The Sins of the Wolf (6 page)

“Evenin’, miss.” He made a gesture to tip his cap. “Evenin’, sir, ma’am.”

“Evening,” they replied absently. They expected the courtesy, and yet it was an intrusion into their party. Hector stood with his coat collar turned up, as if he felt the cold, his eyes on Mary’s face, even though she was half turned away from him. Eilish was walking towards the open carriage door, full of curiosity. Baird stood guarding Mary’s three cases, and Quinlan was shifting from foot to foot, as if impatient to have the matter over with.

Oonagh returned, stood undecided for an instant, looking at Alastair, then at her mother, then, as if reaching some resolve, she took Mary’s arm and together they moved along the platform until they reached the carriage where Mary had a reservation. Hester followed a couple of yards behind. Mary was going to be absent only a week, but even so this was not a time when a stranger, and an employee,
should allow her presence to be felt. Her duties had not yet begun.

Inside, the coach was utterly different from the second-class carriage in which Hester had ridden up. It was not a large open space with hard upright seats, but a series of separate compartments, each with two single upholstered seats facing each other, either of which would quite comfortably have allowed three people to sit side by side, or, wonderful thought, one person to curl up and tuck her feet under her skirts and go to sleep in something like comfort. It would be quite private enough to feel safe from intrusion, since a glance told that it was reserved for Mrs. Mary Farraline and companion. Hester’s spirits were lifted already. It would be so different from the long, exhausting journey up, during which she had managed only brief and disturbed catnaps. She found herself smiling in anticipation.

Mary merely glanced around her as she stepped in. Presumably she had been in first-class carriages before, and this one held no interest for her.

“The luggage is in the guard’s van,” Baird said from the doorway, his eyes on Mary’s face with a directness which did not seem to be there when he spoke to anyone else. “They will unload it for you in London. You may forget about it until then.” He lifted the small overnight case with toiletries and the medicine chest onto the luggage rack for her.

Alastair glanced at him irritably, then did not bother to say anything, as though it all had been said before, and had been no use then, or now, or perhaps in these circumstances was too trivial to bother with. His attention was on his mother. He looked troubled and short-tempered.

“I think you have everything you need, Mother. I hope your journey will be uneventful.” He did not look at Hester, but his meaning was obvious. He bent as if to kiss Mary on the cheek, then apparently changed his mind and straightened up again. “Griselda will meet you, of course.”

“We’ll be here to meet you on your return, Mother,” Eilish said with a quick smile.

“Hardly, my dear.” Quinlan’s expression indicated his feelings profoundly. “It will be half past eight in the morning. When were you ever up at that hour?”

“I can be—if someone wakes me,” Eilish said defensively.

Baird opened his mouth, and closed it again without speaking.

Oonagh frowned. “Of course you can, if you wish to enough.” She turned back to Mary. “Now, Mother, do you have everything you need? Are there any footwarmers here?” She looked down at the floor, and Hester’s eyes followed hers. Footwarmers. What a blessed thought. On the journey up her feet had been so cold she had almost lost all sensation in them.

“Send for some,” Quinlan said with raised eyebrows. “There ought to be.”

“There are,” Oonagh answered him, bending down to pull one of the large stone bottles forward. It was filled with hot water, and also with a chemical which was supposed, when shaken vigorously, to restore some of the heat naturally lost towards morning. “There you are, Mother, it’s lovely and hot. Rest your feet on that. Where’s the traveling rug, Baird?”

He handed it to her obediently, and she took it and made Mary comfortable, wrapping it around her, and folded the spare one on the other seat. No one was taking much notice of Hester, who was apparently not expected to begin her duties until they had actually departed. She arranged her valise where it was out of the way, then sat down on the seat opposite and waited.

Gradually all the good-byes were said and each of them moved back into the corridor until only Oonagh was left.

“Good-bye, Mother,” she said quietly. “I shall look after everything while you are gone—and do it as you would have.”

“What an odd thing to say, my dear.” Mary smiled in amusement. “You look after most of the household now. And when I come to think of it, I believe you have done for some considerable time. And I assure you, it had never crossed my mind to worry.”

