Kingdom of Shadows (88 page)

‘You’ll find there is nothing to be afraid of. The cage is long gone. Everything has gone.’

‘I know.’

‘And I’ll be there.’

‘Where is Clare?’ Sir David Royland looked at Paul over the rim of his glass.

Paul was sitting in the chair by the desk in Geoffrey’s study. He was in a foul temper. Being summoned by his brothers like an errant schoolboy was bad enough; being lectured by David and patronised by Geoffrey was worse, especially as he knew he was in the wrong.

‘Christ Almighty!’ David had burst out as soon as the door closed behind Chloe. In the corridor outside she stopped dead. ‘What possessed you, man? Whatever happened to honesty? To honour? To your common sense? Do you realise you could get five years for this?’ His handsome face was contorted with fury.

Geoffrey was standing by the table, his own glass and Paul’s still in his hand. Pursing his lips he handed one of them to Paul. ‘Steady on, old boy. I’m sure Paul realises the gravity of what he’s done.’

‘Does he?’ David was still shouting. ‘I doubt it! He’s dragged the entire family into the mud with him. The entire family! Including his wife! So, where is she, Paul?’

‘In Scotland.’ Paul’s voice was flat and defiant.

‘Is it true she’s left you?’

Paul shrugged. It was none of their damn business.

David looked up at the ceiling. ‘Dear God, man! Pull yourself together. Think what it will look to the press. Your wife walks out on you a few days before you are accused of fraud. It will emphasise your guilt, don’t you see? They’ll think she’s done it because of that.’

‘So you think I’d do better to fetch her home? A mad woman, to prop up my case!’ Paul leaned back in the chair, his voice heavy with sarcasm. ‘Come home, darling, and tell them what an honest, kind, doting husband I am!’

‘It would help.’ David’s voice was acid.

‘I don’t think it would necessarily be a good thing,’ Geoffrey put in hurriedly. ‘Clare is unwell –’

‘Then we will see that she is cared for.’ David walked over to the window. He stood with his back to his brothers. ‘Where is she, Paul?’

‘In Edinburgh.’ Paul drained his glass. ‘With her lover.’

There was a moment’s stunned silence. Geoffrey walked to his desk and sat down behind it. He put his head in his hands. ‘The press are going to have a field day.’

‘Who is the lover?’ David had not turned. He put his empty glass down on the low sill of the bay window next to the scented geranium, embarrassed and astonished at the sudden pang of jealousy which shook him. ‘Do we know?’

Paul laughed humourlessly. ‘Oh yes, we know. Neil Forbes.’

David swung round. ‘The Earthwatch man?’

‘The same.’

‘Christ!’ David hit his palm against his forehead. ‘And you let her go to him?’

Abruptly Paul stood up. He slammed his empty glass down on his brother’s desk. ‘What would you suggest I should have done? Lock her up?’ He paused. Now was not the moment to tell them he couldn’t even do that properly. ‘Or should I have gone after her and dragged her back?’

‘Remember Clare’s state of mind, David,’ Geoffrey put in from his position behind the desk.

David was breathing heavily through his nose. ‘In my view Clare is a thoroughly bored and spoiled young woman. Her neuroses are frankly unimportant compared with this catastrophe.’ He gave Paul a withering look.

Paul’s colour heightened slightly, but any reply he was going to make was forestalled by Geoffrey. ‘I think you and I should go and fetch her, David. I’m sure she will see the sense in returning to London while Paul is in need of her support.’

‘I doubt it.’ Paul’s anger was simmering to the surface. ‘And if anyone fetches her, it should be me.’

‘You have to stay in London,’ David was sharp. ‘To prepare your defence. Thank God father isn’t alive to see what you’ve done to the family name.’ He swung round to face the door as it opened and Chloe peered into the room.

‘I’m sorry to intrude.’ She glanced from one man to the other hastily. ‘But your Mother’s Union ladies are beginning to arrive, Geoff. I wasn’t sure what to do with them so I’ve put them in the TV room.’

Geoffrey stood up. He glanced from one brother to the other. ‘Give us her address, Paul. David and I will go and talk to her, then, if she agrees she can come here to stay for the time being.’

‘May I ask who is coming to stay?’ Chloe stopped on her way out of the room and looked back.

