ he replied. ‘When I left Fergal he was cooking food that would fair satisfy a sailor.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  I would have paid a lot to see the constable eat salt beef, but I didn’t have the chance to. When we reached Trelowarth Daniel passed me solemnly to Fergal who in his turn made a show of fuss about my health and took me upstairs to my room, supposedly to rest.

  He closed the door behind us quietly. ‘Never mind, I’ve had the story from the men who came before, but in your own words tell me what you saw and what was said.’

  I told him, speaking low so we would not be overheard, and Fergal nodded once or twice and cursed Jack Butler’s rashness in that half-forgiving way reserved for family members who bring trouble in their wake. ‘You lock the door and stay in here until myself or Danny comes to fetch you.’ Giving my shoulder a pat of reassurance, he went out and waited briefly in the corridor until he’d heard me lock the door behind him.

  Left alone I looked around the room and weighed my options. So far it had been a crazy day. I’d risen earlier than usual this morning in my own time, and a part of me was tempted by the bed and by the knowledge that I likely had at least an hour to spend in here alone before the merchant and the constable had finished with their dinner and were gone.

  But then, I wasn’t confident I could sleep while the constable was in the house. I felt too much on edge.

  The problem was there wasn’t much else I could do here while I waited. There was nothing to tidy and no books to read. I was stumped till I noticed the tinderbox set on the mantelpiece. Not that I needed a fire, it was warm in the room, but the starting of fires was a skill I still needed to work on, and practising would at least keep me distracted from what might be happening downstairs.

  This tinderbox, like the one in the kitchen, was made of plain metal and held a worn flint and a ring of hard steel on a soft pile of bits of charred cloth. Kneeling on the hearth, I tried to focus and remember what Fergal had showed me that morning, the steps that he had taken.

  I still found it much harder than it should have been, and clearly I was doing something wrong, because this time I couldn’t even raise a proper spark. It proved a frustrating endeavour, but it did help pass the time. Before I knew it, I heard footsteps in the corridor and Fergal called my name outside the door.

  I set the flint and steel aside and, standing stiffly, went to let him in.

  ‘Our visitors are gone, so you can come downstairs again when you’ve a mind to. Just be careful how you go, for there’s a wee bit of a storm wind blowing down there at the moment.’

  I could tell what he was getting at the second that I stepped onto the landing. Jack’s voice, raised in anger, carried clearly up the stairs.

  ‘Have I not told you that I’m grateful? Should I bow to you and kiss your boots as well?’

  ‘We keep a code, Jack.’ Daniel now, his own tone dangerously level. ‘We have always kept a code. We do not take what is not ours.’

  ‘’Tis noble of us, surely, but—’

  ‘You robbed a man.’ He fired the accusation like an arrow, straight across his brother’s argument. ‘We are not thieves.’

  A silence followed.

  Fergal, who had no doubt heard the brothers arguing like this before, kept walking down the stairs, but I stopped halfway down, unsure, not really wanting to intrude.

  Jack’s voice dropped slightly, but they’d moved into the kitchen now and I could still hear every word. ‘King George might not agree with that.’

  ‘The Prince of Hanover is not my rightful king,’ was Daniel’s stubborn answer, ‘and for that I owe him nothing, for a free trade is a fair trade. What we sell we have already bought and paid for in good faith, we have not stolen it from strangers who can ill afford the loss.’ I heard him exhale with impatience. ‘Have you never stopped to wonder why, in spite of Creed’s advances and his bribery, not one among the people of Polgelly has betrayed us? ’Tis because they do respect us, Jack. They know that we are honest men.’

  ‘Well, you are,’ Jack acknowledged. ‘I myself have never owned that reputation. Nor, in truth, have I considered it worth owning. Being honest cannot furnish me with all I want.’

  ‘And will that make you happy, having everything you want?’

  The answer came back with defiance. ‘I will let you know.’

  A hand came gently round my elbow. Fergal had come back up the few stairs to where I stood. ‘Come on now, they are only talking.’