Oonagh kissed her very lightly, then turned to Hester, her eyes direct and very clear. “Good-bye, Miss Latterly.” And the next moment she was gone.

Mary settled a trifle more comfortably in her seat. She was naturally facing forward, and it was Hester who would travel always looking the way she had come.

A wry look crossed Mary’s face, as though her last words in some way amused her.

“Are you worried?” Hester said quickly, wondering if there were some way she might ease her concern. Mary Farraline was not only her patient, she was also a person towards whom she felt a natural warmth.

Mary lifted her shoulders in the slightest of shrugs. “Oh no, not really. I can think of no sensible thing to worry about. Are you going to be warm enough, my dear? Please use the other rug.” She indicated where Oonagh had put it. “It is brought for you. Really, they should have given us a footwarmer each.” She made a little click of annoyance between her teeth. “I daresay that one will be quite sufficient for two of us. Please—move yourself to sit precisely opposite me, and place your feet on the other half of it. Don’t argue with me. I cannot possibly be comfortable if I know you are sitting there shivering. I have caught trains from Edinburgh station quite often enough to be familiar with their discomforts.”

“Have you traveled a great deal?” Hester inquired, moving to sit as Mary had directed, and finding the blessed relief of the footwarmer on her already chilled feet.

Outside doors were slamming and the porter was shouting out something, but his voice was lost in a belch and hiss of steam. The train clanked and lurched forward, then
very slowly gathered speed and they emerged from the canopy of the station into the darkness of the countryside.

“I used to,” Mary replied to the question with a reminiscent look. “All sorts of places: London, Paris, Brussels, Rome. I even went to Naples once, and Venice. Italy is so beautiful.” She smiled and her face lit with memory. “Everyone should visit it once in their lives. Preferably when they are about thirty. Then they would be old enough to realize how marvelous it is, to feel something of all it has been and sense the past around them, to give depth to the present. And yet they would still be young enough for the flavor to enrich the larger portion of their lives.” The train jolted hard, and then continued forward at greater speed. “I think it is a shame to have your miracles in life when you are too young, and in too much of a hurry to realize what they are. It is a terrible thing to know your blessings only in hindsight.”

Hester was considering the impact of that thought so seriously she did not reply.

“But you have also traveled,” Mary said, her eyes bright on Hester’s face. “And far more interestingly than I—at least for the most part. Oonagh told me you were in the Crimea. If you are not pained by recalling it, I should most dearly like to hear something of your experiences. I admit, my mind is filled with questions in a manner most unbecoming. I am sure it must be ill-bred to inquire so much, but I am old enough not to care what is considered proper.”

Hester had found many peoples’ questions poorly framed and based on assumptions made from the peace and ignorance of England, where the vast majority knew only what newspapers told them. Although that knowledge was now increasing their ability to criticize and raise doubts, it still carried very little of the passion or the horror of reality.

“It brings back distressing memories?” Mary said quickly, apology vivid in her voice.

“No, not at all,” Hester denied, more in courtesy than strict truth. Her memories were sharp and complex, but she
had seldom found herself desiring to escape them. “I fear that they may become tedious for people because I felt so strongly about so much, I tend to repeat myself about the wrongs and omit the details which may make the tale more interesting.”

“I should not be in the least interested in a well-considered and emotionless account that I might read in my daily newspaper.” Mary shook her head vigorously. “Tell me what you felt. What surprised you most? What was best, and what was worst?” She waved a long hand dismissively. “I don’t mean the suffering of the men, I shall take that for granted. I mean for yourself.”

The train had settled with a steady rhythm that was almost soothing in its regularity.

“Rats,” Hester answered without hesitation. “The sound of rats falling off the walls onto the floor; that, and waking up cold.” The memory was sharp as she said it, blurring the present and the sense of the warm rug around her. “It wasn’t so bad once you were up and moving around—and thinking of what you were doing—but when you woke up in the night and were too cold to go back to sleep again, no matter how tired you were, that’s what stays with me most.” She smiled. “Waking up warm, pulling the blankets close around me, hearing the sound of the rain outside, and knowing that there is nothing alive in the room except me, that’s marvelous.”