‘Clare, my dear.’

Chloe frowned. ‘Geoff! I thought we’d cleared all that up.’ She looked at Paul hard. ‘She does not need Geoff’s help, Paul. There is nothing wrong with her.’

Paul laughed harshly. ‘The ministrations of the Church! Oh but she does, Chloe! Twice over. Not only does Geoffrey have to retrieve her sanity if he can and reclaim her from whatever ghosts have possessed her, but he also has to remind her now of the sanctity of the marriage vows she made in front of him when he married us, and stop her running off with the first man who is stupid enough to take her on. My wife has proved herself to be a whore; a fitting mate for a crook like me, I’m sure you’ll agree!’ He pushed past her and out into the hall.

He was conscious momentarily of several pairs of eyes watching from the open door of another room, then he was out in the porch. Glowering, he set off down the path. He had the car and he had Clare’s address in his pocket. If Geoffrey and David thought he was going to sit back and let them get to Clare first they had another think coming. Oh, they could have her, and welcome, and force her to dress up in a sober black dress and jacket with pearls at her throat and ears when she sat in the visitors’ gallery at his trial at the Old Bailey or wherever they dragged him, but he was going to get to her first, and by the time he came to trial he would be a rich man. Rich with the money from Duncairn, because Sigma had at last come back with a yes.

The castle at Berwick-upon-Tweed is almost gone. Above the angle of the river, near the towering arches of Stephenson’s railway bridge, there are some walls, the remains of the sixteenth-century Water Tower and some steps, known locally as the Breakynecks. Above them a wall built by Edward I climbs almost vertically up the hill and there more masonry rears up. Beyond it – everywhere else the castle used to be – there is the railway station, monument to a Victorian disregard for history.

Standing on the remains of the Water Tower Neil and Clare stared south across the broad River Tweed towards the low hills of Northumberland. The tide was low and seaweed stained the shingle beaches. Out in the centre of the water three swans swam majestically upstream against the current.

All the way there in the car, next to Neil, she had found herself wanting to touch him; she felt herself charged with excitement. Her body had been alive, a separate entity of its own, not listening to her brain. It had been conscious only of the man so close beside her behind the wheel of the old Land Rover, not touching her, perhaps not even aware of her in the long silences as they drove south from Edinburgh down the A1. Now they were here he put his arm around her at last as they stood staring out across the river towards the south, but it was too late. The horror, the memories were closing in around her again.

She shivered. Slowly she turned and stared up the wall which climbed the steep hillside. Neil watched her.

It was a cold day; the wind was biting, carrying with it the salt smell of the sea. Behind the grey stone of the wall, smoke from the chimneys of Berwick, sweet with the scent of burning fruitwood and pine, rose and mingled, shredded, with the patchwork of torn, ragged clouds. Neil pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his jacket.

Clare turned back to the river as, high above them, the 125 crept cautiously across the old bridge into Berwick station. It brought the twentieth century only momentarily into focus. Both were thinking of the past.

Neil touched the stones of the wall experimentally. They were very cold. He glanced at Clare. ‘How did she survive the winter?’ he asked quietly. He had known the moment that she was no longer conscious of him as a man.

She was staring at the bank of the river opposite. Some oystercatchers were working their way up the shingle beach, their black and white plumage and red beaks bright against the muddy stones. ‘They were going to keep her outside in the cage,’ she said after a moment. Sometimes she found she could remember things, things that she had not yet seen in the story, as though Isobel’s memories and her own were one and the same. ‘Until they realised she would die. That wouldn’t have done at all. They wanted her alive. So when the deep cold came eventually they took the cage inside. But they never let her out.’

‘Bastards.’ Neil shrugged deeper into his coat. ‘She must have been a very brave lady.’

Clare smiled. ‘She was. She never let them see her cry. She was a Scots noblewoman, and she never let them forget it. Even when the spring came and they took the cage and hoisted it back on to the walls, and all the people came out to see how she had fared through the winter and to taunt her because her king had not come back to rescue her.’

Neil frowned. ‘Do you think she haunts this castle?’

Clare stared back at the high walls. For a moment she didn’t say anything, then she shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I think I would, in her shoes.’

