The Song of the Siren (36 page)

There was a gentleman from the Court who urgently desired to see milord.

Hessenfield pressed my hand. “Take Clarissa up to the nursery,” he said.

I went.

In a few minutes he was up there. He said: “I have to go to St. Germains at once.”

I nodded.

“I don’t know how long I shall be. Back tomorrow, I expect.”

He was back the next day.

It was late afternoon. I heard him arrive and went down to meet him. I saw at once that something was wrong.

We went straight up to our bedroom. He shut the door and looked at me.

“Disaster!” he said. “What?” I stammered.

262

“Our men went right into a trap. They were waiting for them when they landed. Everything is lost ... men, arms, ammunition ... all.”

I stared at him in disbelief.

“How ... ?” I began.

“Yes,” he said fiercely. “How! How did they know the exact spot where they were to land? Somebody betrayed them.”

“Who could?”

“That’s what I have to find out.”

“Was it someone in England ... someone pretending to be with you while working against you?”

“It was a spy, all right. But not over there, I think.”

“Then where?”

“Here.”

“Here! But nobody knew. Who could possibly? You did not even tell me. It must have been someone over there.”

“I think it was someone here.”

“But who?”

“That is what I am going to find out.”

The following day Hessenfield went back to St. Germain-en-Laye. I tried to behave as though nothing had happened but I could not stop thinking of those men who had walked into a trap and were now probably in the Tower or some prison awaiting sentence, which would certainly be death. I was concerned for Hessenfield, who had cared so passionately that the arms which he had been given by the King of France should have been lost, but what was most disturbing was that some of their most gallant men had been taken.

I had never seen him so sad before. It was a new side to this character.

I went to the nursery.

“Where is my father?” asked Clarissa. She always called him my father. I think it implied that she had only recently acquired him.

I said, “He has gone to see the King.”

“He left in rather a hurry,” said Mary Marton.

“Oh, yes,” I answered. “Important business.”

“He looked a little distrait, I thought,” said Mary.

I lifted my shoulders.

263Clarissa said: “Where are we going today?”

“I want to buy some lace,” I said. “Mademoiselle Panton”-she was my couturiere-“wishes to trim a dress with it and for once she is most anxious that I should choose the colors.”

“I expect it is unobtainable,” said Mary with a laugh, “and she will want to blame you because you will have to take a substitute. ‘It was of Madame’s choosing,’ “

she said, imitating Mademoiselle Panton to perfection.

“Mary can be Mademoiselle Panton and Jeanne and me ...” said Clarissa looking with admiration at Mary.

We all went to choose the lace. We came back to dinner, and then in the afternoon Clarissa slept and I rested in my bedroom, reading. It was the quiet hour when everyone was either eating or digesting what they had eaten. By five o’clock the streets would be noisy again.

I wondered what Hessenfield was doing and what measures he would take to find out who had betrayed them. It was disconcerting to discover that there were spies in our midst.

It was a lonely evening. It was at times like this that I realised how much I missed him.

I was now deeply in love with him. Our union seemed to be perfect; he was what I had always wanted; I believed I was the same to him.

We were adventurous spirits, both of us. This life suited him and it suited me. I wondered what it would be like if they brought James back to the throne and we returned to England where we would lead the lives of an ordinary nobleman and his wife ...

except that I should not be his wife. I could not imagine it. Hessenfield would always have to have some plot to be involved in. In the old days he would have gone to sea and plundered the Spanish galleons. In the Civil War he would have behaved in much the same way as he did now, I suppose. He was a man who had to have a cause. Danger was a fillip to his existence. There were men such as that.

But what happened to them when they grew old?

I thought of my grandfather then. He had been such another. What a life he must have led when he was holding Eversleigh during the Protectorate-an ardent Royalist posing as a Roundhead. That would have suited Hessenfield well.

The evening passed slowly without him. I was with Clarissa until it

264was her bedtime. Mary Marton put her to bed and I stayed with her telling her stories until she went to sleep.