  ‘I think they want privacy.’

  He seemed amused at that. ‘And can you hear them where you’re standing now?’ There was no need for me to answer, and he gave a knowing nod. ‘If they were caring about privacy, I promise you they’d talk where they would not be heard. Besides, I think the worst is over.’

  He was right. We came into the kitchen to find both the brothers in a kind of stand-off, like two soldiers on opposing sides who’d used up all their ammunition but weren’t ready to step off the battlefield.

  They noticed Fergal’s entrance more than mine.

  Daniel asked him, ‘Fergal, will you tell Jack there are things in this life greater than himself?’

  To which Jack countered, ‘Fergal, will you kindly tell my brother that I suffer from a weaker moral nature than his own, and so he should not hold me to his standard?’

  Fergal looked from Daniel to Jack and said drily, ‘I had rather tell the pair of you to mind that there’s a lady present. And,’ he said to Jack, ‘if you think Danny’s yelling at you for the theft alone, then you’re a greater fool than I’d have known you for. He feared you would be hanged, you flaming idiot, and him not able to do aught but stand aside and watch. He’ll never tell you that himself, but there’s the reason.’ Glancing round at Daniel he said, ‘And you know it, too, so you can stop pretending you’re so hard.’

  The fight drained out of Jack, first, and he looked across at Daniel as though looking for some proof of Fergal’s statement. ‘Were you truly worried?’

  Daniel asked him, ‘Were you not?’

  Jack shrugged, attempting to look brave. ‘A jury would have set me free.’

  ‘Creed did not mean to use a jury,’ Daniel said, and then he raised his own broad shoulders in a shrug and added lightly, ‘And finding another first mate for the Sally would not be a simple task.’

  ‘First mate?’ Jack grinned a challenge. ‘You meant to say “captain”, I’m sure.’

  But the tension was broken, the unspoken bond of affection restored.

  Fergal passed through into the dining room and returned with a bottle of claret and cups and, having settled both Butler brothers at the kitchen table with the bottle there between them, he got down to work cleaning up after the dinner, with me as his helper.

  I scraped and washed the dishes while he wiped them and returned them to their places, making sure that I was watching so I’d know the spots myself.

  And all the while I listened to Jack’s s
tory of his capture in St Non’s.

  Jack had gone to the inn, as he’d said, to enquire after Wilson. He’d met with a friend there who’d stood him a drink. ‘We did pass the time merrily,’ Jack said. ‘’Twas then that the merchant himself must have seen me and gone out in search of a constable, and Creed being there in the town he replied. He didn’t dare set a foot in the inn, though. He has better sense. Nor indeed did he take me when I stepped out into the street, for again there would be witnesses, and doubtless men among them who’d have come to my defence.’

  ‘Where did he take you, then?’ asked Daniel.

  ‘In the wood, before the mill. It is a lonely stretch of road, that, and he fell upon me in a proper ambush with a cudgel, like the coward that he is.’

  ‘A cudgel?’

  ‘Ay.’ Jack gave the bruised back of his head a rueful rub, in memory. ‘You do not think I’d let myself be bound without a fight, if I were conscious, surely? No matter who it was doing the binding, nor how many men he had gathered around him.’

  Fergal, who’d already talked to the men who had been with the constable when they’d stopped in at the house, gave a nod and said, ‘Ay, well, they would have been there from their duty to the law and not their loyalty to Creed, I’ll warrant. Likely they were just as pleased as Jack was to see you there by the roadside, Danny.’

  Daniel’s thoughts had travelled back a few steps. Tipping the bottle of claret he emptied the dregs into his cup and turned to his brother again. ‘So, your time in St Non’s … was it worth all the trouble?’

  Jack met his gaze squarely. ‘Did I find out aught about our Mr Wilson, you mean? Ay, I did.’ With a pause for a quick drink himself, he went on, ‘His true name is Maclean. And the servant he travelled with did call him “Colonel Maclean” once or twice, says my friend.’

