The Shrouded Walls (11 page)

“I hope you are well at school,” I scribbled. “I wish it were the end of term, for I miss you even more than usual.” I paused, mindful that I must take great care not to say too much. “Haraldsdyke is a most unusual house,” I wrote quickly after a moment, “and the family have been most civil and kind. You would like it here because you could ride every day, if you wished, and there’s plenty of game for shooting on the Marsh. Is it not possible that you could leave before term’s end? Christmas is still several weeks away and it seems such a long time to wait till I see you again. I have so much to tell you, more than can ever be put in a mere letter
...
” Careful. I gnawed the end of the quill, absorbed in my task, oblivious to everything around me. I must, I thought, be a little more specific or the entire point of the letter would be lost. Alexander was not quick to grasp hints and allusions. “You will not credit this,” I resumed presently, “but it turns out that Mr. Robert Brandson, Axel’s father, did not die a natural death at all, as we were led to suppose, and was in fact the victim of a murderous attack last Christmas Eve. It was presumed by the Coroner’s Jury that the perpetrator of the deed was Axel’s half-brother, Mr. Rodric Brandson, but as he died but a few hours after his father as the result of an accident, he was never able to defend himself against such a charge of murder. Even though it is generally accepted that he was guilty, there are nonetheless some who say
...”

There was a sound from behind me.

I spun around, and the pen spluttered on the paper beneath the convulsive start of my hand.

“You should have another candle,” said Axel, “lest you strain your eyes in such a dim light.”

I had never even heard him enter the room. Such was my paralysis of surprise that I could do nothing except stare at him and hope the light was dim enough to hide the pallor of my face and the expression in my eyes.

“Did I startle you?” he said. “I’m sorry.” He was very close to me now, and as he stooped to kiss me he saw the letter and I instinctively turned it face downwards on the blotter.

“Yes, thank you,” I said, and then added, lest he should be harboring any ideas to the contrary, “but I shall be a trifle delicate for two or three days yet.”

“You must take care of yourself.” He released me and turned aside abruptly. I saw his glance rest again on the letter, and my heart began to bump uncomfortably once more. “I shall be riding to Rye again tomorrow,” he said. “I’ll take your letter with me. There’s a mail-coach which leaves tomorrow at noon for Tunbridge Wells and London, and I can arrange with the coachman to see that the letter is safely sent from London to Harrow.”

“Please, I wouldn’t want it to inconvenience you.”

“There would be no inconvenience. If you haven’t yet finished the letter, perhaps you could add a sentence giving my regards to Alexander and saying that we look forward to seeing him at Christmas.”

What else was there to say? I returned to my writing, and presently he rang for his valet and I heard him telling the man to arrange for a light meal to be served in our apartments.

“I had inkspots all over the paper,” I said, speaking the first thought to enter my head. “If it were to anyone else but to Alexander I would write the letter afresh on a clean piece of paper, but he won’t mind my untidiness.
”

“It was thoughtful of you to write so soon after your arrival.” His fingers were against my cheek, the long cool fingers which I now knew so well. He was gently forcing me to look at him.

“How did you fare in Rye?” I said instantly, looking him straight in the eyes.

“Well enough. Aren’t you going to give me a kiss?”

“Of course,” I said, cool as spring water, and rose to my feet as I raised my face to his.

He slid his arms around my waist and kissed me on the mouth with an intimacy which was as unexpected as it was unwelcome.

“You have no idea how good it is,” he said, “to ride home through the foggy dusk of a November evening and then find you here, looking as you look now
...
Are you feeling better?”

“Will you sup with me?” he asked. “Or would you prefer to eat with the others? I’m hungry and tired and have no wish to join them.”

“I’m not hungry at present,” I said. “It’s not so long since I dined. I’ll wait and then drink tea with the others, with your permission.”

I re-wrote the letter to Alexander, carefully omitting any reference to the fact that Rodric’s guilt was doubted in any way. From the subject of the murder, I then described Haraldsdyke in minute detail and mentioned each of the family by name. Finally I carefully added Axel’s message and wrote below it: “Do come as soon as you can!” before signing my name.

By the time I laid down my pen, he was eating his supper at the table by the window.

“I would like to see more of Rye,” I said on an impulse. “Would it be possible for me to travel with you tomorrow?”

“In your present state of health?”

“I—I wasn’t thinking of riding, I thought perhaps the carriage.”

“I think the journey would tire you all the same, and besides, I have business to conduct and wouldn’t be able to attend to you. Another time, perhaps.”

“Perhaps Ned would come with me if you were too busy.”

He gave me a hard look. “Ned?”

“I—
was
talking to him today ... I found him pleasant enough. I thought that perhaps
...”

“You will not,” said Axel distinctly, “travel to Rye with Ned.”

“Very well. As you wish.”

“You would be best advised to spend the day with Alice and learn more about your household. No doubt there will be callers too who wish to present themselves and you should be there to receive them.”

