Defend and Betray (32 page)

“Wine belly,” Miss Buchan retorted, leaning forward.

“Stop it!” Edith shouted sternly. “Stop it at once!”

“Yer want to get rid of 'er.” The cook stared at Edith but waved the knife at Miss Buchan. “She's no good for that poor boy. Poor little child.”

Behind them the kitchen maid wailed again and stuffed the corners of her apron into her mouth.

“You don't know what you're talking about, you fat fool,”

Miss Buchan shouted back at her, her thin, sharp face full of fury. “All you do is stuff him full of cakes—as if that solved anything.”

“Be quiet,” Edith said loudly. “Both of you, be quiet at once!”

“And all you do is follow him around, you dried-up old witch!” The cook ignored Edith completely and went on shouting at Miss Buchan. “Never leave the poor little mite alone. I don't know what's the matter with you.”

“Don't know,” Miss Buchan yelled back at her. “Don't know. Of course you don't know, you stupid old glutton. You don't know anything. You never did.”

“Neither do you, you miserable old baggage!” She waved the knife again, and the footman darted backwards, missing his step and overbalancing. “Sit up there all by yourself dreaming evil thoughts,” the cook went on, oblivious of the other servants gathering in the passage. “And then come down here to decent folk, thinking you know something.” She was well into her stride and Edith might as well not have been there.”You should 'ave bin born an 'undred years ago-then they'd 'ave burned you, they would. And served you right too. Poor little child. They shouldn't allow you anywhere near'im.”

“Ignorant you are,” Miss Buchan cried back at her. “Ignorant as the pigs you look like—nothing but snuffle around all day eating and drinking. All you think about is your belly. You know nothing. Think if a child's got food on his plate he's got everything, and if he eats it he's well. Ha!” She looked around for something to throw, and since she was standing on the stairs, nothing came to hand. “Think you know everything, and you know nothing at all.”

“Buckie, be quiet!” Edith shrieked.

“That's right, Miss Edith,” the cook said, cheering her on. “You tell 'er to keep 'er wicked mouth closed! You should get rid of 'er! Put 'er out! Daft, she is. All them years with other folks' children have turned 'er wits. SheTs no good for that poor child. Lost 'is father and 'is mother, poor little mite, and now 'e 'as to put up with that old witch. It's enough to drive 'im mad. D'yer know what she's bin tellin”im? Do yer?”

“No—nor do I want to,” Edith said sharply.”You just be quiet!”

“Well you should know!” The cook's eyes were blazing and her hair was flying out of nearly all its pins. “An' if nobody else'll tell yer, I will! Got die poor little child so confused 'e don't know anything anymore. One minute 'is grandmama tells 'im 'is papa's dead and 'e's gotter ferget 'is mama because she's a madwoman what killed 'is papa an' will be 'anged for it. Which God 'elp us is the truth.”

The footman had rearmed himself and approached her again. She backhanded him almost unconsciously.

“Then along comes that wizened-up ol' bag o' bones,” she continued regardless, “an' tells 'im 'is mama loves 'im very much and in't a wicked woman at all. Wot's 'e to think?” Her voice was rising all the time. “Don't know whether 'e's comin' or goin', nor 'oo's good nor bad, nor what's the truth about anything.” She finally took the damp dish towel out of her apron pocket and hurled it at Miss Buchan.

It hit Miss Buchan in the chest and slid to the floor. She ignored it completely. Her face was pale, her eyes glittering. Her thin, bony hands were knotted into fists.

“You ugly, interfering old fool,” she shouted back. “You know nothing about it. You should stay with your pots and pans in the kitchen where you belong. Cleaning out the slop pots is your place. Scrubbing the pans, slicing the vegetables, food, food, food! Keep their stomachs full—you leave their minds to me.”

“Buckie, what have you been saying to Master Cassian?” Edith asked her.

Miss Buchan went very white. “Only that his mother's not a wicked woman, Miss Edith. No child should be told his mother's wicked and doesn't love him.”

“She murdered his rather, you daft old bat!” the cook yelled at her. “They'll hang her for it! How's 'e goin' to understand that, if he doesn't know she's wicked, poor little creature?”

“We'll see,” Miss Buchan said. “She's got the best lawyer in London. It's not over yet.”