  Daniel smiled and relaxed.

  ‘Do you not find it telling that he did not use his given name with us?’

  ‘All who are close to this venture do guard their true names out of caution,’ was Daniel’s reply to his brother. ‘But Colonel Maclean is a good name to have, Jack, for that is the name of the duke’s private secretary.’

  ‘So he is on our side, as he claims.’

  ‘Ay. Indisputably.’

  ‘I hope that you are right,’ said Jack. He still looked unconvinced, but having just patched up one quarrel with his brother he did not appear to be in any rush to start another. He set down his empty cup. ‘This wine has given me a thirst for something stronger,’ he confessed. ‘I think I will go down to try the Spaniard’s rum.’

  Fergal, beside me, turned round in disbelief. ‘You know that Creed will be more keen than ever for your blood, now.’

  ‘He will not try a second time today.’ Jack’s tone was certain. ‘And the lads will gladly see me safely home again this evening.’

  Daniel didn’t raise an argument. But when his brother left the house, I saw his face and read the worry on it.

  Silence fell again upon the kitchen, and to break it I asked, ‘Who is the Spaniard?’

  Fergal’s eyes made that familiar crinkle at their corners. ‘’Tis not a who, but a what,’ he corrected. ‘The Spaniard’s Rest, down by the harbour.’

  A pub, I thought, giving a nod of my own. ‘Where by the harbour?’ I asked.

  Fergal told me, and I said, ‘In my day we call it the Wellie. The Wellington.’

  ‘What sort of name is that, then?’

  How could I explain to them without revealing details of the wars that were to come – the Duke of Wellington, Napoleon, and Waterloo? I only said, ‘He was a famous soldier, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington. A hundred years from now. A lot of names were changed to honour him.’

  But Fergal still preferred ‘The Spaniard’s Rest’, and said so. With a sideways look at Daniel, he said, ‘And where are you off to, then?’

  Daniel had stood to his full height and was stretching his shoulders a little bit wearily, his one hand moving in that automatic gesture to his belt to see his dagger was in place. ‘To keep an eye on Jack.’

  ‘He would not thank you for it, Danny.’

  ‘Perhaps not.’

  ‘Then sit down, you great idiot. Creed wants your own blood more than he craves Jack’s, and you know it.’

  Daniel’s silence acknowledged the fact as he reached for his hat.

  ‘Danny …’ Fergal tried again.

  ‘He is my brother,’ Daniel said, as though that answered everything.

  And Fergal, seeing that there was no winning, sighed. ‘Well, take your sword, at least.’

  Daniel shook his head. ‘There’d be no room to draw it, in the Spaniard.’ But I noticed that he tucked a pistol in his belt as well before he left us, and I couldn’t help but wonder just what sort of crowd went drinking at the Spaniard’s Rest. A rougher clientele, I reasoned, than I would have found in the Polgelly pubs of my own time.

  ‘They’ll both wind up dead by the roadside,’ was Fergal’s black prediction, as he gave the fire on the hearth a savage stir with the poker, ‘and Creed will come and say it is an accident, he will, and I’ll be left to kill the bastard with my own two hands.’

  I braved his blackened mood to ask a question. ‘Fergal?’

  ‘Ay?’

  ‘Why does the constable want Daniel’s blood?’

  Fergal set the poker back in place and I could sense his hesitation, so I tried to help him.

  ‘It can’t be just the free-trading,’ I said, ‘because I’m sure he makes a profit from that, doesn’t he?’

  His mouth twitched in the way it always did when I’d amused him. ‘Ay, he does.’

  ‘So I’m assuming that it’s personal.’ I cleared my throat and asked him, ‘Does it have to do with Ann?’

  He slowly turned his head. ‘Why would you think of that?’ But I could see from his expression that I’d hit the mark. ‘What did Creed tell you?’

  ‘Nothing. No, it’s just … oh, I don’t know. The way he sometimes looks at me. He doesn’t like to see me wear her clothes.’