“Yes,” I said. I glanced at the clock on the mantelpiece above the fireplace. “Will you excuse me, Axel, if I leave you now? I think perhaps tea will be ready soon, and I’m hungrier now than I was earlier.”

He gave his permission. Taking a candle I went out into the corridor, and had just reached the landing when I remembered with horror that I had
not destroyed my original letter to Alexander but had left it carelessly folded on the secretaire with my completed letter.

I turned at once and ran back down the passage. I was already in the room when I remembered I had not even paused to invent an excuse for my return.

Luckily I had no need of one; Axel had already gone into the bedroom beyond. Moving hastily across to the secretaire I snatched up the original letter and cast it into the midst of the fire. It was only as I stood watching it bum that it occurred to me to wonder if the folded notepaper had been exactly as I had left it on the secretaire
...

The next morning was dull and tedious. Knowing that when Axel returned from Rye he would be sure to ask me how I had spent the day, I asked Alice to show me the kitchens and her household affairs. Then the rector’s wife and sister called again, and I had to be civil and welcoming to them in an attempt to create a good impression. When they had gone, Alice took me to the nursery to show me her children, and again I had to be careful to say exactly the right words and choose appropriately admiring remarks. Stephen, the eldest, was a quiet shy child with fair hair and green eyes, but Clarissa, a year younger, was already as big as he was and much more boisterous. The youngest, Robert, had an aggressive chin which looked odd on so young a child, and a loud voice which he used with deafening effect.

“The little love,” said Alice fondly, picking him up, and he was instantly quiet and well-behaved.

Seeing her with the children reminded me of my fear of pregnancy, and I was glad when I had the chance to escape to my rooms at last. But I could not stay in the rooms long; I was restless and had no wish at all to sit and think heaven knows what manner of thoughts, and soon I was donning my pelisse and some warm boots and slipping downstairs with the idea of walking in the garden. I had hardly taken a step outside when Ned came around the
corner
of the house and nearly bumped into me.

We laughed; he apologized and I said it was nothing. Presently I asked him where he was going.

“To Haraldsford, the nearest village,” he said. “I promised Alice I would take a ham and some pies to her mother. Why don’t you come with me? It’s not far—only a mile.”

“Will we be back in time for dinner?”

“Why, yes—easily. We’ll be gone less than an hour all told.”

I was immensely curious to see Alice’s mother, the witch.

“Very well, I’ll come,” I said, “only it must be a secret. I am supposed to spend all day at the house learning about the household affairs of Haraldsdyke.”

He smiled, his teeth white and even, his black eyes sparkling. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

So we set off together for the village, and immediately the house was behind us I was conscious of relief and felt almost light-hearted.

We were soon there. The road was built up above the level of the land, which seemed curious to me, but around the village the level rose to meet the road. It was a very small place; there was a round Saxon church with a Norman tower attached, several cottages and an inn called “The Black Ram.” Alice’s mother lived in a tiny hovel apart from the others on the edge of the village; a nanny-goat grazed by the door and two hens peered out of the open doorway.

“She’s a witch, I believe,” I said casually to Ned as we drew nearer, but Ned only laughed.

“So they say—just because she knows a few old potions and a spell or two! I’ll believe she’s a witch the day I see her ride a broomstick, and not till then.”

I was disappointed. I was even more disappointed when I saw that Alice’s mother Dame Joan was not a hump-backed evil creature clad in black rags, but a broad strong country woman with an arrogant nose, a powerful voice and strange light eyes of no particular color but full of grays and greens and blue flecks.

“Good-day, Dame Joan,” said Ned briskly. “Alice sent me with some gifts for you. I hope you’re well and in good health.”

She shot him a sharp look and then glanced at me. “You’ll be the foreigner’s wife,” she said at once.

I suppose it was an obvious enough deduction, but I was childishly thrilled at the confident way she announced my identity.

“Yes indeed,” said Ned, winking at me. “Mrs. George Brandson.”

I smiled at her and said “good-day” but she merely said: “You’re an insolent rascal, boy. I saw you twist your face to mock me.”

I was alarmed, thinking he had offended her, but he merely laughed. “Have you eyes in the back of your head, then, Dame Joan?” he said amused. “I was standing behind you—how could you see what I was doing?”

“I’ve ways,” she said darkly. “You’d best be careful or next time you go changing the shapes of new scullery maids I’ll not be so free and easy with my remedies.”

But Ned refused to be either embarrassed or deflated. “Dame Joan is an authority on all manner of things connected with fertility,” he said to me frankly with his careless smile. “If you’re not pregnant and want to be so, she gives you a potion. If you’re pregnant and don’t want to be so she gives you another potion. If you’re not pregnant and don’t want to be so—”

“Young rascal,” said Dame Joan. “Talking before a lady like that. The foreigner would beat you sore if he heard you.”

There was something uncanny about her perception of Axel’s attitude to Ned. Even Ned himself was caught unawares; I saw the smile vanish from his face for a moment and then he was laughing again, refusing to be perturbed.