“ 'Course it's over,” the cook said, scenting victory. “They'll 'ang 'er, and so they should. What's the city coming to if women can murder their 'usbands any time they take a fancy to—and walk away with it?”

“There's worse things than killing people,” Miss Buchan said darkly. “And you know nothing.”

“That's enough!” Edith slipped between the two of them. “Cook, you are to go back to the kitchen and do your own job. Do you hear me?”

“She should be got rid of,” the cook repeated, looking over Edith's shoulder at Miss Buchan.”You mark my words, Miss Edith, she's a—”

“That's enough.” Edith took the cook by the arm and physically turned her around, pushing her down the stairs.

“Miss Buchan,” Hester said quickly, “I think we should leave them. If there is to be any dinner in the house, the cook should get back to her duties.”

Miss Buchan stared at her.

“And anyway,” Hester went on, “I don't think there's really any point in telling her, do you? She isn't listening, and honestly I don't think she'd understand even if she were.”

Miss Buchan hesitated, looking at her with slow consideration, then back at the retreating cook, now clasped firmly by Edith, then at Hester again.

“Come on,” Hester urged. “How long have you known the cook? Has she ever listened to you, or understood what you were talking about?”

Miss Buchan sighed and the rigidity went out of her. She turned and walked back up the stairs with Hester. “Never,” she said wearily. “Idiot,” she said again under her breath.

They reached the landing and went on up again to the schoolroom floor and Miss Buchan's sitting room. Hester followed her in and closed the door. Miss Buchan went to the dormer window and stared out of it across the roof and into the branches of the trees, leaves moving in the wind against the sky.

Hester was not sure how to begin. It must be done very carefully, and perhaps so subtly that the actual words were never said. But perhaps, just perhaps, the truth was at last within her grasp.

“I'm glad you told Cassian not to think his mother was wicked,” she said quietly, almost casually. She saw Miss Buchan's back stiffen. She must go very carefully. There was no retreat left now, nothing must be said in haste or unguardedly. Even in fury she had betrayed nothing, still less would she here, and to a stranger. “It is an unbearable thing for a child to think.”

“It is,” Miss Buchan agreed, still staring out of the window.

“Even though, as I understand it, he was closer to his father.”

Miss Buchan said nothing.

“It is very generous of you to speak well of Mrs. Carlyon to him,” Hester went on, hoping desperately that she was saying the right thing.”You must have had a special affection for the general—after all, you must have known him since his childhood.” Please heaven her guess was right. Miss Buchan had been their governess, hadn't she?

“I had,” Miss Buchan agreed quietly. “Just like Master Cassian, he was.”

“Was he?” Hester sat down as if she intended to stay some time. Miss Buchan remained at the window. “You remember him very clearly? Was he fair, like Cassian?” A new thought came into her mind, unformed, indefinite. “Sometimes people seem to resemble each other even though their coloring or their features are not alike. It is a matter of gesture, mannerism, tone of voice ...”

“Yes,” Miss Buchan agreed, turning towards Hester, a half smile on her lips. “Thaddeus had just the same way of looking at you, careful, as if he were measuring you in his mind.”

“Was he fond of his father too?” Hester tried to picture Randolph as a young man, proud of his only son, spending time with him, telling him about his great campaigns, and the boy's face lighting up with the glamour and the danger and the heroism of it.

“Just the same,” Miss Buchan said with a strange, sad expression in her face, and a flicker of anger coming and going so rapidly Hester only just caught it.

“And to his mother?” Hester asked, not knowing what to say next.

Miss Buchan looked at her, then away again and out of the window, her face puckered with pain.

“Miss Felicia was different from Miss Alexandra,” she said with something like a sob in her voice. “Poor creature. May God forgive her.”

“And yet you find it in your heart to be sorry for her?” Hester said gently, and with respect.

“Of course,” Miss Buchan replied with a sad little smile. “You know what you are taught, what everyone tells you is so. You are all alone. Who is there to ask? You do what you think—you weigh what you value most. Unity: one face to the outside world. Too much to lose, you see. She lacked the courage ...”

Hester did not understand. She groped after threads of it, and the moment she had them the next piece made no sense. But how much dare she ask without risking Miss Buchan's rebuffing her and ceasing to talk at all? One word or gesture of seeming intrusion, a hint of curiosity, and she might withdraw altogether.