Mary laughed, a rich sound of pure enjoyment.

“What an unpredictable faculty memory is. The oddest things will bring back times and places we had long thought lost in the past.” She leaned back in the seat, her face relaxed, her eyes on some distance of the imagination. “You know, I was born the year after the fall of the Bastille—”

“The fall of the Bastille?” Hester was confused.

Mary did not look at her, but kept her gaze on the sudden memory that was apparently woken so sharply. “The
revolution in France, Louis the Sixteenth, Marie Antoinette, Robespierre …”

“Oh! Oh, of course.”

But Mary was still lost in her own thoughts. “Those were such times. The Emperor had all Europe under his heel.” Her voice sank in awe so it was barely audible above the rattle of the wheels over the ties. “He was twenty miles away across the channel, and only the navy stood between his armies and England—and then of course Scotland too.” The smile on her lips broadened, and in spite of the lines in her face and her silver hair, there was in her a radiance and an innocence as though the years between had fallen away and she was a young woman momentarily caught in an old woman’s body. “I remember the spirit we had then. We expected invasion every day. Everyone’s eyes were turned eastward. We had lookouts on the cliff tops and beacon fires ready to light the moment the first Frenchman set foot on the shore. Right up and down the coast every man, woman and child was watching and waiting, homemade weapons ready to hand. We would have fought till the very last of us was dead before we would have let them conquer us.”

Hester said nothing. England had been secure all her lifetime. She could imagine what it might have been like to fear foreign soldiers trampling through the streets, burning the houses, laying waste the fields and farms, but it was only imagination, it could never touch the reality. Even in the very worst days in the Crimea when the allied armies were losing, she had always known England itself was peaceful, impregnable, and except in small, private bereavements, untouched.

“The newspapers used to print terrible cartoons of him.” Mary’s smile broadened for a moment, then vanished suddenly, and she shivered, looking directly at Hester. “Mothers used to terrify their naughty children by threatening that ‘Bony’ would get them. They used to say that he ate little children, and there were pictures of him with a great gaping
mouth, and a knife and fork in his hands, and Europe on his plate.”

The train slowed almost to walking speed as it climbed a steep gradient. A man’s voice shouted something indistinguishable. A whistle blew.

“And then when I had my own children in Edinburgh,” Mary went on, “people used to frighten the disobedient with stories of Burke and Hare. Odd, isn’t it, how much more sinister that seems now? Two Irishmen who started selling corpses to a doctor so he could teach his students anatomy, then progressing to robbing graves, and finally to murder.”

The train began to pick up speed again. She looked at Hester curiously.

“Why does murder to dissect the corpses chill the blood in a way murder to rob never can? After it all came out in 1829, and Burke was hanged—Hare never was, you know! For all I can say, he’s still alive now!” She shivered. “But afterwards, I remember we had a maid who left without giving notice. We never knew where she went—off with some man, in all probability—but of course all the other servants said Burke and Hare had got her, and she was cut up in pieces somewhere!”

She wrapped her shawl tighter around her, although the carriage was no colder than it had been before, and their feet were on the footwarmer and snugly wrapped in a blanket.

“Alastair was about twelve then.” She bit her lip. “And Oonagh was seven, old enough to have heard the stories and understood the terror they woke. One night, it was late in the winter and there was a fearful storm, I heard the thunder and got up to see if everything was all right. I found the two of them together in Oonagh’s room, sitting up in bed, huddled under the blanket with the candle lit. I knew what had happened. Alastair had had a nightmare. He had them sometimes. And he had gone into her room, ostensibly to see if she was all right, but really because he
wanted the comfort of being with her himself. She was frightened too; I can still see her face in my mind, white-skinned, wide-eyed, but busy telling Alastair about Burke having been hanged and that he was quite dead.” She gave a dry little laugh. “She described it in detail, she was so certain of it.”