“Dame Joan knows there’s no love lost between me and George,” he said lightly. “Well, we must be on our way home for dinner. Good-day to you, Dame Joan, and I hope you enjoy the ham and the pies.”

But as we walked away from the village he said without looking at me: “I’m sorry if I spoke too bluntly. I had no wish to offend you.”

“There was no offense,” I said truthfully. “My father was always very frank in his conversation and didn’t care a whit how outspoken he was.”

He smiled, obviously relieved. Presently he said: “I can’t think how you’ll settle at Haraldsdyke.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Well! You’re so—so alive, so
...”
He shrugged, at a loss for words. “You should be in a city,” he said, “wearing beautiful clothes and jewelry and mingling with Society, not cut off here in the country with no one to impress save the local gentry and the merchants of the Cinque Ports! You’ll be stifled, bored—”

“Nonsense!” I spoke all the more intensely because I was afraid there was an element of truth in what he said.

“But you’re so alive!” he said. “So full of interest. So different from these country girls with their giggles and prudery and dreary conversation.”

“You’d best stop this at once,” I said, “or I shall become so vain that my head will be too swollen to permit me to walk through the doorway into Haraldsdyke.” But I was pleased all the same.

Esther met us in the hall when we arrived back. I was half-afraid she had seen us walk up the drive together.

“Ah, there you are!” she said to me, and as I looked at her I thought instantly of her former relationship with Axel and had to repress my longing to rebuff her air of welcoming friendliness which I had never fully accepted as sincere. “We were wondering where you were, my dear,” she said, and her dark eyes glanced from me to Ned and back to me again. “George is home from Rye, and asked to see you as soon as you returned.”

Some instinct told me even before I entered the room that the interview which lay ahead of me would be unpleasant. Axel was in his dressing room; I heard him dismiss his valet as he heard me enter the apartments. The next moment he entered the sitting room where I was waiting, and crossed the floor to greet me.

“Did you have a satisfactory day in Rye?” I asked, rather too quickly. “I’m glad you were able to be back for dinner today.”

“I was surprised to find you absent on my arrival home,” he said dryly, and gestured towards the hearth. “Let’s sit down for a moment.”

I settled myself on the edge of the high-backed fireside chair and folded my hands in my lap. My heart was bumping noisily; I tried to look cool and composed.

“Alice told me you spent some time with her this morning,” he said. “I was glad to hear you’d taken my advice to heart.”

I launched into a detailed account of the time I had spent with Alice. He listened intently. At last when I could think of nothing further to say he said: “After you left Alice I understand you went for a walk with Ned.”

“Yes, to Haraldsford, to take some provisions to Alice’s mother. But how did you—”

“Esther saw you leave.”

There was a pause. I was suddenly very angry at the thought of Esther spying upon me, but I managed to control the impulse to put my thoughts into words.

“I see,” I said.

“You remember that I had forbidden you to go to Rye in Ned’s company.
”

“I remember.”

“Surely you must have realized by now that I wish you to see as little of Ned as possible?”

“It had occurred to me.”

“Yet you sought his company to walk to Haraldsford!”

“That was a mere chance.” I explained what had happened. “I didn’t think you would mind,” I added, “or of course I wouldn’t have gone.”

“I mind very much you being seen alone in his company,” Axel said sharply. “He has a bad reputation, particularly in regard to girls of your age, and he mixes with people with whom it would be ill-advised for you to associate yourself. You forget you’re now mistress of Haraldsdyke, not a mere schoolgirl whose behavior can be overlooked or excused.”

“I am perfectly well aware that I am mistress of Haraldsdyke,” I said icily. “What you seem to forget is that Ned is your half-brother and by normal social standards would be considered a fitting escort for me on a short country walk.”

I was furiously angry, of course, or I would never have dared to speak to him in that manner. For a moment he seemed taken aback at my audacity for I saw his eyes widen slightly, and then he was himself again, very cool and remote.

“He’s no kin of mine.”

“So I’ve been told,” I said cuttingly, “but as this isn’t generally known it would make no difference to the fact that in the eyes of the world he would still be considered a suitable escort.” And I stood up and moved swiftly next door into the bedroom, the tears stinging my eyes.

He followed me instantly and closed the door. “Listen to me,” he said. “Be that as it may, I still have reasons of my own for not wishing you to associate with Ned. I must insist that you heed what I say and see as little of him as possible.”

My tears by this time made speech impossible. I was hopelessly upset, wishing with all my heart that I could run to my mother for comfort, and the wish only served to remind me that she was dead and lost to me forever. Tears scalded my cheeks; I stared out of the window, my back to the stranger behind me, my whole will concentrating on the task of concealing my lack of self-control.

“Are you listening to what I’m saying?” said Axel sharply.

I bent my head in acknowledgement.

“Then I would like your promise that you will do as I tell you.”

I tried to speak but could not. Seconds passed.

“I’m waiting, my dear.”