“It seems she had everything to lose, poor woman,” she said tentatively.

“Not now,” Miss Buchan replied with sudden bitterness. “It's all too late now. It's over—the harm is all done.”

“You don't think the trial might make a difference?” Hester said with fading hope. “You sounded before as if you did.”

Miss Buchan was silent for several minutes. Outside a gardener dropped a rake and the sound of the wood on the path came up through the open window.

“It might help Miss Alexandra,” Miss Buchan said at last. “Please God it will, although I don't see how. But what will it do to the child? And God knows, it can't alter the past for anyone else. What's done is done.”

Hester had a curious sensation, almost like a tingling in the brain. Suddenly shards of a pattern fell together, incomplete, vague, but with a tiny, hideous thread of sense.

“That is why she won't tell us,” she said very slowly. “To protect the child?”

“Tell you?” Miss Buchan faced Hester, a pucker of confusion between her brows.

“Tell us the real reason why she killed the general.”

“No—of course not,” she said slowly. “How could she? But how did you know? No one told you.”

“I guessed.”

“She'll not admit it. God help her, she thinks that is all there is to it—just the one.” Her eyes filled with tears of pity and helplessness, and she turned away again. “But I know there are others, of course there are. I knew it from his face, from the way he smiles, and tells lies, and cries at night.” She spoke very quietly, her voice full of old pain. “He's frightened, and excited, and grown up, and a tiny child, and desperately, sickeningly alone, all at the same time like his father before him, God damn him!” Miss Buchan took a long, shuddering breath, so deep it seemed to rack her whole, thin body. “Can you save her, Miss Latterly?”

“I don't know,” Hester said honestly. All the pity in the world now would not permit a lie. It was not the time. “But I will do everything I can—that I swear to you.”

Without saying anything else she stood up and left the room, closing the door behind her and walking away towards the rest of the small rooms in the wing. She was looking for Cassian.

She found him standing in the corridor outside the door to his bedroom, staring up at her, his face pale, his eyes careful.

“You did the right thing to get Edith to stop the fight,” she said matter-of-factly. “Do you like Miss Buchan?”

He continued to stare at her without speaking, his eyelids heavy, his face watchful and uncertain.

“Shall we go into your room?” she suggested. She was not sure how she was going to approach the subject, but nothing now would make her turn back. The truth was almost reached, at least this part of it.

Wordlessly he turned around and opened the door. She followed him in. Suddenly she was furious that the burden of so much tragedy, guilt and death should rest on the narrow, fragile shoulders of such a child.

He walked over to the window; the light on his face showed the marks of tears on his soft, blemishless skin. His bones were still not fully formed, his nose just beginning to strengthen ana lose its childish outline, his brows to darken.

“Cassian,” she began quietly.

“Yes ma'am?” He looked at her, turning his head slowly.

“Miss Buchan was right, you know. Your mother is not a wicked person, and she does love you very much.”

“Then why did she kill my papa?” His lip trembled and with great difficulty he stopped himself from crying.

“You loved your papa very much?”

He nodded, his hand going up to his mouth.

The rage inside her made her tremble.

“You had some special secrets with your papa, didn't you?”

His right shoulder came up and for an instant a half smile brushed over his mouth. Then there was fear in his eyes, a guarded look.

“I'm not going to ask you about it,” she said gently. “Not if he told you not to tell anyone. Did he make you promise?”

He nodded again.

“That must have been very difficult for you?”

“Yes.”

“Because you couldn't tell Mama?”

He looked frightened and backed away half a step.

“Was that important, not to tell Mama?”

He nodded slowly, his eyes on her face.

“Did you want to tell her, at first?”

He stood quite still.

Hester waited. Far outside she heard faint murmurs from the street, carriage wheels, a horse's hooves. Beyond the window the leaves flickered in the wind and threw patterns of light across the glass.

Slowly he nodded.

“Did it hurt?”

Again the long hesitation, then he nodded.

“But it was a very grown-up thing to do, and being a man of honor, you didn't tell anyone?”

He shook his head.

“I understand.”

“Are you going to tell Mama? Papa said if she ever knew she'd hate me—she wouldn't love me anymore, she wouldn't understand, and she'd send me away. Is that what happened?” His eyes were very large, full of fear and defeat, as if in his heart he had already accepted it was true.