  ‘Well now, the only one who has a say in that is Danny,’ Fergal said. ‘And he’s not bothered by it.’

  I wasn’t sure I’d have agreed with that, entirely, but instead of arguing the point I asked, ‘Was he in love with her? Constable Creed, I mean.’

  ‘Love?’ Fergal’s mouth twisted slightly, a grimace instead of a smile. ‘Not the word I’d have used for it, no. Not what Ann would have called it herself, neither. No,’ he said, looking away, ‘he was Ann’s brother.’

  That one I hadn’t seen coming. ‘Her brother?’

  ‘They shared the same father, though Creed’s mother died before he was grown halfway to manhood. He took little notice, they say, of his father’s new wife, or of Ann. Not at first. But as Ann grew, he started to take an unnatural interest.’ He spat in the flames. ‘’Twas a kind of obsession. An evil one. Smothered her with it, he did. Couldn’t bear it if she looked at anyone else.’

  ‘And she looked at Daniel.’

  ‘She did, ay. And Danny looked back.’

  I thought about this. ‘So I’m guessing the constable wasn’t too pleased when they married.’

  ‘He was not. But see, Ann had a mind of her own, and she did what she wanted. She feared Creed herself at times, but she would never have shown it.’ He glanced at me, and this time there was nothing hard behind his smile. ‘You share that with her, anyway – the both of you too proud to let your fear show when you feel it.’

  ‘I’m not proud at all.’ I met his gaze with honesty. ‘When the constable’s anywhere near me, I’m scared to death.’

  Fergal’s face softened. ‘Well now, you needn’t be. He’ll have to come through myself first to get to you, and after me there’s still Danny left standing, and he’s not so easy to get by.’

  ‘So long as he’s not lying dead by the roadside,’ I pointed out, remembering his earlier prediction.

  Fergal shrugged aside the words. ‘’Twa
s only myself talking, that was. You pay it no heed, now.’

  I did try to take his advice.

  Hours later, alone in my bed, I tried focusing on the soft sounds of the sleeping house – the scuttle of mice through the walls and the creak of the beams in the ceiling above me, and Fergal’s snores rattling down the long corridor. I tried telling myself that if Fergal was so unconcerned about things that he was able to sleep, well then, I should be able to sleep, too. But I couldn’t shake off my worries.

  The images rose in a taunting progression, dissolving to worse ones of Daniel approaching the dark shadowed trees of The Hill with his unhurried stride, to be met by an ambush as Jack had been, beaten and bound while the constable looked on with cruel satisfaction …

  I turned over sharply to stop my imaginings, tugging the blankets with me as I rolled on to my side. The weather had changed, growing cooler and damp, but I’d left the windows halfway open anyway, so I’d be able to hear any noise from the road. There was no wind tonight, and instead of the rush of the leaves and the rattle of window-glass, I could hear nothing right now but the hoot of an owl from the woods, and the slumbering roll of the waves on the shingle below the black cliffs. Now and then something made a faint sound, some small animal, maybe, that rustled the grass with its passing, and after that silence again and that horrible stillness that seemed to be waiting.

  And when, after what felt like hours, I finally heard the shuffle of approaching footsteps, my rush of relief was short-lived. The steps sounded wrongly uneven, and in those first moments the horrible images rose once again and I half-thought that Daniel had met with the constable’s men, and was staggering wounded now up the long hill from Polgelly.

  I bolted from the bed, taking the top blanket with me to wrap round my shoulders for warmth like a shawl, but by the time I reached the window he’d gone past already.

  From the floor below I heard the door swing open and slam shut as though it had been kicked. And then a dreadful clattering as though he’d fallen over.

  I was halfway to my own door when I heard a burst of laughter, and Jack’s cheerful voice so slurred with drink I couldn’t catch the words. I couldn’t catch Daniel’s reply, either, but the deep quiet tone of his speech reassured me and made me relax. He was only bringing Jack home. He was safe.