Then I returned to my lonely bedchamber and slept.

I awoke early, took the usual bread and coffee and then went along to Clarissa’s room.

She was sitting up in bed playing with a doll I had bought for her the day before.

“Mary’s gone out,” she said.

“Gone out! At this hour? She can’t have.”

Clarissa nodded.

“Yvette’s got blue eyes,” she said, holding the doll out to me. “Look.”

“I am sure Mary is in her room,” I said. “I’m going to see.”

Clarissa shook her head, but I went through to Mary’s room.

The bed was made. Could it be that she had not slept in it last night? Unless she had made it before she left, but one of the servants usually did that... later in the morning.

I looked round the room. I opened a cupboard. Her clothes had gone.

Then I saw the note. It was lying on the table and it was addressed to me.

Dear Lady Hessenfield, [I read]

I have had to leave quickly. I had a message from my aunt who is dangerously ill in Lyons. The messenger came after you retired and as you have had an anxious day I did not want to disturb you. There was just time to catch the coach to Lyons. So I left at once. I will come back and see you when I can leave my aunt. Thank you for all your goodness to me,

Mary Marton.

The paper dropped from my hand. Something strange was going on. I knew it.

Why had she gone like that? When had the messenger arrived? Surely I would have heard him come? She had never mentioned an aunt in Lyons. I had understood she had had no family but the parents of whom she had spoken.

My thoughts immediately went to Matt.

265

That is it, I thought. She was in love with him and he must have made her understand that he did not love her. Mary had always seemed a strange girl to me; she was aloof and although she had got along comfortably with Clarissa, I fancied she had never felt cornpletely at ease with me. I had been delighted by her friendship for Matt and had immediately presumed that it was serious. The answer to the question of her hurried departure seemed to be that because her love affair with Matt was at an end she wanted to cut herself adrift completely; she did not want probing questions asked.

A quiet, controlled person, such as I had imagined her to be, could act in this way.

Hessenfield returned the next day. He had been away two nights.

He looked exuberant now, his old self.

He could scarcely wait to embrace me.

He said: “I want to see that governess woman at once.”

“Oh, the strangest thing has happened. She has gone.”

“Gone!”

He looked at me blankly and I said quickly: “Yesterday morning I went to her room.

Her bed had not been slept in. There was a note. She had gone to a sick aunt in Lyons.”

“A sick aunt in Lyons! Oh my God, she’s got away. She was the one. The leak ... it came through her.”

“Do you mean that ... she was a spy?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. I told you I was going to find out how it happened.

She was one of the first I checked and got right to the heart of the matter. It must have been someone in the house. That was the only time it was mentioned. That day they came to me and I had them in my study ... we worked out the route. It was only then that the name of the place was given away. I didn’t even put it on paper-it was so secret. Everything has been passed by word of mouth. I guessed it was someone in the house .. . who overheard and immediately passed on the information. I decided to check on the backgrounds of everyone. It was an easy task because I started with ner ... the latest comer. Her parents are in England. She has been working as a spy for the Queen’s government. They are determined to wipe us out. They knew these shipments were getting in, that they were being landed at quiet spots on the coast and that the arms were being hidden until the great day when we should use them. Thank

266God, she was one of the first suspects and I hit the mark right away.”

“I can’t believe it of Mary,” I said.

“One never can of the good spy. She was that, I grant you, and now we have lost her

... unless we catch up with her somewhere, which is hardly likely. At least she won’t dare come out to France again. It would be too dangerous for her.”

“I should have seen it,” I said. “I remember the day you were here with those men.

I heard Mary on the landing. I thought I heard a door open. I went down and she was going out as I came down the stairs. I didn’t think anything of it. I thought she was only creeping out for a rendezvous with her lover.”

“With her lover?” said Hessenfield sharply.

“Oh, with Matt Pilkington. You know we thought there was something between them.

