Authors: Jane Aiken Hodge
The Winding Stair
Stair
Jane Aiken Hodge
Chapter One
Moonlight lay, like water on smooth grass. Cypresses cast strange shadows across the river that ran fast, deep and cruel under its ornamental bridge. Pausing there a moment before he braced himself to enter Forland House, Gair Varlow lifted his head to listen. Somewhere, a late nightingale sang. Nearer, running feet crunched on gravel. A figure appeared from where Lord Forland's theatre stood at the far side of the house, showed briefly in black silhouette against ranges of lighted windows, then cut across the rose garden toward the river. Watching, Gair instinctively stepped back into the scented shadow of a huge climbing rose, listening to the sobbing, hard drawn breath that might mean exhaustion or tears.
The runner emerged from the shadow of the house, and Gair swallowed a gasp of surprise. This was a creature from fairy-tale, a slender boy all silver-white in the moonlight, whose doublet and hose belonged not to 1806, the age of odd old King George and Bonaparte, but to an earlier day when Queen Elizabeth sent out her fleet against the Spaniard.
While Gair watched, stock-still with amazement, the boy reached the middle of the hump-backed bridge. Still sobbing, he stopped for a moment to catch his breath, unaware of the watcher in the shadows, then began to climb on to the low parapet.
âDon't!' In a moment the dream boy was going to plunge into the river, and Gair had stayed, like a fool, amazed, too far away to intervene. He would have to do it with words. The boy was hesitating, surprised at the interruption, poised on the top of the low wall. âDon't,' Gair said again, but casually now. âIt's quite shallow under the bridge,' he lied. âYou'll look sufficiently absurd, head down, legs up, in the mud. Besides,' he moved forward into the moonlight. âThis is my best suit of clothes. I don't at all want to spoil it hauling you out.'
âAre you sure?' The boy's high clear voice suggested that he must still be in his early teens.
âOf course I'm sure.' Gair risked another slow step forward. âI ought to know. Let me introduce myself. I'm Lady Forland's brother, Gair Varlow, and entirely at your service.'
âOh! Mr Varlow ⦠Yes, I suppose you should know.' But he stayed perched on the wall and Gair did not dare move nearer. âIs it really so shallow?'
âIn winter it might be as much as waist deep, but nowâ'
âI see.' The boy sat down suddenly on the parapet, and Gair breathed a silent sigh of relief. âWhat a fool I am,' the high, clear voice went on. âI might have known it would be no good. Nothing I d ⦠d ⦠d â¦' He stuck on the letter, struggled for a moment, then began again. âNothing I do ever is.' He finished it in a rush.
While he stuttered, Gair had had a moment of delighted illumination. Here, fantastically, was opportunity presenting itself to him unasked. This was the very person he had come to Forland House to see.
âDo you stammer too?' he asked as if it was the most natural thing in the world. âI used to when I was a boy.' He had thought a great deal about what his approach was to be, but had never thought of this one.
âYou d ⦠d ⦠don't any more?' It came more easily this time.
âNot the least in the world. I grew out of it when I was at the University. I expect you will too.'
âThe University? Me?' And then, looking down at the extravagant white and silver costume. âGood gracious! You can't thinkâ' An irrepressible, delicious giggle ended the sentence. And then, sliding lightly down from the wall, plumed hat in hand, with a parody of a deep bow: âYour humble servant, Mr Varlow.'
âAnd yours, Miss Brett.' He knew it for the crassest of mistakes the moment it was spoken.
âMissâ' She choked on it. âYou knew all the t ⦠t ⦠t ⦠You knew all the while.' She was too angry to let even the stammer stop her. âI suppose your sister t ⦠t ⦠told you. My Lady Forland who thinks I'll make such a comic t ⦠t ⦠turn in her opera. Viola with a stutter.' She turned away towards the river. âWhy did you stop me? If I'd kept still, down there, I might have contrived to d ⦠to d â¦' She stopped, stutter and words alike lost in a rush of tears.
As for him, he was almost too angry to think. What lunacy was this of Vanessa's? He had asked her to get the girl to her house party so that he could look her over. He had warned her, too, about the stammer, and yet she had apparently driven the
child to the point of suicide. If he had not happened to be here ⦠He shuddered at the threat to his carefully laid plans. And it was not averted yet, though he saw with relief that Juana Brett was making no effort to get back on to the wall, but merely leaned against it, her face in her hands, sobbing and shuddering.
âBut what in the world possessed Vanessa to give you the part?'
His tone of simple enquiry was just what she needed. She raised her head to look at him, her thin face ravaged in the moonlight. âI ⦠d ⦠don't stammer when I sing,' she explained. âThey said it was just a singing part. My step-mother said I must. It was why we were asked, you see, and she said it was such a chance for the girls. My step-sisters.' It was a relief to her to talk about it, here in the cool anonymity of moonlight. âIt's a new opera of Mr. Haydn's,' she went on. âOne they found in the poor D ⦠D â¦'
He watched her writhe, stuck fast on the letter, his compassion mixed with despair. What use could this poor creature be to him? He had had no idea her stammer was so bad. Had old Mrs. Brett not known, or had she simply not chosen to tell him?