Privately Neil agreed. ‘I’m glad there’s so little of the castle left. Shall we go to the hotel now?’

Clare was still staring up at the wall above them. ‘I’d like to climb up there first. There is a tower there, at the angle of the wall –’

‘It’s not the same date, Clare. The old castle has gone.’

She shook her head. ‘Some of it was there then – this high wall down to the river – the tower we saw by the station. They were there, Neil, when she was here.’ She faced him, feeling the wind tug at her hair as they stood above the river. ‘Do you still want me to do it, Neil? Shall I sit down here, on this seat, and summon her back to Berwick?’ Her voice had tightened unsteadily and Neil frowned. He didn’t like the wild note he heard there.

He shook his head. ‘I want us to do what Zak suggested on the phone. Quietly at the hotel, tonight. I want you to try to dismiss her. Send her away. You have been to Berwick now. You’ve faced the castle. You’ve seen where it happened and it means no more to you than it does to me – an awful, tragic, romantic story, but a story. From the past. Nothing to do with today. Zak thinks, and I agree with him, that having been here your nightmares will stop and that, given determination on your part, Isobel will leave you alone.’

‘Particularly as the story is nearly over,’ she said sadly. ‘I hope you’re right.’

‘I am right.’ He put his arm around her shoulders again. ‘You’ll see. You’re going to banish poor Isobel back to where she belongs – the land of shadows and dreams – and then you’re going to get on with your own life.’

Geoffrey turned on the lights in the chancel, and closing the vestry door behind him walked slowly towards the altar. The body of the church was in darkness. He could smell the flowers, Michaelmas daisies and chrysanthemums – autumn flowers – mixed with lilies and exotic cream imported roses and dahlias banked around the lectern and on either side of the altar. They had had a wedding that afternoon and the church was glorious. He smiled. St Andrew’s Day tomorrow and the church would be
en fête
. Thoughtfully he walked to his accustomed seat at the end of the choir stalls and sat down. Above him the elegant white-painted pillars of the Regency church soared upward into the darkness. He couldn’t see the gallery or the organ at the far end of the church – merely sense the lightness and space which he loved. Chloe had been sad that they didn’t have a medieval church – the other church in his parish was Victorian and the third was modern. He hadn’t told her yet about the hint from the bishop that if he were to apply for a certain canonry at a cathedral in the west country he might be offered the position; he hadn’t made up his mind.

Chloe was right of course. Clare had been leading him on. It wasn’t true about the Satanism and the spells. How could it be? She had been teasing him, he realised it now. She had always teased him, always sent him up. He didn’t resent it. He was really very fond of Clare, and he knew he was too intense sometimes – probably in her eyes he was impossibly pompous. It only made him sad that he fell for it every time, just as he had this time. Why? Why had he believed her? He wasn’t gullible. He was an experienced pastor and he had sensed her desperation and her despair. They were real enough and that was why she still needed his help, that was why he had said a heartfelt Eucharist for her. Had it helped? He had no way of knowing.

His thoughts turned to Paul and he cursed silently. His brother was a fool. But what to do about it? And what to do next about Clare? What to do for the best for all of them?

He sat back and closed his eyes, letting the blessed peace of the church enfold him and soothe him. He loved it in there at night, with the darkness all around him, and the noise of the traffic quieter now outside. It saddened him that during the day his parishioners could no longer come into the church to pray, that he had to keep it locked against the thieves and vandals. If they could share this peace, this closer communion with God, the world would be a better place for everyone. Slowly and heavily he slid forward off the seat and knelt on the tapestried hassock and, burying his face in his hands, he began to pray.

It was St Andrew’s Night. The public rooms at the hotel were hung with flags and Clare found herself staring at them blankly as Neil signed the register and collected the key to their room. There was no dog with them for once. Casta had been left with Jack at Duncairn. ‘They’re having a party later,’ he said as he guided her towards the stairs. ‘The receptionist said we might be a bit disturbed by the noise, but we’re invited to it if we want to go. I’m sorry. I didn’t realise what date it was.’

Clare laughed suddenly. ‘Oh Neil! The archetypal Scotsman, and you didn’t think of St Andrew!’ Her nerves were at breaking point and she was almost hysterical with laughter suddenly. ‘You, of all people!’