I thought at first that she had left because something had happened with him ...

that he had told her he didn’t want her. That’s what the servants think. They talk about it all the time. They love anything that has a hint of romance in it.”

“Let them go on thinking it,” he said thoughtfully.

The incident had had a sobering effect on me, but Hessenfield quickly recovered his optimism. “It is the fortunes of war,” he said. “Sometimes success, sometimes failure.

We can only go on in hope.”

He was gay and lively and we resumed the old way of life; but I could not help those moments of reflection which kept intruding. I kept remembering details about Mary.

I should have seen that she was no ordinary nursery governess. I should have checked her story more thoroughly. That she had been a spy in our household and that I was the one who had brought her in, distressed me. Moreover, Clarissa was continually asking questions. I had told her that Mary had gone to her sick aunt in Lyons, which seemed the easiest way of dealing with the matter. And, as Hessenfield had suggested, that was the story which was circulated through the household. The servants thought it a little odd that she should have gone away without telling anyone, but she was English, and, as I overheard Jeanne say, the English often did odd things.

It was a week after Mary had left when I was out with Clarissa and Jeanne. We had shopped in the market for vegetables and were returning home along by the river when we noticed a crowd and a commotion.

267Naturally we were curious and went over.

Jeanne turned to me and whispered: “Not for La Petite, madame.”

La Petite was immediately all ears.

“What is it? What have they found?” cried Clarissa.

“Oh, it is something they have dragged out of the river,” said Jeanne.

“What? What?”

“I don’t suppose they know yet. And I have the dinner to see to.”

“Maman.” She had already taken the French form and used it all the time. “Let us stay.”

Jeanne was throwing anxious glances at me.

I said firmly: “No, we must go home. It is nothing much.”

“Just a bundle of old clothes someone has fished out of the river,” said Jeanne.

“Who threw them in?”

“Well, that is what we don’t know,” said Jeanne.

“Who does know?”

“Whoever threw them in.”

“Who did?”

“Oh, Clarissa,” I cried, “we know no more than that. We are going home now so that Jeanne can cook the dinner. You want some dinner, don’t you?”

Clarissa considered. “I want to know who threw his clothes in the river first,” she said.

“You won’t say that when we are having dinner and you’re waiting to hear about river-sodden clothes,” I said.

“What’s river sodden?”

It was the opportunity. I took her hand firmly and more or less dragged her away.

Later that day Jeanne sought me out.

“I thought madame would want to know. It was a man they pulled ůt of the river this morning.”

“Oh, dear, some poor unfortunate man. He must have been unhappy to take his life.”

“They’re saying that he didn’t, madame. They’re saying he was murdered.”

“That’s even worse. I am glad we didn’t let the child see or hear. Don’t tell her, Jeanne, or let any of the others.”

“No, madame, I will not.”

268

I knew that something had happened even before they told me. There seemed to be a perpetual buzz of conversation in the household-but more subdued than usual and it stopped at my approach.

Finally Jeanne could restrain herself no more.

“Madame,” she told me, “they know whose was the body in the Seine. ... They know who the man is.”

“Oh,” I said, “who was it?”

There was a short pause then Jeanne said quickly: “It was the gentleman who used to come here so much.”

“What!” I cried.

“Monsieur Pilkington.”

“No,” I whispered. “It can’t be.”

“It is, madame. And he was murdered. Shot, they say.”

I was terribly shaken. I stammered: “I don’t believe it. Why should anyone shoot him?”

Jeanne looked sly.

“Someone who was jealous, madame?”

“Jealous. Who would be jealous of him?”

Jeanne lifted her shoulder.

“I thought you should know, madame.”

“Yes ... yes ... thank you for telling me. Please see that none of this reaches my daughter’s ears.

“Oh, no, madame. Certainly not. It would not be good for La Petite.”

I shut myself in my room. It was hard to believe it. I felt sure there must be some mistake. Matt... dead ... murdered. His body thrown into the Seine.