âThe D ⦠D â¦' She threw back her head, her strong features showing shadowed in the moonlight, and amazed him with a fluent stream of Portuguese bad language. Then, on the same high note: âThey found it in the Duchess of Devonshire's papers,' she said. âIt's based on Shakespeare's T â¦'
It was going to start again. âI admire your command of Portuguese,' he said in that language.
âOh!' It took her aback. âYou speak Portuguese?' She, too, spoke it like a native. âI didn't think â¦' Was she blushing? âNobody else understands it here. It seems to help, somehow. It's only what the servants used to say at my grandmother's.'
âI can imagine.' Dryly.
âIt's not so very bad either,' she went on. âThey're happy people, the Portuguese; they don't swear much, or drink either. I didn't know what life was really like, till I came here, to England.'
âYou don't like it here?'
âWho cares whether I like it or not? What's that to the purpose? You don't ask to be born. If you're a girl, you don't ask to be happy either. You just live. Or â you don't.' She had turned away again to gaze down into the dark water.
âI don't understand.' Anything to distract her. âYou don't seem to stammer in Portuguese.'
âIn Portuguese? Of course not. Why should I?'
Hope welled up in him. âThen you'd like to go back there?'
âDon't talk about it! I can't bear even to think of it. In Portugal, I was alive. I could talk, think, breathe ⦠You know Portugal, Mr. Varlow? You must, to speak the language so well.'
âI've been there.' Careful, he told himself; don't rush your fences.
âThen you know what it's like. The sun, and the sea, and the quietness ⦠All that time to be yourself, with no one to carp, and quibble and wish you different.'
âYou're talking about your Grandmother Brett's house at Cabo Roca?' It sounded most unlike his own experience of the gossipridden English colony at Lisbon, but then, things were different in that extraordinary castle on the cliffs, where old Mrs. Brett, English herself, ruled a Portuguese household with a rod of iron.
âThe Castle on the Rock? You know it?' Eagerly.
âYes. I went there once. An amazing place. I was actually received by your formidable grandmother.'
âWere you really? And the others â you saw them? My uncles, my cousins, my Aunt Elvira â¦' Her voice changed, softened on the last name. âI grew up there, you know. I was happy.' She made it absolute. âAnd I did not even know it, till we came away, my father and I.'
He knew enough about the circumstances of her father's disastrous quarrel with his rich mother, and still more unfortunate second marriage, to be able to fill out her bare sketch in his imagination. It brought him back to the immediate point.
âAnd they want you to sing Viola in some opera of Mr. Haydn's based on
Twelfth Night
?' he asked.
âThat's it.' In Portuguese, even her laugh sounded different, richer and freer. âIt's a difficult part â calls for an unusual range. They could none of them do it. So Lady Forland asked us over to her house party. We live quite near, you see. Mamma was wild with joy. She's been angling for an invitation ever since we settled here.' And then. âI oughtn't to be telling you these things.'
âNever mind.' He made it matter-of-fact, casual. âBlame it on moonlight and roses. Can you smell them? I think we're both a
little moon-mad, you and I. Besides, I might be able to help you. Vanessa â Lady Forland sometimes pays attention to me. Your problem, as I understand it, is that you can sing happily enough in their opera â so long as you don't have to talk?'
âThat's it.' Eagerly. âRecitative's all right; I can do that, but now they want to write some dialogue in the duel scene. They say it will just add to the comedy if I stutter. I could kill them.'
âI don't blame you.' He meant it. âBetter them than yourself, though I'd be sorry to see you hang at Tyburn.'
Her laugh really was delicious. âThank you, Mr. Varlow. And I'm glad you stopped me. Though mind you,' she was looking down at the river again. âI think you lied to me. It's quite deep enough, isn't it?'
âOf course.' And then, risking it. âShall I give you a leg up?'
âNot tonight, thank you. Not if you think you can persuade Lady Forland about the part. I won't be made a mock of, but I like singing. It's heavenly music, Mr. Haydn's.' She threw back her head, and moonlight illuminated the thin, pointed face, with its huge eyes and the undisciplined ringlets escaping from under the plumed hat. â “Oh, mistress mine,”' her voice rivalled the nightingale's. â “Where are you roaming?”' And down suddenly to earth. âThey will be wondering, won't they?'
âWhere you're roaming? I suppose they will.' He was loath to end this strange, promising, moon-drenched scene, but turned beside her to start back toward the house. âTell them it's all my fault. You came out for a breath of air, met me, and we got talking about Portugal. Of course you wanted all the latest news.' He left it like that, hopefully. This was too promising a chance to let slip. He needed to know much more about this strange, quicksilver, stammering girl before he decided if he could use her.
âBut I do,' she took the bait. âYou mean, you've been there recently?'
